These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) form a binding agreement between you and SlabStake, the business that operates the SlabStake platform and its related services (the “Service”). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.
- You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract.
- One account per person. You may hold only one account. To trade shares with other members, to withdraw funds or to list a card of your own, you must complete identity verification. We may restrict or close a duplicate or unverifiable account.
- You are responsible for the accuracy of the information you provide and for all activity under your account, including keeping your password confidential. Notify us at once of any unauthorized use.
- Usernames. You may choose an optional public username. It must not impersonate anyone, a brand or SlabStake staff included, and it must not be misleading or offensive. We may remove or reclaim a username at any time; your account code is unaffected.
- You may not use the Service where doing so would violate applicable law. We do not offer the Service to residents of countries under comprehensive sanctions, at present Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Syria, and that list may change.
- The Service is not available yet to residents of the United States or its territories. Each member confirms the country on their identity document when they verify, and a connection from the United States cannot add money or buy shares. A member who moves there keeps their account and may withdraw their balance.
SlabStake lets members hold a US dollar cash balance, funded by cryptocurrency deposits, and acquire fractional shares that represent a beneficial interest in specific PSA-graded trading cards held in custody at a third-party vault. Most cards are listings we source from a public marketplace and buy once members have funded them. SlabStake also sells shares of cards it already owns, from its own vault. A verified member may list a card of their own when that feature is open. Once a card is vaulted, holders of a majority of its shares may support selling it, and on a sale the net proceeds are distributed to holders in proportion to their shares, rounded to the nearest cent.
A “share” is a unit of beneficial interest in a specific card, administered through the Service. It is not a share of stock in SlabStake or in any company, it is not a deposit or a bank account, it is not insured by any deposit-insurance scheme, and it confers no ownership right in SlabStake itself and no vote in it. Your rights are the ones these Terms describe.
- Deposits. When you send a supported cryptocurrency to a deposit address we issue to you, our processor converts it to a US dollar stablecoin and we credit your balance with the amount that conversion produces, after the processor’s fees. A stablecoin pegged to the US dollar is credited at face value. The rate is the one obtained at conversion, normally within minutes of your coins arriving; we do not fix a rate at the moment you send. A credited balance does not change with later movements in cryptocurrency prices.
- Cash balance. Your balance is recorded in US dollars and is spendable only within the Service or by withdrawal. We may hold the corresponding value in stablecoins or other assets; you have a claim to your recorded US dollar balance, subject to these Terms, and to no particular asset.
- Withdrawals. You may withdraw your available balance as a supported cryptocurrency to a wallet address you control, subject to a minimum of US$5 and to a rolling limit of US$500.00 in any 24 hours. Once submitted, a withdrawal is sent automatically and cannot be cancelled, like any transfer on a blockchain. USDC on a supported network is sent without a conversion fee. Any other coin, USDT included, is bought at the rate obtained at the time of sending and a conversion fee of 0.5% applies. The network fee is deducted in every case, so the amount that lands is your US dollar amount less those costs. We may decline or delay a request before it is sent while identity verification is incomplete or on hold, or for a security or legal reason. You are responsible for the accuracy of the address you give.
- We do not pay interest on balances. We are not a bank, and we are not a fiduciary except to the limited extent applicable law requires.
- Pledging to a card. While a card we source is funding, you pledge toward its funding target from your cash balance, and a platform fee of 5% is added on top of the pledge and held with it. Until the card is fully funded, you may cancel all of your pledge, or any part of it that leaves at least the minimum pledge in place, and the amount is returned to your balance with its fee. Once a card is fully funded, a pledge can no longer be cancelled, including while funding is reopened to raise a higher cost.
- Shares are issued at the real cost. After we buy a card, we record what it actually cost at checkout and issue its shares at that cost: one share for each dollar, owned to the cent. Each backer receives shares in proportion to their pledge, rounded down to the nearest hundredth of a share, and the fee is charged only on the part of a pledge that became shares. Any part of a pledge that did not become shares is returned to your balance with its fee. SlabStake buys and holds the fractions of a share that this rounding leaves unallocated. Where the card cost more than its target, SlabStake may cover the difference up to a limit and holds the shares that difference bought. Above that limit, we may still cover the difference or reopen funding for the rest for a limited time. Otherwise we cancel the card and return every pledge in full with its fee.
