[speakeasy]

Firstly, I haven't followed the rise of Bitcoins very carefully and generally haven't thought much about them. I don't know how you get them, where you keep them or how you redeem them for cash.

But I'm now learning about travel hacking and how to rack of points for free trips and hotels on credit cards without much actual spending.

Was recently reading about this guy who got 4 million AAdvantage miles by buying coins from the US mint with his credit card and then paying off the bill using the coins he just bought and carrying zero balance. So basically he got a lifetime of travel for free. The mint recently stopped allowing this.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/02/28/c...iles-free/

I'm wondering if something like this is possible with Bitcoins. Is there a limit to how many you can buy? How hard is it to get them back into your bank account in time to pay the bill without interest? Are there transaction fees?

[chyamor]

That mint trick is almost 7 years old now. you need to look into CC churn via amazon pay. Thats all I can say without being banned

[JJ Roberts]

(03-06-2014 03:30 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

Is there a limit to how many you can buy? How hard is it to get them back into your bank account in time to pay the bill without interest? Are there transaction fees?

There is a limit to the amount of bitcoins in existence so theoretically yes but you would have to be a multi-billionaire before you would run out of bitcoins to buy.

There are 12,481,550 BTC is existence right now. Current market cap of all of those bitcoins is $8,240,194,494.50

The upper limit of 21,000,000 BTC will be reached in about 10 years time.

Transactions fees are usually a fraction of one percent.

[ridiculous_nicholas]

(03-06-2014 03:38 PM)chyamor Wrote:  

That mint trick is almost 7 years old now. you need to look into CC churn via amazon pay. Thats all I can say without being banned

Amazon pay only allows you $1000 a month. Use the vanilla reloads with Bluebird

[booshala]

(03-06-2014 03:30 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

Firstly, I haven't followed the rise of Bitcoins very carefully and generally haven't thought much about them. I don't know how you get them, where you keep them or how you redeem them for cash.

But I'm now learning about travel hacking and how to rack of points for free trips and hotels on credit cards without much actual spending.

Was recently reading about this guy who got 4 million AAdvantage miles by buying coins from the US mint with his credit card and then paying off the bill using the coins he just bought and carrying zero balance. So basically he got a lifetime of travel for free. The mint recently stopped allowing this.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/02/28/c...iles-free/

I'm wondering if something like this is possible with Bitcoins. Is there a limit to how many you can buy? How hard is it to get them back into your bank account in time to pay the bill without interest? Are there transaction fees?

Couple of issues unfortunately:

1. Hard to buy bitcoin with credit cards. I think coinbase allows this but more as a backup. Even then, I think you have to pay a 3% surcharge.

2. Volatility of bitcoin: No guarantee that when you buy at $600, it's going to go up or down when you want to sell.

There's tons of ways to make manufactured spending (MS) with credit cards. As I've posted in other threads, I put about $700k a year on my credit cards through MS tactics. Much easier than buying/selling bitcoin, although your outside the box thinking is admirable.

I got in the US Mint game late, but I remember buying around $300,000 worth of coins in a few months with a 5% cash back card from AARP. That was a lot of fun!

[ridiculous_nicholas]

(03-07-2014 01:33 AM)booshala Wrote:  

(03-06-2014 03:30 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

Firstly, I haven't followed the rise of Bitcoins very carefully and generally haven't thought much about them. I don't know how you get them, where you keep them or how you redeem them for cash.

But I'm now learning about travel hacking and how to rack of points for free trips and hotels on credit cards without much actual spending.

Was recently reading about this guy who got 4 million AAdvantage miles by buying coins from the US mint with his credit card and then paying off the bill using the coins he just bought and carrying zero balance. So basically he got a lifetime of travel for free. The mint recently stopped allowing this.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/02/28/c...iles-free/

I'm wondering if something like this is possible with Bitcoins. Is there a limit to how many you can buy? How hard is it to get them back into your bank account in time to pay the bill without interest? Are there transaction fees?

Couple of issues unfortunately:

1. Hard to buy bitcoin with credit cards. I think coinbase allows this but more as a backup. Even then, I think you have to pay a 3% surcharge.

2. Volatility of bitcoin: No guarantee that when you buy at $600, it's going to go up or down when you want to sell.

There's tons of ways to make manufactured spending (MS) with credit cards. As I've posted in other threads, I put about $700k a year on my credit cards through MS tactics. Much easier than buying/selling bitcoin, although your outside the box thinking is admirable.

I got in the US Mint game late, but I remember buying around $300,000 worth of coins in a few months with a 5% cash back card from AARP. That was a lot of fun!

