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“Banclist.com is probably the most lucrative direct messaging platform”

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Re: “Banclist.com is probably the most lucrative direct messaging platform”

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the scope seems rather narrow, and the technical requirements about on par with a mailing list.

Their sole innovation over that is that they realized neutrality and being a third party is valuable because of regulation. Haha, this is pretty clever.

Similarly, there is a business computing custom indices that a bank uses in products. The bank is perfectly capable of computing the index itself, but it needs to be handled by a third party that is paid handsomely to just re-calculate what the bank already calculated.

Re: “Banclist.com is probably the most lucrative direct messaging platform”

#22

Are there any effective strategies for searching out profitable parasitic niches like this? Looking around the corners of big heavily regulated industries? Healthcare, real estate, finance?

Immersion. Work in the industry at a position where you're likely to encounter inefficiencies. In healthcare, for example, you can't spit without hitting an optimization opportunity. Working midlevel can mean you get to see low-level workers hacking around bureaucracy and management wringing their hands about money and budgets and such.

Taking a job in an industry to get access to its seedy underbelly isn't super appealing to most founders, but for some ossified industries there's really no other way to find those golden opportunities.

Oh, and be patient. Practice being a mouthless set of ears.

Re: “Banclist.com is probably the most lucrative direct messaging platform”

#23

This is an example of what happens when a field is over-regulated. You have these obtuse solutions working around a problem that is only hard because of lawyers and 500 regulations to "protect investors". People were able to hack together exchanges for crypto-coins. The only thing that stands in the way of doing this for private stock/tiny companies is excessive regulation. I'm not saying we want the whole crypto exp…

What about BancList indicates that the field is over-regulated

Re: “Banclist.com is probably the most lucrative direct messaging platform”

#25
post #14
post #2

It actually was a little difficult to figure out what this business is about from their website, but their LinkedIn is comprehensive enough: “Overview Non-publicly held banks are facing increasing risks when they maintain a private list of their shareholders. Sharing unpublished information about the bank’s stock with a few shareholders exposes the bank, its management and directors to potentially serious liability.…

Why banks specifically? Doesn't every private company with multiple shareholders have the same problem? Or is the legal situation for a bank different?

The BancList about page explains that they serve privately held companies as well. "BancList (www.banclist.com) helps shareholders of privately held financial institutions as well as other privately held companies and organizations communicate with each other via a 24/7 online platform..."

https://banclist.com/about-us

Re: “Banclist.com is probably the most lucrative direct messaging platform”

#26
post #23

This is an example of what happens when a field is over-regulated. You have these obtuse solutions working around a problem that is only hard because of lawyers and 500 regulations to "protect investors". People were able to hack together exchanges for crypto-coins. The only thing that stands in the way of doing this for private stock/tiny companies is excessive regulation. I'm not saying we want the whole crypto exp…

What about BancList indicates that the field is over-regulated

The fact that it's called "BancList"?

Re: “Banclist.com is probably the most lucrative direct messaging platform”

#27

This is an example of what happens when a field is over-regulated. You have these obtuse solutions working around a problem that is only hard because of lawyers and 500 regulations to "protect investors". People were able to hack together exchanges for crypto-coins. The only thing that stands in the way of doing this for private stock/tiny companies is excessive regulation. I'm not saying we want the whole crypto exp…

Many people would argue that the financial industry is not regulated enough.

People were able to hack together exchanges for crypto-coins. The only thing that stands in the way of doing this for private stock/tiny companies is excessive regulation.

Crypto exchanges are examples of how to create a financial system that lacks security (both the technical and financial kinds) and trust. It's an example of how NOT to do things. Crypto exchanges act as broker, exchange, clearinghouse, depository and trustee. And do none of these very well.

In the regulated world, exchanges do not hold your assets. There is nothing "on deposit". Your broker (who holds your cash assets instead) is insured. Brokers don't even typically hold your securities, they just track your positions. The security assets themselves are held at depository institutions. Etc, etc. This system is not by accident. It was developed through a long history of trial and error to minimize the impact of fraud, abuse, bankruptcies, etc.

I'll be the first to recognize that most financial regulators have been very slow to adopt to the crypto world. That's because so many crypto tokens are either not securities or quasi securities and thus defy easy classification. Thus some old rules don't really apply well. They're also paranoid about money laundering, which doesn't help.

The software aspects of setting up exchanges are challenging but ultimately not the hard part. I guess my point is that just because something is easy to do doesn't mean it should be done.

Re: “Banclist.com is probably the most lucrative direct messaging platform”

#28

Are there any effective strategies for searching out profitable parasitic niches like this? Looking around the corners of big heavily regulated industries? Healthcare, real estate, finance?

Yes. Become and expert in the field by spending many years working in it in many different roles.

From the outside? Probably not.

Re: “Banclist.com is probably the most lucrative direct messaging platform”

#29
post #6

> Thus BancList (spelling absolutely intentional, because even the K is regulated and I am absolutely not joking about that fact). No, he's not joking. Even the font size is regulated. I ran into that as an employee of a commodities trader. I'm not sure if the choice of font is regulated but it wouldn't be surprising.

When I worked on a site for mutual funds years ago, we couldn't use green-color text because it could be considered as implying that the person reading it would make money.

Commodity trading platforms are forced by the CFTC(commodity trading regulating body) to represent bids with a blue color, for exactly the same reason. If the bids are green, someone might make the argument that you would profit from bidding more than selling.

Re: “Banclist.com is probably the most lucrative direct messaging platform”

#30
> Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS) OpenSSL/1.0.1e-fips mod_fcgid/2.3.9 PHP/5.4.16 mod_python/3.5.0- Python/2.7.5

Eek! I wouldn't trust them with my data if I was a bank. They haven't updated their server since 2013. All of the versions listed in that header have major vulns. This is a disaster waiting to happen.

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