Zhou,
just be aware that if you're paying out interest you could be running into some concocted international banking regulations.
at this point i only wish you spectacular success as this is what the community needs; another honest go to option.
We have already consulted financial and legal professionals about this. Please refer to our latest press release for details. We are fully licensed, but it's a strategic move so we don't want to disclose the details too early. |
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Why do you need to continue paying interest if you have no shortage of funds?
Because we want to offer our customers a consistent payout. Our interest rate is calculated every 30 minutes based on our funds. There's no guarantee that we won't have a shortage of funds if people start to open positions in the same direction. Our aim is to avoid the asterisk permanently. And we have to charge arbitrary swaps to fund the interest system. |
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Z are fucking kidding me ? Long Position -$0.17
Short Position -$0.08 We have no shortage of either currency, and we still have to pay deposits to people. The only way will be to collect position swaps. |
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Does this mean you would start sending out 1099's based on incomes made from each account?  No. We will not operate the business in the United States, nor will we respond to requests outside of our operating jurisdiction. |
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Are verified accounts required for anything at this point?
No, but you can already get your account verified using our verification feature. |
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OMG Z is goin short!  Seriously tho, thanks for the feature. One question: do you have plans to make option to edit orders? Cos now one needs to cancel and create new. There are three ways of editing orders: - Directing to another page: it's painfully slow. Rejected. - Modal window: it's still slower than canceling and place again. Rejected. - In-place editing: it causes user errors easily. Rejected. I don't think it's a necessary feature to have. So there's no plans for that. :-/ |
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Trading Tip
Slow and steady wins the race. Trading Tip
Be humble and patient. Do not fight the markets. Where's the "sell high, buy low"?! Thanks for that. I will add it into our trading tips array. Currently we have N tips being randomly included in the message. We would keep N a secret first! :-D |
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@zhoutong thanks for answering some questions. Can you show us some paperwork on bitcoinica.com, like company registration with the local authorities, and your position in the company ? Contract or similar will do, you can blackout very sensitive information.
Who else works at bitcoinica.com ? Can you provide some relevant information in the public domain on the issues above ?
I have already promised to release this information, but not now due to our on-going process of corporate re-organization. We just developed the account verification system today. It's fine if you proceed with whatever you're doing. But your compliant is definitely invalid according to our current status. The requested information had to be made public in the first place. I will not withdraw my complaint without you making a public announcement presenting your company public information. The validity of my complaint is not of your duties to decide. Can you refrain only answering some of my questions please, who else works at/with bitcoinica.com ? No, I will not answer your questions from now on. We will focus on finalizing our KYC stuff for compliance. All the information you asked for will be released in public when we're ready to. It's an important strategic move for us, and we want to be extremely careful about every big change we make. I don't care about your complaint. The Board has already approved a re-organization of the company, and Bitcoinica will operate in neither United States nor Singapore. We care more about our clients' responses towards our KYC requirements and how the public will react to the financial services provider status we have got. We are 100% confident that what we are doing is fully legal and ethical. A legal complaint from a random guy doesn't change what we are doing right now. |
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The wait is over. Now Bitcoinica supports email notifications for order executions, non-instant deposits (Bitcoins and wires) and withdrawals. Simply click "Notify" on an order to enable notification for order execution! In the future, we will implement notifications for margin calls and "forgot password". We hope you like this little new feature!  |
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@zhoutong thanks for answering some questions. Can you show us some paperwork on bitcoinica.com, like company registration with the local authorities, and your position in the company ? Contract or similar will do, you can blackout very sensitive information.
Who else works at bitcoinica.com ? Can you provide some relevant information in the public domain on the issues above ?
I have already promised to release this information, but not now due to our on-going process of corporate re-organization. We just developed the account verification system today. It's fine if you proceed with whatever you're doing. But your compliant is definitely invalid according to our current status. |
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This is a simple customer survey. We have a deadline of imposing KYC procedures, and basically we have to do that in order to be fulfill the compliance requirements as a legal financial services provider.
Before you vote, we want to assure you that:
- We will be fully legal as a financial services provider.
- We will have the legal right (and also the obligation) to collect your identifications.
- We will require a scanned copy of Photo ID and proof of residential address.
- We will store all identification in a secure place, and we will never give out to anyone without a court order.
- We will have a detailed Terms of Service and Privacy Policy before identification becomes an absolute requirement.
If you have any ideas, please voice out too.
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Dear Bitcointalk members,
Thank you for your active participation in this thread. We're now working on the official response regarding this matter and hopefully we can clear things up.
