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Instawire, Bitcoin-Central, Instawallet, Paytunia and Paymium are seem to be closely related, they cross reference each other on their sites, though their respective guarantees for their services are quite different (that was two links in two words just it's difficult to see it on your platform, perhaps you can fix that) which is interesting.

The question is why Instawire charges much more than the prices you can get on Bitcoin-Central? Maybe because the first one is a service and the latter one is an exchange. But perhaps do they have different KYC policies? Though I'm not sure about Instawire' KYC (Know oyur customer) policies they state on their site that you can send up to 100 euros, though, for a high fee. Maybe you pay for your privacy with this service? On the other hand, Bitcoin-Central requires your personal documents for even the smallest transactions, right? Though I'm not sure, didn't find these data explicitly on their sites.

Rodrigo de Azevedo
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superuser
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You got the answer in the question : the fees are higher on Instawire because it is a service, not an exchange.

The fact is also that (until Bitcoin is legally considered a currency) sales of Bitcoins are subjected to European VAT which instantly adds 19.6% to the price. (If Paymium buys a Bitcoin at 10 EUR, it must sell it at 11.96 EUR to start breaking even).

There is no legal requirement to do KYC on Instawire as no funds are held on behalf of users, sometimes documents might be requested, but when they are it is for fraud-prevention purposes, not KYC. The 100€ limit is also a fraud-prevention measure.

David
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  • Still, not quite sure about who would want to use Instawire and why? It does not add to privacy obviously as it uses a bank wire. Privacy conscious people would rather use Bitcoin-OTC, right? Yeah, that might have a learning curve and it's not _Insta_. – superuser Jan 12 '13 at 07:29