Bitcoin Forum

It doesn't let people go to sleep, which is why the currency is so unstable in my opinion.

When people can't go home for dinner, they stay till late :).

Which timezone's daylight hours do you think trading should be tied to?

The currency is unstable because it is a small market. Look at any small market and you will see similar stuff. It hardly has to do with being open 24hours a day.

But maybe I am wrong and you are right. If you really feel like a non 24hr exchange market is the way to go you can open one and maybe you will find out that a lot of people think like you and will use your service.

I'm all for it! Let's close all trading platform when it's night here in Europe. So you guys in the US better sleep during the day so that you can trade in the night.

It can be tied to whichever individual exchanger is running it. I'm am not saying that this should be a rule or law, but it should definately be a choice for investors. If I had the money I would start a scheduled trade site right now.. I know that there are many people who would be attracted to the idea of a "break" from trading. I am on EST zone so therefore my exchange site would be open from 8AM-8PM. Like I said wish I had the cash to backup the trades, I would start building right now.

Europeans trade in the NASDAQ even though it's only open during USA work hours. The point is irrelevant.

Yes, the same way how people in the US trade at European exchanges, even though it's night in the US. And in practice, one of those reasons is that the exchanges aren't open 24/7: If I can't get a trade through at an European exchange because they are already closed, I'll just buy the stuff at an US-based exchange instead, if this one is still open.

But to be honest, the whole question is irrelevant. Let's consider all major exchanges are based in the US (which they aren't!) and all of them close during the night. How long do you think would it take for a new exchange to open in Europe or Japan that does not abide to those closing times? And in reality even existing exchanges won't abide to this: MtGox is based in Japan, Bitmarket is based in Europe, etc. So why should they abide to US timezones?

The parent poster obviously has no idea what a market is, otherwise they wouldn't be so in favor of restricting the trading hours. How about you take a nap, and let the adults do the trading...

REAL investors don't like going to sleep knowing that their multi-million dollar investments can potentially be turned into cow manure while they sleep, (What happened at MTGOX). How about you grow up...

Might be fine if your hustling pocket change, but it's not for serious people.

And yes in the future once the currency stabilizes this won't be needed, but till then how can we expect to bring big dogs into the game when they have absolutely no control over the market that they are gambling in? At-least scheduling allows a foreseeable window for everyone to literally "get their game on". Right now to be a serious bitcoin investor, one must be up 24/7 looking at charts... How can you expect older people (people who honestly have the money) getting into this, if they see the biggest swings during the times they're asleep?

And again: Which solution do you propose? Bitcoin is a _global_ community. There is no day and no night. In addition, Bitcoin is decentralized - everyone can open an exchange and you can't prevent this.

These are like to rules of physics: Even if you wanted to - you can't change them. Better learn to live with them.

I think that some sort of occasional trading breaks would be fantastic. The recent crash was possibly purposely done on a low-volume day--A holiday in the US. In the very least, having fewer trading hours or days would mean better-balanced trading.

This would be especially useful because Mt. Gox and other exchanges lack the more "automated" functions that real exchanges have, and thus require constant babysitting by traders. We need exchanges to have circuit breakers to protect the exchange. But we also need individual stop losses, shorts, options, and some means to automate trading for people who don't know or wish to use the API. The API was useless during the crash, after all, and my personal stop loss bot wasn't able to do jack shit. The API should not be relied upon for such a basic function as stop loss orders. And they're practically mandatory for playing with volatile stocks.

I saw on the Live Bitcoin TV thing that someone asked about stop loss orders, and the Mt. Gox guys DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY WERE. They thought a stop loss order was a circuit breaker for the whole exchange, and then talked about how they have some piece of software that alerts them in the event of a crash. Wow, that's some heavy duty feature there, ace. Two lines of code that would halt the market during suspicious trading could have saved us from this whole rollback debacle if only it was there before.

Phew. So my point is that, because obviously anyone who has more than two dollars in bitcoins needs to watch the market like a hawk, it would be nice if there were breaks.

