Bitcoin Forum

We have reached 2,000-user mark. To celebrate, we're glad to announce that we won't charge any extra spreads on top of market spreads in the next 12 hours.

Starting: January 9, 2012 2:00 pm UTC
Ending: January 10, 2012 2:00 am UTC

We are paying all Mt. Gox fees incurred during this celebration. You just have to trade at the price that provides you enough liquidity!

Our largest 24-hour volume ever was over 200,000 BTC. Let's see how much we can trade today! Enjoy your trading!

By the way, if you still don't have an account yet, grab one at https://www.bitcoinica.com (https://www.bitcoinica.com) before time runs out.

UPDATE: It has already started! 12 hours 3 minutes and counting...

Yea, unfortunately you forced liquidated me for a price that was lower then what really occurred in the market two hours ago.  Basically the way you have the site set up one large trade (that forces an unrealistic price due to your much larger then normal spreads) positions that would survive in a real market do not in yours.  I only had a 3 BTC position, but I do not think I will be coming back while you are treating spikes this way.

The lowest price ever tracked today is only 4 cents, or 0.66% lower than the Mt. Gox low. I believe that unreasonable forced liquidations shouldn't happen again after the last algorithm change.

Zhoutonged!

Maybe I am missing something but the bid price on bitcoinica is 6.27

https://i.imgur.com/kyrQQ.png


The bid price in gox is 6.42

https://i.imgur.com/kDyUK.png

Now I understand you have this guaranteed liquidity of 50BTC but down at 6.4 you have got 94BTC

At 6.27 BTC depth was over 1300 ??

This is just an example, it was like that on the way up too (about 20 mins ago)

I'm not stupid, I know your game is rigged against me but when you come and tell me your spreads are matching gox, you need to explain what that means, because right now it doesn't seem to mean 'your spreads are matching gox'

I don't know the delay, you are right, but clark moody seems to correlate pretty tightly with mtgoxlive ime. (Both of which seem to be a fair indicator of real-time price).

I expect a bit of slippage. I also expect things to be a bit skewed in zhou's favour, maybe for his bid/ask to be 100 or 200 deep in the goxlive prices...

Unless of course all 1300 BTC on the bid side happen to be bitcoinica's ?

It's very likely that someone has placed a large sell order on Bitcoinica. Then we can't guarantee the liquidity at better prices. Also, delays might be an issue too.

Bid at 4700BTC deep!

https://i.imgur.com/AnTWI.png

uh-oh!

I'm pretty sure that your Clark moody connection was broken. My data suggested otherwise.

I'm pretty sure you right! I think I just watched you take a dump all over the market, it broke moody and goxlive!

Bitcoinica doesn't use the crappy API that Clark moody and Mt. Gox live use.

There's never anything wrong with the prices after the algorithm change.

Don't worry I love you zhou, I think you're site is marvellous and props to you for (bit)coining it in - I'm only jealous i didn't do it first! You're bound to get a few haters on the way though eh ;)

It's very interesting to watch the effect bitcoinica can/does have on the market. (as a proxy for crazy people's sentiment, that is!)

Of course I have to include myself in the 'crazy people'...

Keep on trucking Mr Z

Dear Mr Z,

I have been mucking around on Bitcoinica for about a month now, with a small amount of coins. I think the site is excellent and I'm very impressed.

However, the possibility of becoming trapped in a position (due to no reserve) is stopping me from moving more money to your site.

Is this something that will be fixed in the future?

Careful using absolutes, good sir ;-)

What API do you use? Does gox have something private thats more reliable?

It'll be interesting to see what effect, if any, this has on the market. Increased volatility due to people trading more freely? Decreased volatility due to it being profitable to trade in a tighter range now?

Not that I think we'll be able to tell, so much noise in the system anyway.

I just tried to get to bitcoinica (clicking the link in this message) but looks like site is down - dns lookup failed.. ??

Have not been able to get to this site once yet.

http://network-tools.com/default.asp?prog=lookup&host=www.bitcoinica.com

Can you access that IP?

DNS issue is known, Zhoutong said he's working on it, but that was a while ago so I guess it's not terribly high priority.  For now you can use opendns or googledns (8.8.8.8)

I am a MT Gox trader, but am curious about Bitcoinica.

Does Bitcoinica give you the ability to do Stop Loss Orders? Can I trade like I would on Mt Gox with close spreads, or is the spread so far apart that its not worthwhile?

