Updated

Rather than explaining it with words, I added a few faux orders to show the sort of thing I had in mind. Let me know if that helped.

It could of course just as easily be done the completely opposite way from top to bottom, and that wouldn't be wrong in any way, and in that situation your order would be on top. Just to me this way makes every so slightly more intuitive sense.

Sorry I don't understand your whole idea on localbitcoins. I have used localbitcoins as a bitcoin seller quite a long time ago.

I would be fine with any sort of shipping that the buyer wanted to pay for. There is a potential problem with trying to get the seller to do some sort of fancy shipping. He could just pretend like he was going to send some gold inorder to get the buyer to send him shipping money and then cut ties and never send any gold. There is also a problem with an expectation that the seller do fancy shipping. Either every single one of them does (thus making small purchases impractical) or none of them do. If you have some who do and some who dont you fracture the market. It loses its homogeneity and you have to make 2 different markets each with half the liquidity. Mainly this service is for people who arent in a terrible hurry. Of course if its some massive amount of gold than at some point shipping costs become negligible and it definitely becomes worth it to have tracking. So in sufficiently large amounts its reasonable to expect the seller to use good shipping just out of his own self interest.

It is very unlikely that you would ever receive a fake 1/10th ounce piece that conformed to weight and dimensional specifications. I don't think such a thing exists.

Ill have to think about the request for limitations on brands. I'm not sure how badly that would fracture the market. If you look at the spreadsheet you will get an idea for what im trying to do. I want it to be like a market like any of the other bitcoin exchanges. Inorder to do that people cant be requesting specific kinds of bitcoins. Each order has to be as good as any other. Now you do have altcoins, and if there is sufficient liquidity and volume in the future than we can fracture the market into two based on the sorts of distinctions that are most important to people (could be fast shipping from seller or potentially government mint vs non government mint or large coins vs small ect...). But until such a time as there is significant liquidity, its best to keep it all as one market, which entails some sacrifices.

Minimum resolution is 0.1 troy ounces. So I can either place the order for 0.2 or 0.3 troy ounces. Ill set it for 0.2 at the price you specified. You can update the order in this thread anytime. More often means more bumps so feel free

This is the sort of stuff I think about and dream about all the time.

One of the most important insights I've ever had in my life was realizing that the reason computer scientists have been unable to scale mesh networks well is that they don't realize that the problem they are trying to solve is not a computer science problem at all, it is an economics problem, precisely it is the economic calculation problem.

Essentially they are trying to find the right "algorythm" to centrally plan data routing, but that is impossible because information necessary to solve the problem isnt centrally located and its factors can not even be communicated meaningfully in any terms other than in prices.

The solution is to allow node operators to be node entrepreneurs and respond to changing market conditions. If one location is more profitable than another than that is the right location for their node in terms of building the most robust network. If they have a wide profit margin than they should upgrade their hardware. If they have a small profit margin than they should keep the hardware the same. If they are operating at a loss than the capital should be redeployed in some other capacity, perhaps in a different location. This communicates how to physically structure the network efficiently and dynamically for a constantly changing word. On the user side, just like any other good or service, they can determine the efficient routing path for themselves based on there preferred cost/speed trade off. Just like other goods in the economy where consumers weigh the benefits of different features of competing products against the cost of those additional features. Their entirely self serving economizing choices empower node operators with the information necessary to make efficient choices in how to deploy network infrastructure.

Anyway this fits perfectly with a lot of the blockchain technology interweaving you were talking about.

Sorry in advance for slightly offtopic in terms of monero but on topic in terms of responding to your comment. I'm just super interested in and passionate about a topic that someone randomly brought up, i cant help but jump in.

Thanks for all the info. I don't think im going to go spring for a MSB license before i even do a single trade but thanks to your comment ill probably move forward with that a little sooner than I otherwise would have if the community starts to show interest in the project. Also if msb is easy enough, i just wont worry about accpting coins with face denominations, its not like they are going to come throw me in federal prison for a few dozen trades, ill only get a knock if this service becomes sufficiently popular so i have plenty of time to worry about that in future.

So if you have an idea for what this local coin dealer would pay you, you might consider going ahead and posting up some buy orders (and potentially sell orders) that would allow enough room to arbitrage. Even if the offer is low it would be nice to have something to start filling up my orderbook with. You could supply some liquidity if nothing else.

And thankyou for your interest and advise. It is greatly appreciated.

That sounds awesome! Send him to this thread for me. Or alternatively I'm happy to just provide escrow services for w/e sort of deal your parties require. I am also a general purpose escrow provider in addition to little pet projects like this.

Doesn't it require a 250,000 dollar bond and a license in every state?

You got it. Until such a time as I decide to charge a fee, ill just comp the postage.

Sure. If you want to send me 59 cents I wont object but otherwise It's a pretty inconsequential amount to pay to get this thing started.

Remember the seller will be sending the XAU to me and ill be forwarding it to you. In order to prevent anyone from needing to trust anyone (except me).

Cmon guys I need orders or else this thing is going to die. Even just place an order that you dont think will fill just so I have something to put on the spreadsheet.

Its a network problem. This service is of no use at all to the early adopters but maybe will be someday. So I need altruists to step forward.

Just factor shipping into your ask.

Also buyer doesnt get to choose what type of gold. The reason it has to be this way is I want to build a market and inorder to have a market the good has to be homogeneous. Which means if I allow buyers to specify the type of gold, than i have to break it up into different orderbooks for different products. Which means liquidity gets cut in half or thirds or quarters ect... Sorry, if this is deal breaking let me know and ill pull it down.

There are definitely some advantages to going that route to be sure. But I like to think there are also some unique advantages to this approach as well. When you go to a website like that you have one seller and one price on one item, take it or leave it.

I am hoping instead to build a vibrant market with many competing buyers and sellers and price discovery. It is reasonable to expect that under these circumstances you may be able to get a much better deal than you could on a website like that. But I see mostly the trade off will be simple off the grid OTC purchases of bitcoins on the seller side, and very competitive prices on gold for gold on the buyers side. Each can have their interests met through the exchange in a way that would be difficult if they were forced to trust each other.

Also yes. No KYC requirements. No licenses. No red tape. No government bullshit of any kind. Just simple beautiful peer2peer exchange.

1/10th ounce gold eagle says "5 dollars" on it. Craaaaaap. That would almost certainly be used as a justification to slap me with transmitting money without a money transmitter license or at the very least KYC requirements.

Could still use bars like this.



But that's pretty restrictive.

I think im going to have to switch to a gram standard rather than troy ounce. Maybe 5 gram resolution with the option to use either 5 1 gram or 1 5 gram bar.

I wont be handling any money, at-least as far as the US government is concerned. http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/IRS-Virtual-Currency-Guidance

But this does bring up one good point. Perhaps I wont be able to accept gold coins with face value denominations. That could be very restrictive.

Thanks for the kind words mickey. Yes unfortunately it will be USA only. It would just take too long for packages to arrive from other parts of the world. There would be too much variance in what sort of time buyers could expect it to take for the letter to arrive.

xmr on cryptsy! nice! how many exchanges is xmr on these days?

Hey buddy! Long time no see. How are things? Thoughts on the idea?

Sorry about deleting your comment xetsr. I realized I needed to claim a few of these top reply spots for myself.

off to bed for the night. will check back in the morning.

I have a pretty good amount of experience dealing in gold and silver. I am unaware of any 1/10th ounce fake gold products. Nevertheless I will be using digital calipers and a scale to ensure that the dimensions and weight conform to specifications. The risk of receiving a fake product at this point approaches 0.

Ill make the first entry in the faq. Thanks for the question