Enable easy selling/buying Nubits with e-currency USD

Here I try to make a centralized and coherent post to stimulate discussion on how to make it easy to sell and buy Nubits with e-currencies. Hopefully we can draw up a strategy, formulate a plan, and come up with proposals for relevant motions or custodian votes.

tldr; here is a summary

It’s important for Nu to make selling/buying Nubits by e-currencies issued by payment processors and gateways.

There are three ways to accomplish it:

  • official installation of Nubits to the processors with members,
  • to the payment gateways,
  • provision of easy to use code so everyone with moderate webpage creation skills can let other buy/sell Nubits.

Payment processors

Here we use payment processors to refer to internet payment processors, internet wallets, payment exchange and currency conversion gateways, unless specifically noted.

Payment processors are not new. PayPal is the one best known. Other heavy weight international players currently include PerfectMoney, OKPay, WebMoney, Payeer, EgoPay etc., which collect users’ fund and allow users to pay bills and buy things. The e-currencies and credits issued by payment processors are converted by gateways. Liquidity, in the form of fiat (usually USD), is very deep, probably hundreds time more than that of all typical crypto-exchanges combined.

It’s not a coincidence that payment processors are often not founded in the US or Western Europe, but in places where traditional financial sectors do not provide quality services, leaving market space and regulation room for internet based payment providers.

The importance of NBT/USD liquidity

There have been discussions and foresighted suggestions of buying/selling Nubits via payment processors dating back to less than a month after the launch of Nu.

More suggestions have been made but the matter was not felt urgent because people thought trading NBT/BTC is better for adoption.

Maintaining a peg by NBT/BTC subjects Nu to volatility of BTC. Nu is guaranteed to lose money. When BTC falls, Nu buys falling BTC and suffers loss; when BTC rises, Nu pays high park interest to defend the buy wall. Hedging and other ways have been proposed but they seem complicated. At least hedging hasn’t helped LPC fighting at the front line.

I believe it is imperative to curb and eventually eliminate shareholder-paid LPC of NBT/BTC (or NBT/Crypto in general) pairs.

Even if you don’t agree that with its volatility NBT/BTC is toxic in Nu pegging operations, and Nu should run most of its pegging through NBT/USD pair, you probably agree that direct NBT/USD conversion is an important to make widely available with deep liquidity. It is directly linked to the “$1 coin” idea.

CryptoExchanges are not the place to support NBT/USD trading

Running LPC operations in the NBT/USD pair has problems at typical crypto-exchanges. Not many crypto-exchanges support USD deposit/withdraw. Even they do, trading the pair is not really trading

So doing NBT/USD, of which the price chart is a flat line, is just boring currency conversion that’s not attractive to crypto-exchanges. Exchanges perhaps don’t make real money accepting users’ fiat. They probably lose money doing so due to regulatory overhead. So there are very few exchanges that offer USD transfer.

In contrast, there are many times more payment processors than crypto-exchanges. Better yet, unlike crypto-exchanges, most payment processors have some forms of USD liquidity.

Enable buy/sell Nubits with payment processors

Now comes to the logical conclusion: Nu should actively expand Nubits adoption by payment processors, to tap into their deep USD liquidity, customer base, existing real-life business penetration, geographically decentralized connection among partners, internet-based infrastructure and APIs.

As Satoshi pointed out, cryptocurrencies will need a somewhat centralized business layer (maybe hubs) for highly efficient processing and clearing. Expecting a blockchain to support hundreds of transaction per second is not realistic. So expanding into payment processors is needed even Nu were not a pegged cryptocurrency.

I see several methods to go ahead based on limited experience, as given below.

Method 1. Official integration to payment processors that have user funded accounts

Top payment processors have members depositing fund into their accounts. Nu can help these payment processor to accept Nubits as one of their an official payment/accounting method. OKPay as example:

If supported by OKPay, Nubits could have hundreds of thousand private and business users, and can be exchanged with fiats of tens million dollars in liquidity, transferable with banks, credit cards, other payment processors and xchangers, even BTC-e USD code. I consider the bittylicious proposal one tep in this direction.

However this method has its problems. Nu has to deal with payment processors on a case by case basis so the cost of integration varies, and the results also vary.

For example different payment processors support cryptos to different degrees. Take OKPay, it only accepts BTC, LTC, and DOGE for deposit and withdrawal. It doesn’t have internal cryptowallets, which may not be what may expect.

Another example is that every payment processor has different requirements for identification. For example you can’t withdraw fund unless you have verified your physical identity with OKPay. This could limit its help to Nubits adoption if end users just want to spend small amount with minimum hassle, or don’t have IDs or don’t want to leave ID copy to OKPay. PerfectMoney and Payeer, on the other hand, allow withdrawals and transfers to numerous electronic channels without requiring identification.

