I was trying to find the lowest cost brokers that aren’t just mobile apps that offer passive investments in the assets I’m looking for on top of the usual equity and bonds I already have.
I’m hoping this will help people in my situation. I looked for a comparison website and found: https://brokerchooser.com/ which helped but I still had to dig around to get the direct comparison I needed all in one easily visible table.
What are your thoughts and experiences on the below brokers like customer service etc with these platforms?
Trading212 looks to be the cheapest and best all round but I’ve read bad experiences.
To diversify my portfolio I’m looking at:

1. Renewables funds,
2. Commodities,
3. Individual shares and Crypto (a very small gamble 1% of total)
4. Property dev/REITs,
5. Venture capital,
6. Higher risk corporate Bonds,

1 - 4 Can be invested in via ETF’s offered by most of the online brokers below.
4 - 5 Can be invested in using the other platforms below: Crowdcube, Seedrs, Syndicate room, Crowdproperty.
1 and 6 I think need higher cost traditional brokers like HL/Black rock etc but I’m not sure.
Here’s my comparison:

	Free trades per month	Products	Fees (deposit etc)	FCA Regulated?	Bank transfer or debit card?
Trading 212	Unlimited	Stocks ETF/ETCs Forex Crypto ISA	Free ISA, no trade fees, CFD account has charges inc: 0.5% currency conversion charge, no forex fees	Yes	Debit card: Yes - Bank transfer: Yes
TD Ameritrade	Unlimited	$0 for US stock $6.95 for non-US	Cannot find on FCA register	Cannot find on FCA register
eToro	Unlimited	Stocks ETF/ETCs Forex Crypto Commodities via CFD’s No ISA	- $5 withdrawal fee - Deposit and withdrawal fee of 0.5% - exchange fee (50 pips) 0.5cent/$1 e.g $7.5 on $500 - If no activity for 12 months charged $10 per month - 0.75% fee to buy bitcoin	Yes	Debit card: Yes - Bank transfer: No
Freetrade	Unlimited	Mobile app only Stocks ETFs ISA	ISA £3/month 0.90% forex fee	Yes	Debit card: No - Bank transfer: Yes
Revolut	3	Mobile app only Stocks Crypto Commodities No ISA	Complex fee structure	Yes	Debit card: Yes - Bank transfer: Yes
Degiro	Unlimited	Stocks ETF Funds Bonds Options Futures Crypto No ISA	High fees (complex structure)	Yes	Debit card: No - Bank transfer: Yes

Other investment platforms:
​

	Investment type	Fees (deposit etc)	FCA Regulated?	Pre-emption rights?
Crowd cube	Venture capital	1.5%	Yes	No
Syndicate Room	Venture capital	High fees 2% set up fee 1.5% – 2.3% annual 20% performance fee Life-time management fees of between 12.5% and 24.3%	Yes	Yes
Seedrs	Venture capital	7.5% of any profit Plus variable sale fees	Yes	Yes
Crowd property	Property	0% fees however returns capped at 8%.	Yes	N/A

​
Have you used any of these before or do you have alternatives?
​

I'm in the following situation rn:
I live in Europe and pay in Euro for the necessary things in life. My personal investing / trading style is based all around US Equity. So practically 85 % of my wealth is either in $ Cash or in US Equity.
The USD is now down more than 7 % in comparison to the euro since the beginning of May. So I practically lost 7 % isn't it?
A few days ago I thought it would be smart to hedge against the currency risk through a simple forex broker in swiss where I have a leverage of 200. Since I did that the USD lost about 2 %, the trade I placed gained 2 %, exactly what I theoretically lost on the US side. The swaps I pay the broker for holding the forex position overnight are insignificantly small and with the 200 leverage, I don't need much capital to place the trade 1 to 1.
Now I'm a bit confused, I had recently a discussion with a friend who told me that what I was doing is nonsense and not a hedge at all. It's speculation on a weaker dollar and I would be dump to hold 85 % of my money in $ because I use € to pay the bills and everything.
But the point is that even if the USD got stronger, I would lose money on my forex position, but I would also "gain" money on my $ position I hold in my US brokerage. + - 0
Sorry if that a dumb question but do I make a thought error? Is the hedge reasonable and is it really that important to have my base currency as the standard living currency I use to pay bills?

edit to add: Thanks /joeledg for the suggestion on LightSpeed, I looked into them more deeply and have engaged with Robert Morse over on Elite Trader. They do tick off all the boxes (except the last, but that's really last on my list and not important) below. Please ignore the total misinformation (what really is the point of that??) you'll find in the responses below.
https://www.lightspeed.com/automated-trading/
I ignored them before because of lack of API focus, but just found they support colo/cross connect as well as everything else on the list. So that is pretty savvy.
It's possible the retail API trader is too small of a market to focus on exclusively, but that doesn't stop with providing them good service anyways. I still think there's an opportunity there with the right prioritization and engineering team, but that's a different discussion.
--
Looking for a broker, ideally API Only. (Competitive with IB!)
Some ideal features -

• API retail traders are warmly welcomed, supported, and encouraged
• Should go without saying, but dead simple, rock solid security.
• US stocks/options support
• pure focus on API/algotrading, very basic UI (none is fine with me), no market data support but see below regarding latency.
• low commissions, obviously, but more importantly described and billed with precision and transparency
• order execution transparency, flexibility. Smart routing isn't that important to me, but I do need fine grained control
• order fill ratio rules with smart billing and generally well implemented throttling
• detailed latency comparison against exchanges and routing performance (how fast do messages flow through your broker to exchanges). Focused support for the usual algotrading trading suspect exchanges here. Know your customers.
• DC co-location / cross connect support / generally great network infra
• API performance / C++ support / protocol serialization speeds. Clear, simple python facade to C++ API. Fix is nice, but not required. I want speed and control.
• latency compatibility with data providers (broker doesn't need to supply market data, but needs to ideally have colocation offering which has very low latency against low cost API data providers, eg nanex or nanex like offering)
• paper trading / dev account for staging new code.
• great documentation is nice, but constantly updated example code is required. Best to simply have a reference implementation used for full coverage integration testing that you support. Use good tools to measure coverage. Example code be similar to average use cases. Github for that code would be wise. Think like a developer!
• broad markets support is nice (futures,forex,international, OTC,bonds,etc).

Add your ideas, fellow algotraders.

--UPDATE--
In light of Christine from Hatch's announcement of a reduction to a flat $3 broker fee, I've updated in a new comment here.
Treat the direct comparison of $ below as incorrect (once Hatch update their pricing).
--Old Text--
I decided to undertake a fees comparison of the two platforms as Stake is launching on Tuesday.
Comparing Hatch and Stake, the long and short of it is:

• If you are buying more than 1.00 shares and less than 400 share units, you will be on $8/transaction fee. So including the 0.5% FX fee, the break-even point where Hatch fees are cheaper is about $1600 in 1 transaction. Above this, Hatch is cheaper. Below this, Stake is cheaper.
• If you only buy fractional shares (less than 1.00 share units per transaction, eg you can buy 0.99 shares for USD$3) then the break-even point is $600 per transaction. Above this, Hatch is cheaper, below Stake is cheaper. For this to apply you'd have to be buying into something like Amazon where the share price is $2k/share, so this comparison is kind of meaningless. Most companies are under $600 so you'd be buying more than 1.00 share units.
• If you buy fractional shares into say 3 companies per FX transfer, total fees are $9/transfer, then the break-even point is about $1900 (below Stake is better, above Hatch is better)
• If you are are a typical routine investor doing small DCA every fortnight or month or whatever, buying into multiple companies with each deposit, Stake will win every time because of zero broker fees.

Most people will do the latter and be DCA in to a lot of smaller companies so Stake will end up being a lot cheaper on the buy-in.
https://imgur.com/a/wkuiIl1
Comparing to US based companies, assuming you use Transferwise to deposit into a US bank account and there is no fee to transfer from the US account to their service, Transferwise appear to get a 0.6% better FOREX rate than Hatch did when I just checked - Transferwise was $0.6067 vs Hatch $0.6029 (I'm assuming the Hatch FOREX rate will be similar to Stake, can't check atm as I don't have a Stake account until Tuesday). So the break-even point for using Transferwise at current FOREX rates is about $250 (below Stake is better, above Transferwise is better), excluding IBKTD Ameritrade fees (TDA have no broker fees currently). Hatch will allow USD transfer but only if you email them so I don't think you can use this as your regular deposit strategy.
One thing to consider with IBKTD Amertrade is they are US companies who are not at all interested in your NZ tax requirements so will not help you at all in the process. Customer support will be harder to get, and using Transferwise is not a trivial process especially if you are doing very regular deposits it can become a PITA for a relatively tiny difference in fees (eg if you deposit $500/fortnight the difference in FX fees is about $3 per transaction, so just don't buy that bag of chips and save yourself the hassle of using Transferwise + foreign based company IMO - and this is coming from someone who even changes power and ISP companies every year chasing better deals!).
Once you want to withdraw money, Hatch is obviously cheaper at 0.5% (edit: despite the $8 withdrawal fee) compared to 1% with Stake (and they have a $2 withdrawl fee that will be pretty negligible if you have a lot of money invested). Hatch will do an off-market transfer of US shares so best strategy might be using Stake for deposits and Hatch for withdrawals.
Another benefit to Hatch is that they are Kiwi owned so I think more likely to be accessible in terms of Tax and customer support than an Aussie based company (Stake). Lastly with Hatch, if a company is less than $400/share then you should buy a series of Fractional share bids unless you are buying more than 2.66 share units, above that the $8 broker fee is better.
Edit: I had a user complaining about the withdrawal fee of $8 through Hatch. This is true if you are regularly buying and selling shares. Typical advice given here is directed to buy and hold strategies (so you only get stung once for a withdrawal after X number of years), if you want day trading advice there are other subs for that. See my comment here.

