Topic: [Gauging Interest] All-In-One Service To Handle All Kinds Of Deposits (Read 1030 times)

To clarify a bit about what the interface might look like here's what I was thinking:

I understand where you are coming from. The idea is that it makes depositing easier for small investors in a multitude of ways:
1.) They can change withdrawal address mid-deposit as I am essentially proxying the request
2.) They can get in on investments that require a larger minimum then they want/are able to put in
3.) They can easily compare deposit amounts between services and move Bitcoins around as they want

I wouldn't have access to the private keys or anything like that of people's personal withdrawal addresses. It would basically work like this:

Someone deposits 10BTC to a 6.75% PPT through me: I invest that 10BTC, and they "set it and forget it" to, after a month, change over to a hashking 1.9%, 8-week lock-in. After ~3 months, I send back the final amount earned (minus a small cut possibly, depending on how this goes) to the withdrawal address I have on file for them. The convenience is a all-in-one place to see all possible deposits and compare them, to be able to set plans for paths of investments months in advance, and to be able to change withdrawal address mid-way through deposits, which may be a really nice thing for new users to deposits or Bitcoin in general. Again, not for the large or medium investor.

This is a terrible idea in its present form.

Your plan is: I send the BTC to you, then I use a custom software program to instruct you whom to send it to, so I do all of the work of deciding where to invest but none of the benefit of directly working with the programs, so if your software is buggy or if you disappear (intentionally or not), I'm out of luck.  Plus you know all of my deposit and withdrawal addresses and can track me in the blockchain.  You realize the same benefits (having a software app to track your investment) can be done WITHOUT going through yet another middleman.  Sorry, the point of bitcoin is to cut out middlemen, not to create more. 

Make the program manage all the different "deposits," store all data locally on the hard drive, with no server whatsoever, and fully release source and it might be useful.  It would be OK if the program encrypts all the addresses and stores them remotely for backups- as long as you have 0 access to the addresses and balances.

If you want to provide "convenience" of transferring between different people, sorry, we have bitcoin for that.  As a hypothetical example, I could contact imsaguy today with a PGP signed message saying "transfer 50 BTC to znort" and provide my deposit address to znort if I didn't mind both guys knew about the tx.  If you are offering something that competes with that, it's gotta be easy to use and more secure than existing bitcoin clients.  Reducing security by making another server that can be broken into isn't the way to go.

Sounds really cool!

There is a list of deposit takers here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/who-pays-what-81542

Hello! This morning I was browsing the lending forum and noticed this sort of service doesn't really exist, so I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in it.




The service:
- One location to manage deposits with multiple depositors (hashking, vescudero, Starfish BCB, imsaguy, etc.)
- Low-to-nothing fee for the service
- One-day buffer for deposits and withdrawals (ex.: Deposit Monday, Tuesday your deposit period starts, if it's a week the next Tuesday it matures, you can withdraw and receive it sometime Wednesday)
- Quickly move money from one service to another without messing with a bunch of transactions (Lock-ins would still apply, but you could set something so that when, say, your 1.9%, 8-week hashking deposit matures, it is automatically reinvested in a PPT, or reinvested in hashking's longest deposit period)
- NO insurance provided by me as to the depositor I pass your money through defaulting
- Good security (no website, standalone application requiring authentication, passwords stored server-side with SHA256/512+salt or similar)
- Bitcoin wallet for other's deposits stored off the server (somewhere else that isn't directly linked)
- Service options depending on what each deposit opportunity offers (for example, some deposits would have a 4- or 8-week lock-in, etc.).
- Keeps track of latest deposit opportunities

The flow of choosing a type of deposit might look something like this:

PPT (Pirate Passthrough Options):
1.) Insured (up to x%)
2.) Uninsured (up to y%)

FAQ:

1.) Would you manage any deposit options yourself?
No. I would merely be providing low-cost or free passthrough services that tie together many of the deposit options to make it easier for people to manage funds, etc.

2.) Would you provide any kind of insurance on any of the deposits (especially Pirate)?
No. All insurance options would passthrough to deposit opportunities that provide interest themselves. I offer no interest of any type on a deposit opportunity defaulting.

3.) Would the Bitcoin transfers be controlled automatically?
No. They would be done by hand. This both allows me to more easily run the BTC client on an off-site location, and to control flow of resources (so if someone was able to gain unauthorized access to the server, they would be unable to do anything with Bitcoins, they would only be able to mess up files (which I will backup)).

