Going offshore to escape the CFTC

DEEPER HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF BITCOIN

I don’t want to abuse this thread, so this is my last
post for the week on the subject :slight_smile:

To me, the recent events with BitCoin give me faith
in exchanges such as Evolve.Markets which holds
your trading account in BTC (actually BIT units).

hyperscalper

Anyone have experience with https://www.n1cm.com/?

While we’re on the subject of bitcoin and brokers, N1CM confirmed in a chat that they do accept BTC deposits. It is not listed with their deposit methods.

On a related note, an email from Bitwala today stated:
“Following the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), we regret to announce that we have made the decision to suspend our service for U.S. persons.”

:rage:

Agreed, Evolve Markets is excellent.
SimpleFX spreads are not as good, but they have more pairs to trade and allow accounts denominated in several different cryptocurrencies. BTC is most popular crypto, but slow and has relatively large transaction fees. Funding an account in ETH or LTC and trading XRPUSD is quite nice, especially if you expect the cryptocurrency you are using to fund your account to go up.
Also, it’s not a great idea to have all eggs in one basket.
I’ve had good experience with both of these brokers.

FINPROTRADING WITHDRAWAL OF USD FUNDS TO BITCOIN

I haven’t seen any problems buying BitCoin within FinPro, using funds
in an MT4 USD trading account. These BitCoin are placed in FinProTrading’s
BitCoin Wallet which is provided to each account holder. Of course
this takes place at some exchange rate BTC/USD.

Withdrawals are reviewed by their accounts department, so there are
a few hours up to 24 hours delay before withdrawal is made. This
of course poses a risk in USD/BTC exchange rate between the time
the withdrawal request is made, and when it is completed. In this
case, the withdrawal occured into the BitCoin Wallet at FinPro as
some prevailing exchange rate, unspecified.

Then moving the BTC amounts to another wallet, such as a Coinbase
wallet is OK, but is rather clumsy. If you specify the full amount, the transaction
fails, apparently due to the lack of any additional funds for the BitCoin
FEE. So you need to “guess” a little bit less than the total amount, so that
a FEE can be sent along, and those transactions can then succeed. This
is confusing, but it works, leaving a few “residual” fractional BTC remaining
behind.

So, clumsy, but working very smoothly. For U.S. clients seeking a "smooth"
method of interacting with these brokers, BitCoin is a very good method
in general as the transfer method.

Obviously, moving between “fiat” currency like USD, into and out of BitCoin
presents risk of exchange rate volatility. On the other hand, this can be an
additional “trading opportunity” if one chooses an advantageous time to make
those exchanges.

hyperscalper

1 Like

So Global Brokerage, FXCM’s former partner and stakeholder, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code and is planning to restructure.
In the official statement the company also said it is delisting from NASDAQ and is parting ways with some of its board members and senior managers.
According to the official statement, Global Brokerage has entered into into a restructuring support agreement with around 70% of its noteholders.

Well, I wouldn’t recommend holding bitcoin in FINPRO’s online wallet.

I had a small amount in my wallet from a deposit early this year. Wasn’t much. But given the big appreciation recently thought I could add it to my trading account. So I just checked the wallet It was empty. Checked the transaction log. Someone sent the remaining bitcoin out of my wallet to some other bitcoin address a few weeks ago. Not sure if FINRPO did that or the wallet got hacked.

Are you saying finpro stole your bitcoin / money? did you ask them what happen? please keep us posted

Yes, that would be a concern for me also… What does FinPro support say about the
disappearance of the BTC ??

hyperscalper

I also checked them. Just had a chat with their support, seems to be a nice broker to me. Has opened the demo account with them and liking their trading conditions so far. Will keep you guys posted. Anyways, bitcoin and all other cryptos are going crazy. Not sure what bitcoin is upto. It broke off its $8000 mark as well. The way it is picking up, it can cross $10000 mark also in just couple of days

Itsnt it funny how we are getting all these talks about bitcoin being in a bubble. The total market cap of all the crypto combined is merely 200 billion while just the top 10 stocks in US are sitting at a combined valuation of 4.5 Trillion. Compare that with the GDP of America! American stocks are trading at highest GDP/MCap ever in history (with the only exception being dotcom bubble)

What I find funny is that Facebook is trading at a valuation of 550 billion roughly 2.5 times of all the crypto currency valuation combined !

So Yes we are all living in a bubble :slight_smile:

I fail to understand why BTC is even considered a bubble and is compared to every bubble we have experienced in the past from Tulip mania, dot com bubble to 2009 financial crisis. All these comparisons are erroneous. The currency is not comparable to any of these history lessons. BTC is of a totally different character. Its supply, blockchain technology, security and its decentralized structure makes it what SPECIAL & different.

Whenever btc reaches all times highs, its compared to tupil mania. What separates btc form the tulip mania is simply SUPPLY. BTC is eternally limited to 21M coins as opposed to the supply of tulip bulbs that could increase in any quantity rendering the store of value tulip bulbs to minuscule levels. Btc is certainly not a dot com company that could lose profitability & fail neither is it controlled by the central banks that it could crumble under government pressure.

The currency has recovered from the 3 Bitcoin bubbles per se in the last seven years. We’ve only seen surprising recoveries in its value every time it corrected. BTC price might mirror a bubble today, but its present market capitalization is of $222 billion which is 16 times more as much as it was a year ago, with no significant change in tangible economic value. All time highs are not indicative of a bubble. Its high time that we acknowledge that Bitcoin isn’t a bubble. It’s the most legitimate and the transparent monetary system that exists today.