Post any options questions you wanted to ask, but were afraid to ask. A weekly thread in which questions will be received with equanimity. There are no stupid questions, only dumb answers.   Fire away. This is a weekly rotation with past threads linked below. This project succeeds thanks to people thoughtfully sharing their knowledge and experiences (YOU are invited to respond to questions posted here.)
Perhaps you're looking for an item in the frequent answers list below.
For a useful response about a particular option trade, disclose position details, so that responders can assist. Vague inquires receive vague responses. Tell us: TICKER -- Put or Call -- strike price (for each leg, on spreads) -- expiration date -- cost of option entry -- date of option entry -- underlying stock price at entry -- current option (spread) market value -- current underlying stock price -- your rationale for entering the position.   .
Key informational links: • Glossary • List of Recommended Books • Introduction to Options (The Options Playbook) • The complete side-bar informational links, for mobile app users.

Links to the most frequent answers

I just made (or lost) $____. Should I close the trade? Yes, close the trade, because you had no plan for an exit to limit your risk. Your trade is a prediction: a plan directs action upon an (in)validated prediction. Take the gain (or loss). End the risk of losing the gain (or increasing the loss). Plan the exit before the start of each trade, for both a gain, and maximum loss. • Exit-first trade planning, and using a risk-reduction trade checklist (Redtexture)
Why did my options lose value, when the stock price went in a favorable direction? • Options extrinsic and intrinsic value, an introduction (Redtexture)
Getting started in options • Calls and puts, long and short, an introduction (Redtexture) • Exercise & Assignment - A Guide (ScottishTrader) • Some useful educational links • Some introductory trading guidance, with educational links • Options Expiration & Assignment (Option Alpha) • Expiration time and date (Investopedia)
Common mistakes and useful advice for new options traders • Five mistakes to avoid when trading options (Options Playbook) • Top 10 Mistakes Beginner Option Traders Make (Ally Bank) • One year into options trading: lessons learned (whitethunder9) • Here's some cold hard words from a professional trader (magik_moose) • Thoughts after trading for 7 Years (invcht2) • Avoiding Stupidity is Easier than Seeking Brilliance (Farnum Street Blog) • 20 Habits of Highly Successful Traders (Viper Report) (40 minutes) • There's a bull market somewhere (Jason Leavitt) (3 minutes)
Trade planning, risk reduction and trade size, etc. • Exit-first trade planning, and using a risk-reduction trade checklist (Redtexture) • Trade Checklists and Guides (Option Alpha) • An illustration of planning on trades failing. (John Carter) (at 90 seconds) • Trade Simulator Tool (Radioactive Trading) • Risk of Ruin (Better System Trader)
Minimizing Bid-Ask Spreads (high-volume options are best) • Fishing for a price: price discovery with (wide) bid-ask spreads (Redtexture) • List of option activity by underlying (Market Chameleon) • List of option activity by underlying (Barchart) • Open Interest by ticker (optinistics)
Closing out a trade • Most options positions are closed before expiration (Options Playbook) • When to Exit Guide (Option Alpha) • Risk to reward ratios change over the life of a position: a reason for early exit (Redtexture)
Options Greeks and Option Chains • An Introduction to Options Greeks (Options Playbook) • Options Greeks (Epsilon Options) • Option Greeks (Chris Butler - Project Option) • A selected list of option chain & option data websites • See also the wiki FAQ
Selected Trade Positions & Management • The Wheel Strategy (ScottishTrader) • Rolling Short (Credit) Spreads (Options Playbook) • Rolling Short (Credit) Spreads (Redtexture) • Long Call vs. Call Spread Options Strategy Comparison (Chris Butler - Project Option) (30 Minutes) • Take the loss (here's why) (Clay Trader) (15 minutes) • The diagonal calendar spread and "poor man's covered call" (Redtexture) • Creative Ways to Avoid The Pattern Day Trader Rule (Sean McLaughlin) • See also the wiki FAQ
Implied Volatility, IV Rank, and IV Percentile (of days) • See the wiki FAQ
Miscellaneous: Economic Calendars, International Brokers, RobinHood, Pattern Day Trader, CBOE Exchange Rules, Contract Specifications, TDA Margin Handbook, EU Regulations on US ETFs, US Taxes and Options • See the wiki FAQ for most of this material • Selected calendars of economic reports and events • An incomplete list of international brokers dealing in US options markets (Redtexture)
Following week's Noob thread: Oct 21-27 2019
Previous weeks' Noob threads:
Oct 14-20 2019 Oct 7-13 2019 Sept 30 - Oct 6 2019
Sept 23-29 2019 Sept 16-22 2019 Sept 09-15 2019 Sept 02-09 2019 Aug 26 - Sept 02 2019
Complete NOOB archive, 2018, and 2019

Overview:

The trademark BROKERZ.COM is the sole proprietorship of BROKERZ LTD addressed offshore in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The trading assets of this broker includes FX pairs, CFDs on shares, several commodities, and many indexes. To get all the information about this broker please read this BROKERZ review.

About the BROKERZ:

Regulation and licensing is the most critical aspect of an online broker. Sadly, we were unable to find any information about the regulatory body that looks after this broker’s operation. The unregulated and unlicensed nature makes it hard to trust any broker. It also becomes a tedious job to recover investor’s funds. As a genuine reviewer, we warn all our readers to avoid such scam brokers. The local financial regulatory authority of Austria publicly warned about this forex fraud called BROKERZ. This broker makes efforts to provide out of the class facility to its traders and offers MetaTrader and WebTrader platform. Eventually, it fails to provide out of class and favorable trading conditions. The spreads provided in all accounts types are capped at 3 pips for the $/€ FX pair. These provided spreads are far higher in comparison with the average market spreads. The broker also takes $8 commission on each trade performed, it is nothing but the extra spread of 0.8 pips. This ultimately increases the trading cost and appears to be unfavorable to all the traders.
While talking about the advantages of BROKERZ it offers 3 different types of trading terminals. The super popular and time tested MetaTrader is amongst them. MetaTrader features MQL for strategy making, charting for current market situation, experts advice for a quick profit and many more. Another advantage we came across of this broker is its low initial investments. $250 is required to open a basic account with this broker and it is according to market condition. The maximum leverage of 1:100 is offered by BROKERZ and it can be beneficial to most of the traders as the minimum loss is associated with it as compared to the high leverage ratio.

Is BROKEZ scam or legit?

The offshore broker BROKERZ is unregulated and unlicensed. Also, there is a potential forex scam broker warning issued against it by the Austrian financial authority. The SVG based firms are treated doubtfully. All these facts force us to believe that this can be an investment scam. Avoiding such brokers is advised.

https://medium.com/@Zawiasa/the-crypto-markets-correlation-with-traditional-markets-79e8209a6d8
At the time of Corona virus and the — not so related — economic meltdown, many questions the correlation between the virtual economy of cryptocurrencies and the “trad” one.
Why is it such an important question? For many years crypto evangelists predicted Bitcoin as a new safe-haven, the “digital gold”. — Oh boy, they were wrong.
The correlation is not imaginary, trad market players now have significant capital in cryptocurrency and when they need to pull liquidity to cover fiat liabilities, they just do it. The reason for the steep drop in % terms is because the BTC market is not liquid enough at this point in time.
Is it a problem? A heresy of the crypto evangelion?
A heresy for sure, but not a problem at all. Let’s be honest and admit it: The crypto community found nothing unusual in the recent price-drops. I, myself even shorted the market, because crypto is still full of promises but lacking adoption.

Okay, so they are correlating and crypto is full of shit and scammy and basically the same, right?

Not so! Do you remember the times when we had to wait days for a transaction? Paying with wire transfer for something in China was insanely expensive? When merchants preferred cash over credit cards, because of high fees? When you had to hire a broker for investing?
Those times are gone and yes, not because of crypto solved these problems, but crypto definitely accelerated this transformation, urged the financial world to change rules or die. Now what if I say, this is only the beginning and these are only entry-level benefits of what really crypo promises?

Crypto promises us the “digital America”

Uh, I said it. Crypto is the new land and all the resourceful wants their own pieces of it. The reason behind why so many are thinking about Bitcoin as the digital gold is because the digital America’s gold rush is happening now. We all know deep in our consciousness that the world is heavily changing, the youth is changing, society is being digitalized even if brain-computer interfaces are not a thing yet..

Damn son you are weird and I stopped reading here.

The reason you feel weird about our descendants living online is because you know it will happen, but stay in the present now and I will tell you what crypto is doing to our traditional economy!

What is the “crypto dream”?

Many of the early adopters joined not because they wanted to make money, but because they think the current money system is unfair. Common citizens are paying the highest on almost everything and most of the time they don’t know about it. The financial sector’s practices are so hidden, almost like an occult knowledge. There are a few people who understand it and then there are everyone else, the vulnerable. This makes the first statement of the dream:

• Financial systems should be transparent.

One of my biggest frustration as a teenager was I did not see real good opportunities in the world. I read about them, I saw them in historical movies, but in reality workplaces were boring and abusive, investments were only for the rich. Neither the booming housing market or fake forex trading seemed like a good fit for me. I had very little money, but a big passion to forge my fortune.

• Opportunities should be there for everyone.

The wolves of Wall Street created our current system in the ideology of “I own what I could acquire” and backfired each other just like everyone did. They have done this, because there is no trust in the traditional world, but trust is heavily needed. But if things are transparent and open, we only need one more thing to wake up from this nightmare:

• Cooperations should work without trust.

You read it right, a trustless environment provide uncheatable cooperation. There is no single entity that has authority over the system, and consensus is achieved without participants having to know or trust anything but the system itself.

I don’t eat your utopian bullshit! Your software is written by people I still need to trust.

People tend to be happier to direct trust towards organizations than systems. However, while organizations are made up of people who are easily corruptible, trustless systems can be governed entirely by computer code. All of the source code in crypto should be accessible to everyone. If it is not, then it is not a part of our ecosystem.

