ICBIT - New Exchange

[Fireball]

Hello,
let me introduce the new trading platform, called https://icbit.se. There is already a long thread about its Derivatives market section ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50817.msg605807#msg605807 ). However, by reading numerous messages about problems on Mt.Gox and TradeHill, slowness of orders execution, be it web interface or special API (which should be in fact designed to ease server's work), I suspect there is a need in a better, competing exchange.

I constructed the new exchange using my multiple years of experience in the stock and derivatives trading (including HFT, quantative trading), but I tried to make it comfortable for existing traders' practices used by Bitcoin community. My wish for ICBIT is to be considered as the next step of Bitcoin exchanges evolution, something like "Exchange 2.0".

Some of the new architectural features which make ICBIT different from already existing exchanges:

• Advanced, very high-performance trading engine.
• Redis-based data storage for active data and traditional SQL database storage for historic data.
• Real time web trading client. No polling, no slowness, what you see in the web trading client is updated at real time.
• (One very important feature which will make active trading WAY more convinient coming soon... )
• Websocket API.
• Partnership with leading money transfer services for fast and convinient money deposit/withdrawal and key projects in the Bitcoin community (announcements coming soon...).

As I already told in my other topics, ICBIT is a community-driven project, so it evolves according to the demand of the Bitcoin community.

Right now, only Currency Trading section is enabled, Derivatives markets will be the next step after Currency Trading goes live.

HOW TO TRADE.
DISCLAIMER: The trading platform is in beta testing stage, so it obviously may have problems, misbehave or just don't work at a given moment of time. The purpose of this testing is to eliminate as much of problems as possible before going live. Email address for any questions is given at the website's front page.

1. Register at the website (if you haven't already) to obtain global ICBIT authentication credentials.
2. Go to the web trading client (https://icbit.se/WebTrade/).
3. Log in there with your global ICBIT login and password (it's not mandatory to be logged in at the main website).
4. Go to "Funds" tab. Follow on-screen instructions to deposit (or later withdraw) some money.
5. Go to "Currency Trading" tab. Now you can create buy/sell orders, watch the market depth (order book), keep an eye on your waller and a list of orders.

If you encounter any problem, have some useful suggestion - reply to this thread, and I would fix it.

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[finway]

Still have some problems:

[Fireball]

Still have some problems:

Ah thanks, it's same issue we had before. It comes due to intersecting orders from yourself (e.g. you sell 300 for 6.3, and simulteneously you buy 100 for 6.3) - I will deploy an update with the check enabled in about half an hour and reply back here.

[Fireball]

For fun, I just bought 100 of your BTCs for 6.3, and then sold them back to you for 6.2. You made some profit! :-)

I will notify when the intersecting orders update will be live.

[Nefario]

I'll be giving this a try.

[Fireball]

Fixes:
1. Now it's impossible to add an "intersecting" order (e.g. if you have a buy order @ 5 USD, you can't add a limit order sell @ 6, the order will be marked as rejected).
2. Problem with cancelling New or Partially Filled orders is resolved now.

[mc_lovin]

Desktop trading client?  Me likes.

[JusticeForYou]

Watching

[Fireball]

Testing goes quite good so far, thanks a lot for those who took the time to go, test and report the bugs!

I'm working on the remaining things, and one very important and useful feature I will announce when it's ready.

In the meanwhile, the Trading API is being documented as we speak. The specification is available here - http://icbit.se/api . It really resembles MtGox's streaming API a lot, however there are some specific changes (only authenticated users are allowed to connect, it's possible to send out actual commands to put/cancel the order without the need to use slow HTTP POST/GET based API). It would be cool to listen to any comments about this (especially from trading bot authors as they are really concerned with speed and reliability).

[Fireball]

Update: Now Filled and Canceled/Rejected orders will be kept in the Your Orders table for up to 5 minutes. They won't really disappear by themselves, you would need to reload the webpage to make them go away (this is done intentionally, so that while you're trading, you can see your most recent history).

Is this ok by your opinion? Want to propose a different time interval? Filled orders are just moved to a slower/long-term storage, so if needed we could provide an interface to view user's trading history by date for example.

[Fireball]

Doing some maintenance on one of the servers now, so the trading engine is sometimes offline.
For the time being, the frontpage of https://icbit.se got updated with some key ideas behind this trading platform. I hope you like it.

More updates to the engine to come today... (I will post here when they are deployed).

[kakobrekla]

Gmail put your reg. email in spam folder.

[hazek]

Hey Fireball, I want to give you the same suggestion as I gave to cryptoxchange:

Well it would seem like you have all the bases covered when comparing to mtgox and other exchanges yet there's one area that everyone ignores or doesn't think is relevant that could significantly set you apart from everyone else and that's TRANSPARENCY.

