TorBroker - The Silk Road of Stock Brokers

A daring new service, "TorBroker," was quietly announced in the gambling (how ironic) sub-forum of bitcointalk.org last week.

TorBroker does for securities trading what Silk Road did for the drug trade, allowing users to buy and sell any of nearly 1000 stocks and ETFs anonymously and under the cover of the Tor network. Users fund their accounts with Bitcoin and pay a 1% fee to buy and sell securities.

The main selling points of the service are that users can access publicly traded securities without providing any identifying information, not even an email address, while masking their IP addresses through the Tor network, and of course, dodging capital gains taxes. Trades can only be executed at the opening bell, so day traders won't find this service overly useful.

Can you trust TorBroker to not run away with your Bitcoins? Well, there's an interesting answer, with a dramatic Bitcoin twist. Roger Ver, a.k.a. "Bitcoin Jesus," was contacted by the creators of TorBroker and was asked if he'd be willing to hold 1000 BTC as a security bond that could be used to pay back users in the event that TorBroker disappeared. Here's the full quote:

"I don't know TorBroker or any of the people behind it, but about a month and a half ago they contacted me, and at least one other well known member of the Bitcoin community, and asked us to publicly hold 1,000 BTC as a security bond that would be used to refund customers if TorBroker ever disappeared with their customers money.

While I fully support TorBroker's efforts to bring additional economic freedom to traditional financial markets, legally it didn't seem safe for me to be the front man for this.

The fact that they were looking for someone to hold this bond seems to be a strong indication that they are in this for the long term, and do not intend to disappear with everyone's money.

If the regulators are able to uncover the true identities of the TorBroker accounts, I am sure that they (the regulators) will steal everyone's money though.

I wish TorBroker the best of luck,  and financial tyrants the worst."

No doubt, if the Silk Road has pissed off the FBI, TorBroker is really going to get the SEC's skivvies in a knot!

TorBroker can be accessed with the Tor Browser at http://torbrokerge7zxgq.onion.

Posted in: silk road,Tor,TorBroker