Bitcoin Forum

will announce by the  end of this month .  Hopefully it  will be  well  received.

Any Bitcoin initiatives in the pipelines for India?

Yes! :D I'm currently developing an app and its almost coming to a finish. Maybe max a week or so! Hopefully it will get a great deal of attention. Also have more ideas in the pipeline. Using https://bips.me as its the only processor which allows withdrawal to Indian banks (SWIFT). For those who want to use BIPS along-with nodejs here is an unofficial module: https://github.com/shripadk/bips. I think the only thing preventing India from entering the startup ecosystem with full-force was payment processing. Bitcoin really demolishes that barrier for entry. I bet there will be quite a lot of startups from India as Bitcoin becomes more popular.

I do believe that BIPS also pays to PayPal accounts in India.

I havent used the bips Banking or Ebay.
Anybody with experience, what's stopping users from using Bips Bank Withdrawals /Deposits?

Hi guys! I am a 4th yr btech student from NIT Jamshedpur. I read about bitcoins in a forbesindia article a couple of months back. I wanted to buy a few coins but could not find an efficient and a reliable site/exchange to trade coins. I have joined hands with a friend of mine from IIT Kgp and am planning to start  an exchange. We will be operating from our colg. campus itself so that should remove the "trust deficit" since we still have an entire year of colg. left and cannot run away with your money.

1)I would like to know the problems faced by bitcoin traders and we'll try to solve them.

2) Could any one give me a rough estimate about the no. of active bitcoin traders and how actively they trade?

3) Our operational costs will be pretty low since we'll be operating from our colg. Therefore we would like to charge then smallest possible commissio that would be just enough to cover our costs. As per my calculations a commission of 3% should be sufficient. I need your feed back on the commssion rate.

Any suggestion/advice is welcome   
Hopefully we'll have the exchange rolling in a couple of months.

3) Our operational costs will be pretty low since we'll be operating from our colg. Therefore we would like to charge then smallest possible commissio that would be just enough to cover our costs. As per my calculations a commission of 3% should be sufficient. I need your feed back on the commssion rate.

Best of luck with your new initiative :)

Couple of things I will suggest :
1. There is no way you should expect operating costs low. Think it like if you have 1000 BTC in deposits, you are storing almost 45 lacs of cash. How you want to protect it is on you, because its not your money. Its your depositors money and scammers/hackers here are really creative :)
2. Banking infrastructure. Thats most important.
3. Accounting. You can not touch depositors money to pay your expenses. YOU CAN NOT. You can transfer your commissions, profits daily, weekly, monthly to your expense accounts and pay your expenses from there. So your expense account must have enough cash reserve to make sure your run at least for next 6 months. Get investors or invest your own money.
4. Form a company. Dont do it with your personal accounts and personal obligation. You must have either PVT LTD or LLP.
5. Try to be in this economy for at least 6  months to understand how it works, what are benefits and on top of everything where you can fail.
 
You can start with this. Better start with Crypto only exchange. Dont touch FIAT in the starting.

I remember a line from user "Wisard" here : Running an exchange or handling people money, you can not start with lean start up concept.

Cheers

Spending a bit of time at the Forum Marketplace should give you a small idea of the ongoing trades. You can also refer to localbitcoins to see how the spread is across several cities.

All the best and do your research well. :)

As per my calculations a commission of 3% should be sufficient. I need your feed back on the commission rate.

MtGox, the largest exchange, charges less than 0.60%

MSB in India

What is that ?

The volume that we are expecting is nothing in comparison to the volume that mtgox gets. Add to it the cost of setting up and running a MSB in India and the costs shoot up dramatically. With people charging 10-20% over mtgox rates in India, a commission anywhere near the 5% mark should come as a relief to many.

Money service Business. Nice to see a Bitcoin service, being called one. :)

Something cool that I had noticed in most other local communities is that they are ruthless in starting up.