My impression is that OKPay has better developed infrastructures and business reach, but may not be as easy to deal with from crypto perspective.

Method 2. Official integration to payment exchanges and gaveways

There are many more exchanges / gateways that don’t have (much) member fund themselves, but mainly make money by exchanging fund in one external form (such as BTC, PerfectMoney-USD, OKPay-USD, BTC-e USD, bank wire, creditcard ) to another. Examples include http://rchange.net on the complex end and, for example, https://exch.cc/ on the simple end.

To integrate Nubits to payment gateways is to place Nubits as one of the fund options there, so customers can buy/sell NBT with other forms of e-currencies. The gateways will pay for liquidity themselves. This is equivalent to setting up Liquidity Provider Custodians unfunded by Nu shareholders.

The advantage of integrating Nubits to payment exchanges / gateways is that the complexity is less compared with method 1, both for the gateway owners and for Nu to help them. This makes it possible to have Nubits integrated to many places. There are hundreds geographically distributed payment exchanges / gateways, having a lot of them serving Nubits to customers will greatly increase the robustness of Nu ecosystem against economic volatility, loss of major exchanges/processors, regional regulations.

Method 3. Providing code that sells/buys Nubits with e-currencies

The third and perhaps the best way to expand Nubits buy/sell/conversion is to make the transaction points decentralized to the extreme, i.e. provide code that one can use to setup conversion between e-currency USD and Nubits anywhere.

All major payment processors have APIs (Payeer, webmoney , OKPay, PerfectMoney …) so if Nu provides wrapper interfaces to handle fiat payment/reception, any server can be set up to sell Nubits to customers in essentially three steps:

  1. customer enters Nubits address and e-currency USD (for example by entering a PerfectMoney e-voucher code, or by pressing a pre-made OKPay payment button);

  2. server verifies that fund has arrived at own PM account;

  3. server sends Nubits to customer’s address

and buy Nubits from a customer as easily:

  1. customer enters a payment processor account number and amount NBT to sell;

  2. server gives a Nubits payment address of own Nubits wallet (with QR code);

  3. customer sends Nubits to the address;

  4. server verifies Nubits payment has arrived and sends fiat from own account to the account provided.

The final result web interface can be simple like this or this or more sophisticated like this.

The code plus a nubits wallet is so lightweight it can be deployed anywhere – on a personal page, on a disposable droplet, on a Raspberry pi…

The customer doesn’t have to register. It’s like roll-your-own shapeshift with fiats. The code is simple with Nubits because there is no need to have an exchange rate feed for conversion.

The code doesn’t have to be stand-alone, or for trading Nubits per se. For example, a small webshop owner can add nubits to payment method to her shop by simple web programming based on the reference code. The possibilities are endless.

It’s up to the service owner how AML/KYC is handled according to local regulations.

We provide the underlying currency and simple tools to enable wide-spread adoption.

8 Likes

I like method 3 very much. It would be a very classical custodian role (just not an LPC) and @woolly_sammoth’s current efforts on Bittylicious are of a very similar nature. We could take advantage of almost all BTC services by using those wrappers, and the stability is a clear selling point.

As community I think we need to develop the required tools for that, just as the Nu team did it with the NuBot for LPCs. We cannot assume that external people will take the risk and implement it on their own.

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Yes. Making progress in Method 3 will greatly help to implement 2 technically. Progress in Method 2 will lead to progress in Method 1 through competition.

Community development effort is indispensable. I am hoping the shareholders can see the importance and put priority to this work by voting, so some outreach and development man power in the Nu team are allocated for it.

After the critical mass is reached people will implement their stuff. But now we need to help to get Nu rolling.

I agree. 3 looks the simplest and most straightforward method to begin with, imho.
I would support a custodian grant whose goal would be to develop such a voucher-based way of buying/selling nubits.

Thank you @mhps for putting all this together. I agree selling NuBits through payments processors such as OKPay, WebMoney, EgoPay, etc is very important. I think your point that those in Europe and North America may be discounting its importance is valid.

It is a project looking for a leader eager to create a small business out of it. Someone who decided to buy and sell Nuits on one or more of these platforms could do so at whatever spread they feel is in their best interest.

It is just a matter of utilizing APIs and hooking that up to a web interface. It seems like the kind of thing that has already been mostly done (except for the NuBit integration itself). It looks like some are selling other crypto using these payment platforms. So, perhaps we could give them incentive to add NuBits or pay them for their source code so someone from our community could add NuBit support. Custodial grants can be made available for whatever incentive shareholders understand to be in their interest. It also occurs to me that @woolly_sammoth and @desrever have been doing somewhat similar work when integrating NuBot with various exchanges. So they may be able to provide some development resources if someone steps forward and indicates they want to operate exchanges on an ongoing basis.

