Topic: comparing bitcoin stock exchanges: mpex / btct / cryptostocks / bitfunder (Read 8338 times)

Take a look at CoinBr, they recently lowered all their fees and are quite reasonable now. They act as a broker for MPEx, so you can get the solid investments from MPEx without having to pay the huge registration fee, and the user interface is nice.  Here is my referal link: https://coinbr.com/ref?c=G7fzMs7Kfh

Hello,
I would like to make some investments but the more I read the more I see scams, and not serious websites.
Has anyone found a quite safe way to invest my money?
Thanks

It will either be moved to a different exchange, or I'll do a buy-back at the original issuing price.

O_O I didn't revive this thread for a reason and ya not sure why the book asset on btct linked to this

Since BTCT will be closing, what are the plans for W4A-BOOK? Will it be moving to one of the other exchanges, such as bitfunder.com or havelockinvestments.com?
Or will you be issuing a refund and buying back the shares?

Thought it would be interesting to see what others thought.  Where they agree or disagree.  I posted a poll here:  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/poll-which-btc-stock-exchange-do-you-prefer-follow-up-on-recent-comparison-272848

I corresponded with one of their owners recently.  He made a very good impression.  Very professional.

I prefer Btct.co to the others listed for various reasons.  I think it has the best overall combination of usability and variety of stocks right now.

If these exchanges are offshore, does that mean the investors should be too?

Thanks for the comment, firstly. 

However, I think supporters should have the chance to recoup their philanthropic investment.  Especially with Bitcoin breaking barriers to finance, there is no reason a stock-trading model shouldn't apply to the arts.  I'm left with three choices if I want to pioneer this model:

1)  Work through bitstarter or kickstarter.  I could, with a lot of work, automate the sending of dividends to shareholders, but there is no infrastructure for trading shares.

2)  Implement my own share-trading platform.  I've considered this.  I would greatly prefer to focus on what I do best -- writing -- and benefit from a division of labor with specialists.

3)  Use an existing bitcoin stock exchange.

(I'm pursuing option #3 with btct.co.)

A stock exchange listing is not appropriate for your book project.  I recommend that you try Kickstarter or one of the other crowd-funding sites. These sites are designed specifically for projects like yours.

Not any worse than S.Dice did, and both the above mentioned and S.Dice were on MPEx.

How long was S.Dice listed?  How much did everyone lose that bought in at 0.0035+?  Why did those people lose?  (hint, management seemed to have gone on a 3 month post-IPO vacation...)

I don't think any exchange is immune unless the exchange only lists their own stuff.  Which seems to be where MPEx is now?

MPEx has a lot going for it, but the batting average is probably not it.


Add: That trilema post you linked is hilarious!  Reminds me of that old game "lemmings".

See, that wasn't so hard, why didn't you start with that explanation?

The story in the link made me laugh.

Gigavps cratered.

It may not be "entirely true", but do the math, it'd probably be a worthwhile exercise, see if you can replicate previous results, the famous "less than half your btc in less than half a year" observation.

BTCJam is a scam platform because of its average 70% returns on "investments" (management figures, reality probably diverges). It doesn't have to be "entirely true": 30% true is way too much. Arguably 5% true is way too much. MPEx stands well under 1%. Again, these things matter.


There are no current competitors. There's MPEx, and there's various attempts to recreate GLBSE. These compete among themselves for the "most-GLBSE alike" title, and when they don't do that they negotiate to reunite into one single unity of fail, thus actually recreating their model.

Outside of that pretend competition (as you can't really compete when there's no actual difference) there's no such thing as competition going on in BTC finance land: the play exchanges and MPEx couldn't compete if they wanted to, as they serve entirely disjunct markets. The random noob that started this thread for his literary-financial & fiducial new media etc project being a convenient point in case.

I suppose at most you could say the competition is cultural, in the sense of sanity trying to compete with firm conviction. That's hardly any sort of competition either.

Comparing yourself to shit does not make yourself look more attractive. Maybe you want to consider how to compare yourself to your current competitors instead of a failed operation from the past?

That's not entirely true... Many of them have continued successfully on other exchanges.  Some have continued successfully without exchanges such as Nasty, Asicminer, Moore, and Gigamining. (which was listed on MPEx)  And many of them shut down clean such as DeaDTerra's fund (can't recall the name) and 007.

Your advice is wasted on me.  They don't seem like the type of people I'm willing to work with.

Let's think with our thinking hat. Each and every asset GLBSE listed cratered. A purported "exchange" that chiefly lists/promotes scams is indeed an SEC lawsuit waiting to happen. These things matter.

I am not sure you linked the correct article? That one is a list of all the closed assets from MPEx, which seems like a reason not to use the exchange since things there don't last very long and tend to lose money? Maybe you just need to enlighten us on how it explains why people use the exchange?

Havelock seems like one of the major ones-
https://www.havelockinvestments.com/index.php

Also,

796-
https://796.com/stockpd?op=market

Pico Stocks-
https://picostocks.com/

Another place you should look for funding is btcjam. (I think there might be one or two other crowd lending btc platforms, you could do some forum and/or google searching for that, I don't remember them off the top of my head).

https://picostocks.com/docs/index/page:2

Looks like a one-man band.

See here.


As others have pointed out, you certainly don't have any business on MPEx.