No regulations, etc even matter at this stage apart form money conversion and even that has got several workarounds based on limits, etc.

If our community can get a bit more ruthless and enable/ support/ help any legit business that comes up, I am sure that we can grow way faster in India.

Make sure to do your homework, just some days ago 22 banks got penalized by RBI for violating KYC norms.
http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/rbi-penalises-22-banks-kyc-slips-183000847.html

Something cool that I had noticed in most other local communities is that they are ruthless in starting up.

No regulations, etc even matter at this stage apart form money conversion and even that has got several workarounds based on limits, etc.

If our community can get a bit more ruthless and enable/ support/ help any legit business that comes up, I am sure that we can grow way faster in India.

I partly agree with you here Benson. But again, once you start getting the volumes, if your startup is dependent on the banking infrastructure, then yes you have to start thinking about it well in advance.

If your startup can survive independent of the Indian authorities, then you don't even have to bother about the rules and regulations initially.
For instance, taking btc exchange as an example, other countries have some internationally accepted modes of payments like Online Fund Transfer abroad, ACH, WU and MG by which the exchange can flawlessly operate initially until the paperwork is completed. (example : buying and selling through coinbase exchange)

AFAIK, in India even paypal has to comply with RBI regulations and the payments received to that paypal account has to be withdrawn to the local bank at the end of everyday. That makes our situation a tad more diff than the start ups in other countries.

I partly agree with you here Benson. But again, once you start getting the volumes, if your startup is dependent on the banking infrastructure, then yes you have to start thinking about it well in advance.

If your startup can survive independent of the Indian authorities, then you don't even have to bother about the rules and regulations initially.
For instance, taking btc exchange as an example, other countries have some internationally accepted modes of payments like Online Fund Transfer abroad, ACH, WU and MG by which the exchange can flawlessly operate initially until the paperwork is completed. (example : buying and selling through coinbase exchange)

AFAIK, in India even paypal has to comply with RBI regulations and the payments received to that paypal account has to be withdrawn to the local bank at the end of everyday. That makes our situation a tad more diff than the start ups in other countries.

That's true it's not easy to setup a Money related business easily in india.

I'm not sure but i think exchange needs to get licence under "Pre-paid Payment Instruments" or Cross border Money Transfer to do deal with international customers.

Both licence needs alot money.

Well, there is nothing out officially as yet mate.. We need to grow merchant acceptance before we can challenge anything.
Without startups and places to link into/ spend money at, there will be no merchant acceptance or growth.
Without that, there is no case to present to anyone. This stems the growth factor.

buysellbitco.in, madovercoins.com, coinmonk.com, indiabitcoin.com, inrbtc.com, etc are really the pillars of our community in India. These are not enough cases to persuade a country/ bank/ company/ individual to adopt.

Any thoughts?

+1

  The volume on a per day basis is still below Rs 1 lakh. I  am not using any cash channels, all the business is done through NEFT only.
Though I cannot say that it will be payment gateway in a full sense, merchants in India can now get their customers bitcoins sent to their specific address and the amount will be deposited in their bank accounts daily.

My experience so far is ...the volumes are low....test your ideas...if it not fully automated...make a semi automated setup...but the get service out. the true validator of your business are the customers not the regulatory agencies.

1) What is stopping you from setting up a payment gateway?

2) Would i be wrong to say that 50 coins change hand every day in India?

1) What is stopping you from setting up a payment gateway?

2) Would i be wrong to say that 50 coins change hand every day in India?

1) We will be announcing this service in less than a month.

2) at INRBTC the avg volume per day is 10 bitcoins that too because we only buy bitcoins for now. Buysellbitco.in can give a better picture.

India has an extremely strong IT industry would be much easier to start any Bitcoin projects in India.

2) 50 BTC.. If you want monthly average it is surely more than 1500 BTC :) Let me give you hint BTC goes down you get buyers, BTC goes up you get sellers.

