Second what Hyperscalper said here with a little to add…
The broker should tell you how close their demo is to live. Many brokers will tell you flat out that they don’t guarantee them to match.
Even if they claim they match, start small when going live.
Using Information Systems terminology, Demo is Sandbox or Dev environment, Test and Staging environments should run on Live account with very small risk.
Thanks for the advice fellas. The good news is my trading style is more swing’ish, and the EA’s I use are more of the trade manager variety than high frequency scalping.
In the future I will do more of my backtesting and research on the live account side just to be safe. Is there a way to shut off trading completely when fuxing around on a live account so no accidental trades occur? I know about keeping autotrading and one-click trading off.
@LAF “Sure Trump has bad manners, but he is 100% a deregulator. He’s the best chance we’ve got of ever having decent Forex access in the U.S. again. I just don’t know if we have any allies in the White House on this issue. Does Trump even know about our Forex woes?”
I believe in moderate regulation, not the over-reach which
has given U.S. Forex traders nowhere to turn…
My comment is “no comment” … on the issue of Trump.
Instead of PM to me, I’d like these issues to be placed in this
main thread, please.
hyperscalper
Discussion of the landscape in Europe which is being
developed which restricts lower end traders and investors.
[EDIT] no advertising intended or implied here, just
general information
[EDIT2] By the way, that firm in New Zealand will not accept
U.S. persons…
hyperscalper
Seems asia is the least regulated area. But something will happen. Many people use Bitmex when they aren’t suppose to. Laws will develop a way to punish this.
It’s actually pretty easy to launder and hide money in crypto, but no sane person who wants a legal living would want to. That’s why I’m stressing so hard to come up with audit trails and legal incorporation schemes. If the international and euro and american regulators don’t nab the exchange, the exchange developers themselves might nab funds as punishment for ToS violation. Bitmex reserves the right to do this, and many, many people are going to have to cite an audit trail on taxes for having used a broker they weren’t suppose to, which will lead to some sort of response from CFTC eventually. I fear coinexx will be next if they do not institute a geoblock for appearances. But frankly I want an audit trail. I want to be on the right side of an audit trail, rather than having millions in unauditable money from trading activity that SHOULD be legal.
Because of the 5 mil ECP and EMSA euro regs, this makes me prefer asian brokers. But I still need to figure out some sort of corporate structure. I guess people could still register their corp with a euro broker as a non ECP, but it would still have the benefit of a euro residency passport, though people in this thread have mentioned how difficult that is. I for one am willing to become a resident let’s say of portugual, or at least panama, even thailand, but if the 2nd passport shows original origin, then I think what may be required is a ‘resident local manager’ … not a ‘nominee’…
When looking into laws for Mauritus offshore banking they do require some corps to have a registered local agent in mauritus. . but I guess the question is how to get a ‘in name only’ setup which I’m sure is quite cost prohibitive, but could be done.
The exchanges may not accept a bank in your name though, and no sane person is going to want a nominee signatory over their bank… so being able to access a forex site that allows withdraw in bitcoin is probably best… then sell the bitcoin for gold to a money manager and have the gold manager deposit cash to your bank of choice, preferably another one attached to the oversea trading corp to get tax benefit.
This would require a fairly complex legal structure but it s what I intend to do the next 12 months.
The best you can do if you want to get accurate fills during testing (spreads + price slippage + commissions) is to trade .01 lots to minimize potential losses.
Forget opening a bank or brokerage account with US citizen anywhere in the signup process (entity managing member/director, account signatory) unless you are ECP qualified.
The worst case scenario of having to regain access to the brokers we currently have access to with lower KYC requirements and crypto transfers would be easier…
Offshore entity with non US nominee manager/director & power of attorney, non us VPN/VPS IP, Crypto only withdrawals.
Since banking is not needed, any respected jurisdiction that is lower cost (ex. Bahamas, BVI ect.) should be fine. This setup should cost about $2000 annually (entity registration renewal, nominee, registered agent & mail forwarding address)
BTW… The IRS tax filing for a foreign controlled company is quite insane to say the least. It’s a definite red flag with IRS, so an audit is practically guaranteed at some point in the future.
“It’s actually pretty easy to launder and hide money in crypto”
Granted this is probably true with certain techniques.
