[ANN] TorBroker - Fund your account in Bitcoin, trade >1000 real stocks and ETFs

[jgarzik]

I'm sure it would be trivial to discover the owner by making signature investments on certain scales and identifying the pattern on an exchange.

+1

I was also curious about dividends.

That would be ideal:  a [non-anonymous, sorry TorBroker] service that allowed me to

• deposit bitcoins
• trade US securities
• receive dividend payments, instantly converted to bitcoins, and credited to a bitcoin balance
• withdraw bitcoins

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[piotr_n]

I'm sure it would be trivial to discover the owner by making signature investments on certain scales and identifying the pattern on an exchange.

Yeah. But then you need to assume that they are stupid and so when you say them "buy 1264 shares of ABC and 1734 of DEF" (where ABC and DEF are a rarely traded assets), they are actually buying the exact amount of both of them... which they should not, if they are smart and don't want to get busted.

[jgarzik]

Yeah. But then you need to assume that they are stupid and so when you say them "buy 1264 shares of ABC and 1734 of DEF" (where ABC and DEF are a rarely traded assets), they are actually buying the exact amount of both of them... which they should not, if they are smart and don't want to get busted.

It is tough to do real-time trading and avoid that problem.

[piotr_n]

Yeah. But then you need to assume that they are stupid and so when you say them "buy 1264 shares of ABC and 1734 of DEF" (where ABC and DEF are a rarely traded assets), they are actually buying the exact amount of both of them... which they should not, if they are smart and don't want to get busted.

It is tough to do real-time trading and avoid that problem.

Well if you have 1% commission in + 1% out, you have about 2% of "space" to modify the order volumes, while statistically you should break even anyway, despite of the provision, just by choosing the direction up/down randomly.
And the more the service gets popular, the more the volumes add up, the harder it is for anyone to match them with a single account requests.
But that is also why I don't think they will ever switch to an actual real-time trading - it must always be somehow delayed, in order to combine requests from different accounts.

Another trick you could use is to spread the requests among different brokerage accounts.

These are just ideas from the top of my head, but I'm sure if I had built such a service, I'd probably have more security related countermeasures in my head.

[TorBroker]

Problem #1:  impossible to prove this is not a scam, besides actual service testing and observing the results.

Yes, we've been thinking hard about how to overcome this. Our first approach was to contact high profile Bitcoin community members and ask them to hold a bond, but unfortunately no one were willing to hold it.

We're working to introduce leveraged trading soon. If we offer you X times leverage, then you can essentially trust us with an amount of funds equal to 1/X and still get the same exposure in the markets as now.

Problem #2:  US capital gains tax liability, which the operators presumably must pay

Problem #3:  Bitcoin income/exchange tax liability, and other regulatory risk.  Move any significant amount of money into TorBroker, and it is noticable that you are suddenly appearing at your brokerage's doorstep with USD cash from already-watched bitcoin exchange sources.

We answered that here: "Our accounts are in jurisdictions with no capital gains taxes, so we can pass on the full profit to our customers." The income/exchange tax is also not an issue in our jurisdictions.

We should probably feature our answer somewhere more prominent, because it gets asked a lot.

I was also curious about dividends.

Dividends are currently added to your balance when you sell the security. Unlike capital gains, some US dividends are taxable no matter the jurisdiction you're trading from, and we will subtract the taxes we pay before paying out to you. Stay tuned for the details about this.

I'm sure it would be trivial to discover the owner by making signature investments on certain scales and identifying the pattern on an exchange.

We are aware of this potential pattern recognition problem and think we have it solved. We can't go into details, but essentially there is a lot you can do to add randomness across multiple accounts.

Also, we're primarily staying under the radar to avoid political pressure to pass new regulation. To the best of our knowledge, passing on gains from securities trading with no legal ownership of securities given to our customers does currently not require a license in our jurisdictions.

[TorBroker]

Dividends are currently added to your balance when you sell the security. Unlike capital gains, some US dividends are taxable no matter the jurisdiction you're trading from, and we will subtract the taxes we pay before paying out to you. Stay tuned for the details about this.

