Y Combinator-backed startup San Francisco Open Exchange (SFOX) is an online trading platform that helps people find the best bitcoin prices at various exchanges. In other words, it would like to help you buy, sell and invest in bitcoin exchanges kinda like and investor buys and sells stock on E-Trade. Co-founder Akbar Thobhani left his job at Airbnb to create this platform. He started thinking that if he could find a way to compare prices this would help drive widespread adoption for the bitcoin market. There are similar systems that directly buy and sell. CampBX, based in Atlanta, is one of many hundreds of exchanges out there that allow buying and selling.
Although, Thobhani says CampBX is a different business because it’s just one exchange on a closed system. “Our goal is simple – find our customers the best price for their bitcoin. To do this, we work with multiple exchanges and use our algorithms to route the transactions,” Thobhani explained in an email. The key thing to understand here is that SFOX does not actually allow you to buy or sell bitcoin directly, like CampBX or other exchanges.
Rather, it is a platform which facilitates finding the best price on these exchanges. There’s also the btcReport app for iOS. However, this app merely shares information about the different prices on different exchanges. It does not allow someone to actually buy or sell bitcoin. This is what makes SFOX unique in the market.
It actually finds the prices on different exchanges and then, like a stock exchange platform, facilitates the trade. It also allows you to use standard equity trading features like limit orders, just like someone might find on a platform like E-Trade or Charles Schwabb. Another thing that SFOX attempts to solve is the location of where the exchanges exist. According to SFOX, 90 percent of all bitcoin trades are done in the U.S.
However, the most popular exchanges like Bitstamp and BTC-e are based outside of the U.S.
