Bitcoin Forum

Coinsetter is doing some research in regards to what bitcoiners are truly looking for what it comes to a BTC/fiat exchange. After all, we can sit around in a room and theorize all we want to--and can even look internally at what we want as bitcoiners ourselves--but at the end of the day it's you guys (and girls) that we want on our platform... Why not get the information we need straight, from the source?

Your responses are going to help guide the development of our platform moving forward, so please, feel free to speak your mind!

The "qualities" of a Bitcoin exchange all boil down to this:

* The trustworthiness of the owners: If they will run with all the coin that is deposited or play with customers money (Mt. Gox)
* Withdrawal and Deposit methods with low fees: SEPA for Europe, webmoney/QIWI for Russia, Money Order for US
* How powerful the exchange servers are: Mt. Gox had major delays during very high-volume times

Strictly in terms of features/functionality....

A high-functioning, low-lag trade engine. BTC-E is the only successful exchange in this regard.
Robust options for types of orders to execute -- limit, market, stops, trailing stops. Bitfinex is the only exchange that got this right so far.

I must say when I am thinking about it I think that I like when an exchange has got:

-2FA
-"Fast" working deposits/withdraws
-Withdraws with 2FA and E-mail at one time.

something that all these hastily coded exchanges all lack -- a real-time, atomic trading engine! i agree that btce is the only one that comes close.

trust, test of time (I first do test exchanges first), local deposits, fast and easy withdrawals.

Speed of execution, clean and intuitive trading interface, privacy controls and seamless interaction with the fiat world (read banks)

Non-exclusive control of private keys with users' BTC on them.

This is something we haven't heard much of before. Could you possibly expand a bit on what you mean by "privacy controls".

Also, by seamless are you referring to time of transfer or more so in overall convenience?

Thanks again to you specifically Maurya78 for your feedback and everyone else giving us this valuable info!

Seamless as in the bank and the Bitcoin exchange working together. Most banks do not allow customers to use the bank accounts to buy Bitcoin and sometimes even close accounts because of it. For example with https://btcu.biz/ they work together with local banks to add the functionality to deposit USD into a bank's ATM and have it added to their btcu.biz account.

Speed on inquiries such a verification time, withdrawals and deposits, and of course it must be trusted.

So just for clarification, are you referring to developing connections with more local/regional banks? Or do you mean any bank, period?

1) Trust.
2) Low fee.

Find a bank that is willing to work together with Coinsetter, have them make a statement that they will not close anyone's account because they are trading Bitcoins. The last thing users in the US want to see is this: https://i.imgur.com/cJCbbVY.jpg

However, if you are in the US, don't even bother. Any US bank will take KYC (know your customer) laws very seriously and will not allow Bitcoin trading to happen.

We actually already have a compliance-approved US bank account. Our issue has never been getting the bank account, it has been the regulations surrounding accepting US customer funds.

Securing their customer's coin in a cold storage
Doing regular audits
Two factor authentication
Listens to customer's feedback
Transparency
Https protection.

1) How exactly do you define "trust"?
2) What qualifies as low fees for the community? 

1. Identity of the owners being public. Enough accountability to know that if the coin disappear (hack/theft) the owner of the exchange will make sure every user will get their balance back.

2. Lower than the competitors. About 0.20% (with discounts at first the draw in users and a referral bonus)

We're actually the first bitcoin exchange to offer insurance on customer deposits (via Xapo). It's on our blog here: http://www.coinsetter.com/blog/2014/07/01/coinsetter-bitcoins-now-protected-insured-xapo-vault/

In terms of fees, we've been heavily discussing this around the office recently. It's part of the reason we're doing this research--we want to know what the community is comfortable with. 

I would never trade at an exchange that charge a 0.50% fee  :) When I was trading at Kraken I was paying 0.06%. Their fee structure means that you get lower fee if you trade more (over a 30 day period). I also like Krakens order types and user interface in general.

The most important things for me are:
- Trust, audits, and insurance
- Advanced order types
- Option to sell short
- An API that is easy to work with
- Volume (not fake :))
- Uptime

More trade types/options. For example, the ability to easily both market order and sell order. It's nice to be able to stop buy/sell as well (at least if there is sufficient liquidity to justify using stops).

I'd agree, but the liquidity question is key, to be sure. If an exchange has, say, Huobi's level of liquidity, I would definitely use stops. But on Bitfinex, I never use them. Price alarms and discipline to get in/out.

Honestly, I just want a non-laggy, professional trade engine. Stamp and Finex have so much lag it's embarrassing during high volume times. I really wish a large, liquid exchange could get it together.

make your trading engine to be NOT like Bitstamp's. i don't know how the hell it was coded, but it sometimes matches orders incorrectly apparently, and lags horribly.

I want to see a smooth interface, with different order types (limit, market, stop, trailing stop, etc)

I think it all comes down to liquidity and depth of markets (which are to an extent driven by trust, quality of APIs and so on too). As an example, I spent $3k on bitcoin on one the other day and moved the market nearly 2% to fill my order. That is unsustainable for customers.

How do you solve this if you are a smaller exchange? I think you need a shared order book with other smaller exchanges; without this, I almost have to go to Bitstamp or Bitfinex every time.

Ease of moving money on and off also high on the list.

even Bitstamp and Bitfinex aren't incredibly liquid. the days of crazy thick Gox books are long gone, and to be honest, i'm beginning to think thin order books are just the new reality.

I think the reason the GOX order book was so thick was because overall trading volume was very heavy. Now that volume has slowed down a little bit overall order book size has decreased.

I think the ability to use leverage is by far the most important feature as it allows me to speculate and profit off of fear and greed

We actually aggregate Bitstamp's order book into our own internal order book. Essentially meaning we combine our own liquidity with Stamps. Not to mention our API offerings outnumber everyone in the industry (we have FIX 4.4 API, Web Sockets API, and RESTful/JSON API) [they're pretty fast as well, if I don't say so myself].

The problem with integrating Bitstamp's book is that it potentially just reinforces its status as top dog given they get the volume too. I think that partnerships with other smaller exchanges will ultimately be better for the bitcoin community as it will create more competition and reduce the risk of another Mt. Gox (by which I mean the death of a large, well known player linked to lots of people), something which could really, really set us back.

Lets not forget how the exchange treats its customers. I have had some bad experience with btc-e when it comes to support.

in order for these of kinds if things to be done quickly the exchange needs to reach an economy of scale meaning it needs to be very big.

Lending/borrowing feature.

I prefer easy of use, fast and usable interface.
I'll be honest. Only 2-3 exchanges on the whole market deliver it.

Trust is obviously very important and having real people with real names associated with the exchange is a big plus.
The trading screen/interface has to be carefully designed so as to maximize efficiency. Clean, simple uncluttered trading screen is always best.
Trading engine needs to be fast and responsive built with scalability in mind. Lag/slow loading pages is a BIG turn off.
Efficient and reliable customer support (very important that staff stick to their word).
And finally it's always a good idea to keep customers up to date with what's going within the company. Changes, plans, media. A blog or news page.