A 15% dividend tax applies to US stocks. ADRs representing companies in other countries may be subject to dividend taxes of their local jurisdictions as well - we recommend you investigate the rate for the jurisdiction of the specific company you want to buy. Dividend taxes are subtracted before we receive the dividends in our accounts. Whatever amount we receive we simply add to your TorBroker USD balance.

[TorBroker]

We've set up www.torbroker.info to promote the service to people not yet familiar with Tor. Let us know what you think!

[jgarzik]

We've set up www.torbroker.info to promote the service to people not yet familiar with Tor. Let us know what you think!

I apologize for having to ask this, but,

Please remove "BitPay" mention if you would, any comments I make are my personal opinion, and not an official company endorsement.

[TorBroker]

We've set up www.torbroker.info to promote the service to people not yet familiar with Tor. Let us know what you think!

I apologize for having to ask this, but,

Please remove "BitPay" mention if you would, any comments I make are my personal opinion, and not an official company endorsement.

We didn't intend for it to look like a company statement but rather just information about who you happen to be. We've removed it now. Looks OK?

[TorBroker]

TorBroker is currently experiencing downtime regularly. We will soon be upgrading our infrastructure which should eliminate these outages. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[TorBroker]

TorBroker is running much better yet again, thanks for your patience. Stay tuned for some exciting updates to come.

[jaminunit]

This is so fucking epic! Well done guys

[lindatess]

If you can't reveal your company name, then how is your firm going to deal with a huge capital gains tax?

Are you trading as an individual or an entity?

If you are withholding the tax, are you guys doing some form of tax arbitrage? How do you intend to make a profit?

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If I'm trading from Australia, as a foreigner I can't get dividends, but if I trade with you, do I get the dividend?

For a normal foreign investor there is no point collecting the dividend or not because they can't claim any tax offsets (e.g. franking credits)... However, TorBroker may be able to claim it and benefit, but don't know the insides of the U.S. tax system.

I already sell and then buy back my US shares on interactivebrokers each time there is a dividend.

[TorBroker]

If you can't reveal your company name, then how is your firm going to deal with a huge capital gains tax?

Are you trading as an individual or an entity?

If you are withholding the tax, are you guys doing some form of tax arbitrage? How do you intend to make a profit?

----
If I'm trading from Australia, as a foreigner I can't get dividends, but if I trade with you, do I get the dividend?

For a normal foreign investor there is no point collecting the dividend or not because they can't claim any tax offsets (e.g. franking credits)... However, TorBroker may be able to claim it and benefit, but don't know the insides of the U.S. tax system.

I already sell and then buy back my US shares on interactivebrokers each time there is a dividend.

TorBroker operates from jurisdictions with no capital gains tax.

Dividends are currently added to your balance when you sell the security. A 15% dividend tax applies to US stocks. ADRs representing companies in other countries may be subject to dividend taxes of their local jurisdictions as well - we recommend you investigate the rate for the jurisdiction of the specific company you want to buy. Dividend taxes are subtracted before we receive the dividends in our accounts. Whatever amount we receive we simply add to your TorBroker USD balance.

[TorBroker]

Happy New Year!

We are still working to introduce exciting new features to TorBroker. Expect to see live trading, margin trading, and a better portfolio interface in the coming months.

If you don't have the TorBrowser, you can now also access the website in your regular browser through: https://torbrokerge7zxgq.onion.lu
However, please note that this requires some trust in the owner of the onion.lu proxy as he can snoop your login credentials.

Also, we've decided to keep the $5 minimum trade commission for the entirety of 2014.

May 2014 be the year of financial freedom and prosperity!

TorBroker

[leancuisine]

Is it just me or can I not access both the Tor and non-Tor based versions of the site anymore? Just worried about my investment there, to say the least...

[naphto]

Is it considered as gambling?

[leancuisine]

Is it considered as gambling?

Trading stocks could be called as a risky investment, or better yet a gamble.

EDIT: The website is also up now.

[only]

Is this still working? Can't see any securities in the list.

[TorBroker]

Is this still working? Can't see any securities in the list.

Absolutely. Are you sure Javascript is enabled in your browser?