In an exchange isnt the No. of buyers= No of sellers.

buysellbitco.in essentially buys from users and then sells them instead of acting as a middleman. Am i correct?

You will get more sellers when BTC is going up trying to cash out profits and you will find more buyers when BTC is going down. Here is the basic issue lies. When BTC is going up you will not find a lot of traders who want to buy and when BTC is going down you will not find lot of sellers. But all of this is related to traders who knows what they are doing.

What makes the price go up or down?

Just an advise, if you are going ahead with exchange idea I will advise you to first eye for customer acquisition. Get them used to with your platform, let them setup their accounts, setup payment channels and get comfort level with your platform, support and money in-out system.

In any case you will not have awesome volumes at the start, so you can offer them free trades for few months and concentrate all your efforts to get more and more people on board with carefully designed  marketing campaigns to get people in. Start with referral program based on number of leads it generates.

Just my two satoshi :)

Cheers

buysellbitco.in sounded as if der is some "magic" trick up every experts' sleeve  :P
I know abt supply and demand and confidence but fail to understand how an expert will be able to judge dese 2 factors correctly and use it to his advantage.

What makes the price go up or down?

If you ask Warren Buffet, he will have a very simple answer Greed and fear.

statistical forecasting

pls elaborate or post any helpful link. Where do you get bitcoin stats for da analysis?

pls elaborate or post any helpful link. Where do you get bitcoin stats for da analysis?

^ This.

Bitcoin Going UP = Greed = BUY BUY BUY
Bitcoin Going Down = Fear = "SELL SELL SELL"

On a sidenote take an appointment from dr.fontas he will tell you more about pumping/dumping.
 ;D

x) Traders. They do not operate in India. They directly work with MtGox, Bitstamp and X, Y, Z. But normally does not worrk with C in above. Why ? Well the % cut of c in India is a bit ted high for them and they can not justify it. They do a good volume, more than 50 BTC for sure. If you want to open exchange try to eye them. It will be very hard for you to get them in as they are used to work with liquidity which will be chicken egg problem for you.

I trade on MtGox. There is 0 chance I will trade on an exchange that charges 3% each way. Just to enter and exit a trade, it's already a 6% hit.

I used to be a market maker on Bitfloor when it was around. Bitfloor actually paid liquidity providers for each transaction, rather than charging. That's the way to add liquidity to your exchange, especially when you're just starting.

1) What are the barriers faced by Indians (residents) that prevent them from trading on MtGox ?

Indian can do trading on mtgox and other trading sites, there's no resctriction about that, main problem is you can't deposit/withdraw fiat easily as international bank wire fees is quite high.

Do you have an idea about the kind of fees for wire transfers? I'm asking coz I'm finishing with an app which accepts only cryptos (Bitcoin, Litecoin etc) and I want to withdraw after a certain threshold. But I have no idea about the wire fees (I have HDFC/Axis bank accounts). If the fees are too high, then I can withdraw in big chunks rather than withdrawing for each transaction.

"Withdrawals
Wire transfers are currently taking up to 1 week to process due to the volume of withdrawal requests in queue.

If your withdrawal is larger than 10,000 USD (equivalent), it will take at least 2 weeks to process.

Withdrawals typically take 2-5 full business days to reach your bank, provided that you have included all required information such as your full name and address as it appears on your bank statement.

Mizuho bank charges a fee of 2,000 Yen for the withdrawals."

https://support.mtgox.com/entries/21649594-Withdrawals-and-Deposits

2000 YEN is around 20$ now.

No idea about icici but on axis bank it's 200 rupees something fees for per inward remittance.

I will try to keep things SIMPLE and in retrospective of a common man especially in INDIA who knows a little bit about how a currency works and how a normal forex trading works.

First why price rises : The price for any given currency won't remain the same.

