What Does it Take to be a Currency Exchanger

[Emerge]

I'd like to create a currency exchange for the Philippines from the ground up. I'll most likely bootstrap it and/or use funds from Navette Capital,
but I'd like to know first what it would take and what are recommendations + requirements for making something like this?

Legal would not be a problem, I intend for this to be done all on the net or with a separate bank account.

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[MadGamer]

I'm assuming It won't use P2P protocol and It's going to be centralized, first thing you should think about is the security , It has to be your first priority because If the hot wallet gets hacked , both you and the users will get a bad time.
An exchange is definitely not something you can build overnight , you should always hire the best If you want to run a serious business , top developers , top security experts and top designers. I'm not sure about the exchanges in Philippine but there should be some competition so make sure you have the better fees and give the people a reason to use your services.

[Emerge]

I'm assuming It won't use P2P protocol and It's going to be centralized, first thing you should think about is the security , It has to be your first priority because If the hot wallet gets hacked , both you and the users will get a bad time.
An exchange is definitely not something you can build overnight , you should always hire the best If you want to run a serious business , top developers , top security experts and top designers. I'm not sure about the exchanges in Philippine but there should be some competition so make sure you have the better fees and give the people a reason to use your services.

I was thinking more of a cash to Bitcoin and Bitcoin to cash exchange rather than a Bitcoin/Fiat/Altcoin exchange.
I think I could do it manually so the process won't be hard for the start, but knowing where to get a supply of money like from Neteller or Skrill or Paypal would help..

I only really have Bitcoin and Cash at hand most of the time

[merchantofzeny]

Would you partner with remittance centers like coins.ph? How exactly would the btc be converted to peso? Anyway, good luck on your endeavor kabayan.

[Emerge]

Would you partner with remittance centers like coins.ph? How exactly would the btc be converted to peso? Anyway, good luck on your endeavor kabayan.

I would of course partner with as many outlets as I can manage. I can manually accept Bitcoin and send them Peso as early as possible for the first few weeks/months
then when I'm ready to expand I can hire a few people to do that for me, at the same time get a license for remittance

[Authoritai]

There is a really solid security checklist from C4 for exchanges on how to be secure

[PremiumCodeX]

You have to make it different, at one but even better if more point(s) better than other exchanges. I trust in your abilities to create an exchange, but having people use it will be an issue that you will have to overcome. I know a new exchange, which is in this phase and let me tell you, it is a challenging time what they are in at the moment. You will need to prepare with funds for a long run-up time and trust yourself because your will need your motivation. Look, if you can come up with a nice idea, I will use your exchange (:

[Emerge]

What's a nice amount of money to start this up? I have some money on hand, but if needed I can get some money from Navette Capital as well

[HTML6]

How are the financial regulations in the Philippines? In most countries it's so hard to start these companies legally because of all of the licenses you have to get first.

[Emerge]

How are the financial regulations in the Philippines? In most countries it's so hard to start these companies legally because of all of the licenses you have to get first.

Yes that's right, however I can do this business on the internet for a while until i start getting used mainstream then I can register a license

[Decoded]

Bootstrap is a html/css library, nothing to do with a currency exchange system. All you need is to be able to accept and receive payment in different currencies automatically. I'd recommend to use a third-party API, but if you want to build it from the ground up, build it using C++.

[Emerge]

Bootstrap is a html/css library, nothing to do with a currency exchange system. All you need is to be able to accept and receive payment in different currencies automatically. I'd recommend to use a third-party API, but if you want to build it from the ground up, build it using C++.

I know what Bootstrap is, I'm talking about bootstrapping, the act of using your own money for a startup instead of asking for investments..
I won't be using C++, as I said, I don't need a complex back-end since I'm doing this manually for the first few weeks/months..

Please read before posting! Thanks!

[electronicash]

The  competition is going to be tough. If you notice liqui, they have been very aggressive that they do IOU for tokens with potentials. Its not just the security that you need to keep up, c-cex had been up for years but they were very much used still.

[MadGamer]

I was thinking more of a cash to Bitcoin and Bitcoin to cash exchange rather than a Bitcoin/Fiat/Altcoin exchange.
I think I could do it manually so the process won't be hard for the start, but knowing where to get a supply of money like from Neteller or Skrill or Paypal would help..

I only really have Bitcoin and Cash at hand most of the time

You should always have liquidity If you want to have customers and I guess that processing the transaction manually could make you loose some costumers because they want fast transactions and there will be definitely the trust issues that comes with it . If we assume that you won't have much users when you start then I guess you should have at least 25 BTC to start with.
It also won't be easy to find suppliers for the payment methods you are looking for, I guess you should get the BTC and make a bitcoin debit card and deposit using it into both Skrill and Neteller and then sell from there with a higher fees. Finding suppliers from the currency exchange section is not really an option as the fees are high and you will end up losing money instead of making profits.

