Vault of Satoshi Rolls Out New Altcoin Support

Canadian digital currency exchange Vault of Satoshi will announce a plethora of new features today, including more verification options, coin-to-coin trading, and support for several new coins.

The exchange, which opened its doors in October, has eased its verification procedures, said founder Mike Curry. It previously had two verification states for customers: verified and unverified. As of today, it offers four.

The unverified status (which essentially stops you doing anything significant on the site) still exists. But requirements for its basic level of verification have dropped from two pieces of photo ID to one. You can then trade up to $9500 per week.

In addition, it has introduced an elevated level, with bill payment capabilities, allowing people to trade up to $15,000 per week in the first month, rising over time. Finally, a fourth level for "serious" traders (of which it has around 25) enables them to deposit and withdraw up to $100,000 per week.

It has managed to reduce its verification requirements thanks in part to a deal with Equifax, which has provided it with access to its API, to help with KYC and AML procedures.

New altcoin support

Curry also told CoinDesk that Vault of Satoshi will now be supporting several more coins, one of which is the seven week-old dogecoin. Also now on the books are namecoin, quarkcoin, feathercoin, and Sunny King's prime number-busting primecoin. These join its existing bitcoin, litecoin and peercoin portfolio.

Vault of Satoshi always planned to add support for more altcoins. It ignores those outside of the top 20 in market capitalization, said Curry. Of those inside, it tends to go by "gut feel" and market interest when choosing which to support.

"It's become more than a joke, to one of the top five most important coins right now. It has some interesting attributes," Curry said of dogecoin, pointing to the fact that all of them are scheduled to be mined by 2015. "We're going to be able to see what happens to a coin after its creation ends."

Among those soon to be supported by the exchange are Marketcoin, and Nxt. However, these are taking considerably more work due to their fundamentally different architectures, he said.

Within the next two weeks, Vault of Satoshi will be introducing coin-to-coin trades, which will make it easier to trade between altcoins without having to drop back into fiat currency first.

The company, which started in Curry's basement, now has a 2000 square foot office, and ten employees. It is taking attempting to cement itself as the number two in the Canadian market behind incumbent Calgary-based exchange Virtex, and is also rolling out a Canadian order book. This will enable it to process orders directly in Canadian dollars, rather than dealing in US fiat, making life easier for Canadian traders, which make up 72% of its volume.

Finally, it is introducing basic charting facilities, which will become more sophisticated over time. It will start with a single page charting system, but will introduce charts based on other exchanges' data over time.

"I'd like the relationship to go further than just having our competitors' names on the charts. We'd like to conduct remote trading from Vault of Satoshi", Curry said. Trading on other exchanges from Vault of Satoshi would reduce bitcoin traders' information footprint, he said.

"We're working with a couple of exchanges right now so that if you're verified with us, you can have an anonymous ID to trade with somebody else."

Canada image via Shutterstock