Just some ideas on how to move forward. There is money to be made from solving this problem. Fortune favours the bold.

3 Likes

Thanks indeed for putting this insightful summary together - that’s a solid basis to start with.

Many have. It’s a very crowded market where many venders compete to attract customers at the best rate. Look at this and this exchange finder – money changers’ rates are compared in realtime against each other. I think if a couple of them start to provide Nubits, most of them will follow to keep competitive.

How about a reward program for implementing NBT in the bestchange list above, offered to the owners? Then we can ask if they are interested in sellling thier code for NBT or for Nushare.

@woolly_sammoth already showed interest. Finding someone who want to operate an exchange is close to finding an LPC (sans exchange risk) so I guess it’s not hard with the right terms.

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According to the rationales given in the OP and comments and sugestions made by the community, I propose the following near-term and mid-term plan to push Nubits adoption.

1. Prepare the Nu exchange integration guide

Payment processors and exchange gateways do not only offer exchange interfaces but also provide liquidity (acting like LPCs), we should add a section telling things that are not known outside Nu-sphere:

a) Nu allows payment processors and exchange gateways to apply for compensations fees from Nu shareholders at market-determined rates. The exchangers will need to post an LPC proposal for shareholders to vote. (a proposal template should be given: who, how much liquidity on NBT/USD, for how long, how often to report, promise to re-ballance or not at what frequency, how much fee is asked etc )
b) Whether to be an shareholder-approved LPC or not, in addition to buying Nubits from the market, exchangers can purchase Nubits from shareholders or Nu reserve fund custodians at $1/NBT.

2. Contact a list of selected payment processors and exchange gateways

We send official emails/messages to promising payment processors and exchange gateways to introduce Nubits, invite them to integrate Nubits, and point them to the integration guide.

There are hundreds payment processors and exchange gateways. It’s better we pick a small number to start with.

Here are a list top e-currency issuers listed in Method 1 in the OP
https://www.perfectmoney.com
https://payeer.com/en/
https://www.okpay.com/en/index.html
http://egopay.com/
edit: add http://www.neteller.com

Somehow I don’t expect many of them will pay a lot of attention to Nubits because there must be many people proposing all kind of ideas for these big players. So I have chosen from those smaller processors and gateways listed by bestexchange for buying BTC with PM-USD. I looked at each of them, and selected the ones according to the criteria:

  • Has English version web interface
  • Trades PM USD (annotated after the link-- PM:PerfectMoney OK:OKpay PY:Payeer WM:webmoney EG:EgoPay) and BTC
  • my webpage security alarm doesn’t go off

The ones with a “*” means they are also chosen in the PM partners list (see bellow). The ones in this list generally have better made, more professional interfaces. If you have other lists that can help to pick out the more active, liquid, developed, and potentially friendly exchanges, feel free to suggest.

========= bestexchange list =============
http://24multiexchange.com/ pm ok wm eg
http://24pay.me/en/ pm ok*
https://www.alfacashier.com/ pm ok *
http://www.bitcoinchange.com pm ok
https://www.crxzone.com pm ok
http://cashint.com/ pm ok eg
https://coinomat.com pm ok *
https://www.changer.com pm ok
https://www.currenca.com pm ok payeer
https://e-scrooge.is pm ok eg
https://www.exchangec2c.com pm ok py eg c2c
https://www.exchangegold.org pm ok py
http://exchanger.org.ua/english/ pm ok manual processing *
http://exchanging.ir/exchange/ pm ok eg
https://f1ex.com/ pm ok
https://goldux.com/ pm ok py
https://indacoin.io pm ok py
https://my-xchange.biz/en pm
http://www.superchange.ru/en pm py *
http://pm2btc.me/ pm *
https://wmglobus.com/en/sleepmode/ pm ok wm
https://unichange.me pm ok
https://xchange.cc/en/ pm py ok *
http://www.xmlgold.eu/ *
https://xzzx.biz/ pm wm *

edit: https://www.247exchange.com/ is asked in this post.

3. Help the processors and gateways to integrate

I expect contacted processors and gateways to do most of the integration work. However to accomplish a solid step using Method 1 and 2 in the OP, the Nu team and community might need to give some help to the processors and exchanges, because they may have various levels of development and cryptocurrency expertise, to vote on LPC proposals, and to help with testing. Nu should treat the interested processors and gateways as potential partners.

Once there are several processors and gateways that have Nubits integrated, we will contact price comparison and rating sites such as bestchange and OKchanger to suggest NBT be included. This will not only get more users to see NBT, but will help other exchanges to see the need to offer NBT, too.

4. Contact more potential partners

There are about 200 entries on PerfectMoney certified partners list . I looked at the first 60 or so and picked out about half of them using the same criteria above.

