New York’s Coinsetter, a Bitcoin trading platform that received a seed round of $500,000 in funding this past spring, launched its private beta in mid-November.
Coinsetter’s path to this point has been fraught with regulation concerns and pivots in its strategy. After its seed round, moves by the State of New York indicated that targeting US customers might be too difficult, and the company began to consider international clients.
Later, the company made a move back toward serving US traders and has since worked to make its trading platform compliant by developing partnerships with banks.
To achieve compliance, Coinsetter will not accept deposits in US dollars. Rather, it has created a derivative product that will allow users to approximate a BTC–USD trade.
The platform’s private beta has thus far been only available to invitees, to whom Coinsetter CEO Jaron Lukasiewicz has been personally reaching out.
Lukasiewicz is calling his platform a “liquidity platform,” and he says the platform’s millisecond trading speed will allow for more flexible trading.
This focus on liquidity has seen Coinsetter strike a deal with a “major market maker.” Also, pricing strategies reflect this focus. Trades of up to 499 BTC during a 30-day period have their fees capped at 0.5%, and that drops to 0.3% for trades above 1,000 BTC.
“High volume traders on our site can reach levels where they will actually get paid to make trades,” Lukasiewicz said.
Coinsetter has also registered as a money transmitting business with the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, but the same registration has not been made in New York itself. That application process is ongoing and could take up to a year. Without such licensing, it may be impossible for users to trade USD and BTC directly.
Initially, Lukasiewicz saw Coinsetter as a type of forex platform. But for now, margin trading, an original feature of the platform, will have to wait.
The company also touts its exchange aggregation feed, which allows it to offer the best Bitcoin prices “available anywhere.”
As far as security on the exchange, the company’s Bitcoin addresses will be generated offline by machines that are never intended to even touch the internet. Deposits and withdrawals are being processed manually for now. Deposits may be automated soon, but withdrawals will continue to be processed offline and by hand.
During beta, the company’s focus is customer feedback. Slowly, other features will be added, including the abovementioned margin trading.