Bitcoin Forum

sorry i couldn't find an 'official' mtgoxlive thread to post this idea:

it would be cool if you could tell the site how many bitcoins you have for sale, and then it could constantly update how much you could get for them at any given moment.

eg. if you have 2036 btc to sell, you could currently get $20,023.

this is not just a simple exchange-rate calculation as it takes into account all the currently active bid orders.

likewise if you have $53938 to spend, you can right now get 5009 BTC.

would be great if you could input your $ amount, and then watch as the potential BTC amount you could buy fluctates based on the asks.

Hover your cursor on the lines.

yes, been there, done that thanks (that's how i found out the above example figures).

it's easy to find out by moving the cursor to the window and hovering over the graph until you find the point which corresponds to your approximate amount of bitcoins or dollars.

but i'm talking about entering your exact amount, and having an updated, easily visible display that shows you the amount, without user interaction.

besides the lag when people place big orders... I think mtgoxlive is perfect.

yeah it is a good site.

i just think it would be cool to be able to see how much your stash is worth, if sold into the mt gox market in one hit, obviously this is much different to just looking at the exchange rate and saying coins*rate.

like say the rate is $10.15 (like it is right now), and I own 20,000 coins... some might say i have $203,000 worth of coins, but it's realistically only worth about $180,000, if it had to be sold right now on mt gox.

how does one get started in programming a site that utilises this live feed?

Nothing is stopping a 3rd party from implementing this, or you yourself.  I'd prefer that to adding clutter to the mtgox site.  Simple = Better.  More < Less.

Well, you can take a look at the Wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/MtGox/API) and work with the WebSocket API.

Obtaining the whole order book is a bit tricky, but my service does it. I could add this sort of calculator to my order book site. Are you putting up a bounty for it?  ;)

Well, I did it. So go check out http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/order-book/ (http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/order-book/) and use the nifty new calculator there!

this is awesome, thank you. i hope i'm not the only one that thinks this is useful (or just plain interesting :) )

...sending you 1 btc.

i forgot mtgoxlive wasn't a '3rd party' anymore.

Love this use it all the time.  Will be sending you some btc after my next trade.

Thanks guys. I hope many people continue to find my service useful.

I think it is worse than a lag. The browser completely locks up (all windows and tabs) when there are orders flying by. I suspect mtgoxlive is using synchronous XMLHttpRequest. If so, that is a very poor design pattern; it is fairly easy to switch to asynchronous. I like the website, but this is such a bad problem that I am tempted to find or write an alternative. Does anyone know of an alternative?