Bitcoin Forum

Our Locks Plugin is now available to Payment Processors across the globe

Protect your customers from price swings with our new Locks plugin.
Locks can now be integrated seamlessly into your wallet / payment platform, offering your customers a way to Lock and unlock Bitcoin to USD, GBP, EUR, Gold and Silver.
Protect them from Bearwhales today! Contact:  Rob@coinapult.com

See how Electrum have done it.

https://medium.com/@Coinapult/electrum-locks-plugin-beta-9d8f724af19a

so, with this you can lock the fiat value of your electrum bitcoin wallet,isn't it?

Will have to take a look. Thanks.

i guess it is. circle and most other exchanges will adopt this.

This is an extremely strange service being offered.

A customer of this service provides an interest-free loan to some unknown counterparty, denominated in something other than Bitcoin, only using Bitcoin as the payment mechanism for issuing and repaying the loan.

That's fine if that really is a service that people want, but why is the marketing for Locks so incredibly vague and imprecise about what is actually going on?

Silk Road did this in it's early days. They allowed people to lock in the US dollar price of a transaction when the funds were being held in escrow. When the buyer would release escrow the seller would receive more or less bitcoin depending on which direction bitcoin went.

This may have been how Ross was able to amass so much bitcoin as the price of bitcon was generally rising

Because they don't want to call it "selling with no option to withdraw", which is what it really is.

Exchanges let you withdraw either fiat or bitcoin.  Locking services only let you withdraw bitcoin.  I am not sure why there would be demand for this kind of crippled service, when exchanges already exist and do more.

Something doesn't sound right.

I watched their demo video. Here's how they say the locking works "If you lock 1000 EUR worth of Bitcoins, you'll always have 1000 EUR worth of BTC, whether the price is 1000 EUR/BTC or 1 EUR/BTC."

BUT

What it doesn't tell is - what happens if 1 BTC is worth 2000 EUR in future. You will still have 1000 EUR worth of Bitcoins?

I THINK YES.

So if you believe in a bright future of BTC, you should NOT lock your BTC.

LOL what a deceiving tactic.....

OP why didnt you include your "hidden" fee?

Yeah at 8% , fck NO!

Regarding fees: We apply a small spread, typically 1-2% on the exchange price quoted. When Locking you are taken to a confirmation page where you can choose to accept the exchange rate, or not. I am not sure where the idea of an 8% fee came from, which would be high indeed! When we say 1-2%, that is to cover all eventualities. The most you will pay is 2% but usually the rate quoted is lower.

Locks is useful anywhere a stable balance is needed for example, for savings, wages or rent payments. The service is useful where people don't have an exchange account and perhaps aren't into Bitcoin for speculative reasons.

Please do join our wallet demo on Thursday where you can put queries directly to the team: http://tinyurl.com/ljqjn77

Hi Cryptworld, Yes, that is exactly right.

Hi Justusranvier, The following interview with CEO Ira Miller covers the service in depth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_Y15iqQA9g

I will wait for users review before downloading.

personally if you believe in bitcoin why would you want to have no upside to your bitcoin. If you lock in and it goes up your stuck at the old rate.... I can see how this would be smart if you were dealing in a lot of btc though protecting some money.

At or near bubble peak, I would give this a shot. I would just wonder what the tax consequences of this are; more options to trade while avoiding taxable events is always a good thing.

In coinapult's defense, I can verify the spread is indeed 2% as I just verified -

https://api.coinapult.com/api/ticker?filter=small

Granted this is a larger spread than bitstamp, circle or coinbase.  Coinbases is 0.3% , coinapult still fulfills a important role in countries outside the US .

As someone who is a longterm bitcoin bull, I see no use for this feature either, outside of a tool for day traders , but than again other exchanges have lower fees. If you don't want to ride on the volatility roller coaster than just cash out and hold the fiat yourself instead of with a third party.

This being said, coinapult is an important provider for interacting with banks outside the US.

 

these bastards  ;D !


(by the way: nice tool coinapult)

This is a hedging tool prototype. It's a good concept. I imagine many of these tools will become available through Bitcoin 2.0 apps where you can lock many assets with various triggers.

Hi btckold24, I'm sure you realize capital gains is only one aspect of Bitcoin's upside.  Instant, irreversible, global payments is of course another significant upside to the technology. 

Locks is designed to be an easy way for individuals interested realizing the value of the blockchain to do so, without the cumbersome process of learning to deal with exchanges.  Locks lowers the barrier to entry for new users because they can think in terms of assets they are used to and simultaneously spend where ever Bitcoin is accepted.

We anticipate by lowering the barrier to entry and making new users more comfortable, more people will experience how seamless Bitcoin transactions are and thus have greater insight to Bitcoin's upside and hold Bitcoin  :)

Hi inBitweTrust, Coinbase charges a 1% fee on top of their spread to buy and sell. Correct?

Coinapult charges no fees, pure spread.

Locks will also be supported in Coinapult's SMS wallet.  The unbanked can't access exchanges, but many have SMS capabilities.