The last time this happened it didn't end so well.

Are you going to elaborate on that?

One of many errors and omissions in your assessment of the exchanges.

Thanks for the correction. 

BTC-TC's UX is generally pretty rockin compared to everything else I've seen. That said, the general design aesthetic doesn't look super good or professional (sorry, Burn!)... sort of like Reddit. Hurts the eyes, but it's nicely functional, and that's really what matters at the end of the day. It's what keeps people coming back. Burn being an active, fairly transparent, and generally responsive participant also does wonders and helps maintain confidence in the service.

Havelock its a major exchange

On other notes

Theres also 796 (Still observing not risking capital there yet but since you listed crytostocks ) and litecoinglobal if you don't mind a lite exchange

you guys gotta have more faith in BTCT, burnside takes criticism constructively and is a nice guy overall (you know how many issues he deals with on a daily basis?) and has been active in seeking legal advice.

PLUS it's a legally registered offshore biz with an offshore domain and constant cold storage backups. pretty much the sign of preparing to be taken down...I think it deserves more than the "so-so" you gave it.

and cryptostocks needs to put the smackdown on scams for sure.

just my 2 satoshi, good idea for a thread

Havelock Investments - https://www.havelockinvestments.com/

I was not trying to single out BTCT, I was using them as an example. I am just saying that getting an asset listed on btct does not mean you will have a huge volume, since the traders evaluate each security individually.

Don't they only have 1 stock - a mining security that keeps pushing its deadlines back?  It's just a website selling shares in his own company(s) not an actual exchange.

havelock?

You might want to add picostocks.com to the list. Just saying.

Strange thing to say.  MPEx only has a few stocks at all - if you took away THEIR top stock then there wouldn't be a lot left at all in securities trade.  And Bitfunder has its trade concentrated tighter than BTC-TC.  So why was BTC-TC singled out for that comment?   And why should a security be excluded from measures of quantity just because it's doing well?

My DMS securities aren't one of the most active ones on BTC-TC, but even they combined turned over around 4K BTC in the last 30 days.  So it's not like ALL the volume is ASICMINER.  Even without the ASICMINER securities it still does significantly more volume than MPEx.

Not that volume is a measure of anything - other than volume.  But it's undeniable that Bitfunder/BTC-TC have been expanding whilst MPEx has been contracting (it now only has MP's own securities on it).  A lot of that expansion has, unfortunately, been crap.

Belize.

And yup, dealing with people's bitcoins means lots of responsibility and thus lots of warnings to be careful.

Don't judge a book by the cover. Looking at the total volume of the exchange does not tell you much. For example, a huge amount of the volume on BTCT is just from one stock (actually several pass-throughs to the same stock, AsicMiner).

for MPEX the 30 btc fee is not for listing, but to register a key to use the exchange. They have the best security model. Cryptostocks is older than BTCT or BitFunder, but not many people use it because the operator is rather shady. (and what Deprived said while I was typing)

For doing a crowdfunding project, you definitely won't get it on MPEx (that is just not the sort of thing listed there), you will probably have trouble getting it on BTCT. You might be able to get it onto BitFunder. You could look into BitStarter, I think they do that sort of thing.

Website may look nice but it's horrid to use (or was when I used to trade there).  It's been runing longer than BTC-TC and Bitfunder.  It has low volume for a few reasons:

• It allows blatant scams to list.
• It (and/or the currency exchange same guy runs) have been hacked a few times.
• Operator of it changed contract for his own shares mid-IPO so noone can have any faith in his integrity (he had a minimum number that needed to be sold or the IPO would be aborted.  When that target wasn't reached he just edited the target).
• Operator is in breach of his contract with investors in his currency exchange - withholding profits that should be theirs to repay funds allegedly stolen from the site which wouldn't be their responsibility anyway even if the hacking actually happened.

Noone with any sense uses it - hence the low volume.

Havelock may be a 4th one for you to have a look at.

I did a quick comparison of bitcoin stock exchanges today and thought I'd share my initial impressions.  Please let me know if I missed any major exchanges, or if I got the wrong impression anywhere:

MPEX
website: primitive
30 day volume: 22,000 btc
listing fee: 30 btc!!!
other comments: They operator seems insufferably rude.  You can see it in his FAQ.  These guys are best known for handling the recent SatoshiDice deal.  Between the high fee and rude operator, it's not clear to me why people use this service.

BTCT
website: so-so
30 day volume: 108,000 btc
listing fee: 5 btc
other comments: Based in Bolivia.  You can really sense the legal uncertainty of bitcoin securities on this websites.  There are huge, very verbose disclaimers all over the place.

Cryptostocks
website: nice!
30 day volume: 300 btc
listing fee: 2btc!
other comments: looks great.  I'm not sure how long they've been around.  Maybe they're new and that's why the volume is so low.  I dig the low listing fee.

BitFunder
website: nice!
30 day volume: not sure, but I think it's very high
listing fee: 5btc
other comments: another great-looking site.  Everything seems professional

That's it.

The reason I'm looking into this is that I'm thinking of doing crowdfunding for a literary project, and rather than appealing to straight philanthropy, I thought it'd be more fun and effective to sell shares of the proposed book.  Is anyone aware of this having been done before?  I'm not.  Any thoughts are appreciated.