[2014-10-23] CNET Founder Readies Bitreserve Launch in Bid to Quell Bitcoin Vola

[lanboor]

http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/10/22/cnet-founder-readies-bitreserve-launch-in-bid-to-quell-bitcoin-volatility/

Bitreserve has a few features differentiating it from other digital-currency wallet services. It taps the efficiency and low-transaction costs of bitcoin, but also promises to lock in users’ bitcoin deposits at fixed exchange rates. The service does not allow actual exchanges of bitcoin against fiat currencies but rather promises to absorb and manage the risk of bitcoin losing value against them by maintaining and publicly displaying an asset reserve covering 100% of its clients’ dollar- and other currency-denominated deposits. The goal is to overcome the extreme price volatility that has been the digital currency’s primary deterrent for mainstream users and thus provide them with a service for cheap, reliable money transfers.

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[cjp]

I wonder: does this work in only one direction (like options)? Or does it work in two directions? I guess it could be the second case, in such a way that the number of bitcoins in your wallet increases when the BTC/USD rate drops ,but actually decreases when the BTC/USD rate rises.

In that case, it's nothing more than a USD bank account with convenient USD/BTC conversion. You may even have to pay for that convenience, e.g. by having unfavorable conversion rates (large difference between buy/sell price), since your wallet is tied to a single exchange provider.