4.) What happens if some deposit opportunity has a forced-withdrawal?
This will be handled on a case-by-case basis depending on what exactly is going on, but in general, Bitcoins sent back would be forwarded to your default withdrawal address.

5.) What do you gain from this?
I'm not sure yet. It may be more of a free service to the Bitcoin community, or perhaps a service that costs either a 1-time sign-up fee (likely nothing more than 1 BTC at most), or a monthly recurring cost (likely nothing more than 0.1BTC/mo). If you ask me, this fee would seem reasonable if the service saved you some time/hassle.

6.) Why a standalone application instead of a website?
Two reasons: 1.) I feel a website opens the door to more security flaws than a simple client/server pair, and
2.) I find it much easier to make a standalone client (in Java, most likely) than to build a website.

7.) What happens if you close your service?
More than likely, I would grandfather it out. I would stop taking new deposit passthroughs, and as current deposits finished, they would be sent back to the investor. Any special instructions from the investor (stuff like "when my 8-week investment with hk ends, reinvest in PPT for 4 weeks") would be removed (so in that example, as soon as the 8-week investment with hk ends, you would receive your Bitcoins back).

8.) Who are you, Vorksholk?
I'm a frequent forum visitor, have almost 200 posts (not that that means much), ran multiple alternate-cryptocurrency-related services, and have made multiple small transactions with others on the forums (mostly buying steam games). I also mine Litecoins and Bitcoins. That is, I'll admit, very little credentials for making a service of this type. As always, if you don't feel safe investing with someone, don't. If you have any questions about specifics, I'd be happy to discuss them with you either here or over PM.

9.) Who are you expecting to start the service offering deposits with?
While I will likely run into issues with some of the deposits and for whatever reason not be able to provide some of them, ideally I'd like to start with something like this:

PPT:
payb.tc's 6.9%
Hashking's 6.75%
Starfish BCB's 5%

Regular Deposits:
Hashking's 1% weekly (no lock-in) and 1.9% weekly (8 week)
Vescudero's 2% weekly
imsaguy's Plan A and B
nckrazze's 4- and 10-week deposit
Dank's 2.8% weekly
RustyRyan's 3% weekly

Note: some of the above deposits require a minimum, ranging from 1BTC to 100BTC.
Option A:
Any deposits put into these will sit in my service until we get enough deposited into that account type to make the deposit. While your coins are sitting in my service, they will gain no interest. At any time, the service will be able to show how many Bitcoins have been so far put in towards getting a certain deposit, likely updated daily. You will be able to withdraw your coins at any time during this waiting period, but once deposit starts normal rules would apply.
Option B: Each week that we don't hit the minimum requirement still, those Bitcoins would be invested in some other week-long investment (such as hk's 1%).

I would like input as to which option people would want to see, as it will be one OR the other, both won't be offered.
Option A advantage: deposit starts right when minimum is met
Option A disadvantage: investment earns no interest while waiting

Option B advantage: investment earns interest while waiting
Option B disadvantage: deposit waits around a week max when they could be invested in the other service

10.) What would be possible from the client?
From the client, after you authenticate, you would be able to start new deposits, withdraw current ones (or set them to withdraw, depending on the lock-in), set certain deposits to do various things upon maturity (withdraw to your address, set to reinvest in same/similar bond or another opportunity), change account options (such as withdrawal address), etc.

Important: for things such as reinvestment upon maturity, there will be a 1-2 day buffer. This is because:
Say you invest 10BTC in a 6.75% PPT, and set it to withdraw after 2 weeks and reinvest into hashking's 1.9% 8-week bond.
You deposit on a Monday, so by Tuesday the deposit is set up and rolling. Two Tuesdays from then it matures, and due to the delay with withdrawals I will likely get the money back out the Wednesday after that 2nd Tuesday. Depending on the bond/investment, if I reinvest your money on Wednesday when I receive it, the bond will likely show investment either Wednesday or Thursday, making it a 1-2 day buffer. I reserve the right to take longer on the buffer, but I will email you (or PM you) about the delay if it's going to take more than 3 days for whatever reason. I expect this to happen at some point due to either something in my schedule, or delays in withdrawing/depositing for whatever reason.

