Yes i know that with an exchange is a situation in witch you don't have your coins in control, and you have to trust a third party, but if you wan't to make some trading while staking, this is a good solution, Altcoin market on btcpop is still young and small, and at the moment no API for automated trade, but some good deals are possible while staking, (if you want to play with an exchange), i'm not here to advertise btcpop (also if my signature do it with a referral) but i trust the new btcpop owner, he never hides behind anonimity, and this is a good starting point to build a trusted relationship... also BTC address for cold storage in pop is known so all the btc held on the site are fast verifiable....
I will not try to convince anyone, my post was to confirm what the other user said, nothing more. btcpop.co is a nice community and old members, there, are great, is more than 1 year and a half that i use this site, a lot of things happened (bad and good) we risked to sink with the old owner, but now the site is healty, i'm only an investor there, i'm not involved in any way with property, i don't even have btcpop shares so no interest in having more success to have more dividends from it.
i was only passing on information about a service thats there and i use and trust, i didn't even know pop was doing a signature campaign if i'm honest that's a new one to me lol and you said " Such services are the complete opposite of the Bitcoin-idea" is that not what alt coins are the complete opposite of the Bitcoin-idea?