I cant seem to find an exchange that does stop loss orders with enough volume.

Bitcoinica is oriented around a somewhat different model of trading with 'positions' as well as the more Gox/Intersango like 'exchange' transactions.

I guess the ability to do stop loss orders is impossible for someone who just wants to do regular day-trading with Bitcoins.

Sigh....

Bitcoinica has stop loss. Day trading is tricky cos of spreads though. You have 6 hours of the "reduced spreads special" to go though ...

stewart, it wouldn't be too hard to write a bot in php to run stops for you, surprised nobody has made one yet.

others -- i am already using google dns...

How big are the spreads on Bitcoinica, on average?  On Mt Gox it's just a few cents.

http://charts.bitcoinica.com/daily_quotes

Wish I had the smarts to do this, and what a great MT Gox trading help this would be. I would happily donate BTC for that kind of bot.

Thanks for the charts. I see .10, .15 and .20 spreads. Oh well, guess that's the price for playing with margin.

hm, problem is what about liability if it fails to execute a stop for you?  
New code always has bugs.

Maybe it would make sense to create an advisory bot though .. one that sends out alerts if your stop or trailing stop is hit...

Can't say I didn't try to warn you.  I've posted a couple of times that stop orders won't protect you.

Stop orders will be executed at the market price.  And if the market price changes quickly to below your zhoutong price, *zhoutonged*.

Advisory stop alerts aren't automatically executed... so unlike automated stops, which will execute at market, you have the opportunity to close your position however you prefer.   For an item this thinly traded, though, you aren't going to want to hold large positions at one price point since it will be hard to liquidate.  Better to stick wiith small lots or at least scale-in/scale-out, and you won't need to worry so much if the spread is big.

If you followed the discussions, you would know that you wouldn't be trapped in a position. Trading restriction only applies on new positions. You can close any position any time. This is guaranteed now.

Why the pony on your userpic have her eyes closed?

I am asking because you can see the spread between bid and ask yourself.
Right now it is already seems to include bitcoinica comission.

OK, thanks.
I must have missed that post.

Just wanted to say thanks, zhouthong. The spreads have been amazing for the last 12 hours.

Now that we are back at the normal spreads, would it be possible at all to reduce them a bit ?

I know that you have some risk because of margins, providing liquidity and you need to make some money.

Whatever you do, I appreciate your service very much.

It's to my best interest to lower the spread, because people don't trade on Bitcoinica if the spread is high.

We have to pay Mt. Gox fees though. Currently we are paying 0.25%, the lowest tier. And the "commission" we charge is always less than 0.6%. So just do your own math by looking at the homepage numbers. Bitcoinica is actually quite cheap.

If you just want to catch the spikes, perhaps Mt. Gox is a better choice because they don't guarantee any liquidity and you are completely on your own.

Your model is broken.
It acts often like a base ball glove.
When all logic say's now is the time to buy suddenly your buy price rises far above mtgox price and catches all the people falling for this trick.
Same goes for selling.
Quite often your spread just sits there, covering up all profit.
If this doesn't happen then you suddenly have liquidity problems.

So, either your algorithm is broken or you are not doing this fair.

Yesterday there was a spread of over 1 bitcoin.
That's bizar and totaly unbalanced.
And people have to wait untill your algorithm normalizes.
Often, when there is action, your algorithm just overreacts and covers the profits.
But by the time it normalizes there is no action on the exchanges.

This forum has even invented a term to describe this: Being Zhoutonged

Your algorithm has tons of hidden risk built in.
Now, the relation between the exchanges and your casino is unknown.
Please make this relation/algorithm PUBIC!.
This will make sure everyone knows the risks.
The risk comes not from the leverage but from the non-stability in your algorithm!
It resonates too much.

When you make a margin trading platform, you can make your algorithm more fair.  If you actually do, you can bet I'll trade there more often.

Right now -- I like Bitcoinica quite a bit.

It's not his algorithm causing resonation, it's his users and others who are overreacting to every little market move.

I tell you a public algorithm that you can use to test against ours. It's not identical, but a lot easier to handle:

Just estimate the average cost to buy/sell 100 BTC at Mt. Gox plus fees, considering slippage.

In reality, we have some minor adjustments on top of this to give customers better rates when possible.