Meanwhile, we want to make clear a few things:
- Bitcoinica is no longer a product of xWaylab Inc., and we no longer operate in the jurisdiction of Delaware. We have registered a new entity outside of United States and we are now a fully licensed financial services provider in that country. (We will announce our new corporate structure with proof of financial services license available from a government site.)
- Bitcoinica is a Bitcoin CFD (Contract For Difference) trading platform, not a bucket shop. Even though our trading facilities don't deliver actual Bitcoins, there is actual trading of Bitcoins among Bitcoinica customers or at other exchanges. The benefit of trading CFDs instead of Bitcoins is the possibility of margin trading of commodity-like assets, instead of contract-like assets. The underlying trading process is absolutely legal.
- We have a legal deadline for doing KYC procedures, and currently we are still far from that. However, we are considering requiring identification documents from our customers. We will launch a poll to hear your voices.
It's surprising that the OP didn't give us more than 3 days to announce the changes at the corporate side of Bitcoinica, and this thread has forced us to put aside our technical development and focus on the legal problems right away. We will address these issues soon.
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Sorry guys, I was too busy to give out the free credits.
Now I have sent 1 USD to everyone replied with a Bitcoinica username.
Thank you for your support!
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I have over 13 BTC "sitting" in my account but have done nothing with them. Do I need to have earned 0.01 BTC from a position before interest payments start being made or can I just leave the balance untouched? Thanks for helping me out.
You can just leave them untouched. When these 13 BTC starts to generate 0.01 BTC interest for you, you will receive your first interest payment. Thanks! |
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Has anyone successfully received any interest payments? I have had some BTC in there for about 2 days with nothing. Isn't is supposed to be live now or is the 16th the launch date?
You need to get at least 0.01 ฿ to be paid. The accumulation has already started. You'll be paid on the first day that you have accumulated 0.01 ฿. |
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"Our general design principle is that we always pay less interest to our customers than what we receive from them as position swaps."
It would be nice if the amount of interest paid out to customers equaled that which you received in position swaps. Or at least came close to it.
That might lead to smaller interest rate gap between the buy and sell positions.
Is 70% considered close? Most money market investment deals return 70% of interbank rate. The spread is large because we have no shortage of funds now. We have to collect from a small group of people and distribute to a large group of people, hence the buy-sell spread. |
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i dont get this..
i can deposit btc or usd and bitcoinica gives me interest? what risks are involved?
There are no risk at all. We collect swaps from traders and distribute a (large) fraction of them to depositors through interest payments. This is not a ponzi scheme or any risky investment. It's similar to a money market fund. (In fact, Bitcoinica is the first ever Bitcoin money market.) We have a notable history of running a large-scale trading system with high security and availability. It's important to also know that the interest rate will go down if there are a lot of spare deposits, and we can't guarantee any interest rates. According to my experience and understanding of the system, realistically the long-term APY interest rates for USD should be between 3% - 8%. (But again, this is not a guarantee, just a personal opinion.) |
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+1. USD interest rates are way above anything anyone could get anywhere in the world (without the risk of losing your money).
What's to stop someone depositing $10k, never trading and collecting 8%pa? High reward = high risk. No ifs, no buts.
as the exchange gets more liquid the rates go down... Swaps mean that those buying bitcoin or USD on leverage pay the interest to those providing the liquidity. What will happen in the future is that the starfish will never exist again as those trying to buy new long (or short in a bare market) positions will be facing extremely high swap costs. (meaning there is a huge intensive for people to provide more liquidly to to fund those positions). It is really win-win for everyone  it just seems...too good to be true! ive been warry of bitcoinica from the start, not in terms of shady practices but i just dont understand margin trading. this seems like something that i would benefit from....seems like an un-shade-ified version of bitscalper. is it as simple as just depositing some money or do i need to do something special....i guess its time for me to register an account there and look around. EDIT:  is anyone willing to explain what the above informs us? does this mean I have to deposit money and essentially try to predict a direction (long/short), this must be wrong because its essentially the same thing as margin trading...what am i missing? i see zhoutong slowly bringing some really exciting things. if he does indeed start his own exchange he could potentially allow people to gain interest with their zhoutexchangeUSD credits You don't have to do anything to earn the interest. Just deposit money and hold. (I'm not going to start an exchange for now. We will continue using Mt. Gox until a better exchange comes out.) |
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GAH! MTGOX code depositing is bombing out. No funds at worst time. NameError in AccountController#depositing
uninitialized constant MtGox::Connection::FaradayMiddleware
Rails.root: /var/www/bitcoinica
Application Trace | Framework Trace | Full Trace
app/controllers/account_controller.rb:29:in `depositing'
Just retry. It's some connection problem. |
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Check your Account Ledger for your first interest payment! Now both USD and BTC have noticeable interest rates.  |
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