- Changes to the listing before we buy. A card we source tracks a live marketplace listing until we buy it. If that listing ends before we buy, or its price goes up while the card is still funding, the card fails and every pledge is returned in full with its fee. A higher price found once the card is fully funded is treated as a cost above the target, as described above. If the price goes down while the card is funding, the funding target is lowered and every pledge stays as it is; whatever the card then does not need is returned when its shares are issued.
- Custody. Once a card is fully funded, we acquire the physical card and place it in third-party custody. The public custody log records each step. We do not guarantee a particular custodian or a timeline, and a custody arrangement may change.
- Cards from SlabStake’s own vault. SlabStake also offers shares of cards it already owns. Those shares are placed in the card’s order book at US$1.00 per share when the card is listed, plus a buyer fee of 1%, and the money goes to SlabStake as the seller. SlabStake may change that price later, and buying opens once the slab is in the vault. SlabStake holds the shares that are not bought and takes no part in any vote to sell the card. For its shares it receives the same proportion of the net sale proceeds as any other holder. SlabStake may close the offering early and keep the remainder.
- Cards listed by members. When that feature is open, a verified member may list a card of their own at a price they set. Before vault intake, buyers pledge at that price, with a buyer fee of 1% on top. A pledge to a member’s listing cannot be cancelled, and it becomes shares at vault intake. After intake, any shares still on offer are sold from the seller’s ask in the order book, with the same buyer fee. The seller’s obligations are in Section 6 and in the .
- Exit by majority support. Once a card is vaulted, if holders of more than half of its shares support a sale, the card moves toward sale. The majority is measured against all of the card’s shares, including those SlabStake holds, which never vote, so where SlabStake holds shares of a card, members can force a sale only once they hold a majority of the whole card. Shares a member seller still offers from their own listing do not vote either. On completion, the net proceeds (the sale price less the disclosed fees and costs) are paid to each holder in proportion to their shares, rounded to the nearest cent, and SlabStake takes or makes up the difference the rounding leaves.
- Funding failures. If a card cannot be bought, we cancel it and return every pledge in full with its fee. If a card we bought is lost before it is vaulted, each holder is refunded what their shares cost them, fee included, credited to their balance.
- Listing your own card (consignment). A verified member may list a PSA-graded card they own. The seller sets the price and how much of the card is for sale, keeping at most a third, and chooses to ship it to the vault either at once or once the offered portion is fully pledged. A card already held in a PSA Vault may instead be transferred vault-to-vault to SlabStake’s PSA account. Each route runs within three business days of its start. Until vault intake confirms the card, title and risk stay with the seller. Buyers’ pledges are held in escrow and released to the seller, less the seller fee, at intake, when the buyers’ shares are issued. After intake, each share bought from the seller’s ask pays the seller at once, less the same fee. If the card is not shipped in time, or does not pass intake for any reason, including that it does not match the listing, the listing is cancelled and every pledge is refunded in full with its fee. The full rules are the Seller policy, which the seller accepts when listing.
Every fee is shown in the Service before you commit to a transaction, in a card’s funding breakdown or in the confirmation step. At present the fees are:
- Funding a sourced card. The funding target is the listing price plus a shipping estimate of US$5.99. Sales tax is not charged on these purchases at present; if that changes, the target will include it. A platform fee of 5% is added on top of each pledge, and it is charged only on the part of the pledge that becomes shares.
- Buyer fees. 1% on shares bought from SlabStake, and 1% on a pledge to a member’s listing or on shares bought from that seller’s ask after intake, in each case on top of the price.
- Seller fees, deducted from what a member listing a card receives: 3% when the card ships at once and 5% when it ships once sold. A vault-to-vault transfer bears 2%.
- Deposits and withdrawals. We charge no fee on a deposit; the processor’s own fees are deducted before your balance is credited. A withdrawal bears the conversion fee and the network fee described in Section 4.
- Trades between members. None at present.
We may change a fee for future transactions by updating this page and, for a material change, by notice. A fee already applied to a completed transaction is final except where these Terms say otherwise. The fees on a card are fixed when it is listed, so a later change never applies to a card already funding or funded.
You agree not to:
- create more than one account, impersonate anyone or provide false identity information;
- engage in wash trading or price manipulation, or attempt in any other way to distort valuations or the market;
- use the Service for money laundering or terrorist financing, or for any other unlawful purpose;
- act on behalf of a sanctioned person;
- attempt to access accounts or data that are not yours, probe or circumvent security, scrape at scale or interfere with the operation of the Service;
- reverse engineer or resell the Service, or misuse its content.