You should never attempt to catch a spike on Bitcoinica using market orders. If there's no market depth at Mt. Gox, it's impossible to have a narrow spread on Bitcoinica. I can assure you that. It's not about profit at all.

Maybe someone can make a bucket shop with independent pricing power to compete with Bitcoinica.

99% of the time, Bitcoinica spreads are just as cheap as Mt. Gox fees. If you're the guy that hates Bitcoinica just because of the 1% time when spike happens, just go to Mt. Gox and see what happens when you attempt to buy/sell something fairly significant.

Quite true.

All prices are given. We are now even releasing the charts. All price points are tradable with guaranteed liquidity.

Also, don't forget that a huge buy or sell can make the order book very thin for a brief period, and obviously everyone has to wait until Bitcoinica provides better prices when the orders re-establish.

The problem is that Bitcoinica is the most transparent pricing engine ever that tells you the *real* trading prices of Bitcoin, instead of the unreliable Mt. Gox "last price".

That's not a bad idea.  I bet it would still get customers even if it was blatantly advertised as a "bucket shop".

Actually this "problem" can be used as an advantage when all the real-time charting services are down due to connection or whatever sort of problems... you can get an idea of price from Bitcoinica.

+1

Bitcoinica provides "stop" orders -- the disadvantage is that if the next open market order is far away from your stop (big spikes), it will have provided little protection.  But I imagine a stop order used by a bot on mtgox would act similarly.

sorry, i couldn't let this one go. :D

OK I finally created a bitcoinica account, and tried to fund it with a MtGox code, but something bad happened:

1: I generated a Mt Gox code for x BTC
2: copied code into bitcoinica deposit field and pressed "Redeem and Deposit" -- but I got an Error message.
3: Then I noticed I had not pressed the CONFIRM button on the Mt Gox Withdrawal, so I pressed Confirm, re-copied the code to bitcoinica, tried "Redeem and Deposit" again, and this time it worked.

4: However when I looked back at my MtGox balance, it was lower by 2x BTC, as if I had withdrawn x BTC twice, but only x were transferred to bitcoinica.

What went wrong here?  If I actually generated two codes by mistake, how do I recover that first code?  I don't see it in my mtgox history...

thanks

I've never had that happen personally, but have always been slightly afraid of the possibility of something like this.  You need to talk to Zhou or Jon at Bitcoinica and/or someone at Gox.

Agreed, that's why I ran out and got bitcoinbucketshop.com earlier today.  ;D I think there is a market for low limit BTC price speculation. This would allow low spreads and lots of opportunity to gamble.

This is absolutely ludicrous.  It's the same as asking someone to write you a trade bot for free, then explain how you wrote it.

What do you mean it doesn't show up in your history?


Let's say you had X coins and tried to withdraw Y coins.


Does it show you withdrew Y coins twice, but give the same code?
Does it show you withdrew Y coins once, but change the balance by 2Y?
Does it show you withdrew Y coins once, and that were mistaken about what X was?
Does it show you withdrew Y coins twice, but not give a code for one of them?


There are many possibilities.  You will need to be more specific.

I resolved the problem -- not sure what was wrong really, but I had created 2 codes from MtGox.

the first code just generated an error  when I tried to deposit it into bitcoinica... the second one was OK.  So, I returned the first code as a deposit to MtGox, and generated a new code, which did work to deposit in bitcoinica.

So I'm exploring bitcoinica  --- the site offers leverage for day-trading type levels, and seems to encourage short term trading - but the spread is WAY to big to be comfortable, even for swing-trading... from the moment you start building a position, you are more than 1% underwater.

A spread of say .25 % or .3% would be workable in this situation, but at the moment I think the site is only useable for medium-term swing trades. 

Also - they advertise that stoploss functions are available, but I cannot find that at all - frustrating..
do any of you know how to find the stop sets on bitcoinica?

Lengthen your time frame.  I trade stocks $100 at a time with $9 trades.... it takes time, but you can do ok.  Sometimes the house makes more than you do, but you have to spend money to make money.  Stops are under the "Advanced Placement" tab.

Have fun with that :-) 
 
I agree that bitcoinica is more appropriate for longer timeframes, my point is that it encourages intraday trading.

I looked under Advanced Placement .. I dont see any way to add stops though, what am I missing?