The technology behind crypto

Many being confused about the blockchain, thinking it is not a big deal. We had many software far older than Bitcoin, implementing the very same ideas. What Bitcoin had — which made the blockchain a very unique thing — is philosophy. It was intended to use a special way and confronted a very big thing, nobody thought it could be possible to confront.
The blockchain is a way to store information. A decentralized, fully transparent one, which is accessible for everyone 7/24. It never stops, It cannot be stopped and people make it doing different things.
The first use case its inventor made it doing is persisting transactions, money transfers. He told all of us it is just an experiment, which he didn’t tell is the capabilities of this technology. So fast people realized it is possible to do extraordinary things with it, like running a whole computer on the blockchain, making it behave like a virtual computer instance.
No one did things like this before: A global computer which cannot be stopped, which is capable to run all kinds of software on it.

What was the impact?

People go mad about it, especially greedy people who don’t know a bum about the technology but have money to pour in. At one point, the fundraising softwares running on the Ethereum global computer had more impact and volume than the whole VC industry in America. This was only the early rising of crypto, 2017 spring. Later that year, everyone hopped on the train who were brave or stupid enough.
Did crypto had a real economy at that point? Was it an industry? Real-world adoption? NOPE
It was a bitter funny hype train, challenging everyone inside or outside the community, but it showed us one thing: We have the gold.
Not so much people are capable to find and extract gold, to be honest: Most of us are just lurkers, fortune hunters and times could be rough when a mass hype destructs all the mines, but people had keep going, continuing the work.

How the crypto economy relates to the traditional economy now?

It is expanding much faster than any other economy in the world. Our frontiers in adoption are companies like Crypto.com paying hundred millions of dollars ($50 bonus for every new customer) to onboard millions of users, others like Coinbase paying $166 anyone to motivate in learning about cryptocurrencies. Handshake is airdropping hundreds of dollars (on current rates) to open-source developers and these are just a few examples of how generous and prosperous our thriving world is. In comparison: Revolut, a fintech company which is very similar to Crypto.com only paid 10 USD for new card holders and no one would ever pay you to educate yourself about financials. Developers? They historically get a fraction of a fraction of the pie in Silicon Valley. (Sorry Y Combinator, you are a delightful exception)
These companies I mentioned are very traditional ones and they are not innovating in software, but keeping our gates open to the new world. I don’t want to credit here any of the thousands of developer teams, all working on the “real deal”. I only leave here a link to the list of all variants of the Bitcoin source code alone. Understanding what blockchain companies are working on is a whole new profession now.
The idea of a crypto company is the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). Which covers trustless, often anonymous and fully transparent organizations with profit sharing and they are aimed to become better alternatives to traditional companies. Most of us in the community have different understanding, proposals and hopes about what a DAO should be, but common sense tell us it is the next big thing to emerge.

Wild West is Happening

We are building railway systems across the land, making connections and interoperations between blockchains. We are attracting a lot of immigrants day-to-day, because we have better paying workplaces, better interest rates and in overall a flourish economy. We are growing a strong identity to support our nation as the blockchain developers, economists, philosophers and investors. Our money is under our control as we own our future and all of us knows: We will soon show the world, what we are capable to achieve.
This is my view of the crypto world. This is the manifesto of “digital America”.
RAZ
contact me at zawiasa.hu

Hello everyone,
I am here to discuss the recent FUD presented by a relatively unknown YouTube reviewer. I intend to discuss his methodology and the actual points themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=1hH5_FAEzyo
This is his YouTube video based on the document in question. He wrote the document. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XQlAGIDPjDoQNHtzEWGdbO9i8MUkc4lZFKYLTZzMpYU/edit
First, to get this out of the way, the reviewer has only been around on the social media scene for a short while. The views of his videos are only in the hundreds and his twitter was created a week ago. He is basically a "nobody" at this point. I don't mean that to be disparaging. He literally came out of nowhere. He is unproven and his methodology is inconsistent and extremely questionable.
With that said, just because he came out of nowhere doesn't mean he might not have a point, so let's look at his rating methodology to get a better idea of his process.
Oh and if you do not want to read all this, here is the TL:DR: The guy doesn't know what he is talking about. He doesn't has much idea of what he is doing when writing reviews. His research is lazy. I actually feel I wasted my time responding to this, but I am going to do it anyway.
When rating a project, he uses the following categories: MVP (minimum viable product), ease of research, team, roadmap, community (bonus), solving a problem, does it need blockchain, token use, red flags, competition, presentation, token vesting, demand/value, scarcity, customer service, best in field (bonus), active use, size of market, development (bonus)
These are pretty good things to look at, but he failed to look at GitHub contributions (or other source code related sites), so he can't really tell if a project is scammy or not. So, how well did he check this stuff out?
Rating the team:
When looking at his review of GVT, the only way to get an idea of this person's methodology is to look at his reviews of other projects. When rating the team there are basically two basic routes a person can take. You can analyze the team itself, or you can bundle the team and the advisors together and rate the project as a whole.
The reviewer is inconsistent in his reviews. In this category he bundles the entire team and advisors on some projects whereas he just looks solely at the team in other reviews.
His research is absolutely lazy. He gave Polymath a 0 rating for their team, but their website links to their company LinkedIn page and lists all 26 employees. It was not hard to find this. Even if it weren't on the site, a simple google search would have revealed who the team is. Polymath has a great team with some decent “stars” on it. It makes no sense to give them a 0. The reviewer doesn't know what he is doing.
Difficulty in finding the team deserves docking points in "ease of research", and it does not deserve giving the entire category a 0. The point of this category should be to evaluate the merits of the team members, which is something he does not do in most of his reviews.
He gave Selfkey a perfect score stating: "Team: 20 Points - Superstar team and advisors" This means he is bundling the team and advisors together. If so, any issues with advisors deserves docking points from that category, not docking at additional 20 points because of one advisor.
Looking at Selfkey, I don't know where the he gets the idea that they have a "superstar team". What does that even mean? I checked their profiles. Some of them only came onto the project recently and their LinkedIn pages are nothing to write home about. Some of them don't even have LinkedIn pages.
He gave the GVT team 13 points, but then docked 20 points because he didn't like Charlie Shrem.
Do you realize the ridiculousness of this? The GV team category effectively gets -7/20 points because the reviewer does not like Charlie Shrem. That is worse than giving the team 0/20. Charlie is only one advisor with no actual power over the GVT team's operations. He cannot execute any commands over the GV team or force them to do anything. The GV team can fire Charlie. Charlie cannot dismantle the GV team. That power balance is important. The rating makes no sense at all. Also, he docked the Changelly advisor because his company has bad customer service? Really? What does that have to do with his ability to advise the GV team on the things they need from him? Fact of the matter is his business is still running. The same cannot be said for advisors of other projects (more on that soon).
If you are going to rate the team and include the advisors, the value should be 3:1 or even 2:1. Even if you gave the advisors a score of 0, the category score should not be that low. GVT's advisors are absolutely amazing. To call them weak is ridiculous.
With regard to Nuls: "Asian team, isn’t on LinkedIn. No way to research." They get 0 points because they are Asian and don't use the sites you like to use? The language used allows that statement to be interpreted in a very negative way. There are non-Asians on that team as well. There is a way to research them. There are bios of each team member if you scroll over the pictures. You can then use that information to do more research on them. You are just too lazy.
Looking at The Key, their members are definitely not "all-stars". Their team is unknown and they have 3 relatively unknown advisors, only one of which has a LinkedIn page. Love him or hate him, Charlie Shrem is a crypto superstar compared to these people. Interestingly they are more of an "Asian team" than Nuls. That didn't seem to affect the score much though.
He gave the Bounty0x team a perfect score, but he obvious didn't bother to research every member of the team or their advisors with much effort. As an example, Terry Li is the Bounty0x solidity developer. If you check his LinkedIn page you will find a few serious red flags. He hasn't held a job for over a year. He has no visible programming experience. He has been a solidity developer for 10 months with no prior history or proof that he can program well. I cannot stress this enough: you do not want your solidity developer to be a programming newbie. This will spell disaster for your project.
When you look at their advisors there are some serious red flags as well. I picked two advisors to research and I found out that both of them have had their companies fail. One of them even declared themselves unsuccessful in a Facebook post. I don't want a project to be advised by people with a bunch of failed startups. Changelly having bad customer service pales in comparison to advisors whose project's failed. Bounty0x's advisor team is filled with failed entrepreneurs and members of their team lack experience in the jobs they are assigned. Also, their "Backend and Solidity engineer" has only been with the project for a month, and his blockchain programming experience is nonexistent. They do not deserve a perfect score in this category.
GVT has a team with years of programming experience, but more importantly, they have years of experience programming financial software. These are exactly the type of people you need on your team.
To the reviewer: Either bundle the advisors into the team rating or give them a separate category. Do not be inconsistent in this category. Do not bring a team's ethnicity into play as a factor for anything. Please do actual research on all the members, and please define what it means to be a "superstar". Please learn to navigate websites. Polymath's team is there. Your inconsistency and lack of research in this makes you appear incapable of judging a team. There is no clear methodology here. All your reviews are questionable because of this.
Roadmap:
He gave 0 points to GVT for their roadmap being hard to read. But the key point is this: They have a roadmap. There is no reason to give 0 points in this category. Not only that, the roadmap is decently detailed with many goals and objectives. The roadmap isn't some simple points on a line like Enigma's roadmap. Speaking of which...
He gave Enigma 0 points for not having a roadmap at all.... But they do have a roadmap. The guy didn't do his research.
https://en.decentral.news/2017/12/27/ico-analysis-enigma-catalyst-realm-crypto-trading-machines/
It can be found here.
MVP:
Having a minimum viable product be worth only 10 points is ludicrous. Any project that has an MVP basically utterly destroys a project that doesn't. More importantly, the reviewer didn't actually bother to use the MVP on what he reviews.
He gave Polymath 0 points for their demo, but gave GVT 10 points for theirs.
I am going to be blunt about this. GVT's demo is a non-functional interface demo. GVT's MVP comes on April 1. Polymath does not deserve a 0, and GVT does not (as of 3/21) deserve a 10. They both deserve a 5. He didn't bother to actually check out GVT's demo, which goes to show he doesn't actually research things properly.
He gave Enigma a 3 for an MVP not available to the public and Selfkey a 5 for an MVP not used by the public. Eh?
He gave the Authorship a 10 for their MVP but claims he cannot find any info about them. How is that supposed to work?
He gave Po.Et 0 points for their MVP because he couldn't find it.
Here you go buddy: https://github.com/poetapp/wordpress-plugin
It's right there. You just failed to find it. It isn't their fault your research is bad.
Ease of Research:
The reviewer either needs to dock points for research being difficult in their respective categories or dock research being difficult in this category. Do not "double dip" and dock points in both categories. This category is irrelevant since the reviewer already docks points in their respective categories. Also, this category is subjective because it is based on the reviewer's research skillset.
Community:
He uses coingecko's score or numbers from their telegram channel but there isn’t much evidence that he actually bothered to check out their communities much. Reeks of laziness and has nothing to do with the quality of a community. This really shouldn't even be a category if he is going to give points based on this. High telegram channel members has little meaning.
Solving a problem:
The reviewer’s inability to understand the problem that a project solves should not be held against it. Polymath is quite clear in the problem it solves.
He gives projects that solve problems of identifying people a 10, but gives projects that solve problems of identifying intellectual property a 3. That makes no sense. Those are both problems that need to be solved by the blockchain. The idea that he finds one more important than the other is clear bias.
Token Use:
The author does not understand the GV product. GV is platform agnostic, and more importantly GVT needs as little outside influence as possible. There is a very specific reason why GVT has to be used in place of ETH. ETH would technically be a middleman in this sense. GV's success is not meant the be tied to ETH's success or ETH token price manipulation. GV's success isn't even meant to be tied to crypto's success. GV is designed to succeed even if ETH or crypto fails.
GVT actually deserves a 10 in this category. GVT is needed to use the platform. Money is transferred using GVT. Profit is returned using GVT. Other services such as GV Markets will also function using GVT as gas. The utility of GVT is needed in all aspects of the platform. This gives the token great utility and investment value. If 1 Billion is invested through the GV platform, GV's market cap includes that 1 billion because the token is needed to transfer that 1 Billion around. This provides great incentive to invest in the platform and a great reason for the token price to grow in value. No other project that this much incentive or ways to bring value to their token as much as GVT. I am surprised the reviewer cannot see this.
GVT is also market agnostic. The entire crypto market can fail and GVT can still maintain value through profits brought in from the Forex and stock markets. This will make it extremely resilient over time.
Presentation:
The purpose of GVT is quite clear. It is broken down on the website and the presentation clearly explains why it is needed as all levels of trust management including the brokers, customers and managers. All that info is very clear on the front page of the site. 0/10? GVT presentation isn't the problem here. It seems the reviewer only watched the video which is just one part of the presentation. Everything is on the site and in the whitepaper, which the reviewer apparently didn't even fully read.
Token vesting:
He colors it yellow for GVT but green for other projects that also get 5 points... visual bias is apparent. He gave one project a 10 for an 18 month vesting period and a 6 to another project for the same period with little justification for such a disparity.
Supply/Scarcity:
GVT receives 3 points because 44M tokens were available during ICO but only sold about 4M. This makes him believe that they didn’t create much demand. “Everyone who wanted GVT got it.” The US and Singapore could not participate. Also, Bounty0x failed to reach their soft cap, but the reviewer didn’t dock any points for that. If everyone who wanted GVT got it then the marketcap wouldn’t be where it is today. What a terrible assumption he made.
Competition: He gave GV a 5/10, but his reasoning made little sense. “Covesting and coindash are used to trade cryptocurrencies while GVT is for cryptocurrency AND non-crypto trading. They will still compete for a portion of the same market. People will have only so much fiat to invest.” You do not use fiat to invest in Covesting or Coindash. Also, GV will allow people who are into stocks or forex to bring their money into crypto. No other coin is doing what GVT does. Covesting and coindash, arguably, are projects that try to compete against just one part of the entire GV platform. GVT is more than that and should have a higher score because there is basically no competition. There is competition for some of its features, but not for the platform as a whole. He gave Bounty0x a 20-point bonus for "Best in Field"... but they are the best because they have no competition. As a matter of fact, there is no reason for a 20 point "best in field category" when you already have a competition category worth 10 points.
He gave Funfair a 5/10 even though he states "No competition in FunFair’s niche"... That would automatically make it the best in its field if it has no competition as well.
Why does a project that has no competition effectively get 30 points (10/10 + 20), while another project with no competition get only 5 (5/10 + 0)? I will tell you why. It's because the author doesn't know what he is doing.
Guy's I am going to be honest. I am tired of doing this. You get my point. His reviews are an inconsistent and poorly researched mess. I've written around 8 pages worth of content covering this. If there is anything else you need me to compare, please write it in the comment section.

