Bitcoin Forum

Saw some people discussing about the "manipulator" sold below $2.

It's not the manipulator, but Bitcoinica. Our system liquidated a lot of positions at the price around $2.

We sent three limit orders to Mt. Gox for hedging:

SELL 19693.42 BTC at $2.00778
SELL 3130.5 BTC at $1.81321
SELL 3083.0 BTC at $1.81253

Apparently, the lowest price hit $1.994. We have been continuously warning our clients about the risk of margin trading. However, this was an inevitable outcome as the bot is unable to judge whether the price will go lower.

In order to protect our customers, we have lowered the default leverage to 2.5:1, while still preserving their freedom of choice.

This post is not intended for anything. Just to let you guys know so that you know what happened.

EVERYONE:
Told ya.

Sooooooooooooooooooooo...

Now that Z has rolled back leverage to the 1970s, ...

... is price gonna go up?????

BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY

i kinda feel bad for people getting liquidated but swimming always makes me feel better.

https://i.imgur.com/dSXLC.jpg

Told us what? That 0.3% of the coins available dropped the market another 10-20%? Jump for joy, the return to prosperity is here.

BUY!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKISmzmO9Mw&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKISmzmO9Mw&feature=related)

I've been saying all over the place on these forums the past few days, there is no "manipulator", if there was, the most likely candidate would not be any person per se, but an organization that moves lots of btc for its operation, aka Bitcoinica.

Right, so the drop to $1.994 was just a bad day at the market. Gotcha. BUY BUY BUY

YES INDEED BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY... you, I mean.  Not me.  :-D

I would be a fool not to give you my money.

I guess bitcoinica's not responsible for this wall at 2.10 then?

It's a fair comment. But as far as I have observed, manipulator exists. Bitcoinica don't place walls. It's just a dark pool that removes liquidity from the market when there's liquidity at favorable or unfavorable prices.

Keep in mind that all trades executed by Bitcoinica are completely automated. Even though I do have a personal account and I sometimes trade, I don't trade based on the information about my clients and I never trade more than 300 BTC.

No, unless the slippage is too large that we can't find a correct price to trade at, we don't leave any orders open.

Bitcoinica offers guaranteed liquidity, so sometimes we may lose, but most time the slippage is within the spreads.

SOOOO... it's more likely that this 2.10 wall is fake.  That's my personal conclusion.

Can you elaborate on that?

Especially with a market order how is that guaranteed? Only for a block of 50 BTC? How do I find the spread for a larger amount?
What are these numbers above the prices? (0-9)

The price you see is immediately available for trading. Your market orders can be executed immediately. Our bot will simply get the price from the database and add the position into your account. Matching and hedging will be done later.

If you trade more than 50 BTC, it will be split into multiple orders of 50 BTC. There will be a reasonable interval such as 5 seconds between them during the execution to allow the price to change.

The small number is a pipette. It's simply the 5th digit. Most forex brokerages use this format to show "pips" (0.0001) clearly while providing more precision.

Thanks, also has the leverage been reduced globally or have I received a margin call? It only shows 2.5 now..

Reduced globally.

If you want to request for changing back, email to support@bitcoinica.com

Cool, thanks for that info.

If you get a margin call, you'll know it -- a big reddish-pink box will pop up at the top of the page explaining in detail your margin call.

This happens when your net value falls below 2x your maintenance.

Only scrooge can dive and swim in money, others get hurt

Bid 1.7 1496.03
Bid 1.75 3472.8
Bid 1.8 21956.05
Bid 1.85 2873.66
Bid 1.9 10857.26
Bid 1.95 2099.6
Bid 2 4532.92
Bid 2.05 570.77
Bid 2.1 23670.31  
Bid 2.15 3589.13
Bid 2.2 2329.81

No manipulator, than explain the bid wall in red, which is normally 50,000. See how he tries and pushes the price higher by placing his bid wall, than he pushes it with smaller bidwalls above his big one. The 2.15 and 2.2 bid walls, were created by him to push the price higher. He probably bought some to get those up.

He will than move his huge bid wall up higher as he slowly pushes the price higher.

This is pure manipulation to get the price higher. Why would he want the price higher if he wanted to just buy them to hold? The reason is he holds now at least 200,000 to 500,000 in bought bitcoins. I have seen his bid walls get sold into numerous times. Even with bitcoinica selling those 25K coins, he bought most of them. I have seen many of his 10K bid walls get taken right down. He is trying to protect his huge bitcoin investment and is very desperate at this point.

It is so easy to see his tactics, just keep checking Mt. Gox. charts to see him in action.

I had thought Bitcoinica was responsible for that, but I suppose I'll have to go back to the drawing board.

I liked the roller coaster one better before you changed it.

A drunk robot seemed more appropriate.

Thanks for the openness.

That explains a lot of the strange trading activity we see.  I would bet most trading on MtGox is program driven with scant human oversight.

It's ironic that a Utopian commodity/currency designed for freedom is being heavily affected by high frequency trading, short trading, and other tricks the 1% on Wall Street use.

Freedom?  Everyone's free to use whatever tools are available to help them get all the bitcoins they can.  If my resources were such that I could afford more mining power, and / or solar power to run it, I probably wouldn't have to use bitcoinica or even trade at all.

But BTC is the future and I'll be damned if I'm left behind this time.

