Is making a bitcoin exchange a profitable business? Has anyone have any experience?
And I don't mean an online one, but a local one where people can go and buy/sell bitcoin.
What do you think?
I can understand that it will depend upon the location, but I think it can help in inviting more people to bitcoin too, right?
Well if your talking about one that you can actually walk into IRL then I don't really think it will be profitable, you'll need to pay for rent, electrical bills and what not, and how exactly will you make money, if you charge a certain amount of fees per transaction you'll surely get some interested locals but I doubt it'll profit for ya. You'll have to think about marketing, security and what not, which will all cost, how will you ensure your customers aren't scammed? Insurance, Legality, Profitability, and
Competition are a few big things to think about.
If your 100% certain you've got the legality sorted, a working business model to profit, a marketing crew to get your name out there, secure operations of the exchange IRL, and how you plan to compete with other sites such as LocalBitcoins which offers local meetups and are more known then you can go ahead. I'll be sure to stop by your local exchange if I don't have to fly out of my city to get there (or you can pay for my ticket if your exchange ends up going viral
)