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The oldest bitcoin exchange, BTCC, moves into the US market

The longest-running bitcoin exchange still in service, Bitcoin China, recently opened a new US Dollar denominated platform for spot and margin trading. The new real-time exchange, currently in beta, offers Market, Limit, Stop, and One Cancels the Other (OCO) orders for spot trading. The Pro trading platform, also in beta, adds 25x margin trading.

The longest-running bitcoin exchange still in service, Bitcoin China, recently opened a new US Dollar denominated platform for spot and margin trading. The new real-time exchange, currently in beta, offers Market, Limit, Stop, and One Cancels the Other (OCO) orders for spot trading. The Pro trading platform, also in beta, adds 25x margin trading.

BTCC Logo“We consolidated, crystallized, and applied customer feedback from our five years of operation to create the ideal exchange.”
— – Bobby Lee, Bitcoin China CEO

The exchange, better known as BTCC within the bitcoin trading community, has been in business since 2011. While the company offers services to almost every corner of the planet, 16 countries are excluded, including the typical outsiders like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea. Joining them are residents in the US states of New Hampshire, North Carolina, and New York.

The rest of the world can sign up with a photo of their passport, a selfie of themselves holding the passport, and a third form of identification that can be a driver’s licenses or utility bill. However, only about five percent of US citizens have a passport.

Despite the extra ID verification steps, the exchange’s fee structure is likely to draw many US Dollar traders. Buyers pay only 0.2 percent of a trade, with a minimum of one penny, which is on par with Bitfinex and better than Bitstamp’s 0.25 percent. Meanwhile, sellers can earn money on each trade, receiving a rebate of 0.05 percent for adding liquidity to the board. This beats both leading USD exchanges which still charge money to sellers.

The company claims that the USD Exchange is, “The only bitcoin spot exchange that pays traders for adding liquidity to the order book.” However, exchanges Coincheck, BitMEX, and Gemini all offer similar programs to tempt market makers.

Depositing to and withdrawing from the Chinese trading account is available by bank wire and Credit cards, which are all subject to their own minimum amounts and varying fees. Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals, however, are both free, without limit, and only take 20 to 30 minutes to process. Credit card deposits have strictly tiered limits designed to protect them from fraud, including a monthly limit of $20,000.

“One of our major focuses in developing the exchange was ensuring that we offer customers convenient funding options, including credit cards and more.”
— – Samson Mow, Bitcoin China COO

BTCC’s history goes back to June 2011, when a two-man team in Shanghai launched the Yuan denominated bitcoin exchange under an uncertain regulatory environment, making it the oldest bitcoin exchange still trading.

It was one of three major exchanges started that summer, with Slovenian Bitstamp and the Russian BTC-E also debuting. Meanwhile, MtGox, in Japan, had the bitcoin market for USD trade cornered the entire year.

The exchange grew quickly in 2012, despite the Chinese government and their central bank starting to make the first of several ominous-sounding statements about Bitcoin. The platform was China’s only exchange for trading Yuan for bitcoins at the time, and garnered positive press coverage on national television. However, in a few separate instances spanning the next year, BTCC halted customer deposits temporarily to avoid running into trouble with the law.

By the beginning of 2013 the company had acquired a new charismatic CEO, Bobby Lee, the  brother of Litecoin founder Charlie Lee. The new CEO graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Computer Science before working for Yahoo! and Walmart China as their VP of Technology.

After his brother introduced him to cryptocurrencies, Lee flew to Shanghai and approached BTCC in early 2013. He has since attracted several investors, and the exchange has quickly grown into the highest volume bitcoin exchange on the planet, despite the local Central Bank’s saber rattlings.

“The biggest Bitcoin exchange is now in China, displacing Japanese, American and European sources of demand,” wrote ConvergEx Group market analyst Nick Colas in a November 2013 client note. “That enterprise is called BTC China.”

The company now also offers a few other bitcoin services, including a bitcoin wallet, physical bitcoins, and a bitcoin mining pools. The BTCC pool is currently the third largest, with control of about 12 percent of the global hashrate.


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