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What options are available to purchase bitcoins in bulk (e.g. a buy in the range of ten thousand dollars or more) without having to mess around with a market exchange?
How can it be determined if the price is fair?
What payment methods are accepted?
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The following offer sales of bitcoins in larger quantities:
2Very important answer. – ripper234 – 2012-07-28T13:19:12.100
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You can buy them by trading directly with someone who wants to sell a bunch of coins. One good place to find willing counterparties bitcoin-otc (#bitcoin-otc on freenode irc, and bitcoin-otc.com).
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It isn't too hard to find someone willing to sell large amounts of BTC at around the MtGox market price with no fee. You can try #bitcoin-otc or the Bitcoin Forum's "Currency exchange" section. Wire transfers and Western Union are the most commonly-accepted transfer methods for large amounts.
It's also very easy to buy MtGox USD coupons. A lot of sellers will trade 1 MtGox USD for 1 transferred USD -- no fee at all (besides the transfer fee).
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I think that in common sense, as there is no central authority to be emiting bitcoins you can not simply be buing wholesale. The only way to get more stable and equal price is: Firstly - Go to the exchange which handles big volume of BTC, e.g. Mtgox.com Secondly - You can just be buying the smaller rate of bitcoins.
The payments metods include mainly wire transfers, in Europe SEPA (which is cheaper for earopean), and many other things like Ucash. You can also buy Linden Dollars and trasfer to bitcoin. Or https://www.bitcoinary.com/ seems to be good way when paying with paypal.
BitWage gets "wholesale" / "bulk" rates. – Geremia – 2015-10-15T00:03:13.300
1What benefits are you trying to gain over using an exchange? What do you mean by "mess around with" exactly? – David Schwartz – 2012-07-20T21:11:47.640
Basically so that a person can basically hand over to somebody X dollars (or send a wire for an amount), provide bitcoin address and then know that in a day or so bitcoins will arrive and that the overall price paid for them was at a fair rate. – Stephen Gornick – 2012-07-21T19:42:37.120
1I guess what this would be called is a broker. Are there any bitcoin brokers, and how would you be able to tell if the broker is fair? – Stephen Gornick – 2012-07-21T19:44:42.167
@DavidSchwartz - e.g. volume discounts. – ripper234 – 2012-07-28T13:19:38.730
1@ripper234: But if you're buying wholesale, the other party is selling wholesale. They would be equally entitled to a discount, and you can't both get a discount. Perhaps you might be able to transact without paying a commission to an exchange, but you're unlikely to get a break on the rate. – David Schwartz – 2012-07-28T18:48:43.340
@DavidSchwartz - the other part might need to dump a ton of Bitcoins after a few huge deals they've made (Bitpay and BFL). – ripper234 – 2012-07-29T04:31:38.830
@ripper234: And you need to buy a ton of Bitcoins. It's symmetric, any argument why they should give you a break is also an argument why you should give them a break. At best, you can save commission. – David Schwartz – 2012-07-29T05:46:40.967
@DavidSchwartz - this does not fit some information I have received. – ripper234 – 2012-07-29T06:29:18.013
DavidSchwartz is spot on. An exchange is the mechanism for determining the appropriate price. If the seller is offering this as a service (has no interest in selling other than the fee he will collect), he will need to buy the coins at the exchange anyway to hedge the rate, so you still have all the slippage and exchange fee, plus the mediator's fee (maybe he can reduce slippage a bit by using multiple exchanges). (continued...) – Meni Rosenfeld – 2012-10-03T07:17:29.050
If you manage to find someone who wants to sell a big amount, you effectively cut the middleman and can spare yourselves the exchange fees, and the appropriate rate will be whatever is going on in the exchanges. But in general finding a seller at the exact time you want to buy isn't easy. There's no free lunch - by the time the market is big enough to find OTC sellers easily, exchanges will be competitive enough that their fees will be too low to make it worth the trouble. – Meni Rosenfeld – 2012-10-03T07:19:26.050
In the end it reduces to market forces and bargaining power. If someone really has lots of coins to dump and not enough people to buy them, he can offer a better rate to attract buyers in a way that is still better for him than to suffer the exchange's fee and short-term slippage. – Meni Rosenfeld – 2012-10-03T07:23:16.233