Yah I agree, buying bitcoins on credit (if its even possible) would be like buying stocks on credit. Bad news unless you know what you are doing and can afford the loss. I have a margin trading account and I still refuse to use the margin

[GeneralMacDaddy]

(03-07-2014 01:02 AM)ridiculous_nicholas Wrote:  

(03-06-2014 03:38 PM)chyamor Wrote:  

That mint trick is almost 7 years old now. you need to look into CC churn via amazon pay. Thats all I can say without being banned

Amazon pay only allows you $1000 a month. Use the vanilla reloads with Bluebird

Looked into vanilla reloads a bit, that looks interesting. Have you successfully used this strategy, and can you share a bit more?

[Virtus]

vanilla reloads

[jamaicabound]

That mint story is actually quite old, I was surprised to see a 2013 article about it. I actually got in on the mint thing towards the very tail end last couple week only got to place and cash in two orders. That was a once in a lifetime opportunity, government was so stupid to take credit cards, offer free shipping on super heavy boxes of coins and think something like this wasn't going to happen. It actually went on for quite a while and this really goes to show how stupid the governmetn is. I think they did the presidential coins one time, found out people were doing this, put a stop to it and then rolled it out about a year later doing the same thing. They were catching a lot of flack about wasting all this money producing coins nobody wanted and the costs to build warehouses to store all these coins nobody wanted was a huge expense as well.

Anyhow, there's similar ways to rack up credit card miles, problem is nobody really wants to share because as soon as people find out the cc companies catch on and break up a good thing. Someone mentioned amazon, I wasn't sure if that was still going on.

Basically if you wanna do soemthing like this the key is to be able to buy something very liquid with a credit card. Mint coins were perfect because it was as easy as get the box go to the bank, deposit and go buy another. NOthing quite that simple anymore but things like currency, silver, bitcoins, anything where its very liquid and your not going to lose money reselling can be an opportunity to rack up miles. I would say first thing is get a cc that doesn't charge cash advance fees. If you find low spreads on either monster boxes of silver coins or currency buy it up and resell it either to coinshops or ebay. Make sure your at least breaking even if not making a little bit of money. people get so wrapped up in credit card rewards they often spend money to get poitns but the actual cash value of points is very low so your pretty much always going to wind up a loser. I have a currency exchange near my house that doesn't have a great stock of stuff but sells at $3 or 1% whichever is greater so I can buy euros for just over spot and either sell them on ebay, sell them to friends travling, wait for the euro to go up a bit and sell back to a bank. Ive done simlar things with silver coins, at one point I was getting eagles for like a buck over spot, paying with credit card and then going to a coin shop and getting $350 over spot. Not only was I making a decent buck off the margins on the silver but was putting each monter box on my cc which at the time was about 12k.

[GeneralMacDaddy]

(03-08-2014 09:47 AM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

That mint story is actually quite old, I was surprised to see a 2013 article about it. I actually got in on the mint thing towards the very tail end last couple week only got to place and cash in two orders. That was a once in a lifetime opportunity, government was so stupid to take credit cards, offer free shipping on super heavy boxes of coins and think something like this wasn't going to happen. It actually went on for quite a while and this really goes to show how stupid the governmetn is. I think they did the presidential coins one time, found out people were doing this, put a stop to it and then rolled it out about a year later doing the same thing. They were catching a lot of flack about wasting all this money producing coins nobody wanted and the costs to build warehouses to store all these coins nobody wanted was a huge expense as well.

Anyhow, there's similar ways to rack up credit card miles, problem is nobody really wants to share because as soon as people find out the cc companies catch on and break up a good thing. Someone mentioned amazon, I wasn't sure if that was still going on.

Basically if you wanna do soemthing like this the key is to be able to buy something very liquid with a credit card. Mint coins were perfect because it was as easy as get the box go to the bank, deposit and go buy another. NOthing quite that simple anymore but things like currency, silver, bitcoins, anything where its very liquid and your not going to lose money reselling can be an opportunity to rack up miles. I would say first thing is get a cc that doesn't charge cash advance fees. If you find low spreads on either monster boxes of silver coins or currency buy it up and resell it either to coinshops or ebay. Make sure your at least breaking even if not making a little bit of money. people get so wrapped up in credit card rewards they often spend money to get poitns but the actual cash value of points is very low so your pretty much always going to wind up a loser. I have a currency exchange near my house that doesn't have a great stock of stuff but sells at $3 or 1% whichever is greater so I can buy euros for just over spot and either sell them on ebay, sell them to friends travling, wait for the euro to go up a bit and sell back to a bank. Ive done simlar things with silver coins, at one point I was getting eagles for like a buck over spot, paying with credit card and then going to a coin shop and getting $350 over spot. Not only was I making a decent buck off the margins on the silver but was putting each monter box on my cc which at the time was about 12k.

Besides Google (thanks Calihunter that was good), I found a a good write up here from another forum member. Seems like this is still possible at the moment with vanilla reloads
http://www.rooshvforum.network/thread-33803.html