Risks

Transactions are final

Blockchain transactions cannot be reversed, cancelled or refunded once they confirm, by us or anyone else. If you send funds or a card to the wrong address, or approve a transaction you did not intend, it is almost always lost. RareTrader never holds your assets, so it cannot recover them.

You sign every transaction

RareTrader prepares transactions and checks them against what it shows you, such as the card, price, recipient and fee, before asking your wallet to sign. Those checks reduce mistakes but cannot rule out every error, so read each request in your wallet before you approve it. RareTrader will never ask for your seed phrase or your wallet’s private key.

Buying from a Counterparty dispenser

A dispenser can close, sell out or change before your payment confirms, for example if someone else buys first. The bitcoin you sent can then be lost without the card being delivered. A stock check cannot remove this risk, which is why the dispenser purchase asks you to confirm you understand it.

Listings and offers

• A listing can be bought, cancelled or expire between the moment you see it and the moment you sign.
• A failed or out-of-date transaction can still cost network fees.
• An offer can be accepted at any time until it expires or you cancel it; cancelling also costs a network fee.
• Making an offer may wrap ETH into WETH and approve it for OpenSea’s contracts.

Fees

Network fees change with demand, can be high, and are usually paid even when a transaction fails. A transaction with a low fee can wait a long time to confirm. Marketplace fees and Emblem’s claim fee are set by those services. RareTrader itself charges no fee.

Wrapped and native cards

Each card exists as a Counterparty asset on Bitcoin, and may also be wrapped in an Emblem Vault token on Ethereum. These are different assets on different chains, with different markets and prices, and moving between them depends on Emblem Vault’s systems.

Unvaulting

• Unvaulting claims a vault through Emblem, reveals the vault’s private key in your browser, and uses it to send the card to the Bitcoin address you enter. Anyone who has that key controls whatever is still in the vault’s address.
• It depends on Emblem Vault and on a third-party key-signing service. If either is unavailable or behaves unexpectedly, an unvault can be delayed or fail partway through.
• Claiming burns the vault token and is irreversible. Sending requires bitcoin for the network fee, and a wrong destination address means the card is lost.

Prices and information

• Market data comes from blockchains and third parties and can be delayed, incomplete or wrong. Floors are the cheapest current listing, which can be an unusual price. Floor cap and portfolio values are estimates, not valuations.
• Conversions between BTC, ETH, XCP and other tokens use exchange rates that can be out of date.
• Some cards are divisible and trade in fractions; a tiny fraction can show a misleading price per card.

Market and technology risk

• Collectible cards can be illiquid and volatile, and can lose all of their value.
• Blockchains, smart contracts, marketplaces, wallets and RareTrader itself can have bugs, outages or security problems, and blockchains can reorganize recent blocks.

Your responsibilities

Keep your wallet and keys secure, check every transaction, and make sure your trading is lawful where you live. You are responsible for any taxes. Nothing on RareTrader is financial, investment, legal or tax advice.