Camp BX Hacker / Compliance Security Audit

[Serge]

Keyur, got any insight on deposit/withdrawal methods that you guys are planning to integrate?
Another question, will you be getting any sort of exchange or MSB licencing?  (I have no idea whichever is applicable in the case of Bitcoin exchange)

Serge,
      Only method available at launch will be Dwolla.  We will work with the user community after that to prioritize which method they would like to see next.

Thank you,
    Keyur

Thanks. Looking forward to your launch as I'm sure many others do too =)

[Jack of Diamonds]

Very impressive, professional site. A few questions:

1. As mentioned above, will you add physical information about the exchange's whereabouts? Mt. Gox is known to operate from Cerulean Tower in Tokyo, but they do not list any address or phone number in public.

2. When (or, if at all) will you accept wire transfers as deposit and withdrawal method ($USD, Swiss franc, EUR, JPY)?

3. Do you have an automated system for instant withdrawals and deposits of bitcoins from/into the system via unique, 24 hour disposable wallets like Mt. Gox?

[Keyur @ Camp BX]

Very impressive, professional site. A few questions:

1. As mentioned above, will you add physical information about the exchange's whereabouts? Mt. Gox is known to operate from Cerulean Tower in Tokyo, but they do not list any address or phone number in public.

2. When (or, if at all) will you accept wire transfers as deposit and withdrawal method ($USD, Swiss franc, EUR, JPY)?

3. Do you have an automated system for instant withdrawals and deposits of bitcoins from/into the system via unique, 24 hour disposable wallets like Mt. Gox?

Thank you JD!

1) Wednesday

2) Launch time is pressure time, so we intend to keep things streamlined at launch and not scatter the team's energy. We will explore allowing other modes of payment (including wire transfers) after launch.

3) That was the first feature we implemented!  You can try it out for yourself if you have some testnet coins lying around at http://testnet.campbx.com
Keep in mind that coins need 5 confirmations from the network to show up in the wallet, which can take a while on testnet due to limited mining activity.  It should be much faster on livenet.

Hope this helps,
       Keyur

[Oldminer]

Will you be offering bank transfers to and from Australian bank accounts?

[FreeMoney]

 

3. Do you have an automated system for instant withdrawals and deposits of bitcoins from/into the system via unique, 24 hour disposable wallets like Mt. Gox?

I prefer a dedicated, but cycle-able, deposit address like bitcoin-central does. This lets me deposit without going to the site, or let someone pay to it for me. Minor thing though.

I'm really impressed, very classy.

[befuddled]

Short selling? Color me suspicious. Are you going to allow naked short sales?

Bitcoin is so tiny and thinly traded (by FX or any other standards) big-money interest hostile to Bitcoin can come in effectively drop the price to zero. Easily. All they have to do is capitalize a stand-alone entity with, say, $1B US. Then continuously take an gradually ever-growing short position. Bitcoin will never be worth much. If, over time, their short position goes underwater to an extent that exceeds their capital, they can either add more, or declare BR. If the Fed were behind it, they can just print to the extent necessary so they never have to cover.

If naked short sales are not allowed, then anybody selling short would have to "borrow" them from someone else first, and I guess that someone would be the accounts of those who hold balances at campbx. I recommend nobody hold your bitcoin balances in campbx, unless campbx has an option to disallow their borrowing for short selling.

Please disabuse me of these notions if I am in error. I don't see anything good for Bitcoin coming from allowing short sales.

[TonyHoyle]

Excellent... It's good to see sites coming onstream that do decent security audits.

More payment options would be great... the only reason I still consider mtgox is it's the only one that can do direct transfers to/from euros without imposing stupid fees.

[jerfelix]

Gotta say, I wasn't that impressed with their site. I signed up and found that their code transformed my username to all lowercase characters. Why would anyone do such a thing? 

I tested the website, and was only mildly impressed.  I didn't think the user interface was all that great (and just hated the color scheme).

On the other hand, though, Keyur has been unbelievably receptive and responsive to feedback.  And they seem to be putting security, reputation, and trustworthiness at the top of their agenda, with just a few feature advantages. 

I would LOVE to see another successful exchange, so I'm keeping an open mind on this one, and wishing them the best of luck!

[Keyur @ Camp BX]

Short selling? Color me suspicious. Are you going to allow naked short sales?

Bitcoin is so tiny and thinly traded (by FX or any other standards) big-money interest hostile to Bitcoin can come in effectively drop the price to zero. Easily. All they have to do is capitalize a stand-alone entity with, say, $1B US. Then continuously take an gradually ever-growing short position. Bitcoin will never be worth much. If, over time, their short position goes underwater to an extent that exceeds their capital, they can either add more, or declare BR. If the Fed were behind it, they can just print to the extent necessary so they never have to cover.

If naked short sales are not allowed, then anybody selling short would have to "borrow" them from someone else first, and I guess that someone would be the accounts of those who hold balances at campbx. I recommend nobody hold your bitcoin balances in campbx, unless campbx has an option to disallow their borrowing for short selling.

Please disabuse me of these notions if I am in error. I don't see anything good for Bitcoin coming from allowing short sales.

Befuddled,
     We do not allow naked shorts - you have to put 52% coins towards the trade.  Also the trade maximum size is capped.  So $1B government money will not do any good here.

To clarify, we DO NOT borrow from user accounts and only the user can move the coins out of his/her wallet.  There is a dedicated "house account" funded by us for shorts.  This account is risk-managed based on liquidity available in the market to limit our risk exposure.

Hope this makes sense,
      Keyur

[befuddled]

Keyur-

We do not allow naked shorts

To clarify, we DO NOT borrow from user accounts and only the user can move the coins out of his/her wallet.  There is a dedicated "house account" funded by us for shorts.

