Bitcoin Forum

Hello,

I'm interested in starting a new bitcoin exchange, and am currently looking for some potential partners with development experience. I've set up a very basic "rough draft" using the intersango open source from github, but would like some assistance with configureing/understanding the functionality as well as the look/feel of the site.

I can either pay you for consulting/dev or if you're intersted in partnering 50/50 and co-running/owning the site together that would be great too..


Any help or insight would be greatly appreaciated.

Thanks,

The people who came up with and/or ran Intersango were some of the most incompetent and/or crooked people ever to hit the bitcoin scene, though maybe so crooked that its not really clear whether their code was deliberately full of holes in order to serve as an excuse for "being hacked" or they were just so crooked they managed to hack themselves despite no gaping holes in the code.

They were some of the most fraudulent "security experts" in the business though so chances do not seem high that the code is likely to turn out to be secure even if they didn't deliberately make it insecure as an excuse for vanishing everyone's money...

TL;DR don't expect the code to be useable for real money / real bitcoins unless you too plan on "being hacked" so you can pocket everyone's money.

-MarkM-

Thanks for the insight Mark... Can you recommend any other kind of open source platform that might work? Or would this have to be built from scratch?

I don't really care what the back-end turns out to be, so long as the objective of setting up a viable exchange is achieved. :)

Again, I'm open to any suggestions, comments, or insights.. :)

Thanks!

All the free open source bitcoin exchanges I have looked at are not the latest up to date versions, last time I looked.

They seem to make an initial sketch that kind of works, then go proprietary in making it real and useful and using it with real money.

I myself am going with Open Transactions so far, as that really is free open source stuff all the way, it isn't some old version not actually being used for real in the form you get to grab from github or sourceforge or google code or wherever.

But Open Transactions does not include all the "glue" stuff such as actually checking whether you have any bitcoins in your hotwallet and if so who they are from, and go on to credit it to their Open Transactions account and move it to the coldwallet and so on.

That part I actually do not even want to do, so hey if that is the part you like maybe you could consider acting as a market maker for me, accepting bitcoins from people and sending them bitcoin tokens on my Open Transactions server (for a fee) and accepting bitcoin tokens from people on my Open Transactions server and sending them actual bitcoins in return (for a fee)...

-MarkM-

Mark, am I reading correctly that you have a new exchange in development?

gweedo is right that it is a can of worms you probably ought not want to get into.

But if you must, then do look up "Cyclos", real life banking software, free open source, kept up to date, bugfixed, and so on.

Has all kinds of goodies such as apps for umpteen handheld devices and so on, but, is really for being a bank not directly an "exchange" per se.

So again it has no hooks in and out of actual blockchain-coinage, but also it lacks actual market order matching engine (which Open Transactions does have and is a big part of why I ever picked up on Open Transactions in the first place). But it does have web front ends, a lot of people don't like Open Transactions because they prefer the insecurity of web front ends to the secure encrypted messages client<->server model Open Transactions uses.

-MarkM-

Not quite. I have now-relatively-no-longer-new exchange already up and running, but still being actively developed, for a long time now, see

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53329.0

Also, for price lists of assets it handles, see

http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/digitalisassets.html

-MarkM-

Awesome, thanks Mark for the input, I will check those packages out...

The reason I wanted to start an exchange is because of a USP I have in mind that would make it different from many of the others already out there...

Regardless, I wanted to setup SOME kind of btc service I could run... I understand that there will be challenges and head-aches, but you get that with any business, and I'm certainly prepared for them...

I might be interested in exchanging your tokens if you could tell me more about it...


And yeah, I don't have any "rep" yet, but hey everyone has to start somewhere right? I'm not one to just give up on something once I set my mind to it. :)

Suggested reading:

So you think you're going to start a Bitcoin business, right?
 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=124441.0

Seconded. :) A "must read".

-MarkM-

Awesome, excellent advise... Going through it now...

Thanks guys

See that is where your wrong, and I know people are going to say I am trolling or whatever, but someone has to be real. Yes back in the good old days when bitcoin was under the radar, go ahead and start an exchange. Today you need lawyers, cause if something goes wrong like a hack, you will be hearing from lawyers. Also since you taking an existing outdated software, you have to work twice as hard to get it in running order, check for bugs. Do you know how to do your own security audits? I mean I don't want to push you away and say, no but it isn't really in the cards. An exchange is one of the toughes sites, to build, to manage, to just keep running. It is like being in the a bull run with a target on your back, you will wake up everyday to a new issue. You have to keep rewriting the trade matching engine until it is super fast. This is why exchanges make so much money, cause no one really wants to venture out and start an exchange. I been apporach by many people even some highly respected people to be brought on board to write an exchange software. I always say no, the exchange never happens. It takes a lot more then just code, you have to live and breathe this creation everyday, and it will tire you out real fast. You seem like a great person, I think trying your hand at some other projects wouldn't be a bad idea but an exchange is certainly an ambitious project to start your career in the bitcoin world.

Thanks for the advice guys....

I was thinking of some other types of btc services I could start, is there any need for a descent, cheap, honest coin mixer?

Have a few ideas how to accomplish this, was just wondering if theres really a need..

Any other kinds of projects you can recommend?

Thanks,

do be careful of where and how you operate such a service. i believe that running such a service in certain jurisdictions is indeed illegal due to AML laws.

I think I have to agree with everyone else kinda - which sucks, because the way I saw it....

The UK (teknetz, you in the uk?) is CRYING out for better bitcoin access - I have also considered an exchange, but since I dont code I'd have to pay someone to do that and it would cost big time I imagine, I have had a few ideas about other things, but they all rely on being able to code :(

Which is something I'm working on slowly :)

Hi,

Nope, not in the UK, I'm in the US, but wouldn't mind setting up shop there if that's what the market is demanding.

I understand the not being able to code part, as I find myself in the same dilemma..I do have some coding experience but not enough to crank out anything solid. I would however be willing to fund the right person to do it.

As far as AML laws go, would these laws apply to bitcoin? I guess only a lawyer would know for sure...

Thanks for for the replies!

In the UK yes I would imagine they would, not sure on the difference in AML laws tho - prob about the same...

Its a shame I dont trust anyone, as could be a good idea to setup a USD/GBP currency trading service with bitcoin in the middle between us two. Imagine, people being able to send GBP instantly from the US to the UK, all by the power of bitcoin :)

AML laws exist to protect the excess profits of banksters, by preventing competitive new firms from entering the market.

They are not enforced when huge firms get caught laundering billions for drug cartels.  At most the bank pays a small fine, and it is not disclosed publicly.

If *you* do anything with BTC, the AML laws will smack you down.

If banks do something with BTC, they are too big to jail.

if that's the case, I smell an .onion site in the future.. :)

Shows promise, this young Jedi does.   ;)

hah! you made me giggle.

money laundering is indeed a scale-driven racket: you must _appear_ to be doing something to prevent it, e.g. hire 100 incompetent people to review flagged accounts who then do nothing, so you can say "look, i'm really trying to stop this!".

the trouble with a mixing service is that, on its face, you're selling the service of outright breaking AML laws as opposed to feigning compliance. that's not to say that the service isn't valuable for BTC holders who have only a couple options: (1) zero privacy where all your tx can be traced to you personally (this is worse than existing banking systems) and (2) mixing your BTC so you have pretty strong privacy (done right, this is substantially better privacy than you can get using most banks).