A few months ago I came across a way to hold crypto in my RRSP/TFSA and have been answering questions about how to do that in comments, DM's, and Skype consults. I figured it would be helpful to put together one big comprehensive FAQ. Cryptocurrency is treated as a commodity by the CRA and you must pay capital gains taxes on any profits if held outside a TFSA. If bitcoin goes to $1m as some are predicting, the Canadian government is going to be taxing a huge windfall in capital gains taxes.
BACKGROUND
Bitcoin & other crypto cannot be held directly in a RRSP/TFSA, and there are no eligible ETF's in North America yet. However, the ETN COINXBT which trades on the Stockholm Stock Exchange in Sweden (Nasdaq Stockholm) is eligible.
ABOUT COINXBT
COINXBT holds bitcoin directly and its price per share is based on a 0.005 multiple of the current bitcoin price.
For example, if the current price of bitcoin is $10000USD, a share of COINXBT will be worth $50USD (ie: $493 Swedish Kroner)
Company's website and full prospectus at: https://xbtprovider.com/
Price quote / chart: https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/COINXBT:SS
HOW-TO TRADE
Only some Canadian brokerages allow you to trade on eligible international exchanges in your TFSA. Some do not.
Typically placing trades on international exchanges online is not an option and must be made over the phone broker-assisted at a much higher cost than typical North American securities.
CANADIAN BROKERS
I've called pretty much every brokerage to inquire if international securities can be held in a TFSA and what the fee is to transact. You may want to call yourself to see if policies have changed, but here's a summary:

• National Bank: $75 per trade + $0.06 per share (confirmed works)
• TD: Fee dependent on amount traded. Up to $5K is $187, $80K would be $520 per trade (confirmed works)
• CIBC: $250 minimum, based on trade amount. $50K would be about $350 to buy and $350 to sell (confirmed works)
• Scotia iTrade: $250 CAD per trade CAD, unlimited shares & order size (should work)
• BMO Investorline: Fee-based on total trade amount. $50K would be $325 to buy $225 to sell, $50-$60K would be $350 to buy $240 to sell (should work)

Not available, or not available in RRSP/TFSA:

• Interactive Brokers, can trade it, but not in RRSP/TFSA
• Questrade
• Royal Bank
• Credential Direct
• HSBC (has access to almost every exchange other than Stockholm)
• Qtrade
• Virtual Brokers

FAQ's
Are you sure it's legal? I'm quite sure it's illegal.

• This is 100% legal. The Stockholm Stock Exchange is a RRSP/TFSA eligible exchange. Source: https://www.fin.gc.ca/act/fim-imf/dse-bvd-eng.asp

Who is your broker? CAD account?

• I used National Bank Direct Brokerage. The fee's came out to $75 per trade + $0.06 per share.
  For example, the commission for a trade I did for 885 shares of COINXBT was $75 + $53.10 for a total of $128.10. Canadian funds were used to make the purchase and there were no forex fees for converting to Swedish Kroner (SEK)
  

How do I make a trade once I'm ready?

• Call your brokerage and say you want to place a trade on the Stockholm stock exchange. You may be forwarded to a person that specializes in that, and eventually to a broker that deals with placing order on international exchanges. Tell them the symbol to trade is COINXBT and the name of the ETN is "Bitcoin Tracker One".

How do I calculate the number of shares to trade to max out my TFSA?

• The price of COINXBT is in SEK. In my case using NB I took my balance minus anticipated fees divided by the current price to see how many shares I could buy.
  For example: For a $10,000 TFSA, current COINXBT price = $554.77SEK (84.27CAD), would be 117 shares at a cost of $9859.59 + $82.02 commission for a total of $9941.61CAD
  

Market or Limit order?

• The first time I placed an order for COINXBT I tried to place a limit order a little below the market price. Over the next week the price of bitcoin ran up a lot and didn't come down. I ended up buying a lot higher. Since then I've been placing limit orders slightly above the current price or just market orders so that they go through right away. I've had no issues doing it either way.

When can I trade? Is it only possible to make the trade while the Swedish market is open and the TSX are open at the same time? Or can you place the order at any time of day?

• You should be able to place the trade anytime your Canadian broker is open (~9:00 - 17:30 EST). However, it the time is outside Stockholm's trading hours, it will be entered as an after-hours trade and will go live when Stockholm opens the next day. My understanding is that the Stockholm exchange closes at 5:30PM (11:30 EST). Here's a comparison of timezones showing Stockholm trading hours: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/?qm=1&lid=2673730,6077243,5946768&h=2673730&date=2017-10-3&sln=9-18.5

Which number did you use to contact the brokerages?

• Contact numbers for various Canadian brokers: http://www.moneysmartsblog.com/canadian-online-discount-stock-brokerage-comparison/

What happens when there is a fork?

• XBT Provider has said they will monitor forks for 3-months and then decide what action to take. In the case of Bitcoin Cash, they sold the forked coins and distributed it as a dividend to anyone that held ETN shares on the fork date.

