UPDATED 13:01 EDT / AUGUST 02 2011

NEWS

Fast-Growing Bitcoin Exchange Ruxum to Begin Trading in European Currencies

With all the hullabaloo surrounding Bitcoin and, in particular, Bitcoin exchanges it’s a ripe time for new players to enter into the market and wow people involved in the peer-to-peer virtual currency market. While this mathematically interesting currency concept has been around for a few years, it took it until recently to springboard into the mainstream media and with that attention came a lot of trouble. But as we know, trouble and attention often become the engine of innovation.

Leading the innovation curve, Ruxum Exchange, a swiftly growing Bitcoin exchange seeks to provide a much friendlier face to the extremely rough commodity market of the bitcoin economy. Major factors that have discouraged an even larger interest in the cryptocurrency have been difficulties interfacing with the various exchanges, transferring bitcoins, and actually trusting in the security of the exchanges themselves. In fact, insofar, all the issues that have risen out of the use of bitcoins have been about securing the currency itself from loss and theft and not risen from the mechanism that makes the currency work.

When MtGox, a primary exchange, suffered a hack that nearly blew the wind out of the sails of the virtual currency, a lot of eyes narrowed wondering how exchanges might respond. MtGox responded by tasking themselves to develop a far more secure and bank-like commodity exchange site that would handle a greater concern for security. Then recently the third-largest Bitcoin exchange, Poland-based Bitomat, lost their wallet.dat and a thousands of bitcoins with it due to a technical snafu.

Any new exchange will have to take these events into account and design not only a more secure platform for a bitcoin market but something that people want to keep their hard earned virtual cash in.

Ruxum has big shoes to fill. On their About page, the exchange shows that it understand this, “Ruxum makes it dead simple to buy, sell and trade Bitcoin,” the page reads. “We are dedicated to building the best, most secure and easiest to use multi-currency Bitcoin trading platform on the planet.” Trust will be a huge keyword for any new exchange and if they can manage a more secure platform than others, Ruxum will win the day.

The Next Web quoted Ruxum CEO Chad Pankewitz about the operation, which is slated to become the first exchange to trade in Swiss Francs. While Ruxum is still in private beta (invites pending) they already trade in US Dollars and tomorrow will add a number of Asian currencies (including JPY, SGD, HKD and THB.) After 10 August, they expect to add Euros and Pounds Sterling as well.

“With all these trading markets consolidated in one exchange for the first time, it will give customers and traders brand new opportunities for Bitcoin arbitrage across currencies and global markets,” notes Pankewitz.

“Bitcoin itself is inherently global, it crosses social and language differences allowing anyone, regardless of location or nationality to easily make payments to anyone else in the world. We want to facilitate, extend and enhance this concept by providing a global, multi-currency exchange where people can buy, sell and trade Bitcoin around the world with ease.”

No date is yet set for the exchange to go public.

Meanwhile, as Ruxum is still in private beta, The Next Web is giving away 500 private invitation codes at the bottom of their article (linked here) for people interested in joining. Transaction and trading fees are free during the Ruxum beta.


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