[jboggan]

You're really not. I created Bitfuture two years ago, which did exactly what this site purports to do. Derivabit did the same thing. Writing a platform that does this isn't that hard, getting legal approval is the main hurdle followed by having sufficient money in your market to make it liquid. Derivabit and I both decided to hang it up two years ago when Tera Exchange seemingly made it over the fence and got provisional CFTC approval, but that didn't stop them from being sued and settling [0].

Good luck staying off the radar. I think it's an insurmountable chicken-and-egg problem. If you are going to have enough money to fight your way through the inevitable jurisdictional battles you would have had to start this pre-Mt. Gox to get big enough to survive.

On another note - no one actually wants to hedge their Bitcoin. They are buying it as a highly speculative instrument already, even the players with supposedly large transactional demand for it.

0 - http://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/pr7240-15