They are ex citigroup bankers...
I wish they'd just told us that to start with.
Sure, this makes those on this forum nervous - it makes me nervous too. It's the same sort of nervous as headlines like "Microsoft buys Skype" or "Novell buys SuSE" (for those that remember pre-Novell SuSE) but for the mainstream this means the same thing that those previous headlines mean: "someone big thinks this is good."
While we might scowl at the giants of mainstream economics, most of the world still views them like father figures and keep money in the banks they run. For former execs of a big important name like Citi to take an interest in bitcoin and namecoin helps to legitimize it in the public view.
If you don't like or trust them then don't use the exchange, you have plenty of other options - but for the bitcoin community this looks and feels like mainstream backing and I think it will help with some of our PR problems. Now if we could just sort out this usability problem...
No, you have my issue exactly backward. I didn't trust them because they originally came on the forum with some tactics that looked spammy, and NEVER said that they were former Citigroup execs.
If that news turns out to be true, then this is quite exciting news, and bodes well for the medium and long term.
It looks like a well run site but they have a very limited option to receive any funds which is through a wire with a $25 fee. Unless they add other forms of payment I can't see them sticking around long unless a company or fund of some sort gets into trading bitcoins or namecoins.
Good point. They're going to need a lot more bitcoins to sell to people who will send $25 bank wires. Though this also means that they may be intending to cater more to large investors, which is also good news if true.