<story><title>Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money</title><url>https://www.bitprime.co.nz/important-notice-for-all-customers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>claytonjy</author><text>Who is the target market for such a service?</text></item><item><author>phire</author><text>Hmm... Bitprime have grown since the last time I was paying attention. 20 employees....&lt;p&gt;For some context, a few years ago, they only did OTC trades (you ask for a quote and have a few hours to confirm the price and send the funds), with quite a large minimum of a few thousand. You only really delt with them if you wanted to on-road or off-road large amounts of New Zealand dollars.
They didn&amp;#x27;t even run their own crypto wallets or have any infrastructure. They would just run accounts on larger crypto exchanges (binance?) and manually confirm deposits.&lt;p&gt;Looks like they have updated their process recently to be more automated so they can accept lower minimums, but their process apparently hasn&amp;#x27;t changed. They still don&amp;#x27;t hold customer funds and only trade between crypto and NZD.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s entirely possible they ran into problems because their model isn&amp;#x27;t compatible with large downward volatility. Or maybe an exchange froze their account?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tracer1</author><text>Generally OTC desks are useful for large purchases. Let&amp;#x27;s say you want to acquire $100 million in Bitcoin - you could go to Coinbase and just do it, but you&amp;#x27;d drastically move the market, have a really obvious candlestick, and an observant third party could look for large movements from Coinbase and potentially track your holdings &amp;#x2F; de-anonymize you.&lt;p&gt;An OTC desk can be setup to spread the buy over several days &amp;#x2F; months, buy across markets, and optimize for best price execution. It&amp;#x27;s not necessarily a huge business, but a lot of businesses and high net worth individuals will use these types of services instead of trying to learn the skills themselves.</text></comment>
<story><title>Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money</title><url>https://www.bitprime.co.nz/important-notice-for-all-customers/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>claytonjy</author><text>Who is the target market for such a service?</text></item><item><author>phire</author><text>Hmm... Bitprime have grown since the last time I was paying attention. 20 employees....&lt;p&gt;For some context, a few years ago, they only did OTC trades (you ask for a quote and have a few hours to confirm the price and send the funds), with quite a large minimum of a few thousand. You only really delt with them if you wanted to on-road or off-road large amounts of New Zealand dollars.
They didn&amp;#x27;t even run their own crypto wallets or have any infrastructure. They would just run accounts on larger crypto exchanges (binance?) and manually confirm deposits.&lt;p&gt;Looks like they have updated their process recently to be more automated so they can accept lower minimums, but their process apparently hasn&amp;#x27;t changed. They still don&amp;#x27;t hold customer funds and only trade between crypto and NZD.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s entirely possible they ran into problems because their model isn&amp;#x27;t compatible with large downward volatility. Or maybe an exchange froze their account?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>phire</author><text>There are plenty of crypto exchanges that only deal with crypto. Or only have on&amp;#x2F;off ramps for some local currency that isn&amp;#x27;t really practical for people outside of that one country.&lt;p&gt;Bitprime allowed people in NZ to easily transfer value in and out of those exchanges. Or directly into a wallet for other services (i.e. buying NFTs or paying ransomware), or to hoddle.</text></comment>