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Good catch, thanks.

Yep. That fee is still competitive even if you're just buying and holding, but we're geared more towards traders.

We're working with our partners to improve the cost structure so that we don't have to charge deposit fees.

I'm one of the founders/CTO.

Our main difference from Coinbase is that we have an order book and real-time trading. Coinbase is great for people that want to buy some bitcoin at a fixed price and don't mind waiting a few days to get them. We focus more on businesses and traders that need to buy and sell bitcoin in real time. Adding USD is also very fast with us, usually 1 or 2 days. I think that's slightly faster then Coinbase, or was last I checked (unless you add a credit card for instant buy with lower limits). It doesn't matter as much in Coinbase's model, since they're fronting cash to lock in a price.

Ha! I wish ChangeTip supported HN.

Yeah, that's basically the idea, probably using some multi-sig protocol. It will never be as fast as our internal ledger though, since I think we'd need to wait for at least one confirmation before funding the trade.

We have been audited by independent security professionals and will continue to undergo frequent security testing (both code reviews and adversarial testing). I'll try to make the results of that more public, since you obviously shouldn't just take my word for it.

To protect against losses we're working to get insurance for deposits setup, but it's not in place yet. We're also looking at the possibility of letting people maintain custody of their coins if they don't need realtime trading. Proof-of-reserve is also planned soon to guarantee that all accounts are fully funded.

Right now, the vast majority of coins we control are in cold-storage wallets that require 4+ people to access, with most of the rest in cold-storage wallets that require 2 people to access. Only a very small amount is in a hot wallet. We're working with a partner to add custodial multi-sig to our hot wallet (and maybe cold wallets) so that even if someone compromises our machine, there's an external signatory which will be able to prevent transactions from processing.

You're right to be cautious. Even though I keep most of my bitcoins on Buttercoin, in general I wouldn't recommend that anyone use a centralized service for long-term storage. We know that people will do that though, so our security has to be up to par. Hopefully the features we roll out over the next 3-6 months will create enough transparency that you can trust us.

1) Compared to exchanges like Bitstamp, we have US banking relationships and can fund accounts via bank transfer in 1-3 days. Generally, wiring funds internationally is much slower and more expensive.

Compared to brokers like Coinbase or Circle, we have an order book, so traders can quickly adjust their positions.

2) We're working on insurance for held coins and the ability for customers to maintain full custody of their coins (possibly at the cost of slower trade completion times).

Paul left after a couple of months and hasn't been involved with the project for about a year and a half. None of the design or code is based on the original open source effort which he started. We're not trying to hide history, he just doesn't want people thinking he's associated with it anymore.

Ha, I'll have to try that. Does it use our icon even if you just navigate to HN directly?

Oops, that's a bug with how we're using Angular. Thanks for pointing it out!

It has to do with banking and regulation. Adding new regions takes a lot of time and effort to get right, but we're working on it.

Yeah, we're working to expand coverage and bank relationships outside of the US. I can't give any specific timeline, but it's one of our highest priorities.

Thanks for pointing that out. I'll try to make it more clear.