What dmix said. Why are you using a throwaway account?

A co-founder relationship is very important, and my willingness to join you on this venture has less to do with your idea and more to do with you. Specifically:

- Who are you, and what have you done?

- What is your professional and personal experience, and what does it bring to the table in a general sense of running a startup, and in a specific sense, this idea of yours.

- Why you? I need to be able to trust my co-founder pretty much absolutely and unquestionably. What is your character and who can vouch for it?

Funnily enough, your idea and the fact that you have a prototype is a fairly minor signal compared to the above.

I know the OP and he's the "real deal." Hard-working, friendly, insightful, and smart. I'd definitely start a company with him if I hadn't already started one last year. So if you've been thinking about starting a startup but don't have a co-founder, shoot him an e-mail!

I'm not currently looking to join a startup. But if I was I would rather have 5 paragraphs about who you are, why you are the right person for this problem and what you bring to the table... with 1-2 paragraphs about the idea. Team = more important than ideas.

What dmix & potatolicious said, plus:

- The killer app in this space is whether you have an answer to "Why can a startup displace the incumbents?" and "How are you going to get people using this?" The answer to the second must be understandable by my dry cleaner, who would not trust bitcoin even if it were issued by the US Treasury. The prototype at this stage is probably about as useful as PayPal's first prototype (which was for a different idea, IIRC). Edit: not hating on Bitcoin, just pointing out that success here will derive in part from expanding its use beyond the core early adopters.

- Work on your writing & proofing. It may seem petty, but you're aiming big so this stuff matters. People (cofounders included) will pay attention to sloppy writing at this stage, using it as a proxy for information they don't yet have about you. Plus, when my cofounder emails senior people at major banks, will I feel compelled to rewrite the emails? Temp accounts plus poor writing => no response.

Hope this helps, and good luck.

I agree that credit cards are going to be displaced, but what is the rationale that the solution requires its own currency? Most transactions are very much within national (or European) boundaries.

I think companies like Venmo, Dwolla and Square (or even PayPal) are well-positioned to becoming credit card alternatives.

So: why Bitcoin/a separate currency?

Conceptually, I believe Bitcoins, or some derivative of them, will change the world. However, after writing a 25 page report on the legality of Bitcoins, I'm convinced the US government will view them as "domestic terrorism."

Yes, you read that correctly.

There are laws that state that anything that can be used to facilitate money laundering OR threaten the US economy is illegal.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm one of the most active Bitcoin fans I know, I think the concept is unbelievable. I just wanted you to know that there might be some additional legal barriers as you can gain traction.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

I hate conspiracy theories as much as the next guy, but there are a few basic principles I follow:

1) When people are making money off of something, they protect that method of making money, and evolve if necessary.

2) There are intricacies to our currency that might not seem immediately obvious. People depend on the discreet nature of physical currency - it controls the entire world of corruption (a lot of movies like to use diamonds as black market currency, but in reality its too difficult to rule out man-made diamonds these days, or to quickly evaluate the worth of a lot of diamonds). Corruption does not occur solely among gangsters, but all manner of people - from the most prolific bankers to the most "reputable" politicians. Digital currency can too easily be traced.

3) The government has made little effort to create its own digital currency, despite the fact that it would save tax payers billions, negating the need for the IRS, Mint, and reduce the need for the FBI and Secret Service (which monitors counterfeiting among other things)...and the corruption associated with physical currency. You might encounter more red tape and inertia than you anticipate -- if not now then when Visa lobbies its favorite candidate to create laws that work against you.

4) Third world countries are not a great target for digital currency IMHO, unless they have prevalent technology and understanding of it.

I don't think alternative currencies have a long-term future. The only reason they exist now is because people and governments in most countries are quite ignorant about technology. Once they become more widely used, they will start causing a whole lot of problems* and will be banned by governments.

The real solutions, in my opinion, have to use real currencies or they will face a severe risk of death by regulation.

* Use for illegal activities.

* Problems with controlling capital flow across national borders.

* Problems with estimating money supply in an economic system etc.

Did you invest in Bitcoin when it was $21, and want to bring that price back up?

Paypal had enormous problems with fraud that almost killed them (and did kill their competitors).

I think Bitcoin is awesome, but it offers users no protection - it's more of a cash replacement than a credit card replacement. This is something that might end up being difficult to handle (something to make sure users will understand).