[AT101ET]

I'm no currency expert but as with almost all fields this isn't a case of learn on the job. You'll definitely gain a lot of experience but if you play with real money without much direction or knowledge, you'd be forced to close up shop pretty quickly. In other words, you'll be bled dry.
My advice is to try and learn the basics behind supply/demand, inflation, speculation and currency. Make sure you are up to date with current affairs. You need to be ahead of the game, both in terms of global politics and economics.
Read up on FX trading and buy yourself a good laptop and a fast internet connection.
Do as much research as you can. Try pray icing by using a dummy trading account (where you play with fake money). Once you're more familiar with it then take the plunge

[Emerge]

I'm no currency expert but as with almost all fields this isn't a case of learn on the job. You'll definitely gain a lot of experience but if you play with real money without much direction or knowledge, you'd be forced to close up shop pretty quickly. In other words, you'll be bled dry.
My advice is to try and learn the basics behind supply/demand, inflation, speculation and currency. Make sure you are up to date with current affairs. You need to be ahead of the game, both in terms of global politics and economics.
Read up on FX trading and buy yourself a good laptop and a fast internet connection.
Do as much research as you can. Try pray icing by using a dummy trading account (where you play with fake money). Once you're more familiar with it then take the plunge

Oh, i have lots of experience trading FX, I manage an investment fund so yeah.

I was thinking more of a cash to Bitcoin and Bitcoin to cash exchange rather than a Bitcoin/Fiat/Altcoin exchange.
I think I could do it manually so the process won't be hard for the start, but knowing where to get a supply of money like from Neteller or Skrill or Paypal would help..

I only really have Bitcoin and Cash at hand most of the time

You should always have liquidity If you want to have customers and I guess that processing the transaction manually could make you loose some costumers because they want fast transactions and there will be definitely the trust issues that comes with it . If we assume that you won't have much users when you start then I guess you should have at least 25 BTC to start with.
It also won't be easy to find suppliers for the payment methods you are looking for, I guess you should get the BTC and make a bitcoin debit card and deposit using it into both Skrill and Neteller and then sell from there with a higher fees. Finding suppliers from the currency exchange section is not really an option as the fees are high and you will end up losing money instead of making profits.

Yeah you're right. I should probably need about 25 BTC if I were in the US, however in the Philippines I'm sure around 5-10 BTC on hand would work fine since 1 BTC is 45k PhP which is pretty much max in AML laws in the Philippines

[shield132]

I think you know some basis and I won't waste time on telling them. Well, one of the most important factor here is security of your website. For bitcoin cold wallets will be better, some companies are protecting them with trazor. Maks sure you have highly protected cms and bugs are fixed, add 2fa authority. Also servers with good specifications and high speed internet connectivity.
Mostly I am specified in hosting and that's why I gave you that advices.

[AcoinL.L.C]

I'm no currency expert but as with almost all fields this isn't a case of learn on the job. You'll definitely gain a lot of experience but if you play with real money without much direction or knowledge, you'd be forced to close up shop pretty quickly. In other words, you'll be bled dry.
My advice is to try and learn the basics behind supply/demand, inflation, speculation and currency. Make sure you are up to date with current affairs. You need to be ahead of the game, both in terms of global politics and economics.
Read up on FX trading and buy yourself a good laptop and a fast internet connection.
Do as much research as you can. Try pray icing by using a dummy trading account (where you play with fake money). Once you're more familiar with it then take the plunge

Oh, i have lots of experience trading FX, I manage an investment fund so yeah.

I was thinking more of a cash to Bitcoin and Bitcoin to cash exchange rather than a Bitcoin/Fiat/Altcoin exchange.
I think I could do it manually so the process won't be hard for the start, but knowing where to get a supply of money like from Neteller or Skrill or Paypal would help..

I only really have Bitcoin and Cash at hand most of the time

You should always have liquidity If you want to have customers and I guess that processing the transaction manually could make you loose some costumers because they want fast transactions and there will be definitely the trust issues that comes with it . If we assume that you won't have much users when you start then I guess you should have at least 25 BTC to start with.
It also won't be easy to find suppliers for the payment methods you are looking for, I guess you should get the BTC and make a bitcoin debit card and deposit using it into both Skrill and Neteller and then sell from there with a higher fees. Finding suppliers from the currency exchange section is not really an option as the fees are high and you will end up losing money instead of making profits.

Yeah you're right. I should probably need about 25 BTC if I were in the US, however in the Philippines I'm sure around 5-10 BTC on hand would work fine since 1 BTC is 45k PhP which is pretty much max in AML laws in the Philippines

What competitive advantage are you going to offer? There are dozens if not hundreds of sites that already offer these services (to the Philippines) where it auto converts BTC into say Skrill or Perfectmoney etc at very low fees. The main competitive advantage in the industry is liquidity/fees (since there isn't really a way to provide differentiation), even 25 BTC would not be that large of a sum (since its split into multiple different payment vehicles).

[avatar_kiyoshi]

Your ideas looks like my local exchange services(now it's not active anymore), which you only exchange it btc to cash or otherwise. At my local exchange formerly there's no need a sign up, it's directly from btc address to local bank account, are you have a plan to create such platform?

The fund I think it's need pretty a lot amount, when it's come from your personal amount, unless you have investors partners.