But, for Joe 6-pack that buys on Coinbase and just wants to trade or use neat tech, there is no stealth. Everything he does is on the ledger.
Also, newer gen coins have better compliance tools.
Authorities should be able to police money laundering at brokerages without practically destroying the entire retail Forex market.
Most of us aren’t trying to hide anything. We just want to trade with reasonable spreads, leverage, and execution.
Thanks for the insightful post. I’m still kicking around ideas here too.
Someone in the States should start a brokerage on top of the Ripple or Stellar network to get great spreads while satisfying compliance.
Leverage would still have to be 50:1, but I think tech could solve most of the other problems. Maybe I’ll work on this at lunch. haha
An exchange called StellarX recently launched.
I’m anticipating the audit. But it’s better to have the trade history cvs file to exchanges available and to claim its done in the name of the foreign controlled company. Then I get transferabble funds on my IRS as dividends from the company.
I’m actually speaking of some crypto exchange that don’t require anything, anonymous ones, but I still want the paper trail so I can show the trade history and say it was the company. The anonymous exchange reserves the right in its ToS to demand KYC. If they do, they would get the passport of the power of attourney and director/manager, hopefully a very good corporate lawyer (I plan to find a damn good one).
But the crypto still has to be cashed out. I think it’s possible I could be the signator nominee of a bank account representing the company, and possibly the signator of nominee for a gold broker. I know that there a number of places scattered about that accept bitcoin to gold, some are more extreme in kyc than other, but some I believe won’t care about the exchange, only the KYC documentation/passport ID.
I’m still interested in offshore bank namely for things like a trust and offshore IRA and any tax reduction, as well as multi currency accounts and SEPA.
It looks promising, although is still in early stages. Another cool thing is that you can program directly to the Stellar Marketplace using the API. No broker needed…
Has there been any new low-cost avenues of withdrawing money from Finpro besides the standard wire transfer out? I spoke with them months ago about a possible future visa option but I haven’t touched base on the topic with them since.
I also need to change my Finpro account to “Islamic status” as I often hold trades overnight. Is that impossible on an account that’s already open? Any tips on what not to say or is it pretty straightforward?
If you have >100K to deposit and need Sepa & USD correspondent banking for wires, you’re only options as a US citizen are the Austrian, Cyprus and Liechtenstein banks and prepare to visit in person.
CFTC AND CRYPTO CURRENCIES – THIS IS BAD
[EDIT] VERY BAD
Further intrusion against freedom.
https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/7820-18?utm_source=govdelivery
hyperscalper
Your secret is safe with us !! That reminds me how the
enforcers no doubt monitor this thread; as it gives them
new ideas… 
hyperscalper
Jesus… so that means Coinbase, Kraken & Gemini could be subject to CFTC regulation just like when they took over Forex regulation?
I was suspicious that the real reason they pursued 1broker was because they recently landed that ruling of bitcoin being a commodity so they could corral and consolidate exchanges and thus the market share of btc, more corporatist tactics guised behind regulatory ‘concern’. It’s going to be a long game of cat and mouse, because the point of crypto is to have unregulated unmanaged non intermediary brokering, plus the USA has no jurisdiction over the rest of the world as much as they may think otherwise.
And yes I know they watch everything, at some point you have to just be apathetic to it, half of what they do is quasi unconstitutional, I may as well pursue loopholes as fast as they change the laws to suit their inside traders on wall street.
I’m prepared to expatriate honestly, and I would advise others to be as well.
BUT THEN WE ALLOW THE TERRORISTS TO WIN !
hyperscalper
Can we send the CFTC somewhere far away instead?
I am fine when the CFTC goes after fraudsters who misrepresent
themselves, take advantage of the public and commit financial
crimes. When I get those emails, I am very happy that there is an
enforcement arm to dispense justice.
But what we do in trading is not generally anywhere close to
financial crime.
EVERYTHING WOULD BE FINE if we were able to prove our
competence in trading, and obtain an EXEMPTION from the
offshore BAN. BUT THEN, IRONICALLY WE’D STILL BE SEEKING
GOVERNMENT PERMISSION TO DO WHAT WE SHOULD BE
ABLE TO DO ANYWAY !!!
hyperscalper