What about other cryptocurrencies?

• An ethereum ETN was recently launched: COINETH that also trades on the Stockholm exchange. https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/COINETH:SS
  Other than that, I am not aware of any other eligible crypto securities that can be held in a RRSP/TFSA
  

How is the price of COINXBT determined?

• It's based on the average price of the top 3 exchanges

Why not just buy GBTC?

• GBTC is traded on the OTC exchange in the US and is not RRSP/TFSA eligible

Why can't I place a trade online myself?

• For now, there are no crypto ETF's on North American exchanges. They have been in the works for years in the US, but no approvals yet. Evolve funds recently said they plan to launch a Canadian Bitcoin ETF.
  Trading COINXBT is a bit of a hassle, but you're getting in ahead of everyone else that are not willing to put in the time/effort.
  Once the Canadian/US ETF launches, it will probably be worth it to sell COINXBT and switch to the North American one which should be easy to trade online just like other ETF's.
  

Feedback
If you've managed to get crypto into your RRSP/TFSA in any other ways than listed above please do leave a comment and I'll update the post. Thanks!

What is XTRD?

XTRD is a technology company that are introducing a new infrastructure that would allow banks, hedge funds, and large institutional traders to easily access cryptocurrency markets.
XTRD is launching three separate products in sequential stages to solve the ongoing problems caused by having so many disparate markets. Firstly a unified FIX API followed by XTRD Dark Pools and finally the XTRD Single Point of Access or SPA.
Our goal is to build trading infrastructure in the cyptospace and become one of the first full service shops in the cryptocurrency markets for large traders and funds.

• A single FIX API for trading across all connected exchanges
• A robust GUI for manual cross execution on all crypto markets
• A large liquidity pool, based on orders books from all connected exchanges
• Best prices and best top of book execution net of fees
• Low transaction fees
• 99.99999% reliability and uptime
• Fast execution
• Parent/child orders on multiple exchanges to minimize individual market impact
• Advanced order types common in the equity and FX trading space
• Establish XTRD as a premier market-making entity to mitigate spreads and increase liquidity in the cryptocurrency space
• Derivative trading - XTRD plans to connect to LedgerX (US based, approved by the CFTC) for cryptocurrency options and swaps to offer unified hedging and derivate trading strategies
• Robust, US based technical support
• Reliable and familiar deployment methods for institutions:
  • IPSec as a connectivity option across the Internet
  • Cross connection options
  • Collocation space or VPS (Virtual Private Servers) that clients can rent from XTRD
  • UAT/Sandbox environment for testing

What are the industry issues?

COMPLEX WEB OF EXCHANGES. A combination of differing KYC policies, means of funding, interfaces and APIs results in a fragmented patchwork of liquidity for cryptocurrencies. Trading in an automated fashion with full awareness of best pricing and current liquidity necessitates the opening and use of accounts on multiple exchanges, coding to multiple API’s, following varying funding and withdrawal procedures. Once those hurdles are cleared, market participants must convert fiat currency to BTC or ETH and then forward the ETH on to an exchange that may not accept fiat, necessitating yet another transaction to convert back to fiat. Major concerns for market participants range from unmitigated slippage and counterparty risk to hacking prevention and liquidity.
HIGH FEES. Execution costs are even more of a factor. Typical exchange commissions are in the 0.1% – 0.25% range per transaction (10 to 25 basis points), but the effective fees are much higher when taking into bid and ask spreads maintained by the exchanges. As most exchanges are unregulated, there is generally no central authority or regulator to examine internal exchange orders that separate proprietary activity from customer activity and ensure fair pricing.
THIN LIQUIDITY. A large institutional order, representing a sizable percentage of daily volume can move the market for a product, and related products in an exchange by a factor of 5-10%. That means a single order to buy $1,000,000 worth of bitcoin can cost an extra $50,000-$100,000 per transaction given a lack of liquidity if not managed correctly and executed on only one exchange. By way of comparison, similar trades on FX exchanges barely move markets a fraction of a percent; those price changes cost traders money, and deter investment.

What are the XTRD solutions?

FIX API
An API is an “Application Programming Interface”, a set of rules that computer programs use to communicate. FIX stands for “Financial Information eXchange”, the API standard used by most financial organizations as the intermediary protocol to communicate amongst disparate systems such as market data, execution, trade reporting, and order entry for the past 25 years.XTRD is fixing the problem of having 100 different APIs for 100 exchanges by creating a single FIX based API for market data and execution – the same FIX API that all current financial institutions utilize.XTRD will leverage our data center presences in DC3 Chicago and NY4 New Jersey to host FIX trading clients and reduce their trading latencies to single milliseconds, a time acceleration of 100x when it comes to execution vs internet. More infrastructure and private worldwide internet lines will be added in 2018 and beyond to enable secure, low latency execution for all XTRD clients, FIX and PRO.
XTRD PRO
XTRD PRO is a professional trading platform that will fix the basic problems with trading across crypto exchanges – the need to open multiple web pages, having to click around multiple windows, only being able to use basic order types, and not seeing all your positions, trades, and market data in one place.XTRD PRO will be standalone, downloadable, robust end-to-end encrypted software that will consolidate all market data from exchanges visually into one order book, provide a consolidated position and order view across all your exchange accounts, and enable client side orders not available on exchanges – keyboard macro shortcuts, VWAP/TWAP, shaving the bid and offer, hit through 1% of the inside, reserve orders that bid 100 but show 1, SMART order routing to best exchange and intelligent order splicing across exchanges based on execution costs net of fees, OCO and OTO, many others.
XTRD SPA
XTRD SPA is the solution to bridge cross-exchange liquidity issues. XTRD is creating Joint Venture partnerships with trusted cryptocurrency exchanges to provide clients on those exchanges execution across other exchanges where they do not have accounts by leveraging XTRD’s liquidity pools.An order placed by a client at CEX.IO, XTRD’s first JV partner, can be executed by XTRD at a different exchange where there may be a better price or higher liquidity for a digital asset. Subsequently, XTRD will deliver the position to CEX.IO and then CEX.IO will deliver the execution to the client, with XTRD acting as just another market participant at the CEX.IO exchange.XTRD does not take custody of funds, we are a technology partner with exchanges. All local exchange rules, procedures, and AML/KYC policies apply.
XTRD DARK
Institutions and large market participants who have large orders of 100 BTC or more generally must execute across multiple markets, increasing their counterparty risk, paying enormous commissions and spreads, and generally having to deal with the vagaries of the crypto space. Alternatives are OTC brokers that charge multiple percents or private peer-to-peer swaps which are difficult to effectuate unless one is deeply in the space.XTRD is launching XTRD DARK – a dark liquidity pool to trade crypto vs fiat that matches buyers and sellers of large orders, discreetly and anonymously, at a much lower cost. Liquidity is not displayed so large orders do not move thin markets as they would publicly. The liquidity will come from direct XTRD DARK participants as well as aggregation of retail order flow into block orders, XTRD’s own liquidity pools, connections with decentralized exchanges to effectuate liquidity swaps, and OTC broker order flow.XTRD is partnering with a fiat banking providebroker dealer to onboard all XTRD DARK participants for the fiat currency custody side with full KYC/AML procedures.

XTRD Tokenomics

• TOKEN USAGE. XTRD will generate the XTRD utility tokens via smart contact during the Token Generation Event (TGE) in Q1 of 2018. The XTRD utility token will be utilized on the XTRD network by market participants to pay for execution, VPS, market data, software licensing, and other fees. Market participants will be able to purchase XTRD tokens directly from XTRD’s liquidity pool. The TGE will be preceded by a private institutional sale and a SAFT (Simple Agreement for Future Token) Platform based presale. The XTRD token will be fully ERC20 compliant to ensure that it functions properly on the Ethereum blockchain, similarly to other ERC20 tokens.
• XTRD TOKEN LIQUIDITY AGGREGATION. The XTRD token will be used to create liquidity in the overall cryptocurrency market. Along with the utility of the XTRD token to pay for fees on the XTRD platform of products, most of the XTRD token revenue will be used to increase the inventory of other cryptocurrencies that are in demand by our customers. This will create points of liquidity for our customers to access across the worldwide crypto exchange ecosystem. These liquidity points will be created using XTRD tokens that are paid back into the system for fees. 70% of funds raised in the token sale will be used for liquidity aggregation.
• XTRD STAKING. Discounts of 25% on XTRD services (execution, colocation, market data, software licensing) will be available for token holders in general and discounts of 40% on XTRD services will be available for token holders who maintain an average monthly stake of at least 50,000 XTRD tokens. Fiat will be accepted at no discount to par. Execution fees will generally be set as a percentage of the gross trade amount, based on a combination of factors such as liquidity, the pair being traded, market conditions at the time of the trade, and so on. All charges will be marked to market and remain constant, no matter the value of the XTRD token (a $10 charge will be 2 XTRD if $5 each or 0.5 XTRD if $20 each).
• TOKEN LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS. XTRD tokens are ERC20 compliant utility tokens functioning on the Ethereum blockchain. The value of XTRD is derived purely from serving as a medium of payment for services by market participants in the XTRD trading ecosystem. XTRD tokens confer no voting rights, profit participation, equity, ownership of intellectual property, revenue sharing, rights to dividends, transfer of ownership upon company sale, control of company assets, or any decision-making ability regarding XTRD or its’ operations. XTRD tokens are not designed for speculation. In summary, XTRD tokens are not securities. XTRD Digital Assets, Inc has obtained a qualified legal opinion concurring that XTRD tokens are not to be considered “securities” under applicable U.S. securities laws given their failure to meet all prongs of the Howey Test.

Who is XTRD intended for?

XTRD is mainly aimed at major institutions, hedge funds, algorithmic traders who are currently unable to enter the crypto markets.
These firms include companies such as Divisa Capital run by XTRD Advisor Mushegh Tovmasyan.