11.) Will you offer custom clients for larger investors?
To start I'm not really expecting any large investors as I'm sure those people would much rather manage their funds themselves, and I want to start by not offering too high an amount of total investment amount (in BTC), until I make sure all the loose screws are superglued in. However, there will be no custom clients (aka a client that automatically logs you into your account without any auth info). This is for two reasons:
1.) A client such as this would have to have your authentication details either hard-coded into it or saved in a config file. Neither of these are safe, as not only could someone reverse-engineer the code, but if they have access to the custom executable, they could just launch it and change things such as your withdrawal address. Note: I may have a feature to permanently lock-in your withdrawal address, but one nice feature of this service is that with many deposits the address you put in when you start the deposit is the address that stays, whereas with this service you would be able to change this address if something happened (lose access to wallet, wallet.dat stolen, etc.) However, the internal workings of the client-side program would be quite simple, and if someone wanted to they could likely make their own custom client quite easily. If you do that, it's your problem if that creates a security hole in your account. The default client that I will provide will store no sensitive data (login, password...), but perhaps a config file for certain options, although likely not.

As well, if you account does somehow get hacked (you leave your password somewhere, it's on your computer, whatever), it's not my fault, I will work with you to try to undo damage, but if a withdrawal has already occurred to the hacker, your coins are lost.


FAQ tl;dr: No insurance from me, if I close I will likely grandfather, transactions are done manually on my end for security, standalone application instead of website to be used. There will be usually a 1-2 day buffer when an investment is reinvested, but I reserve the right to have this longer if necessary.

I reserve the right to:
- Close the service at any time (but I will almost guaranteed grandfather out the deposits or have some other plan of action similar to this)
- Take longer than 2 days for buffers (although I will make a good faith effort to not do that, there will be times...)
- Send back deposits I don't feel comfortable depositing (too large, over my "safe-zone capacity"...)
- Change service features at whim (if something doesn't work/isn't making sense, or if something else seems like a good idea to ad)
- Deny service for any reason or none at all (generally again based on capacity and size)
- Change service to another means of delivery (likely a website) if people want/I see it as a more useful option
- FORCE client updates (by making server-side changes to not allow clients of the older version, necessary for changing major features (like adding a client-side feature such as colored text, etc.) and for fixing any security issues if any arise).
- Add more reserved rights as the need arises

About the client standalone application:
The client will be a standalone application that connects to a main server that I run. The client would be the interface between the user and the server, however most everything is done server-side (such as data storing, account options/settings, etc.). I understand many people are not comfortable running compiled applications on their computers. Being that it will be likely written in Java, it is fairly easy to reverse-engineer it. As well, I would be happy to provide source code if people wish. The server-side check for a valid client version will likely simply query the client to send a client version number hard-coded into the code, which will be changed with every release. Someone could easily change this number and recompile the program. However, since I'm changing stuff client-side to support new things, your experience would be greatly degraded, features would not work properly, and you might even get gibberish spat at you. The client version authentication is to give users a better experience, messing with it to use an older client than the server is currently running to use won't do you any good. Updates such as adding new deposit takers, removing old ones, adding/removing account options, etc. will likely not require a client update, as they can all be done server-side.
The program will be distributed in a executable jar file, and a Windows executable (which is really just a .bat file to launch the java jar (which is located in a hidden folder)). This makes it cross-platform: working on Linux, Windows, and Mac out-of-the-box, as long as you have java installed. For linux you may need to launch from the terminal/command line:
cd
java -jar .jar

To this date there are many highly-regarded forum members who trust Pirate and his 7% weekly investment rate. I hold no legal responsibility if pirate or any other opportunity provider does turn out to be doing something illegal, although if something like this is unearthed I will quickly withdraw all funds if possible, will remove the ability to invest in them through this service, and will inform all service users possible. I am not trying to do anything immoral or illegal here, I believe all these services I will be offering a passthrough to are doing perfectly legal things with the money, and if I am proven wrong with make a good faith effort to withdraw all held capital with them and will not offer anything that is at all related to them. This service will be, as I see it, staying in perfectly legal water, and I don't see taxation being an issue as I won't be making much, but if somehow I begin to make good profits with such a service as this I will look into getting a business license and paying related taxes.

Would anyone find a service like this useful?

Would the deposit acceptors (such as hashking, imsaguy, etc.) be fine with a service like this?