Buying fractional shares of collectible cards involves substantial risk. By using the Service, you acknowledge and accept that:
- You can lose money, up to the entire amount you put in. Collectible values are volatile and can fall to little or nothing.
- Shares are illiquid. There may be no buyer when you want to sell, and you cannot force a sale of a card except through the majority-support process. Trading is restricted until a card is vaulted.
- No guaranteed return, value or buyback. Displayed valuations are estimates. SlabStake does not guarantee any resale price and does not repurchase your shares.
- SlabStake sells too. On a card from its own vault, SlabStake is the seller and sets the price, and it keeps what is not bought. Its interest in that card is not the same as yours.
- Cryptocurrency risk. Deposits and withdrawals use cryptocurrency, which is volatile, and blockchain transactions are irreversible.
- Custody and counterparty risk. The physical card, deposited funds and third-party providers each carry a risk of loss, damage, insolvency or failure that may not be fully insured.
- Regulatory risk. The legal treatment of fractional collectible interests is evolving and may change in ways that affect the Service or your holdings.
Nothing in the Service is investment, financial, legal or tax advice, and no content is a recommendation to buy or sell. We are not your broker or adviser, and we owe you no fiduciary duty except where the law imposes one. You alone are responsible for your decisions, and you should seek independent professional advice.
We may verify your identity and the source of your funds. We may suspend or close an account, or restrict it, and withhold actions such as trading or withdrawals, where we reasonably believe this is necessary to comply with law or to prevent fraud or market abuse, where there is a security risk, or because of a breach of these Terms. A suspension does not by itself forfeit the balance or the shares you legitimately hold; we return legitimately held value in accordance with applicable law and these Terms, subject to any legal hold. Staff never see or set your password; account recovery is by the emailed reset link only.
The Service, including its software, design, logos and content (excluding third-party and member content), is owned by SlabStake or its licensors and is protected by law. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the Service for its intended personal purpose. You retain the rights to content you upload, and you grant us a licence to host and display it as needed to operate the Service.
The Service relies on third parties, among them a cryptocurrency payment and custody processor, an identity-verification provider, hosting providers, an email provider and card-data sources. Your use of those services may be subject to their own terms, and we are not responsible for their acts, omissions, outages or content.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, statutory ones included, among them the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement, and any warranty as to the accuracy of valuations, availability or uninterrupted or error-free operation. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties, so some of these exclusions may not apply to you.
To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, SlabStake and its directors, officers, employees and agents are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any lost profit or value, or any loss of data, arising out of or relating to the Service, even if advised of the possibility. To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability for all claims relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of the total fees you paid to us in the twelve months before the claim and one hundred Canadian dollars. Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits a liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including under Quebec consumer-protection law.
You agree to indemnify and hold harmless SlabStake and its personnel from claims and losses, and from the expenses of defending them, including reasonable legal fees, arising out of your breach of these Terms or your misuse of the Service, and out of any violation of law or of a third party’s rights on your part, except to the extent caused by our own fault where such an exclusion is not permitted by law.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Quebec and the applicable laws of Canada, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules. We are based in Quebec, Canada. We try to resolve any dispute informally first, so please contact us. Where permitted by applicable law, the parties agree to resolve disputes in the courts of the Province of Quebec sitting in the judicial district of our head office.
Consumers’ rights are preserved. If you are a consumer resident in Quebec, nothing in these Terms deprives you of your rights under the Consumer Protection Act or other mandatory law, including your right to bring or take part in proceedings before the competent authorities and courts. Provisions of these Terms apply only to the extent that law permits.
- Changes. We may update these Terms from time to time. A material change is signalled by an updated “Last updated” date and by notice through the Service or by email. Continued use after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.
- Termination. You may stop using the Service at any time, and you may close your account from Settings once it holds no balance or shares and has no open pledge, open order, pending withdrawal or live listing. We may suspend or terminate access as described in Section 10 or where required by law. Sections that by their nature should survive (including 9, 11 and 13 to 16) survive termination.
- General. If a provision is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them in connection with a business transfer. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy and, for a seller, the Seller policy, are the entire agreement between us about the Service. We are not liable for a failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
- Language. The parties have requested that these Terms and related documents be drawn up in English. / Les parties ont demandé que ces conditions et les documents s’y rattachant soient rédigés en anglais.
Questions about these Terms? Email us at [email protected]. If you have an account, the fastest route is in-app support, which reaches the same people and keeps your thread together.
These Terms are provided for general information and do not constitute legal advice. Nothing on SlabStake is investment advice. See also our Privacy Policy.