XTRD Weekly Updates

• XTRD Update: May 20th, 2018
• XTRD Update: May 28th, 2018
• XTRD Update: June 4th, 2018
• XTRD Update: June 11th, 2018
• XTRD Update: June 18th, 2018
• XTRD Update: June 25th, 2018
• XTRD Update: July 2nd, 2018
• XTRD Update: July 9th, 2018
• XTRD Update: July 16th, 2018

Upcoming Events

• Futurist Conference - August 14-16th Toronto
• Blockchain Shift - October 11-12th Miami
• The Trading Show New York - September 26th

AMA's

Further AMA's will be coming soon!

• OhHeyMatty AMA
• CryptoBobby AMA
• TheCryptoLark AMA

XTRD In The Media

• Bloomberg Markets Bitcoin Growing Pains. Bloomberg
• XTRD Brings Wall St Trading Infrastructure To Crypto Markets - Fintech News
• Bad Crypto Meets Alex Kravets - Podcast Interview
• Alex Kravets On Modernizing Crypto Exchanges - Podcast Interview
• How Exchanges Work On Wall Street And How They Will Work In Crypto Markets. - Crypto 101 Podcast
• Ethereum Outperforms Bitcoin - Article Feature
• Crypto Markets Are Broken - CoinTelegraph Alex Guest Writer
• Wall Street Comes To Crypto - CryptoCoinNews Article / Interview
• Cryptocurrency Businesses Real Value - Business News Daily
• Cryptocurrency Market Psychology - CBS News
• Bitcoin Slides Again - Expert Option - Reuters

Resources

• Telegram
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Medium
• Reddit
• Whitepaper
• Website

More information will be added to this thread as the project develops.
We are currently looking for key community members to assist in building out this thread.
If you are interested please email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected])

Veritaseum is looking for liquidity providers to assist in kickstarting the world's first global P2P exchange. If you have a healthy stash of BTC, please contact us to discuss.
I was looking at the offerings of a large US bitcoin exchange just now, after hearing that Coinbase had the highest volume of any US-based broker just weeks after opening an exchange (we’ll discuss that at a different time, since Coinbase is waiving fees meaning those users are hot money, but likely are part of the largest installed bitcoin user base in the world and growing rapidly). What I found was illuminating, at least for me since I don’t follow the offerings of BTC brokers and exchanges that closely. I noticed several of the industry (BTC exchange) leaders offer leverage, plain vanilla swaps and TRS (total return swaps - basically fixed/variable rates in major fiat denominations for cryptocurrency (BTC. LTC, DRK) exposure). I said to myself, “Wow, that’s pretty advanced.” Then I looked at the fees, and saw the swaps were priced up to and past 15%. Then, upon further research, I realized that these swaps were financing mechanisms for margin lending. The first thing that came to mind was the difference, and limitations that come with the business models of first generation bitcoin companies and second generation Bitcoin companies. Take notice in the difference of the capitalization. Lower case "b" denotes the accounts of value that the mainstream media calls digital currency. Upper case "B" denotes the blockchain-based, protocol driven services and capabilities behind the lower case "b". Generation 1.0 v. generation 2.0!
To put this into perspective, Veritaseum's UltraCoin offers user programmable swaps (ie. you can make your own CDS, TRS or plain vanilla, or even a custom swap) with exposures to not just 3 cryptos and 3 or 4 fiat currencies, but all major and most exotic currency pairs (dozens) as well as over 45,000 tickers covering EVERY major asset class (stocks, bonds, forex & commodities as well as cryptos) from exchanges throughout the world. This is all capable at a sliding scale of 10 to 25 basis points, round trip. That's the equivalent of 5 bp to 12.5 bp per trade. In addition, all of this is done without UltraCoin having any possession of your funds, whatsoever. Veritaseum (the company behind UltraCoin) is a software concern, not a financial entity, thus you have no exposure to our balance sheet. We cannot MT. Gox you and you essentially have no counterparty, default or credit risk because your counterparty is the blockchain, and you trade peer to peer vs. through a centralized exchange. Pretty big difference from the legacy systems that we're all used to, no?

The Difference between Bitcoin 1.0 and Bitcoin 2.0 Companies

To begin with, I'd like to make clear that not only is the title misleading, but all references to the same are essentially inaccurate. Bitcoin itself is still in beta stage (0.9x) thus its not accurate to refer to 1st and 2nd generations of bitcoin businesses. If anything, we're all in beta. Now that I've gotten that off of my chest... The first bold generation of bitcoin entrepreneurs (it's amazing that you can refer to companies born 2 and 3 years ago as a previous generation, it just goes to show you how fast this space is moving!) built businesses based upon bitcoin as a legacy commodity. Basically, they bought, sold, transmitted or transferred it as a unit of value. They did this because that's how everything was done for the last several thousand years in the financial services industry. Basically, they had no choice - or so they thought. Then came those who read the Satoshi whitepaper and the bitcoin wiki and saw a very different meaning. My team and I are among those entrepreneurs. We saw that bitcoins were malleable, programmable, tools with which one can use to paint upon the canvas of value. A far cry from the moving of static financial widgets from place to place. Think of moving bitcoins around (bitcoin 1.0 companies) vs programming bitcoins to act on their own according to their contractual owner's wishes (bitcoin 2.0 companies) akin to pushing a model T Ford around town vs. programming your driverless electric Tesla to go by the grocery store to pick up some fresh produce before swinging by the school to pick up your kids on the way home to meet you to take your wife (girlfriend?) out to dinner.

A Real World Comparison of Bitcoin Companies

Tickers Available

Veritaseum's UltraCoin: ~45,000+
Asset Classes Available
Veritaseum's UltraCoin: Stocks, Bonds, Commodities, Forex, Cryptos and many indices
Costs Veritaseum's UltraCoin: up to 25 bp round trip for all products (primarily smart contract swap driven)
Leverage available: Veritaseum's UltraCoin: up to 10,000x, with finite digital P/L parameters (no margin calls, no negative account drawdowns)
How does Veritaseum do it? We program the bitcoin to act according to a mutual agreement between two or more parties, then send it to the blockchain to act accordingly. These agreements are self executing, unbreakable promises known as "Smart Contracts". In this case, they are highly customizable, P2P OTC swaps, but we are working on a multitude of other products, services and solutions as well. We also supply very high level, unconflicted, independent and impartial strategy and research for our customers. Since we don't use our balance sheet and we don't act as a principal, we have no incentive to skewer the research in any particular direction.

Smart Contracts as Transaction Vehicles: The Safest Possible Way To Exchange Value

Veritaseum's UltraCoin BTC-based smart contracts are: 1. highly flexible - you design your own derivatives yourself using your own parameters via our simple graphical user interface 2. self-executing 3. autonomous 4. unbreachable: we call them, the unbreakable promise! They are backed, fortified and stored by/on the Bitcoin blockchain itself 5. uber-transparent: simple click the "trace transaction" button to find the location and historical travel path of your assets anytime, from anywhere you have an internet connection

Trading Through a Balance Sheet-Based Financial Institution vs. Distributed, Decentralized, P2P Software Concern

What I do want to accomplish is the education through the fact that the Bitcoin protocol has given rise to the genesis of a new type of company, with a new business model that can offer a totally new type of product. As you were able to see from above, Veritaseum's UltraCoin offers a very uniquer product with many if not all of the attributes that potential competitors offer, with a slew of attributes that others can't touch. This is done at 1/150th of the price and at much less risk! When dealing with Veritaseum's UltraCoin, you can never get Gox'd because we never have (nor do we want) possession of your coins or fiat - every, at any time. Because we don't user our balance sheet (we are a software company, not a centralized exchange or brokedealer) you:

• are never exposed to us as a counterparty, we make the blockchain your counterparty
  
• never have to worry about our capital reserves or the capitalization/credit of your initial counterparty (all trades are fully funded at the outset, even a heavily levered trade at 10,000x),
  
• You never have to worry about negative drawdowns, negative equity or margin calls
  
• If a catastrophic event were to occur, say bi-coastal earthquake takes out our datacenters on the east and west coasts simultaneously while a meteor hits the backup center in the midwest, you will still be able to recover you funds - on your own. Since we do not have possession of your funds you don't have to worry about us absconding with them nor getting blown up with them. Each trade has a catastrophic rollback feature which will put you back into your original funding position n-time units after expiry. Unfortunately, you will not be able to complete your trade, but if two bi-coastal trades hit at the same time as meteor to the mid-west, you may not be studying that EUR short anyway :-)
  

This is just the beginning of what is capable with bitcoin (and this is pure bitcoin, not altcoins, no tokens, no sidechains, just pure, old fashioned [at least as old as it can be considered] bitcoin) and 2.0 business models. Wait until you see the new stuff we'll be rolling out.
I implore you to download our:

• tutorial (which needs to be updated)
  
• spreadsheet based trade model to assist you designing your own custom made swaps before committing capital
  
• • and of course, the UltraCoin BTC wallet for Windows - or - Mac & Linux, which doubles as the trading client. The wallets have a "Demo Mode" which allows you to trade on testnet if, after using the spreadsheet modeler, you are still not comfortable committing live coins. You can get the demo (testnet) coins here.

