Trading is by invitation only. If you want trading access, just pm me or comment below (or send us a tweet).
I do have an important trading question. what are the fees I will pay as a trader using your service?
Also your 'HN Profile' lacks contact info...
I'm sure these guys are very solid citizens but money is money and it makes people do funny things. If there isn't a disclaimer on their site that they don't sell your flow or jump in front of your trades or make money off of you in any way other than a very simple flat fee per trade then you should assume they do.
There is a reason no self respecting hedge fund would use a sell side's algos. If you can't see the source code you don't know that they do the right thing.
These guys might be perfectly honest but then have an error in one of their algos that is only exposed when bitcoin has a very volatile day. What happens then when their algos execute an order on your behalf that you think it shouldn't?
When its your money why take a chance, even if it seems remote.
Again I'm sorry, I fee like a bit of an ass for bringing this up, but until they com out and verify they don't front run you, or sell your flow or make any money off of your trading other than a flat per order fee then you should be skeptical.
And even when they do that, don't use their algos. Most people won't have flow large enough to need to disguise it. Small limit orders can go a long way for most individuals traders.
One other thing that would be good to veriyf is do they guarantee execution at the NBBO (National Best Bid Offer), meaning if 2 different exchanges offer to sell at different prices will they ensure you buy from the cheapest seller?
EDIT They should also fix their private policy. https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/sf-ox.com/PrivacyPolicyOX...
It is so blurry that I can't read it:(
We will make this clear on our site. We tried to do so by showing the complete order book and not just a single price.
You also have complete control of when you execute the algos.
Fixing the privacy policy - not sure what happened to the pdf upload. Thanks for catching.
I've never seen a privacy policy as a PDF. Any reason for this?
It's not their own explicit policies that prohibit traditional brokers from front running or through trading, it's regulation.
Coinsetter, CampBX, Coinbase, Coinmkt, Kraken, SecondMarket / Bitcoin Trust
fyi discussion on reddit...
http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2c1oo5/first...
You can't see order book on coinbase and quickly trade in and out.
None of the other sites allow you to buy / sell with ACH.
Second Market is open to members only; not everyone. You have to be a member that is well funded to trade with them.
CampBX and Coinmkt are exchanges. We are not. Think NYSE and E-Trade. We are the E-Trade.
On a related note, I hear horror stories on /r/bitcoin all the time about bank accounts being shut down over supposed BTC activity. Does your service have a solution or guidance for this?
In another industry, this probably wouldn't be a red flag; it would just be standard marketing practice or startup posturing. But when you're dealing with money services, you don't get to be dishonest, unprofessional, or unprepared.
You've tripped quite a few red flags with your comments on HN today. I definitely won't be doing business with your website.
CoinSetter is kind of a hybrid broker / exchange and they offer fee rebates on coins purchased via ACH through coinbase.
I guess my point is why would I want to trade with you, a new and unproven company, that out of the gate is making a dubious claim of being the "first" of something of which there are already many. This is Bitcoin if you are making dubious claims on the small stuff how can we make the leap of faith that this isn't just scam company n+1
Also curious how you guys market make on BTC, are the prices you are showing as the other exchanges the asking price, and you guys are essentially tightening the spread? Or are you guys selling parts of bulk orders of the large sell orders directly? How do you hedge your inventory risk?
We offer both options, VWAP and TWAP.
The price on other exchange is based on Google's price of BTC.
We do not market make ourselves. We make it easy for market makers to market make.
Our price advantage you see on the site is based on routing. Different exchanges have price advantage at different times and so we route to the exchange that has the best rate; including splitting your order if needed.
We currently don't show the price advantage of algorithms (very difficult to show without knowing trade parameters).
We do not take any inventory risk.
noname123, is there a way for us to connect. You clearly have experience in the space. We would like to speak with you in more details.
There was one time when I did look into arbitrage across different BTC exchanges, the issue I saw then (which I'm not sure still stands) is that different BTC exchanges had different processing fees that made it prohibitively expensive to arbitrage in practice. For instance, Mt.Gox or something similar had like a 0.15% cash out fee. Not to mention foreign exchange risk if you move money in and out of European exchanges vs. US exchanges.
BitInstant was created I believe to solve this problem, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitInstant ; by parking money at all of the available exchanges and charging an interest for people to access their funds for arbitrage. They were shut down due to being deemed as a money transmitter operating without license by the New York state financial regulators.
I do think there might be an opportunity for people who trade the US and European BTC market and arbitraging the USD/Euro exchange rate.
Fr example, bitcoin.de has a best bid of 443 euro (or equivalent of 594.13 USD) of almost 3 lots; bitstamp has a best ask of 8 lots at 582.43. If you parked sufficient funds at both exchanges, you can buy at market price at bitstamp 3 lots and sell at market the 3 lots to bitcoin.de, and immediately buy a hedge of USD to Euro by shorting a equivalent dollar amount of the Euro ETF, FXE. Of course, in practice this is difficult to carry out as you have to factor in slippage, commission cost and how exact your hedge is.
Anyways, that's my $0.02; gl.
We comply with all regulations. This is not an anonymous site. When you are invited to trade, you will be subjected to full KYC.
Having built 4 payments platforms before, I can tell you that regulation is never easy but very necessary.
Importantly, despite claiming to be an automated platform for trading on other exchanges, your service will hold funds. This is the very definition of a money transmitter, and also makes you a financial institution under many countries' financial institution laws. As you appear to be SF-based, you're in violation of at least 2 major financial regulatory schemes--not including any state regulations.
Your website is tripping way too many red flags. You need to get these problems addressed ASAP. Bitcoin is not an excuse for amateur hour.
Instead, they still find time to put a big 'meet the team' section in there, as if end users deeply care about the bios of the founders and don't care about how the product actually works or costs.
The bitcoin community has really changed in the last 3 years.
