[ANN] Bex.io — own your own Bitcoin exchange

[yrashk]

Hi,

Although I am sure some of you already hard about our project (http://bex.io) on reddit & HN, we wanted to reach out to even a larger audience with the announcement.

In a nutshell, we're developing a Bitcoin Exchange as a Service product that will allow Bitcoin entrepreneurs go to market quickly, while focusing on what's really important — regulations/licensing, bank relationships, marketing.

We're expecting to launch by the end of this summer. We have a long term vision on how to take this from individual exchanges to a global liquidity pool and beyond.

As of right now, our matching engine can process MtGox’s daily volume in a matter of minutes — and we'll be working on making it even better to catch up with the future market growth. Our system uses a subset of the industry standard for the real-time electronic exchange of securities transaction (FIX 5.0).

We're employing many security practices (secure multi-level cold storage manager, signed cash account transactions, key derivative functions for passwords, OS-less nodes, encrypted communications, audit trail, OWASP security guidelines adherence, intrusion detection, regular threat and vulnerabilities analysis, KYC API integration, etc.)

Our offering also includes a backoffice UI & API, as well as a reference customer UI with API.

The pricing on the web site will soon be updated. With what we have learned over the past month is our pricing will vary, depending on the market and volume served.

We already have a few customers signed up. We invite you to join the first cohort, grab a time to chat with us: http://meetme.so/bexio

If you have any questions, please feel free to email us at hi@bex.io

P.S. If you want to stay in the loop on our progress, we will be sending periodic updates over the coming months, just subscribe at http://bex.io/.  We will also be at the Bitcoin 2013 conference in San Jose from May 14th to 21st if you want to meet in person (we’ll be also doing some sneak peak previews!)

[greBit]

Please correct me if I misunderstood...

Your starter package costs $199 per month PLUS you take 1% of every transaction?

[yrashk]

The pricing structure published on the web page will be soon updated to reflect its true state.

Basically, the pricing model is still the same, which is a percentage of the revenue with a minimum (which, admittedly, still isn't explained clearly on the web page).

Now, the percentage will vary depending on a client-per-client basis, depending on their unique circumstances — which is the market they are in, the volume they will be booking, risks, etc. Needless to say, the higher the volume is, the lower is the fee.

The "minimum" part is also quite simple — it's a base fee that gets covered by the percentage fee. If your percentage fee is lesser than the base fee, you only pay the base fee. If it is equal or greater, you pay only the percentage fee. Basically, your total is "the greater of base fee or percentage fee"

Is this clearer? Hope it is! Please don't hesitate to ask if you still have questions.

[BTCLuke]

All that talent... Such a beautiful presentation... Such a shame.

Wasted completely on a front-Reseller package biz for an expensive exchange that is centralized but in an even less bitcoin-friendly jurisdiction than the US!

The Canadian government is going to eat your lunch.

Talent and graphics you boys have in spades: Long-term biz strategy you do not.

My advice: Find a way to make the core of Bex.io completely decentralized and spread around the planet. (And not just on AWS, either.)

It's your only hope.

[greBit]

I think you at least need to work on your business model / pricing structure.

You do realise that the transaction fees charged by MtGox / BitStamp / ... are more like 0.5%

No sane business would decide to use your software as opposed to creating their own. At 1% transaction fee, they are already pricing themselves out of the market, with no room to even make any money themselves.

The hardest part of running an exchange is arguably dealing with the regulations/banks/AML/fiat transactions. It is not the software. Your product is a tiny part of what is needed. Your pricing needs to reflect that.

Good luck

[becoin]

My advice: Find a way to make the core of Bex.io completely decentralized and spread around the planet. (And not just on AWS, either.)

I'd recommend the same. You can still get royalties from supporting the code.

Bex.io — own your own Bitcoin exchange

I've looked at your website but coudn't find out - what exactly do I own of my Bitcoin exchange and what exactly do you own of it?

[yrashk]

greBit, as I said above, the pricing will be figured out individually for every scenario. It's not going to be exactly what it is on the site right now — for some exchanges with higher commissions (there are still exchanges that charge a couple of percents; it all depends on the market) and lower volumes our commission is likely to be higher, while for other exchanges it is likely to be quite lower.

There are many *arguably hard* parts of running an exchange. Regulations/banks/AML/fiat transactions — of course. Security — no doubt. Marketing — absolutely. And many, many others.

That said, thanks for your input. Highly appreciated.

[yrashk]

BTCLuke and becoin, thanks for your advice. Just as a side comment, Bex.io deployments are not centralized nor happen to be in Canada.

[yrashk]

Decided to push an interim update to the site, it no longer refers to the pricing plans mentioned above. Instead, it outlines the structure.

[BTCLuke]

I'd recommend the same. You can still get royalties from supporting the code.

Not only that... There is no reason they would have to give up a fee per transaction if it were decentralized. (Making it open sourced would be basically be giving up that fee, but decentralization =/= open source.)

I think they'd do well making it a closed-source, distributed software exchange... But then they'd need to go into full pirate-bay stealth mode too. Not a life everyone is looking for.

BTCLuke and becoin, thanks for your advice. Just as a side comment, Bex.io deployments are not centralized nor happen to be in Canada.

How on earth can you be here on bitcointalk.org and have no clue what centralization is?

If there is a website that can be taken down, it's centralized!

If you have a bank account to receive money in that a government can shut down, it's centralized!

...And no, I'm not just talking about each of your customer's portals, but your server that connects them and hosts your order book... A clearer central point of failure I've never seen.

[RG]

Any news on this adventure?

[K1773R]

also something to note -> almost all the "professional" (ie, trash) looking stuff and selling (as the OP does try to) equals horrible code and no security...
so this is suicide

[Hfleer]

I think you at least need to work on your business model / pricing structure.

You do realise that the transaction fees charged by MtGox / BitStamp / ... are more like 0.5%

No sane business would decide to use your software as opposed to creating their own. At 1% transaction fee, they are already pricing themselves out of the market, with no room to even make any money themselves.

The hardest part of running an exchange is arguably dealing with the regulations/banks/AML/fiat transactions. It is not the software. Your product is a tiny part of what is needed. Your pricing needs to reflect that.

Good luck

Agree with greBit.  I was hoping the trend would be towards lower transaction fees.

[defaced]

I think you at least need to work on your business model / pricing structure.

You do realise that the transaction fees charged by MtGox / BitStamp / ... are more like 0.5%

No sane business would decide to use your software as opposed to creating their own. At 1% transaction fee, they are already pricing themselves out of the market, with no room to even make any money themselves.

The hardest part of running an exchange is arguably dealing with the regulations/banks/AML/fiat transactions. It is not the software. Your product is a tiny part of what is needed. Your pricing needs to reflect that.

Good luck

Agree with greBit.  I was hoping the trend would be towards lower transaction fees.

I feel the exact same way. It would simply be more cost effective to pay a developer to create an exchange.

[RG]

also something to note -> almost all the "professional" (ie, trash) looking stuff and selling (as the OP does try to) equals horrible code and no security...
so this is suicide

I agree taking 1% of the exchange fee is way high, on the other hand, why would you say this, how do you know that?