There's also a lot of BTC industry research available for download as well as our blog which has some of the best fundamental and macro research available on the web. Hardcore traders, investors and speculators should check out my latest piece: It's All Out War, Pt 3: Is the Danish Krone Peg to Euro More Fragile Than Glass Beads? The Danish National Bank Infers So!
Any bitcoin-rich individuals or entities looking to provide liquidity to the system, individuals/compamies who wish to partner, accredited investors looking for a piece of the action (you have to be willing to sign and NDA, we are quite open to working with anybody), or those who simply want to shoot the breeze should feel free to contact us.
Bitcoin 2.0 An example of an UltraCoin smart contract summary
Here's some info about me, my team and what we're doing at Veritaseum:

• 1. Reggie Middleton via Wikipedia - 1.
• 1. How Blockchain Technology Reduces Wall Street Risk & the Fallacy of Too Big To Fail!- 1.
• 1. How Reggie Middleton is Looking To Take the Risk Out of Wall Street - 1.
• 1. How Reggie Middleton's Start-up Patented The Future of Global Finance
• 1. A Simple Apple Trade Using A Pure Bitcoin Wallet: The UltraCoin Client 1.
• 1. A list of many (but not all) of my calls and mentions in the media

I was looking at the offerings of Bitfinex just now, after hearing that Coinbase had the highest volume of any US-based broker just weeks after opening an exchange (we’ll discuss that at a different time, since Coinbase is waiving fees meaning those users are hot money, but likely are part of the largest installed user base). What I found was illuminating, at least for me since I don’t follow the offerings of BTC brokers and exchanges that closely. Bitfinix offers leverage, plain vanilla swaps and TRS (total return swaps - basically fixed/variable rates in major fiat denominations for cryptocurrency (BTC. LTC, DRK) exposure). I said to myself, “Wow, that’s pretty advanced.” Then I looked at the fees page, and saw the swaps were priced at 15%. The first thing that came to mind was the difference, and limitations that come with the business models of first generation bitcoin companies and second generation bitcoin companies.
To put this into perspective, Veritaseum's UltraCoin offers user programmable swaps (ie. you can make your own CDS, TRS or plain vanilla, or even a custom swap) with exposures to not just 3 cryptos and 3 or 4 fiat currencies, but all major and most exotic currency pairs (dozens) as well as over 45,000 tickers covering EVERY major asset class (stocks, bonds, forex & commodities as well as cryptos) from exchanges throughout the world****. This is all capable at a sliding scale of 10 to 25 basis points, round trip. That's the equivalent of 5 bp to 12.5 bp per trade - or 1/150th of what Bitfinex charges for a much simpler and more constrained product. In addition, all of this is done without UltraCoin havin any possession of your funds, whatsoever. Veritaseum (the company behind UltraCoin) is a software concern, not a financial entiity, thus you have no exposure to our balance sheet. We cannot MT. Gox you and you essentially have no counterparty, default or credit risk because your counterparty is the blockchain, and you trade peer to peer vs. through a centralized exchange. Pretty big difference, no?
I will continue my discussion on pricing and features right after I delineate the distinction between the two.

The Difference between Bitcoin 1.0 and Bitcoin 2.0 Companies

To begin with, I'd like to make clear that not only is the title misleading, but all references to the same are essentially inaccurate. Bitcoin itself is still in beta stage (0.9x) thus its not accurate to refer to 1st and 2nd generations of bitcoin businesses. If anything, we're all in beta. Now that I've gotten that off of my chest... The first bold generation of bitcoin entrepreneurs (it's amazing that you can refer to companies born 2 and 3 years ago as a previous generation, it just goes to show you how fast this space is moving!) built businesses based upon bitcoin as a legacy commodity. Basically, they bought, sold, transmitted or transferred it as a unit of value. They did this because that's how everything was done for the last several thousand years in the financial services industry. Basically, they had no choice - or so they thought. Then came those who read the Satoshi whitepaper and the bitcoin wiki and saw a very different meaning. My team and I are among those entrepreneurs. We saw that bitcoins were malleable, programmable, tools with which one can use to paint upon the canvas of value. A far cry from the moving of static financial widgets from place to place. Think of moving bitcoins around (bitcoin 1.0 companies) vs programming bitcoins to act on their own according to their contractual owner's wishes (bitcoin 2.0 companies) akin to pushing a model T Ford around town vs. programming your driverless electric Tesla to go by the grocery store to pick up some fresh produce before swinging by the school to pick up your kids on the way home to meet you to take your wife (girlfriend?) out to dinner.

A Real World Comparison of Bitcoin Companies: Bitfinex (v1.0) vs Veritaseum (v2.0)

Tickers Available

Bitfinex: ~6 or 7 (this is an approximation) - BTC, LTC, DRK, USD & (I'm assuming EUR, CNY and maybe GBP). It is quite possible that I'm underestimating their portfolio here.
Veritaseum's UltraCoin: ~45,000+
Asset Classes Available
Bitfinex: Crypto and forex
Veritaseum's UltraCoin: Stocks, Bonds, Commodities, Forex, Cryptos and many indices
Costs Bitfinex: up to 40bp round trip, 1,500bp for swaps
Veritaseum's UltraCoin: up to 25 bp round trip for all products (primarily smart contract swap driven)
Leverage available: Bitfinex: Assumed to be up to 50x, traditional margin lending
Veritaseum's UltraCoin: up to 10,000x, with finite digital P/L parameters (no margin calls, no negative account drawdowns)
How does Veritaseum do it? We program the bitcoin to act according to a mutual agreement between two or more parties, then send it to the blockchain to act accordingly. These agreements are self executing, unbreakable promises known as "Smart Contracts". In this case, they are highly customizable, P2P OTC swaps, but we are working on a multitude of other products, services and solutions as well. We also supply very high level, unconflicted, independent and impartial strategy and research for our customers. Since we don't use our balance sheet and we don't act as a principal, we have no incentive to skewer the research in any particular direction.

Smart Contracts as Transaction Vehicles: The Safest Possible Way To Exchange Value

Veritaseum's UltraCoin BTC-based smart contracts are: 1. highly flexible - you design your own derivatives yourself using your own parameters via our simple graphical user interface 2. self-executing 3. autonomous 4. unbreachable: we call them, the unbreakable promise! They are backed, fortified and stored by/on the Bitcoin blockchain itself 5. uber-transparent: simple click the "trace transaction" button to find the location and historical travel path of your assets anytime, from anywhere you have an internet connection

Trading Through a Balance Sheet-Based Financial Institution vs. Distributed, Decentralized, P2P Software Concern

It's a matter of risk. This is not a dig at Bitfinex. After looking at their volume (significant) and their offerings (quite impressive given the newness of this industry) the last thing I would ever want to do is to disparage them. As a matter of fact, I give them kudos! Good job, fellas! What I do want to accomplish is the education through the fact that the Bitcoin protocol has given rise to the genesis of a new type of company, with a new business model that can offer a totally new type of product. As you were able to see from above, Veritaseum's UltraCoin offers a very uniquer product with many if not all of the attributes that potential competitors offer, with a slew of attributes that others can't touch. This is done at 1/150th of the price and at much less risk! When dealing with Veritaseum's UltraCoin, you can never get Gox'd because we never have (nor do we want) possession of your coins or fiat - every, at any time. Because we don't user our balance sheet (we are a software company, not a centralized exchange or brokedealer) you:

• are never exposed to us as a counterparty, we make the blockchain your counterparty
  
• never have to worry about our capital reserves or the capitalization/credit of your initial counterparty (all trades are fully funded at the outset, even a heavily levered trade at 10,000x),
  
• You never have to worry about negative drawdowns, negative equity or margin calls
  
• If a catastrophic event were to occur, say bi-coastal earthquake takes out our datacenters on the east and west coasts simultaneously while a meteor hits the backup center in the midwest, you will still be able to recover you funds - on your own. Since we do not have possession of your funds you don't have to worry about us absconding with them nor getting blown up with them. Each trade has a catastrophic rollback feature which will put you back into your original funding position n-time units after expiry. Unfortunately, you will not be able to complete your trade, but if two bi-coastal trades hit at the same time as meteor to the mid-west, you may not be studying that EUR short anyway :-)
  

This is just the beginning of what is capable with bitcoin (and this is pure bitcoin, not altcoins, no tokens, no sidechains, just pure, old fashioned [at least as old as it can be considered] bitcoin) and 2.0 business models. Wait until you see the new stuff we'll be rolling out.
We are in beta, so please be aware of that and the shortcomings that it entails (although it is also my opinion that most bitcoin companies are in beta because bitcoin itself is in beta, as implied above). I implore you to download, and trade with, our:

• tutorial (which needs to be updated)
  
• spreadsheet based trade model to assist you designing your own custom made swaps before committing capital
  
• • and of course, the UltraCoin BTC wallet for Windows - or - Mac & Linux, which doubles as the trading client. The wallets have a "Demo Mode" which allows you to trade on testnet if, after using the spreadsheet modeler, you are still not comfortable committing live coins. You can get the demo (testnet) coins here.

There's also a lot of BTC industry research available for download as well as our blog which has some of the best fundamental and macro research available on the web. Hardcore traders, investors and speculators should check out my latest piece: It's All Out War, Pt 3: Is the Danish Krone Peg to Euro More Fragile Than Glass Beads? The Danish National Bank Infers So!
Any bitcoin-rich individuals or entities looking to provide liquidity to the system, individuals/compamies who wish to partner, accredited investors looking for a piece of the action (you have to be willing to sign and NDA, we are quite open to working with anybody), or those who simply want to shoot the breeze should feel free to contact us.
Bitcoin 2.0 An example of an UltraCoin smart contract summary
Here's some info about me, my team and what we're doing at Veritaseum:

• 1. Reggie Middleton via Wikipedia
• 1. How Blockchain Technology Reduces Wall Street Risk & the Fallacy of Too Big To Fail!
• 1. How Reggie Middleton is Looking To Take the Risk Out of Wall Street
• 1. How Reggie Middleton's Start-up Patented The Future of Global Finance
• 1. A Simple Apple Trade Using A Pure Bitcoin Wallet: The UltraCoin Client
• 1. A list of many (but not all) of my calls and mentions in the media