There are a few solutions that don't involve hurting or helping one particular region:

1. Advance the trading hours by, say, 2 hours every day. Monday 8am-6pm, Tuesday 10-8pm, etc.

2. Close on weekends. In the very least, close the exchange every X many days so that we can have a break. This is also good for bitcoin as a whole because other exchanges will probably have different schedules. It also lets traders plan schedule-dependent trading strategies. Finally, it gives people who, you know, actually use bitcoins as currency and not just to trade back and forth for dollars, time to adjust their sale prices rather than implement some duct-tape solution of prices being dynamic based on Mt. Gox rates (why not just skip the middle man and sell in dollars?)

A lot more people would be willing to accept bitcoin if only they could predict what the value will be in half a day. If you take bitcoins as payment right after the market closes at 6PM and the market opens at 8AM, then you have 14 hours of, essentially, a flat exchange rate.

For that matter, market openings and closings are exciting, but predictably so.

Also, it'll help bring in other investors who are used to scheduled markets. Right now, we have a problem of "dump on friday, buy on monday" because these more timid people don't want to have to sit near a computer all weekend babysitting their bitcoins. It's easier to just get out and relax.

Also (again), stronger bid orders will be placed because people tend to put in orders if only they have a reasonable guess as to when it's going to be filled and if they'll be available then should they need to move the order. In other words, bids drastically decrease on Fridays, even though weekends have seen profitable dips lately, because nobody wants to have their bid filled when they're not around, especially if it looks like it's going all the way to a penny.

Also (a third time), the break will give Mt. Gox a chance to plug security holes and, you know, answer emails and do a little customer service rather than leave us immersed in conspiracy theories and third party knowledge of what some dude said in IRC.

Also (hell, why not?), bitcoin will be slightly more stabilized due to the miner/buyer schedule problem. What I mean is, people mine 24/7. Some miners sell as soon as they get even 1 BTC. So there's constant selling pressure, but buying pressure, as we've seen, depends greatly on bank transfers. Constant sell pressure, sporadic buy pressure: It's a recipe for volatility.

Also, also, also: also.

 ::)
Restricting the trade hours won't change much, it certainly won't cut down on volatility, just because the instruments can't move over night doesn't mean the price won't have changed the next day:

http://daytrading.about.com/od/daytradingglossary/g/OpeningGap.htm


But I could see a different reason for restricting the time: So there could be always someone watching over the trades all the time, and intervene faster if a hack or something were to happen again.

It depends on the currency exchanger. People will cling on to the time that fit's them the best. But really like I said YOU personally don't have to subscribe to the idea. Every single exchange market will have their own rate going, and I promise you if we tested this out, the scheduled exchange (no matter which time zone it's in) will be a hell of alot more stable.

Not really. As soon as you see price differences between the markets you can make money with arbitrage: Buy cheap on one market, sell expensive on the other markets. So the people who do this balance the prices between the individual markets.

So even if your market closes during the night: If there are crashes on other major markets during this time people on your market will sell (or buy) as soon as your market opens again.

You're seeing price differences NOW. What are you talking about?

http://bitcoinwatch.com/
 

Yes - because right now there's a high volatility on individual markets and some of the listed markets only have a very low volume.

This will change. You see arbitrage on all types of financial markets and Bitcoins are no exception.

There are other solutions apart from shutting down the market, which can't be done anyhow. If one exchange closes during the weekend a competitor will happily step in and grab the customers who do want to trade while the other exchange is closed.

The most obvious solution is to hire a professional team of traders to do the trading for you while you are sleeping

There will be differences in pricing no matter what. Look at Ebay,they are still trading at around $25 dollars there , which is amazing considering what just happened at MTGOX.. That point is irrelevant.

The point at hand is: Will scheduled trading give investors a clearer, and more predictable future for their investments.

The answer at this point in time is :Yes:

So investors who want to invest any serious amount of money, have to hire professional teams to manage their money 24/7 ? How can you consider this a serious option ???

Obviously you don't hire a team just for yourself.  You join a managed investment fund.

This is what most investors are already doing for almost any commodity apart from bitcoin.

For a truly distributed trading eco-system, trading should be 24x7.   

The high prices on Ebay are almost certainly due to the fraud risk that the sellers have. If they are, e.g., paid with Paypal, the buyer can reverse the transaction after receiving the Bitcoins. Therefore, every seller will charge a premium to cover that risk.