Solar power is the most expensive form of energy generation as it stands now. It shouldn't be since sunlight is the most abundant form of energy in the world and a fraction of a percentage of the worlds sunlight could satisfy the entire worlds energy needs. Especially given the current economics, mining with solar power is just plain silly.

Where the hell have you been? There has never been anything but "fuck you, got mine" in the world of bitcoin. And, as many would argue around here, that is freedom.

It's been obvious from day one why unregulated currency markets are bad for everyone but the 1%. I mean, Zhoutong even posted a gini index for bitcoins, .8. That's worse than Nigeria in terms of wealth distribution (.7).

What in the hell ever made you think there was anything Utopian about this?

Where the hell have YOU been?  haven't seen your iron-fist style around here lately

Well put.

One time I supported a campaign to introduce new users to Bitcoin, but I recognized that at this point all that is doing is guiding them into the line at the slaughter house (or a majority of them anyway) so I withdrew from any activities along these lines.  And would/did suggest that anyone receiving donations in Bitcoin (which I think is a great thing to do) immediately cash them out for just about anything else.

I retain a lot of hope that at some point Bitcoin will be a viable technology for the masses, but a good deal of evolution is needed before that is the case (IMHO.)

You can say that again.

The idea someone had for making bitcoin payment and purchasing tools on cell phones would be one such evolution. Making it easier to use it to buy and sell is essential to getting more people to adopt it.

 :-*

anyone who got into / planned on using bitcoin as a speculation vehicle got exactly what they deserved. use it as it was intended - decentralized currency and not as a get rich quick scheme.

Getting cell phone users buying trinkets with Bitcoin is not something I feel is very appropriate at the moment.  But it would be a nice thing to have in the system's back pocket and I do believe that solutions are being and have been developed for this.

The people I would prefer to see being significantly involved in Bitcoin at the moment who be those who have a specific combination of tech savvy, reasonably well off financially, deeply suspicious of everything, and (with luck) having some measure of decency and honesty.

These types of people would be best situated to not lose anything they cannot afford to lose and to assist in getting the currency distributed effectively if/when there is a legitimate need to do so arises.

https://bit-pay.com/aboutMobile.html

I'm planning on approaching my lunch place on Thursday here in Cleveland to see if they will set up something to use this.  I've been going there for 5 years and might be able to get them into it.  Looking forward to paying for my future lunches in bitcoins!

After I cashed out my millions shorting the true believers, I got tired of stoking the flames (except the Atlas/Matthew drama).



I genuinely thought this would be an interesting experiment, until it became clear that the unique features of Bitcoin were completely steamrolled by the same issues facing unregulated markets over the last century. That's been obvious for months now. It's been fun in a rubbernecking-sort-of-fashion, but I'm just beginning to feel sorry for people. I know what it's like to have a cause, but I'm genuinely disappointed at the full turn from reality and ignorance that permeates this fanaticism. I pray you're all trolls.


You're half right! Problem is "intentions" don't meet the real world about 99% of the time. Hope you're learning.


I just don't know what to say anymore.

I'll be honest. I'm too embarrassed to be associated with Bitcoin to bring it up to people that I know in real life. I think there's a lot of people on this forum that feel the same way. I meet most of those criteria, and hell.. we've even developed a (mostly) clean room implementation of the Bitcoin stack, including functional double spend detection. The problem is that to the outside world, we're all now seen as loonies and overzealous libertarians living in our moms basements.

The problem isn't that the technology pieces are missing. The problem is that many of us are horribly jaded and misguided INTP and INTJ personality types with delusional thought patterns, narcissistic leanings, and what I can only describe as high functioning autism.

While cryptocurrencies aren't going to die, Bitcoin might have to. It is/was just an experiment, after all.

Heh.  I cannot really argue with a word of that or put it much better :)


I do have some questions about this, however.  Firstly, it is difficult to dislodge a first comer generally even with a much better product, and I see in the original a fairly stunning combination of well made technical decisions and startlingly good implementation (although in fairness, I've neither the skill nor time to analyze it line by line.)  Secondly, in spite of the market shakeups, or perhaps to some extent because of them, I suspect that the value base is relatively widely distributed amongst the most interested geeks and most of them are not going to wish to give it up.  I certainly won't.

I could see a situation where the block chain is used as a basis for other crypto-currencies or even other yet undreamed of things.  My 'investment' or 'speculation' is actually more in just getting some secret keys which have a positive balance representation in the block chain than it is about obtaining a lot more USD than I already have.

I'm ENTJ.  I'd be interested in marketing bitcoin if I knew where to start.

@zhoutong:

 "spreads are high - so am i!" - lead slogan of your hedgeing bot? ;)

ENFJ here. :-)

We don't really have much choice. The market spread is there. If you buy and sell a few hundred coins, the slippage may be even more than the spread.

Situation is generally better when the price is high. Imagine the two scenarios:

You want to buy at $20, but someone offers to sell at $20.1000. (You may just place a limit order and wait for people to sell to you.)

You want to buy at $2, but someone offers to sell at $2.01000. (You may just spend one cent more.)

It's just the psychological difference. We all have experienced high and low prices, and sometimes a trader's psychology is not easy to adjust.

The former situation will yield more liquidity in the market, hence the spread will be lower.

So, let's wait for the price to increase!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMyk7MXsseg