TL;DR: I'm a software engineer in the futures/foreign exchange industry with a bit too much spare time on my hands. Over the last year or so I've built a webapp that mimics, on a small scale, the functionality of a traditional commodities exchange:
https://www.BitFutures.io**** BULLET POINTS FOLLOW IF YOU'RE INTERESTED ****
WHY: There are plenty of other Bitcoin-denominated futures exchanges out there but I grew increasingly frustrated by (1) their high fees and (2) their requests for personally identifiable information. Further, the extreme consolidation currently occurring in the traditional futures industry, both at the exchange and investment firm level, motivated me to provide traders with an alternative.
COST: There are no fees. No per-trade costs, membership dues, transfer fees, etc. The only fee you'll pay is the standard miner/transaction fee when making a withdrawal.
** [Users can also create their own pools / hedge funds and optionally charge fees to investors in those pools. That's an advanced feature, however, unrelated to the free trading capabilities described here.]
ANONYMOUS: Users are never asked for personally identifiable information, not even an email address. Trade confirmations are (optionally) relayed to the user via BitMessage, an open source anonymous communications protocol.
NOT A GAMBLING SITE: Although I'm happy to provide binary contracts based on the outcome of sporting or political events if there's a demand for them, there are plenty of other sites filling that niche quite well. Instead, my goal is to replicate financial and commodity contracts found on traditional commodity exchanges (e.g. Crude Oil, Gold, stock indexes), with a long-term plan of offering more sophisticated contracts (e.g. credit default swaps) that would otherwise require a swap (ISDA) agreement with an investment bank like Goldman.
NO FIAT: The site uses Bitcoin as its sole medium for margin and settlement. There are no facilities to accept or transmit fiat currencies, nor to exchange fiat currencies for Bitcoin.
**** STILL READING? HERE'S MY PITCH FOR HELP ****
CAVEAT, STILL IN DEVELOPMENT: I can't pretend that this webapp is anything other than pre-beta quality right now. It's in serious need of testing. Further, the API calls are hitting servers in Iceland which adds a bit of latency to the page load time. Sorry about that. It's temporary.
TESTING: There are a lot of moving parts to this app that need to be tested. If you have an interest in commodities trading and/or hedge funds and this project sounds interesting to you, please contact me. I'll pay you for your time (in Bitcoin, of course). Contact information follows.
Thanks for reading!
https://www.BitFutures.ioBest,
Gale B. (pseudonym)
Web:
https://www.bitFutures.ioBitMessage: BM-2cXAXMG5KGBxt1pJUFPAEJq5cuFdwi53Pi (BitMessage)
Twitter: @BitFutures
IRC: FreeNode / #bitFutures