Have a transparency page that shows:
-how many users are signed up
-how many of them active in the last 1/7/30 days
-how much fiat is deposited
-how much btc is deposited
-show volume of new deposits for 1/7/30 days periods
-show volume of new withdrawals for 1/7/30 days periods
-show all orders, all of them, none of the dark bs
-show us your entire profit history
-show us the entire costs of running your business
-show us everything, be as transparent as you can without it becoming a security risk


Then you'll really set yourself apart from the rest.

[Fireball]

That's great idea, and in fact I already wanted to do such page, called "statistics". It's a must have information really, and there is nothing to hide. Especially I dislike when small projects start pretending to be huge.

I will comment my thoughts on your table for now, so that people here have the information right away.

-how many users are signed up: About 100, we're just testing the system.
-how many of them active in the last 1/7/30 days: Our system doesn't gather this kind of information.
-how much fiat is deposited: 0 because testing is done with "virtual" money.
-how much btc is deposited: 0 because testing is done with "virtual" money.
-show volume of new deposits for 1/7/30 days periods: Good info to show, I like the idea.
-show volume of new withdrawals for 1/7/30 days periods: Good info to show, I like the idea.
-show all orders, all of them, none of the dark bs: This is already done! Orderbook shows only really existing orders backed up by money in users accounts. Let other players implement dark pools, we don't want to cheat.
-show us your entire profit history: Not good idea, because right now I could show you off tens of thousands of US dollars already spent on the project, and noone would be able to check if that's real or not except me and my partners on this project.
-show us the entire costs of running your business: Not a very good idea, because costs vary a lot. E.g. as for hosting costs, they are available everywhere, and right now ICBIT occupies a few dedicated and some VPS servers. When the load increases, we are going to upgrade servers which experience high load, and also scale horizontally (as the architecture allows this). As for other costs, no reason to tell because noone would be able to check if they are real or not.
-show us everything, be as transparent as you can without it becoming a security risk: I'm all for this, however I'm not going to make hacker's life easier and reveal all of our infrastructure. Maybe with time, I could do this, in some interview or something.

[[Tycho]]

-how much fiat is deposited
-how much btc is deposited

I don't think that it's a good idea because it looks like a security risk.

-show us your entire profit history
-show us the entire costs of running your business

Why do you think that a business should provide such info ?

[hazek]

-show us your entire profit history: Not good idea, because right now I could show you off tens of thousands of US dollars already spent on the project, and noone would be able to check if that's real or not except me and my partners on this project.
-show us the entire costs of running your business: Not a very good idea, because costs vary a lot. E.g. as for hosting costs, they are available everywhere, and right now ICBIT occupies a few dedicated and some VPS servers. When the load increases, we are going to upgrade servers which experience high load, and also scale horizontally (as the architecture allows this). As for other costs, no reason to tell because noone would be able to check if they are real or not.

You need to rethink your positions on these two points because out of all the points I listed these two speak the most to your credibility. If you show you actually made a sizable commitment of your own capital people will have more reasons to trust you and support you. And you can verify your books by getting a reputable 3rd party auditor to audit your figures and verify them for us to see. Same goes for your profits. If we, the users, can see that your business is doing good, that your digging yourself out of the investment hole and have all the incentives to keep your business running (why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, right?) we will have even more confidence in your business and your credibility.

My point is if you do your best to be as transparent as your security allows it, it can only benefit your reputation and your client base and ultimately your success.

[Fireball]

And you can verify your books by getting a reputable 3rd party auditor to audit your figures and verify them for us to see

Who would pay for this, you?

[hazek]

And you can verify your books by getting a reputable 3rd party auditor to audit your figures and verify them for us to see

Who would pay for this, you?

I'm sorry, but that's a part of the cost of running an honest business.

But consider this. You'd have the very first exchange with this type of almost complete transparency. I'm highly confident you'd get a pretty big share of the market very fast and could cover these costs in no time.

[Fireball]

I'm sorry, but that's a part of the cost of running an honest business.

But consider this. You'd have the very first exchange with this type of almost complete transparency. I'm highly confident you'd get a pretty big share of the market very fast and could cover these costs in no time.

Nope.
I fully agree with your other points which would make our exchange the most transparent among existing exchanges, and actually benefit the end-user, with some exceptions, like amount of existing fiat/bitcoin currency is not good as Tycho already suggested, because users are not encouraged to keep money in the exchange, so orderbook will show you approximate value of money "in the market".
However, as for profit/losses reports, it matters only in one specific case: if you're shareholder of the company and you want to ensure your cut of the profit is calculated properly. In any other case, a user of the exchange does not need this information being a user of services provided by the exchange.

Furthermore, from my experience in other big projects, these kind of profits/losses report will only hurt the adoption of the exchange.

[Fireball]

I'm working on attaching payment gateways now and implementing one "tasty" feature (which I left space for in the beginning of the thread). I'll keep updates on the progress here. Testing goes quite good so far.