We're upgrading the software and hardware for the OpenLedger cryptocurrency gateways on Saturday. We hope to complete the upgrade within 1 hour, but it might take as long as 2 hours. During the upgrade period, it will not be possible to deposit and withdraw OPEN assets from OpenLedger, so please plan accordingly.

A number of important workers have been voted out after the latest hardfork changes took effect. Please review cryptofresh.com/workers and vote for the workers you support, or consider proxying to someone who matches your own voting beliefs: http://www.cryptofresh.com/ballots

BlockTrades (http://blocktrades.us) supports buying and selling Ether with the following cryptocurrencies:
BitShares, BitCoin, Dash, Doge, Litecoin, Nubits, and Peercoin.

We also support sending to an Ethereum address without requiring a memo, so you can directly purchase cryptocurrencies from an exchanged-based account where you have Ether deposited without having to first send it to an Ethereum wallet.

I've created this thread to disclose information about BlockTrades and the public offering we're planning. Because of security laws, please note that this offering is NOT available to US and Cayman Islands citizens and residents.

Overview of BlockTrades
BlockTrades was formed to take advantage of opportunities created by the recent rise of cryptocurrency  technologies. BlockTrades takes a three-pronged approach to revenue generation:

1) Direct sales to consumers of cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency services
2) Licensing of commercial off-the-shelf and customizable software products
3) Contract-based development of custom software

Most of BlockTrades' current revenue is derived from the operation of the BlockTrades website that provides fast and convenient purchasing of various cryptocurrencies. BlockTrades also licenses use of the backend engine used by our website on an OEM basis. Currently this backend is licensed to OpenLedger to handle deposits and withdrawals in return for a 50% share of the market-trading fees collected for the assets it supports. BlockTrades has also undertaken several custom software development contracts and has pending negotiations for future software contracts as a means of providing development capital to support its long term business strategy.

BlockTrades' long term strategy is to create a worldwide network for the seamless exchange of fiat and cryptocurrencies and to profit from service fees associated with support of that network. We also envision a number of other businesses that we can build around that network: management of public offerings, loan origination services,  reputation management services, escrow arrangements, etc.

Corporate Structure
BlockTrades was founded on June 1, 2015 and operates as an exempt corporation under Cayman Islands law. One important side-effect of this structure is that the company is exempt from corporate income tax. It also simplifies many regulatory aspects of the company's operation in the cryptocurrency space as Cayman Islands currently has few if any restrictions associated with cryptocurrency. It's possible that this may change in the future, but it should be noted that Cayman Islands is a hub for financial institutions due to its liberal policies regarding new innovations in fintech and this is one of the primary reasons that BlockTrades was founded in this jurisdiction.

Management
Dan Notestein, President/CEO
Dan's primary responsibilities as president include exploration of new business opportunities, planning and development of new software platforms, and exploratory contract negotiations. Dan is also a founder and president of SynaptiCAD, the primary software development contractor used by BlockTrades. Dan has a Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Technology from University of Texas.

Donna Mitichell, VP of Operations and Legal Compliance
Donna's primary responsibilities include management of legal compliance issues associated with cryptocurrencies, management of partner relationships, accounting, and general counsel to BlockTrades. Donna is also Vice President of Marketing for SynaptiCAD. Donna's educational background includes a Master's in Electrical Engineering from Virgina Tech and a  Juris Doctorate degree from Concord Law School. She is an inactive member of the California Bar association.

