[ANN: Open Beta] Introducing 101 Digital Exchange @ 101.net

After almost a year of planning, three months of coding, and lots of private testing, we’re happy to share our efforts with the community.

101 Digital Exchange’s mission is to bring a higher level of transparency and professionalism to the crypto currency ecosystem. We began developing the exchange before the Mt.Gox meltdown, and their obvious ineptitude was the prime motivator for the creation of the business. There are some well-run exchanges now, but we still believe there’s room for another professionally operated business, and hope to earn your trade in the months and years to come.

101DX is not a nameless exchange, run by <?> in <?>. Technical support and operations of the exchange are handled through our support office in Canada, however as an international exchange, we will be incorporated in a more international jurisdiction. Full details of our incorporation will be published when finalized, before we begin trading. Including investors and advisors, we are currently a team of 7, with backgrounds in financial services, reinsurance, foreign exchange, IT security, and cloud infrastructure.

Personally, my name is Robert Hof (call me Rob!), and I’m on LinkedIn and happy to connect -> http://ca.linkedin.com/in/101dotnet/ . For now, I’m the primary online ambassador of the company, and will endeavour to be responsive here at bitcointalk and on reddit (also 101official) for general questions and concerns. Specific questions regarding your account should be handled via our support system at http://support.101.net

We provide customer support via email and the support link above, and will be adding telephone support in both English and Spanish in the coming month or two.

At launch we support 9 cryptos, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Dogecoin. In addition, we believe we have created a unique trading system – you can trade any currency for any other – there are no traditional pairs, and every buy order is conceptually also a sell order. You can phrase the order in whichever manner makes the most sense to you – our trading engine will normalize it and execute it. For example, buying Bitcoin with Dogecoin is the same as selling Dogecoin for Bitcoin.

We will be adding more coins as we shake out the bugs, and of course we will be adding fiat trading as soon as feasible. We already have a banking partner for USD (not in the United States), and will be adding other currencies as well. Deposit/Withdrawal methods.. wait and see. We’re aiming to be very flexible.

Like all new businesses, we have big plans, but we’d rather announce our milestones as we reach them.

Raising Money
We are not raising outside investment at this time. We do, however, offer Membership Units in return for trading discounts of up to 60%. These Membership Units along with our initial capitalization from private investors and partners should be enough to carry out phase one of our business plan. A limited number of Membership Units have additional benefits such as tradability and distribution sharing, and they will be available first-come, first-served basis when we officially open.

Where we are now:

private testing with testnet coins and fake balances
additional testers needed! This is where you come in. Please help us kick the tires, find a bug or two, and generally get a feel for the system.

Short Term Roadmap
Within the next month or two, we plan at a minimum to:

open registration to all - that's today!
turn off play money accounts, flip testnet servers to main blockchain
open our head office in Central America, adding Spanish language technical support.
add at least one fiat currency (USD). Sorry Americans, we won’t be able to help you at launch, but crypto trading will still be available worldwide.
add additional crypto currencies. We have 9 now, and will expand to support any currency with a reasonable volume and hashrate.

Here’s a short introduction to our policies.

Security:
Cold storage? Yes, on every supported coin.
Target Percentage: All except the anticipated daily withdrawals. With scale, this will likely approach 95%+
New Deposits directly to Cold? Not at this time. An hourly process calculates average withdrawal volumes and anticipates its needs for the next 24 hours. Excess is dumped to cold.
Cold Storage policy: Cold Servers are physically diverse, and are brought online only long enough to broadcast a transaction back to the corresponding hot server. M-of-N transactions are being investigated for cold wallet operations so one trusted person can not withdraw the funds from the cold wallet.

Financial Operations:
Full Reserve? Absolutely. We will be releasing regular proof of solvency reports.
Interest on Accounts? No. If we offered interest on your balances, we could not be full reserve, because we would have to generate a return higher than the interest we pay out.
Fiat Funds policy: no intermingling of company operating funds and client funds held in trust. All bank fees to be paid from operating account.

Referral / Affiliate program?
Not yet. High up on the roadmap.

Network / Security
All servers and network gear is owned by the exchange, and is not shared with unrelated parties.
No outside maintenance contracts/contractors
Firewall at network and sever levels
IPS on all servers
Database is clustered
Backups and Snapshots are scheduled; backups are encrypted and stored offsite in exchange-owned equipment.

Staff Policy / Physical Security
All staff with access to back-end to provide criminal background check.
No remote technical support staff
No removable media or recording devices on support floor
No WIFI on office LAN

How to participate NOW

We have just enabled the register link at https://www.101.net . Upon registration, you’ll receive a bunch of play money in different coins. Trade away, and let us know what you think. We have a public Hipchat room for beta testers, which is linked to our internal communications system and monitored by our lead developer.

If you prefer to wait for the real thing, fear not, it won’t be long. We are quite confident that we’ve found all the major bugs.. this is just a short sea trial.

If you’re unhappy with the exchange you’re currently using, or want to diversify your trading options, please consider giving us a try. Thanks for your time, and on behalf of the team, we look forward to serving you.

Robert Hof
101 Digital Exchange