Lets say I have 100 Green colored bucks (not mentioning any particular currency) AND lets say I want to sell these and get 120 RED colored bucks NOW because you are buying it from me and I am demanding a profit (of +20 red colored bucks).
THIS Profit level is determined by me as I am the seller and this is what I think I can make off of my green colored bucks.
KEEP IN MIND that initially the green & the red bucks were equal in value but as soon as I sell it at this price my Green Bucks become +20 more valuable than the buyer's Red bucks.
FOR the price of the currency to actually move up (or for me to actually sell my green bucks at this profit) there needs to be MORE BUYERS WITH RED BUCKS than sellers like me with GREEN BUCKS... ONLY THEN the price of my Green bucks move UP.

NOW why does the price of a currency fall ?

Simple if there are more sellers than buyers for my currency the price will fall.

The same logic can be applied to the Bitcoins as well considering the fact that Bitcoins are also a CURRENCY.

SINCE Bitcoins are fairly 'new' as a 'self sustaining currency' there are a lot of speculations that play into the factor of rising it's value or crashing it, market speculations etc etc.. JUST like a normal currency.

Remember that Buyers are people that want something that is in a limited supply. So when the demand is High AND the supply is low (or constant) the price rises higher.

In Bitcoins case the supply is always limited atleast till 2140 so it's value can be comparable to Gold.


No not a physical home address but YES a lot alike and almost similar to an email address. Only difference here is that you get only payments as transaction and no 'emails'. These addresses can easily be generated by a Bitcoin wallet for free of cost. And you get your very own personal Bitcoin wallet that you can host on your computer from www.bitcoin.org



You can spend these bitcoins at any merchant's store that accepts Bitcoins. Currently there are a very few number of international websites where you can buy with bitcoins but no Indian ones.
Its almost like paypal that is until RBI banned them. It is new it will take time to find acceptance.



To be honest there is no real advantage in buying one currency against another unless you know that there is a huge boost to the value of that particular currency coming in the near future. With Bitcoins the Price has risen from mere cents to $200+ over the small life time it has lived so far and there is still more to come. But if you really get to the core of the coins then I can say bitcoins are great because there is no Third-Party Seizure which means that even the governments can’t freeze someone’s wealth, and thus the Bitcoins owners will have complete freedom to do anything they want with their money. The next great thing about bitcoin is that there are No Taxes here, other than voluntary donation; there is also no way to track a transaction other than a publicly announced bitcoin wallet address that links the owner of the wallet to all the transactions that occur on it.

But the most alluring fact to any merchant should be that in the bitcoin world there are No Risk of “Charge backs”.

I mean isnt this the reason why people / merchants hate Paypal or credit cards ?? ;D

I think these reasons are more than enough to describe how cool Bitcoins really are.


I personally dont think Bitcoins will ever replace the paper currency. I mean just because the Internet exists doesnt mean no one uses the SW radio or the Post or paper-mail (bills/home posted bank statements/letters etc) .

But it WILL take over the online world very very soon. Just imagine you can send your money from one country to another without paying ANYONE in between not even the governments. This way if you want to buy something in USA being in India, you will be paying for the EXACT price of that commodity & nothing extra (other than the shipping offcourse :P )

But again in terms of a common man : An Indian worker working in Dubai can send money directly to his home without paying ANY KIND OF TAXES.



Bitcoin is the future of finances online and perhaps offline.

Quote me if you want to.

I m going to quote www.bitcoin.org



If I DONT Win, just Donate ;) I know you love me :D ;D 1BrKv9h8RE5ovoJDDpJ6yaQom2RTYDbdNA

Hi All,
We are coming up with Crypto currency in India, We raised seed funding and lot of coding is done

We are able to convience few of the top online ecommerance sites to accept Laxmi Coin


Please support us and here is our opencoin.in Link

http://opencoin.in/general-laxmicoin-discussion/laxmi-coin-for-india-and-international-market/

and Bitcointalk.org link

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=287485.0

Looking for support from everyone

Thanks, Mitts