Have PM, PY, OK
https://www.rchange.net/
https://xchange.cc/en/ *
http://www.xmlgold.eu/ *
https://naira4dollar.com
http://www.superchange.ru/ *
https://www.instantexchangers.net/
https://www.instantgold.ng/
http://www.digitalchanger.com/
http://exchanger.org.ua/english/ (no automatic processing) *

Has PM and OK
https://www.alfacashier.com/ *
https://wmglobus.com/en/
https://coinomat.com *
https://www.e-xchange4u.com/
http://24pay.me/en/ *
http://e-dollar.ng/ wm
http://www.zharifsofiaexchanger.com/site/home.php eg PPC
http://www.zitcexchange.com/ wm
https://qcashpay.com/

Has PM
https://nxt.am/en/
http://pm2btc.me/ *
http://www.nicciexchange.net/ wm eg
https://www.velaex.com pm wm
http://www.standardgoldng.com/ wm eg
https://xzzx.biz/ wm *
https://www.exhere.es/ eg
http://www.abijanexchange.com/ wm eg

5. Make Method 3 code available

Once there are quite a few processors and gateways that have successfully integrated NBT/fiat, we will offer to acquire core code described in the OP, in exchange of bounty or nushares. The plan will get details once first several steps are done.

Please comment, especially from the Nu team. I see strategic importance in getting this done. I will put this forward as a motion if needed.

8 Likes

I cannot stress enough how much I like this whole idea. In fact you could imagine making a Peershares DAC out of it. The DAC implements these services and is responsible to fund the custodians. Revenues made from a service fee can be passed back to its shareholders, just like in B&C. You could support many various formats like NBT, BitUSD or this ethereum thing coming up, just as B&C is expected to support BTS soon.

For Nu this surely will be of great benefit in the long term, and this way you don’t depend on NSR funding.

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I am shocked by the huge number of payments processors and gateways.
This is surely something Nu needs to tap into for increasing the ways to buy/sell nubits.

The question that I would have is how much liquidity could be expected to be offered by such payment processor/gateways compared to liquidity offered by exchanges?

Please go ahead.

Regardless whether such DAC would be funded by NSR dilution or not, I feel such DAC would be very useful.

If you go to bestchange and select “give PerfectMoney USD” and “get BTC” you will get this list of exchanges that offer this pair: http://www.bestchange.com/perfectmoney-usd-to-bitcoin.html

Below the list on the right side of the page I can read “The total number working with the Perfect Money USD → Bitcoin direction is 29 reliable exchangers. Total reserve in exchangers: 7 686.68 BTC.”

Due to volatility I imagine the exchanges don’t hold much more BTC than needed. If they sell Nubits, since there is no exchange rate risk, there could be much more NBT liquidity held by these exchanges.

This is just data from exchanges affiliated to bestchange.

Tks. That is not bad; 1.5m USD in reserve.

I really like this plan too -
Perhaps you could introduce a motion to modify the marketing roadmap and/or development roadmap:



cc @tomjoad @Ben @desrever

Thanks for the suggestion. I have taken a more focused approach and will post a draft motion specifically for the “5-steps” maybe today.

3 Likes

Motion posted. Please comment and make suggestions.

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I have finally got some time to read and enter in this discussion, will try to make significant comments only otherwise I risk opening up too many discussions :wink:

Impressive stuff.

I’d add Neteller, they recently started taking money in via BTC and it is definitely a top tier player.

I want to also notify a slightly different category that allow users to convert cryptocurrencies in physical cash (and vice-versa) by using existing networks of ATMs and BTMs and partnerships with banks. Pioneers in this category are https://btcpoint.com/en/ and https://chip-chap.com/en using the HalCash network, with more players emerging. Still small market (Spain and Poland) , but worth analysing maybe.

I have added http://www.neteller.com

ATMs and BTMs are a very promising direction. Also kiosks such as Qiwi. They deserve their own thread.

Regarding this our friends from @bitcoincoid made some great news today: http://digitalmoneytimes.com/crypto-news/lamassu-dominates-the-indonesian-bitcoin-atm-market

The fees charged by btc-e for deposite USD using e-currency (PM-USD etc) is about 1% - 2% probably depending on liquidity. CCEDK doesn’t allow it any more (allowed Payeer at 3% before). All allow wire transfer but the hassle and fee will be equivalent 1-2% for average users.

So I expect PEGs can set 1-3% spread on selling/buying NBT and expect to profit. Because of low friction of NBT transfer, increase of NBT adoption will lower handling fee of PEGs across the internet. But there is a limit of this lowering effect, because the fee includes the cost of setting up and operate PEG business, which won’t become 0 with the presence of Nubits.

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