Ruxum, a Bitcoin exchange launched last week by a former Citigroup vice president, is considering brokering short sales and other derivative transactions. But not just yet, founder Chad Pankewitz told Betabeat in an email. 

"Basically, I think that many other pieces of the Bitcoin economy are much more important before USD focused complex derivative products," Mr. Pankewitz wrote. "It needs greater adoption and more frequent usage among both individuals and businesses around the globe. It needs to be easy to buy and sell Bitcoin around the world in people's local currency. It also needs to be easy for businesses to accept, process and deal with Bitcoin. Then the Bitcoin economy will grow and these many markets will get Bitcoin / local currency convertibility, depth and liquidity."

Ruxum has had "a couple" requests for short selling but it's "not seeing massive demand" for Bitcoin derivatives, Mr. Pankewitz said.

The major Bitcoin exchanges stick to strict buy/sell transactions, but that hasn't stopped bearish Bitcoiners from negotiating short sales person-to-person, where the short seller takes a loan with the agreement to pay it back at market price on a certain future date. But the ClearCoin Escrow app allows for Bitcoin options trading (UPDATE: A commenter pointed out that ClearCoin is shut down.) The Chile-based Tradehill exchange has a teaser on its homepage: "Advanced Trading Coming Soon: Margin trading to leverage your profits. Option trading to help you hedge." Mt. Gox, arguably the most prominent Bitcoin exchange despite a highly-publicized flash crash, is also promising that derivatives are on their way.

Mr. Pankewitz. (Photo: LinkedIn)

Ladies and gentleman, we have a third new Bitcoin exchange. "Bitcoin exchanges popping up like daisies!" says the Bitcoin Money blog. About a month after Mt. Gox was hacked and Tradehill.com hit the web, a former Citigroup vice president now based in Canada and China is launching Ruxum Exchange in invite-only beta. The site emphasizes usability and its "Wall Street-level security," according to TechCrunch, and accepts USD, EUR, GBP and JPY with more currencies to come. The site's security is rigorously audited by a third party, according to Ruxum, and it has back-up databases in two separate physical locations and has developed procedures to deal with breaches. Otherwise its security measures are pretty standard: encrypted passwords and data connection, requiring strong passwords, and so on. "These are people who don't fuck around," observed one Reddit user.

Indeed, Ruxum says it's a "small (but growing) multidisciplinary team of 16 and we bring both our passion and our experience to be able to build you the best solutions for virtual goods, both offline and online. In the past, we have built Internet banking, trading and other secure, complex and scalable solutions for Fortune 500 companies on three continents." Founder Chad Pankewitz, the Citigroup VP, also worked as a currency trader. Four years as a low-level Citigroup exec--"head of eBusiness for Europe, Middle East and Africa"--doesn't knock our socks off, but this is is a level of professionalism not present at the other exchanges, whose founders are more geeks and entrepreneurs than finance veterans.

The cyberattack on Mt. Gox and a highly-publicized story of one Bitcoiner whose coins were stolen makes security a good selling point for a new exchange. Based on Ruxum's fees, it appears the exchange is targeting high net Bitcoin worth individuals who don't mind paying extra for peace of mind.

The site also says the exchange will offer short-selling and margin trading in the future--a chilling reminder that Wall Street is not necessarily a good thing to imitate.