Pre-ICO: Stockus: Fantasy Trading Blockchain Platform
Stockus Crypto Summary
Hi everybody! I’m happy to introduce the Stockus Project to you. It is a new and exciting project on which our team is working on now. The main ideas and its realization are explained further. It will be nice if they are interesting for you.
Stockus. Fantasy trading platform based on the blockchain technology.
Our goal is to create a leading financial simulator based on open ledger technology in order to provide participants with a reliable, transparent trading platform and opportunities to earn large cash prizes. Stockus – is a fantasy trading platform based on smart contracts. Participants place trades individually or in teams. The application allows users to enrol in various tournaments and earn cash rewards without an initial investment of capital.
Gaming Capital Globally
The online gaming industry is rapidly growing, with figures indicating total earnings of 99.6billion USD in 2016 alone. This is an impressive amount; however it pales in comparison to the size of the financial markets. The daily turnover of the Forex market amounted to 5.1trillion USD in 2016. Approximately 10-15 million individual market participants actively trade on Forex worldwide with the total volume generated by retail traders being equal to 293billion USD daily. Statistics show that the average starting capital of a retail trader is somewhere in the region of 700 USD. Within 4 months of trading 97% of all retail traders lose their initial investment and leave the market. The amounts that such traders lose on the currency market amount to tens of millions of dollars annually.
$10 against $700
Our approach differs substantially from the business model of the classic broker. There are two fundamental pillars on which Stockus was built. The first one is that exchange trading for the retail participant is comparable to a game, where players place bets on the direction of the market. And the second one is the players prefer to pay small-one off buy-ins for the chance to win large cash prizes in tournaments as apposed to putting large deposits at risk on leveraged trading accounts. There is clearly a drastic difference between a trader who suffers the loss of their entire deposit of $700 whilst trading on Forex, and a player who buys into a trading tournament for $10 with the chance of winning a massive prize. That same $10 deposit would get the trader nowhere on the Forex market, whereas on Stockus he stands to win thousands of dollars without the requirement of a large investment upfront. Our approach is light years apart from the business model of a traditional broker in the sense that it aims to protect the trader without limiting their gains. Traders are now faced with the choice of trading on the market with a high degree of risk or playing Stockus with limited risk whilst maintaining their earning potential. This is a new opportunity to trader and we believe that they will chose in our favour.
Equal odds of winning
The probability of winning in a fully subscribed Stockus tournament is approximately 3-3.5% which is roughly equal to the chances of turning a profit whilst trading on the Forex market. However $10 gets you nowhere on a forex brokerage account, whereas in Stockus you can enter a trading competition and stand to win tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars with the same amount. The benefit of Stockus is that each player has a limited loss, but gets an equal chance to win large prizes. Fantasy trading – the Stockus platform is designed to be a direct competitor to traditional brokers by attracting a large number of participants. There is no sense in funding a leverage forex account and risking the entire deposit when the trader can enter a tournament and win fantastic amounts of prize money in a variety of competitions. The development of trading skills and ability to collect large gains solely with the merit of experience and knowledge is the main advantage of Stockus. Millions of players with the ambition, aptitude and skill will be able to compete for the large cash rewards with limited downside. In the past such individuals were faced with a choice between financial markets or betting games. Now, such players have an innovative alternative in the form of Stockus.
How to become a millionaire
Stockus is a financial simulator based on a social media platform which allows any player to participate in a tournament of their choice. If a certain trader prefers a short-term, high frequency game, they can join a daily tournament with large prizes. If, on the other hand, the player is more partial to a long term, trend-based approach, the weekly or monthly tournament is more suited to this style and the prizes can reach astronomical levels. It is crucial to note that the size of the prize is not restricted, which means that the more players buy into the competition, the higher the winning pot. The payouts for larger tournaments can potentially reach six figures or more. The game consists of the following: Professional tournaments which will constantly increase in number. A small buy-in amount is paid to enter the tournament and compete against other traders. The winners immediately receive a payout to their account balance. Friendly tournaments which allow anyone to participate free of charge. The main purpose of these trading challenges is to educate new players and allow existing users to refine their strategies in preparation for the professional games. Decentralised challenges which users can host independently by selecting their competitors and forming a private league. Team tournaments allow players to team up with other traders and compete against each other in groups throughout several rounds.
Players or teams who lose their initial capital have the option to buy back in and continue trading. As opposed to leveraged trading, where each loss is a direct hit to the capital and savings of the trader, Stockus allows players to continue trading for as long as they wish. Players have the ability to improve their chances by purchasing leverage, analytical tools and other extras for additional payments. Members of the Stockus community can exchange feedback, tips and trade ideas with each other. A referral program encourages players to invite their friends. The main attraction for most traders will be the professional tournaments. During the development of our tournament system, the team drew a lot of inspiration from the structure of the competitions held by the fantasy trading platform FanDuel. The capitalisation of FanDuel as an organisation is in the billions, and the platform’s phenomenal success along with hundreds of thousands of members testifies to the scalability and potential of such a model when applied in a different area.
The Principles of Platform Monetisation
Stockus aims to monetise fantasy trading by applying a small commission on each buy-in as well as charging additional fees for bonus features such as refunding, leverage, analytics, etc. Each player can purchase extras in order to improve their chances of winning and gain an edge over their competition. Additional initiatives such as referral programmes and promotions allow players to help others and earn additional tokens for their efforts.
Testing the game
Stockus utilises a unique trading platform which our team modelled around the popular MT4 trading software. This proprietary platform allows players to trade stocks, futures, currency pairs and options in real time on a broad selection of global venues. The Stockus model was throughout several beta rounds hosted on the Facebook developer platform in order to enhance the software and improve functionality. This testing base also allowed us to confirm the viability of the concept and saleability of the offering. This period allowed us to gather valuable data on user preferences, as well as collect feedback and verify the validity of the game concept. Users actively participated in the trading tournaments and purchased additional features in order to boost their chances of earnings a prize. We saw a healthy amount of competition for the prize spots, with many players repurchasing funds or unlocking leverage to get the upper hand on their rival traders. Our developers also expanded the capabilities of the platform during this time, adding several different tournament types as well as options trading during the testing phase. We have now developed a completed version of the game based on the results of these extensive tests, which we are excited to bring to your attention.
Blockchain as a foundation for trust
Stockus is innovating by allowing all types of traders to compete in tournaments with limited risk and on equal terms. Ethereum allows us to create smart contracts which automatically determine and verify the outcome of each trading tournament, as well as paying out the rewards to the winners. The principles of crypto can be used to process and distribute the gains from the various tournaments in an efficient and transparent manner. This solution is optimal due to its security and scalability as the number of players and competitions grows. Unlike a typical brokerageplatform, the entire infrastructure of Stockus is built on blockchain, making the setup robust and secure. One of the toughest challenges we faced during the beta testing phase was gaining the trust of the players. Some users raised concerns regarding the authenticity of the tournament results and likelihood of an actual payout. The blockchain addresses such concerns and puts any doubts to rest due to the transparent and objective manner in which the smart contracts will determine winners as well as the final payout of the prizes. This transparency creates an element of trust amongst users and enhances the eligibility of the tournament series. A second challenge addressed by the blockchain infrastructure is raising the required funds and launching the game within a period of 3months. An ICO offers a priceless opportunity to meet our targets and achieve the ultimate objective of building a trading simulator which will offer an innovative and groundbreaking alternative to the traditional forex trading approach. A third argument in favour of an ICO and the blockchain solution is the ability to issue our own tokens, which will essentially act as a cryptocurrency derivative within our game. These tokens will have a value versus Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies which is directly dependent on the popularity and success of the game. Should the demand for ingame services and tournaments continue to increase as we expect, so will the value of the tokens in relation to other currencies.
Stockus Tokens
Stockus tokens are an integral component of the Stockus economy and ecosystem. Owners of these tockens will have access to the following services: - Participation in trading tournaments - Act as witnesses and judges in the trading tournaments - Receive rewards and prizes in the competitions, promotions and tournaments - Purchase additional services and bonus features - Hosting tournaments - Receive referral rewards for inviting friends The tokens play a key role in the economic processes at play in the Stockus environment. These tokens can be purchased in the application, received from other players, won in a tournament, or as a reward for acting as witness or judge in determining the results of a competition. Additional tokens can also be received as a reward for inviting friends to play. Tokens can also be acquired through the preliminary offering of Stockus tokens via Ether (ENT). The Stockus interface will also integrate third party trading solutions such as Shapershift and Coinbase for those users who do not already hold ENT. The initial offering of Stockus tokens will take place in the form of a preliminary ICO. Anyone can subscribe to the offering in exchange for ENT or other cryptocurrencies such as BTC or STEEM. We plan to offer 5,000,000 of our tokens at a rate of 300 tokens for 1 ENT.
Tournament Result Verification
The decentralised tournament verification system is an elegant and robust solution for all users as it prevents any manipulation or abuse of the competition results. All token holders will be able to act as witnesses or judges when determining the winners of each tournament, allowing the public to verify the results via open ledger technology. Should a single participant disagree with the results, an independent confirmation of the tournament results is established by the witnesses. If the conclusion regarding the winners of a tournament is unanimous and there are no disagreements between participants, no added verification via witness is required and the system automatically processes a payout.
Stockus ICO and Development plans
The bulk of raised capital will be directed at the following: - Development of 2 professional tournaments: the WFT (Weekly Fantasy Tournament) and DFT (Daily Fantasy Tournament). These will be completed in 3 months. - A promotional campaign which will ensure that the userbase reaches critical mass and the project becomes sustainable by increasing the prize amounts in the WFT to the order of tens of thousands. - The development of a social network within Stockus, which would allow players to exchange opinions, experiences and advice, as well as form trading societies and teams. - The development of a mobile version of the trading application. - Development and production of at least one new trading competition every 2 months. The game should have at least 6 different tournament types by the end of the first year. The Stockus development team is pleased to present our project for your review and assessment. We hope the summary has made a positive impression and look forward to your support and feedback.
Thank you in advance for your time and attention.
Stockus Developers
tl;dr New blockchain platform allowing fantasy trading, limited capital at risk for the chance to make substantial amounts of money. Project currently under development, ICO later in the year, feel free to ask any questions!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StockusProject/ Website: www.stockus.io Twitter: https://twitter.com/stockusproject