Hope this makes sense

Yes. Thanks much.

[Keyur @ Camp BX]

Keyur-

We do not allow naked shorts

To clarify, we DO NOT borrow from user accounts and only the user can move the coins out of his/her wallet.  There is a dedicated "house account" funded by us for shorts.

Hope this makes sense

Yes. Thanks much.

Befuddled,
     You had some excellent questions, so we have also updated the FAQ section to reflect these clarifications. 

Thank you!
      Keyur

[Keyur @ Camp BX]

Gotta say, I wasn't that impressed with their site. I signed up and found that their code transformed my username to all lowercase characters. Why would anyone do such a thing? 

I tested the website, and was only mildly impressed.  I didn't think the user interface was all that great (and just hated the color scheme).

On the other hand, though, Keyur has been unbelievably receptive and responsive to feedback.  And they seem to be putting security, reputation, and trustworthiness at the top of their agenda, with just a few feature advantages. 

I would LOVE to see another successful exchange, so I'm keeping an open mind on this one, and wishing them the best of luck!

Thank you for trying us out JF.  We have few more exciting features in pipeline that we will roll-out over next six months.

We will also get the API rolled out after launch so you don't have to deal with the UI!


Thank you,
     Keyur

[dennis_sweden]

Elggawf,

      I apologize if some of the answers came across as shady - that was never the intention.

Keep in mind that answers to seemingly simple questions come after long discussions with lawyers, scanning through policy fine print, and back and forth communications with government agencies like Department of Banking and Finance.  These answers represent a competitive advantage for a business.  I have to straddle a fine line between sharing and open-sourcing the business to competition.

 

The foundation of our operations is an active and prominent compliance program, and we are committed to maintaining full compliance with all pertinent rules and regulations for the trading platform.

    Spirit of our program is to do the right thing, not just the legal thing. Attempts to bypass account maximum limits will result in a refund of all funds and a ban for the violating account/s. We have hard-coded additional rules in our trading engine to thwart illegitimate usage of the platform and money laundering.

    Please help us strengthen our compliance program, and immediately report any suspicious trading acitivity you notice on our platform to the helpdesk.

I'm sorry, but this "Legal compliance" statement does not contain any substance. Under what name is Camp BX registered in the State of Georgia? Camp BX is, as far as I can see, not registered. Likewise under which name are deposits insured with the FDIC. The "Camp BX user agreement" does contain more substance as it states that "This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws applicable in the State of Georgia."

If Camp BX has a business model that acts in accordance with the law it can be envisaged that Bitcoin will grow as more businesses will accept Bitcoins.

[ErgoOne]

I'm seriously impressed, assuming that the data we get proves that the audit took place and was of the nature described.  This is how web sites that are used to access and handle other people's money *should* be tested -- for Bitcoin or anybody else! 

Could somebody post the URL to this site, now?  I didn't see it, and I want to go look.

[Keyur @ Camp BX]

Elggawf,

      I apologize if some of the answers came across as shady - that was never the intention.

Keep in mind that answers to seemingly simple questions come after long discussions with lawyers, scanning through policy fine print, and back and forth communications with government agencies like Department of Banking and Finance.  These answers represent a competitive advantage for a business.  I have to straddle a fine line between sharing and open-sourcing the business to competition.

 

The foundation of our operations is an active and prominent compliance program, and we are committed to maintaining full compliance with all pertinent rules and regulations for the trading platform.

    Spirit of our program is to do the right thing, not just the legal thing. Attempts to bypass account maximum limits will result in a refund of all funds and a ban for the violating account/s. We have hard-coded additional rules in our trading engine to thwart illegitimate usage of the platform and money laundering.

    Please help us strengthen our compliance program, and immediately report any suspicious trading acitivity you notice on our platform to the helpdesk.

I'm sorry, but this "Legal compliance" statement does not contain any substance. Under what name is Camp BX registered in the State of Georgia? Camp BX is, as far as I can see, not registered. Likewise under which name are deposits insured with the FDIC. The "Camp BX user agreement" does contain more substance as it states that "This Agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws applicable in the State of Georgia."

If Camp BX has a business model that acts in accordance with the law it can be envisaged that Bitcoin will grow as more businesses will accept Bitcoins.

Dennis,
      We have updated the company name in the footer - Camp BX is our product name.  You can verify the registration now!

Thank you,
     Keyur

[CurbsideProphet]

I'm seriously impressed, assuming that the data we get proves that the audit took place and was of the nature described.  This is how web sites that are used to access and handle other people's money *should* be tested -- for Bitcoin or anybody else! 

Could somebody post the URL to this site, now?  I didn't see it, and I want to go look.

http://testnet.campbx.com/

[dserrano5]

<!------------------------------------------------------------- Charts END!! -->

[Keyur @ Camp BX]

<!------------------------------------------------------------- Charts END!! -->

That's one of our programmers celebrating a little milestone ;-)

[Jaime Frontero]

this looks promising.

i'd much rather have my money compliant to all the various things that money needs to be compliant with, than potentially anonymous but in the hands of amateurs.

if i want anonymity, i'll do BTC > BTC transactions over Tor.

if i want a bank or an exchange, i'll go with staid and boring and all tied up with legal niceties.

i'm looking forward to your launch.  i'll be there.

[dennis_sweden]

Dennis,
      We have updated the company name in the footer - Camp BX is our product name.  You can verify the registration now!

Thank you,
     Keyur

A Camp BX search does still not generate any reccords at "Department of Banking & Finance" in Georgia http://dbf.georgia.gov or at "Georgia Business Licenses Directory" http://publicrecords.onlinesearches.com/Georgia-Business-Licenses.htm or at the FDIC "Bank find" http://www2.fdic.gov/idasp/main_bankfind.asp.