On the other hand, the buyers also get an advantage for paying more: They don't need to trust platforms like MtGox, but can buy there coins on a more reputable platform. If the seller does not send them the Bitcoins they can be sure that they will get there money back.

My point exactly, every medium of exchange will warrant its own value. If I started an exchange site right now, how serious do you think people would take me? And then to coincide with the point, I would have to offer the bitcoins at a much lower artificial rate just to get people to come in, and then that still doesn't measure the trust factor.There will always be fluctuations between exchangers for several varying reasons. But I guess ultimately the market will decide whats better or worse..

No, seriously:

Trading times should be limited to when I am awake.

And preferrably commence as soon as I hit that switch on my toaster.


Problem? :)

exactly... its a global thing.  there's no fair timezone.  if you pick one, you force people in other zones to set their alarms for 2am to do trading.

An important aspect of markets being open only certain hours is to concentrate liquidity during these times and reduce the amount of wild trading swings that result from overly thin order books. While it wouldn't help the OP's concern about people not sleeping, it could potentially help market stability if markets were open say two hours every eight. Not that I expect anyone to implement that, but it is used to those ends in other markets.

In foreign exchange, spreads widen or narrow for currencies depending on their market volatility.

When Turkey closes, the spread on the lira triples.  Ditto for Thailand, Taiwan, South Africa etc. etc.

Bitcoin does not have anything similar to the interbank market.  It may never have that because bitcoin are not distinguished by a country as currency paper is.

Trading by spread instead of a 1929 style fee should be doable right now.

Forex trades 24/7 and they're ok.

Yes it is a good idea.
The sun never sets upon the Bitcoin empire.

They're not a brand new startup currency. I think I made my point clear that 24/7 trading will be possible in a few years (Hopefully months if we get to work), but right now it's not looking to attractive.

You won't need sleep in a few years?
Because it was your original argument.

How would it help if an exchange closed 8 hours a day? Others would still continue trading at other exchanges, so it's not really that you'd have peace of mind.

Sleep is becoming more and more of a luxury for me, bitcoins aren't helping !!! :p

No Exchange in the world is 24/7 .. no exchange is more then 6 days a week no exchange has less then a 30 minute break each day.

its retarded... but so are the fills being reported after commissions.

mtgox has many flaws... but its the best we got.

I have a white paper on a proper BTCUSD futures contract & exchange.

looking for seed BTCs.

pm me

I think the structured, regulated, exchange would maybe set a new temporary standard.

Why would anyone want to follow such "standard"? It's business disadvantage for an exchange to not work 24/7.
It's also disadvantage for PEOPLE USING THEM. The world will not wait for you while you sleep, Bitcoin price will change 24/7 anyway.

I am not a bitcoin investor, I actually have $0 invested in bitcoin exchanging. I am just telling you some of the valid concerns that have come up when I talk to older people who love the idea, but are scared to death of the market. That would be a temporary stabilizer, other than Ebay going all out, and fully embracing Bitcoin trading on their platform, and payment processor(paypal), I highly doubt that will happen anytime soon .

If you want to take an 8-hour break from trading, you can. Just convert all your bitcoins into whatever your home currency is at the end of the day and convert it back the next morning. That way you can feel safe and secure with your money and not lose sleep while everyone else keeps trading. If something causes the price to rise or fall during those 8 hours, then if there was an enforced break that same movement would happen within minutes of the market opening and people who didn't log in fast enough would still miss out.

Why in the world should the exchange sites shut down during specific times? This is not the stock markets. Exchange sites are in place so that people can convert their BTC into viable currency (no matter what time it is), not so that people can make thousands of dollars trying to play the market.

Exactly. If you're a day trader - just "don't take your position home with you" 
(or pay someone to manage your position)

If you've got a longer view - put in some stop loss orders and maybe a supervisory bot as well.
(or pay someone to manage your position)


How the OP didn't realize that restricted trading hours for a global system like bitcoin is an awful idea I don't know.
It shouldn't take posting to a public board and being told this in many different ways to work this out!

What will vegetta's next suggestion be.. a porn website which goes completely offline when he wants to go to sleep, so that he can rest easy knowing it's secure from hackers?

I think everyone agrees that the OP has not thought this through at all. And if he did, his thoughts are more or less retarded.