What fee they charge to lock in the rate?

Sure, but that is the fee to ach it to your bank account, just like the fee for a wire transfer with your service.
If someone wanted lock their BTC to a certain fiat price and keep that fiat with a third party than why not simply use an exchange?

BTC-e charges a 0.2% fee
bitstamp is 0.5% to 0.2%
kraken is 0.35% to 0.1%

So if I were to "lock" and "unlock" on btc right now I would pay
7.52 usd with coinapult
1.89 fee x2 + 2 dollar spread = 5.78 with bitstamp
0.74 x 2 fee + 0.14 dollar spread = 1.62 with btc-e
1.31 x 2 fee + 7.27 dollar spread = 9.89 with kraken (yours is better than kraken)

Am I missing something here ?

 Hmmm... perhaps the locks and unlocks is just another way to spin what a normal exchange does and the real decision on which exchange to use has more to
deal with a trust issue , and how easy it is to get cash into the exchange, and the fees. I would certainly trust an exchange more with holding fiat if I knew who the owners were.... thus
I would trust coinapult and bitstamp above btc-e.

Really? You would trust them more if you knew who the owners were?

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/us-sec-fines-erik-voorhees-unregistered-bitcoin-ipos/

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=82866.msg7114155#msg7114155

I'm merely suggesting that if one depends upon an centralized exchange, one should at least know who the owners are.

From what I understand about reading those two links Eric was attacked by the SEC and thus has been slow to deliver on FeedZeBirds?
This could be because he used all the money between lawyers/fines , or he has been caught up in paperwork and projects, or potentially it was a scam from the get go.
I would tend to think it is the first 2 reasons and seems like he is merely stretching himself too thin over different projects, but I can also empathize with you because I haven't seen any recent updates in a while concerning the project either so at minimum he needs to improve upon his relationship with investors.

The biggest problem that I see is a willingness to break the law and not attempt to be compliant. How can you trust a business that is willing to skirt regulation? I can sympathize with individuals that feel the legal system is unjust and possibly even ignore the law. The only person they're hurting if caught is themselves. Businesses don't have that luxury. They need to be above board all the time because they are risking the money of customers. The two founders of that company came from BitInstant. Bitinstant skirted the law. Was that the doing of one individual, a company policy or a shared cultural view of all employees? There's no way to know. Just realize who you're getting into bed with before you do it.

Erik Voorhees from what I understand is either an anarchist or libertarian and has never hid that fact. Our "kind" doesn't care so much for laws and regulations as much as ethics. Investors should be cognizant that there are risks and rewards to dealing with anarchists as avoiding regulation presents opportunities and risks of state actors attacking you.

I have no problem investing capital in anarchists I know. I think he has just taken on too much and has good intentions to deliver, but I suppose time will tell.

That's it, as long as you're willing to risk your money along with him. It's all good. Just don't expect a company like Circle to get into bed with them. It probably won't happen. We could debate the ethics of risking the money of uninformed people for profit but I'd rather not. Good luck. Circle is such a great company and works so fast they will crush them anyway.

Yes, and that is also why BTC-E is priced so cheaply for fees. The end user is trading lack of regulation for lower fees.

 With regards to leaving any fiat within either a regulated or unregulated exchange: I would suggest neither as one may steal your funds directly(or get hacked) and the other one will steal your funds indirectly through capital gains.

With regards to my opinion investing in any crypto-assets like what you are suggesting: I think this is very risky and would like o see more IPO's where the funds are held in a multisig account where some of the controlling members are trusted individuals outside of the business with no conflicts of interest.

Hi AdamSmith,

There is no fee using Locks.  For transactions up to 50 BTC we keep the bid-ask spread between 2 and 4%. This means each transaction will be 1-2% away from our index price, which closely mirrors prices at the major exchanges. Most of the time the spread will be near the minimum, only venturing near the maximum when the market becomes abnormally illiquid.

Unlike exchanges, Coinapult guarantees the price quoted for 15 minutes.  The point is, you'll know the price before you act.

To clarify your first sentence, Coinapult doesn't handle wire transfers with retail customers. It's Bitcoin in and Bitcoin out, so there is no wire fee.

In response to your exchange fee analysis, you're right, Locks may not be the best deal for people that have already incurred the cost in time and effort to establish an exchange account.  However, how many people have you tried to get interested in Bitcoin that gave up during the multi-step and often multi-week process of setting up an exchange account?  Likely many. 

With Coinapult, you can email new users bitcoin and they can immediately Lock.  In less than 2 minutes, they can experience Bitcoin transactions without having to learn a completely new currency and without having to deal with Bitcoin's volatility.  The less barriers new users perceive to using the blockchain, the faster adoption will take place.

One advantage veterans may find in wallets like Electrum that have the Locks plug-in enabled is convenience.  Significant funds are held on exchanges because waiting 3-6 confirmations before market action can be taken can be too expensive, especially when there is high volume on the network.  With Electrum + Locks, you receive a guaranteed price quote before you send funds.  Don't forget that time is money :)