I like the idea, mainly because its such a big domain and a hard problem. I don't feel however that you should find a cofounder this way. Since this is such a tough domain to begin with, meeting someone and then starting a business together within days is setting yourself up for failure. The idea of changing the world is cool, and may be able to bind people together for the immediate short term, but what happens when you hit the really bad lows in the startup? You haven't known each other for very long, and may split. That being said, I'm sure you have already thought about that, and are ready for that risk. If you are, then god speed and I really do hope you can change the world.

Transferring bitcoin funds is already easy with the GUI. Sure a wrapper around it might make it slightly more user friendly but it's trivially easy to implement. Not to mention the fact that Bitcoin is illegal in most developed countries.

IMO You're better off applying on your own and stating your intention to find a cofounder.

YC does occasionally accept sole-founders who plan to find someone else, as far as I know (I may be wrong) they've never accepted a team which was put together by strangers for the purpose of YC.

YC places a huge emphasis on team (over everything else in the application) and team dynamics play an important part in that. They need to know the team won't fall apart when under pressure as that's one of the main reasons startups fail. If you pair up with someone you've never worked with, then neither you or YC have any indication how the team dynamics will work.

Why are you trying to recruit someone just like you (technical)? You might want to consider looking for someone more on the business dev side, or someone with mad banking knowledge/security chops.

One thing people sometimes don't realize about financial services apps is it is not just the quality of the app that matters, it's how they deal with fraud (chargebacks). This alone destroy most early starters. PayPal succeeded where others failed because they started out trying to solve the problem of online fraud and then pivoted to become an e-wallet.

I don't think you've properly thought this through. Many people have, and there's a reason we still have the system we have today:

How do you handle chargebacks? What about fraud? If you don't properly protect your users, you're not really providing a good service, and you need to make the rules incredibly clear for your merchants, they aren't going to work with you.

How are merchants supposed to respond to the volatility of bitcoin? For a currency that sees semi-wild (compared to standard FOREX) swings in value, they could be waffling between the red and the black on a daily basis. There's no value in holding bitcoins when there are better currencies out there.

Where do you make money? Transactionally? On a flat-fee basis? In loaning out the cash? The problem with banking is that the fractional reserve system has created a risk environment such that you can't make money unless you're leveraging your reserves for lending, and that's an incredibly complex system on its own. The big banks make money because they are vastly huge. How would you move into that scene? Is the intent to be acquired? How do you leverage startup inertia to compete against a company doing hundreds or thousands of times the volume in a day than you'd hope to see in a month?

Just a few questions. Many people have given this particular problem a lot of thought, and none of them have been able to make it work as of yet.

Not fond of the idea and I just did not get inspired nor saw its potential.

For next batch, I applied as lone founder with no-idea, if you did not get in, seems like I might have similar fate.

Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't this just boil down to writing a bitcoin client web app (and/or mobile app)? So you are betting the house on bitcoin becoming popular.

I agree with potatolicious and dmix. Also, what's the difference between "Bitbank", Paypal, Stripe, etc. What makes this idea unique?

I'm gonna call it right now: bad idea. It's not about efficiency, it's about convenience. Plus, what makes you think you math is right? Square only takes 2.75%, and also Amazon is a high-volume, low-margin exception. The long tail is low-volume high-margin, and I doubt you will convince people to radically change payment systems for a lousy 3% savings.

I have a friend of mine who would be a good fit. He is working on a product in the exact same space as you and he has a EU license to act as a payment provider. He's also the kind of person who wants to change the world.

Email me at allhailarnold@gmail.com and I will introduce you to him.

I would also suggest not to make it sound like a job interview. At the moment you have an idea and not much else. If you want to find a cofounder then you need to be the one showing people why they should choose to go with you not the other way around.

Although I'm only slightly interested (don't really have too good of a work ethic :)), I think this is a really interesting space that has plenty of room for innovation. Hope you kill it!

Boy. This is the 60000 dollar question isn't it? Who wants to be my partner? Good luck. I really hope you find them. Taking on the credit card industry is going to be awesome!

a little unfair to tack this response on to this particular post, but it reminds me (again) how much time people spend on the outward appearance of apps around alternative currency without addressing the part that's actually hard.. how do you give an alternative currency real value?

I love all the "aren't the current players going to win this war" posts. That's a HUGE advantage for you: everybody is going to underestimate you and your possible impact.... until it's too late. This isn't a sure bet, not by a long shot, but it's got a good chance of being something as impactful as Square has the potential to be, and that's a big fucking deal y'all.

Because bitcoin worked out so well. Have fun with that, dude.

No thanks. I'd rather sell sugared water.