Disclaimer: Do not take this as financial advice. I may or may not hold shares in any of these markets at any time. You should always do your own research before investing anywhere in any currency. Bitcoin and Litecoin stock markets are by nature unregulated and thus carries a significant risk in addition to traditional market. Please review the terms and conditions for each exchange carefully.
Be very, very careful about investing anywhere.
There, those disclaimers should indicate the seriousness with which you should take investing, especially when you are investing in Bitcoin and Litecoin shares.
With the recent rise in ASICMiner share prices, interest in cryptocurrency investing has increased and people are looking very hard for the next ASICMiner company.
However, you can’t research or invest anything unless you know where to go to find those shares, so allow me to give you a brief overview of the various market places.
Major Exchanges
At the time of this writing, there are four major cryptocurrency exchanges that offer a variety of investment options. All of the exchanges offer regular shares and some offer options and futures as well.
MPEx
MPEx has been around the block longer than any of the other exchanges that are currently in existence. Run by the arguably eccentric Mircea Popescu and sporting a user interface that would make a new investor cry blood. MPEx also requires a hefty fee for joining the exchange, currently at 30 BTC. The owner argues this keeps inexperienced investors away and maintains a high degree of seriousness among those that choose to trade here.
However, what MPEx lacks in beauty and user friendliness, it more than makes up for in volume and stability. MPEx offers trades in three shares only, including itself, but additionally offers options and futures trading on the BTC/USD exchange price, which is very useful in volatile times. Further, MPEx has a strict vetting policy for new listings, requiring a thorough review of new listings more like traditional stock exchanges.
Site: https://mpex.co/
Bitcoin Trading Corporation
On the face of it, the Bitcoin Trading Corporation, or BTCT, has a much higher volume than MPEx. However, at the time of this writing, the majority of that volume comes from ASICMiner Pass-Through trades.
Note: To learn more about pass-through shares, check out my article on How to Buy ASICMiner Shares.
BTCT sports a nice, clean interface, with security features such as two-factor authentication for bids, asks, withdrawals, and account changes. The exchange has a modest range of available shares, including the ever so famous ASICMiner pass-through shares, as well as pass-through shares to all the MPEx shares.
BTCT also offers option trading and a dividend reinvestment plan to turn your dividends into new shares automatically.
Site: https://btct.co/
Bitfunder
If variety of shares is what you favor most, then Bitfunder offers more shares than any other exchange currently on the market, including ASICMiner pass-through shares. Bitfunder also has pass-through shares to the MPEx shares and currently offers trades in more than 30 different stock.
Bitfunder’s interface is clean and fresh and offers multiple charting options giving you more options than the other exchanges. On the negative side, the funding process of Bitfunder is somewhat quirky and requires you to register an account with a different provider to which you will send your funds. As such, the process for trading shares is more cumbersome than BTCT although it is far easier than MPEx.
Site: https://bitfunder.com/
Note: Just as a reminder, please review each site’s terms and policies before you invest anywhere.
Litecoin Global Exchange
The only major, and I say major in the most generous sense, Litecoin stock exchange in the world, is the Litecoin Global Exchange, or LTCG. This exchange resembles BTCT quite a lot, and the simple reason for that is that the same person runs both exchanges. In fact, LTCG owns BTCT, despite the latter being orders of magnitude larger than the former.
Litecoin shares comprise a much smaller market than its big brother Bitcoin, but can still offer viable investments. Several shares traded on LTCG are pass-through shares to Bitcoin-denominated assets (like MPEx and SDICE) which complicate the process of determining the correct price. However, if carefully planned, this can serve as a hedge against volatility in the BTC/LTC exchange rate.
The features of LTCG closely resemble that of BTCT. LTCG offers around 30 shares for trade, including several mining companies and the exchange itself.
Site: https://www.litecoinglobal.com/
Minor Exchanges
In addition to the major exchanges, there are some smaller exchanges that offer very interesting shares too.
Picostocks
Picostocks is the brainchild of a small group of people that want to help hi-tech companies get public funding. Currently, only three companies are listed, including the exchange itself. The other two companies is a pharmaceutical company (Proteon Pharmaceuticals) and a mining company (100TH).
The user experience of Picostocks is in tune with the idea behind Bitcoin, with anonymous but public ledgers of all trades. This allows traders to look into the holdings of any other trader but without knowing the identity of that trader. The idea is that learning how the best traders work will help others learn as well, creating an informed user base.
Update: A word of warning, though, and a clear indication of how unregulated the Bitcoin stock market is. When a certain piece of good news comes through on Picostocks, the stock exchange itself has a tendency to dump large amounts of shares in the market, preventing any reward for risk-taking on this exchange.
As such, I cannot really recommend anyone investing on Picostocks.com as you can be certain that the reward you would normally get for accepting risk will be taken away.
Site: https://www.picostocks.com/
Havelock
Havelock Investments is a small exchange, both in volume and share diversity. However, it does offer pass-through shares to other shares, including a 1/100 pass-through to ASICMiner.
In addition, the Havelock user experience is very neat and looks extremely professional. While this may be unimportant to share prices, a smooth operation is important to get the right share for the right price and the right time.
Havelock also offers direct import of S.DICE (SatoshiDice) shares from MPEx, sports an optional two-factor authentication, lists IPOs separately from other shares, and shows financial reports for all assets that have them available.
Site: https://www.havelockinvestments.com/
What Else?
You know that disclaimed I stated in the beginning? Read it. In fact, to make it easier for you, I’ll repeat it right here:
Disclaimer: Do not take this as financial advice. I may or may not hold shares in any of these markets at any time. You should always do your own research before investing anywhere in any currency. Bitcoin and Litecoin stock markets are by nature unregulated and thus carries a significant risk in addition to traditional market. Please review the terms and conditions for each exchange carefully.