Order Type: Stop

But yeah, it sucks.  I wish I didn't have to pay $9 for one computer to trade with another computer, but that is how USD markets work.  I've done much better with GLBSE where I can trade for free.

Geez... okay a stoploss is an 'order type'.. wonderful.

But check this out. It's broken and just lost me money!

http://awesomescreenshot.com/092rrbs6e

I selected Order Type of Trailing Stop, read the instructions, set a price of 5.6 (below the current price of about 6.85) then pressed Buy .. then tried it again for a traling stop at $6.3

It EXECUTED this as a BUY transaction AT MARKET!!  I now have 20 BTC purchased at 6.93 which I did not ask for. 

Looks like a very serious bug, has anyone tested this code before releasing it on a public who could lose some big $ due to such bugs??

plus to add injury to damage, I would now have to take a loss just to reverse their error...

DO NOT USE THIS SITE YET

Trailing Stops are known broken right now.  Why he hasn't disabled them until it's fixed IDK, but he has posted about this several times in various threads, including the main Bitcoinica thread.  Coincidentally, that would be a better place to continue any discussion since the promotion for this thread has ended.

You really can't expect people to come read a forum to find out that the site doesn't actually work.

You can put real money into it and lose big due to functionality that should never have been released to the public.  That says the developers are pretty clueless about software release procedures, especially for transactional systems dealing with real money.   

There is nothing even on the page to indicate that the functions don't work.
http://awesomescreenshot.com/0d9rrdl98

Worse than simply not working, the StopLoss function will execute other transactions guaranteed to lose you money...

The main way to make money on bitcoinia at the moment is to uncover their identities and hold them liable for damages.

It's run by a 17 year old kid.  If I were you, I would do better diligence before sending your irreversible money to random websites.  That said, if you stay in the loop he is fairly responsive and does pretty well for a kid.  I personally have made plenty of money, and as long as you aren't too heavily leveraged you should be able to profit if you sit on the position for a week.  Anyway, I'm not going to respond in this thread any more as it's title is misleading.  Please take your grief here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=42267.0
or start a new thread.

Should have pressed "Sell"
From the Advanced Placement page:
"STOP
Your order is executed when the market price is higher (buying), lower (selling) or equal than your specified price."

You did indeed ask for it.

But if you don't know the relation between the price at bitcoinica and the rest of bitcoinland then how can you be sure that bitcoinica doesnt have a secret 'flush' button that can be used to tip risky positions over the edge. Maybe at times there is no relation at all to the bitcoin price on the exchanges. How can you know?

Buy trading stop below market price should be executed at market. Even the feature is not broken, it should still be executed.

Trailing stops and stops are the same in terms of execution. Just that trailing stop is trailing, which doesn't work very well at the moment.

We release history price points via both API and charts. Go and see yourself regarding price accuracy.

Actually all forex brokers have these issues, and some of them are evil enough to manipulate prices to trigger stops. But Bitcoinica doesn't take positions into account during price generation. Again, you can check price history and compare with Mt. Gox.

Yeah, well, what happened here then?:
http://charts.bitcoinica.com/daily_quotes?date=2012-01-10
I'm guessing lots of positions got wiped by that spike.
The spread was about 1 bitcoin during this spike.
Completely out of nowhere.
I think your algorithm overreacted to the big buy on mtgox.

same thing that happened here.

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg1zig5-minzczsg2012-01-11zeg2012-01-11ztgSzm1g10zm2g25

bitcoinica was a few cents either side of gox - ironically this was during the 'zero spreads' offer, so I would suspect less people were liquidated than under normal circumstances.

The market was played by some big player(s). Gox, bitcoinica et al had nothing to do with it.

No overreaction. Mt. Gox was the same.

Not many people are liquidated according to my records.

Not exactly:
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg60zczsg2012-01-11zeg2012-01-11ztgCzm1g10zm2g25zv

Notice that around 6:00am the price of mtgox is neither below six nor around 7.
At the same time bitcoinica fluctuated wildly.
So pretty big difference!


That's good to hear.

Bitcoinica range: 5.97-6.93
Mt. Gox range: 6.01-6.90

Just 4 cents, or 0.66%, including all fees and 50 ฿ depth. Which site is cheaper?

Request to Khou, could you implement Yubi keys or some other form of secondary verification on Bitcoinica pse, even an opt in drop down input of 3 chars from a long memorable phrase would be good