Futher information on Dan and Donna's industry experience can be found at: http://www.syncad.com/manateam.htm


Discussion of Pro Forma Financial Statements
The initial financial statements for BlockTrades can found at: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r_fJc2K_0a51N80ZwQOvbjFOi9MjYA_SUFZgT78nKbw/edit?usp=sharing

For liability reasons, I'm presenting the financial statements as Pro-Forma documents, but to the best of my knowledge they are computed using generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). In particular, I am not excluding any “one-time” expenses, although I have highlighted such expenses to show “Operating Income Before Expenses Paid” from our web site separate from expenses associated with its initial development and payments made for that development. This allows a clearer picture of the profits generated from normal purchases by customers excluding fixed costs associated with development of the system and annual legal fees for maintenance of the corporation. Total Equity is also computed using GAAP and represents the expected equity that would be returned to shareholders if all the company's cryptocurrency assets were liquidated and all outstanding loans were paid off (ignoring any additional value attainable from the sale of intangible assets such as the backend software, web site, brand name, etc).

Company Valuation, Offer Price and Mechanism, Restrictions on Offer
BlockTrades has a “book value” of approximately $311K USD (current “liquid” equity of 241K + 70K in intangible assets for development of backend engine). We used a 7x multiple on the company's current book value to get a pre-money valuation of 7 x 311K = 2177K. We'll be offering 1 million shares at an initial price of $2.17 USD equivalent per share.  The shares will be initially purchasable via the BlockTrades website using multiple cryptocurrencies and priced in each cryptocurrency based on the cryptocurrency's current market value. Share ownership will be distributed and accounted for using the digital token “TRADE” (a user-issued asset on BitShares network) and will be solely transferable on the BitShares Distributed Exchange.

Subscribers to this offer will be required to supply their real name, address of residence, a valid email address for notices of shareholder meetings, and an affirmation that they are not citizens or residents of the United States or the Cayman Islands as this offer is not available to US or Cayman Islands citizens/residents. The BitShares accounts to which the TRADE shares are transferred will automatically be entered onto a white list on the BitShares blockchain that will enable those accounts to trade these shares with other members of the white list. The blockchain share holdings data in concert with the company's private database of shareholder contact information will be used to compute the Registry of Members as required by Cayman Islands law.

Timing of the Offer
We have not yet finalized the date at which we will begin offering the shares as we first need to make changes to our website to support the requirements for the offering, but we hope to do so within the next month. In the meantime, I'm happy to respond to any questions about our business or this offering.

For more details about why we're making this previously unplanned public offering, the restriction against purchase by US and Cayman Island citizens and residents, and the corresponding methodology we've chosen for share accounting, see this thread:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,21499.0.html

With the current load on poloniex, it's a great time to make some fast trades on the DEX or using BlockTrades/MetaExchange/Transwiser bridges. Maybe we should have scheduled our liquidity event for today.

I believe we need a worker proposal to fix many of the small problems discovered in the blockchain protocol and code base. These problems are generally too small to require individual proposals that must then be voted in by shareholders. There's too much overhead, the issues aren't easily explainable to voters, and there's too much delay in such a system to effectively address small tasks. Note that we already have similar proposals voted in for the GUI coding and web development (SVK, Cass, etc).

BlockTrades is soliciting feedback on this idea before making a formal proposal on the BitShares network.

We're thinking of proposing to do this at a rate of 60000 bts/day.
The work would be done by Eric, myself, plus other subcontractors as necessary (e.g. Cryptonomex or SynaptiCAD employees). We would make a report once per month on what has been done during that period.

You can now buy and sell NuBits (dollar stable coin) and NuShares (investment style token for NuBits) at http://blocktrades.us via our instant exchange mechanism. We only have limited supplies of both in our inventory at the current time, however.

You can also now deposit NuBits and NuShares into the BitShares webwallet to purchase BTS (other conversion types will also be possible after the next webwallet update) via our bridge.

We've created TRADE.MUSE which is a backed UIA for MUSE coin. Currently, you can purchase TRADE.MUSE from http://blocktrades.us using MUSE, then sell it on any TRADE.MUSE market in the Bitshares Decentralized Exchange. Similarly, if you purchase TRADE.MUSE on the decentralized exchange, you can exchange it for MUSE on the blocktrades web site. Soon you will also be able to deposit/withdraw TRADE.MUSE directly in the web wallet as well.