When naysayers have nothing constructive in their rationale they dismiss such ideas. Like Tesla value was a bubble back in April and Amazon stocks have always been overvalued throughout its life cycle. Any technology, company or idea that increases in value or witnesses an accelerated growth is considered a bubble. Let’s stop buying into such stories

Got a response back. They said they are doing an upgrade to the FinPro bitcoin wallets, and my bitcoin should be visible again by the end of the week. Support did offer to send the bitcoin for me now if I wanted to withdraw or load to trading account. So I guess this turned out to be no big deal.

But it would have been helpful to warn us about this upgrade ahead of time.

Hyperscalper, I guess you didn’t experience this issue? I hadn’t used my bitcoin wallet for the past six months, so maybe they only did this with the inactive wallets.

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No, didn’t have a problem at FinPro. Pulled USD to BTC and sent it off to Coinbase.
It wasn’t “instant” since they have an approval process; but it was pretty
good and all worked fine…

hyperscalper

1 Like

ok good to hear, thanks for the update

FINPROTRADING IS A VERY INTERESTING BROKER FOR SCALPERS

Hi,

28 major Forex pairs only…
I think I mentioned earlier that FinProTrading (aka TurnkeyFX feed) has some
very interesting properties. When the market is being pushed up, the
liquidity providers are “falling all over themselves” to become Best BID,
and when being pushed down, they fight to be Best OFFER. So it’s
possible to quantify this, and pick out the Forex instruments which are
momentarily pushing, for scalps in the 5-10 PIP range with some
reliability. I’ll just put a BOT on that, and see how much can be
“nibbled” … I am able to scan continuously over the 28 major
pairs, and pick out the “low hanging fruit”… LOL

hyperscalper

[EDIT] I realized it’s best to give you some idea of the visual
when this is happening, see attached screenshot on a rising
pair in EUR/AUD …

Has anyone had any further contact from CCM ?

Hi HyperScalper, I messaged you a question about if you run into millisecond system clock timing issues on NJ4X, I just wondered if it showed up or I’m doing the messaging incorrectly on this new format…?

Thanks
RJ

OK, got your message; I haven’t been checking for any…
In answer to your question, I use the Oracle Java 8 runtime,
don’t know anything about the F# language?

I ran a little test, and if I use System.currentTimeMillis() then
indeed you see resolution which is approx. 16 msecs. But,
I have a special routine which takes into account the "nano"
timer and gives me resolution down to 1 millisecond.

So when I print out latencies, etc., they are accurate to
1 millisecond. So looks like you are correct that without
doing something “special” even in Java the default way
of measuring time has only every 16 msecs or so resolution
on Windows 7.

[EDIT] Not sure if this is relevant, or just theoretical:
https://nbsoftsolutions.com/blog/iso-8601-and-nanosecond-precision-across-languages
[EDIT2] Looks like I could update my method of getting millisecond
resolution with new Java 8 functions… Ya learn something every day :slight_smile:

hyperscalper

1 Like

Hello,
I will be upfront and be honest that I have not read the entire thread as is is huge and so my question may already have been answered, sorry if if has.

I am wondering it is completely fine and legal fora US resident to just simply open up an offshore company (say in UK) and do the trading through that account while operating it from the USA. Let me be perfectly clear that this is not to evade taxes or anything, it’s simply to bypass the stupid US restrictions. I want to trade with LMAX or IB but neither accept US Clients.

I know its an added expense and complexity of opening a company in a foreign country but I am fine with that if if opens up the door to be able to pick whichever broker my heart desires.

[quote=“theone964, post:4851, topic:35612, full:true”]
Hello,
I will be upfront and be honest that I have not read the entire thread as is is huge and so my question may already have been answered, sorry if if has.

I am wondering it is completely fine and legal for a US resident to just simply open up an offshore company (say in UK) and do the trading through that account while operating it from the USA.[/quote]

Short answer to your question:

As a U.S. resident, you can legally open a trading account with any forex broker in the world who will deal with you. And you can legally create an offshore company anywhere in the world, and do business (including forex trading) through that company from your base here in the U.S.

An offshore company is far more complex (and expensive) to set up, than simply opening an offshore trading account with one of the brokers who will deal with U.S. residents.

But, as you point out, an offshore company offers more broker choices.


As a “U.S. person” you will have tax-paying and financial-reporting responsibilities to the IRS and the Treasury Dept., regardless of how you structure your forex trading business. To the IRS, you will be responsible for taxes on your worldwide income. And to the Treasury Dept, you will be responsible for revealing all of your offshore accounts/holdings/interests, if the aggregate total of funds held in those entities exceeds certain thresholds.

But, these accounting chores are simply one of the costs of doing business legally, and keeping yourself out of trouble with the Nanny State.


I have written a lot on these subjects in this thread, as have several other members. The thread is huge (as you point out), and therefore a victim of its own success, to a certain extent. I know how difficult it can be to navigate and search this thread, especially for a newcomer. (It would be cool if the forum software automatically created an index of topics in large threads like this one, but that ain’t never gonna happen.)

I will try to put together a list of links to specific posts where the legalities of this offshore broker thing are discussed, where tax issues are addressed, and where the pros and cons of opening an offshore company are batted around. May take me some time to do, so be patient.

Welcome to our “huge” thread, by the way!