Bitcoin Forum

I dont know much on how it works but I hear alot of people saying that the wire transfers and stuff doesn't work on weekends because banks are closed.  This seems to lead to more selling pressure on the weekends.   Wouldn't it be better for bitcoin if trading on the exchanges closed for the weekend? or does it not even matter?

Yes. Has a lot of advantages, also technically - gives them a maintenance window t  take down the site / update the programs withint incured downtime.

Adhering to FOREX trading hours (23 hours / day, 6 days a week) or CME GROUP hours (15 minute downtime per day, weekends off) means more planned stability. And, as I said, a window for handling maintenance.

Absolutely not. We don't play by old economy rules.

Make sense. Let's ignore reality and live ina a fantasy world.

Yes, you DO play by old economic rules. You also play by standard IT rules which LOVE planned downtime. 24/7 is extremely hard to maintain for anything not a joke website (mt gox still is there - joke website - wait until you see real volume, options etc.).

Plus somehow Bitcoins dont live in a fancy fantasy world - exchagne against funds requires funds available, and as the OP pointed out, lots of the non-bitcoiin infrastructure shuts down on weekends.

There would be no way to enforce this. Exchanges can choose for themselves whether to be open or closed in the weekend or at other times.

How about community enforcement? If enough of us (especially if we got all the miners onboard) refuse to do business in certain ways or certain time frames then there's no product to buy during those windows.

No

It doesn't make sense. Why would you want to not be able to trade 24/7? Bitcoin is a global currency.

Agreed.  That's just dumb.

If you want to personally forgo trading at certain times of the day, have at it.

However, the exchanges are privately owned, and can decide on their own what times of day and days of the week they will be open for business.

If you start an exchange, you'll be free to set the business hours.

You know how much money the exchanges make on fees? They wouldn't close at all unless they had to. Keep in mind they are running a business.

Exchanges should stay open on weekends, evenings, whenever they feel like it IMO.

I would love to, if the infrastructure were available in the other currencies we all rely on right now.

Also, I was perhaps talking less about the "certain time frames" and more about the "certain ways" (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15595.0  <- shameless derailing plug of my own thread about unionizing mining)

The "new economy, old economy" idealogy doesn't work in the current model. The only way for bitcoin to get big is through the transaction between established currencies and bitcoin. By not using a limited model current currencies play the economic advantage over bitcoin in stability.

Also it couldn't be enforced and enforcement is probably a bad idea. But it would be in the best interest to exchanges and bitcoin right now to use something like forex. It can always be changed later.

A perfect model would be, banks open 7 days a week and exchanges open 7 days a week. Because banks do close,  the perfect economic model doesn't apply because no money can go into exchange during the weekend but money can leave. Economics no longer apply because while the price can go down the but not up by counter buying at low prices because no new money can be put in until a certain time. And since crashes are due to the steepness of dropping prices the inability to counter buy until later increases the likelihood of significant drops leading to crashes.

Yes, bitcoin should be traded on Forex. We need the added exposure.
No, any exchange that can trade 24/7 should not limit itself except for technical reasons (2 hour downtime window for updates). If the market wants to trade, it will trade. If one exchange bars it, people will move to an exchange that will.

Don't try to regulate the market thinking that you're smarter than it. Let the market does what it does, and choose for yourself whether you want to play it or ride it.

Correct. No need to close on weekends or holidays.

Yeah, only jokers run 24/7 sites... like Amazon, and Google, and... well there's really no point in continuing is there?


Over the long haul, my money is on Bitcoin changing the way the rest of the world works. Bankers hours are a relic.

The rules of the old trade markets are the fantasy world. The economy does not sleep at weekend.

Scheduled downtime is the only argument I can see for not trading 24x7.  Perhaps if the various exchanges do adopt regularly scheduled downtimes, they can do it at different times so that there is always trading available at any time of the day.

On the other hand, with the proper architecture, there should be no real reason for scheduled downtimes.

No they shouldn't close at the weekend. Does Google close on Saturdays? This is the new world.
Besides, even if MtGox closed there would be others who stayed open, which would increase volatility.

Exchanges can do whatever they please, but an hour of suspended trading a week or so, announced well in advance would be a lot better than having wonky half-trades and price fluctuations that don't match the market because of technical concerns.

Yeah okay.

So, erm.. you going to tell them or shall I?

You from the gubermint?

So wait, bitcoin is built in the principles of no regulation, yet you ask for some parts of it to be regulated? That's just stupid.

The only thing exchanges can do is pre-announce downtime scheduling. Of course, there is always the unplanned type of downtime, but that is just how things work out sometimes. Given the current state of hardware and hot-standby for servers and the like, it would be possible to have a service that rarely has outages.

Like others have mentioned, when they are down - that costs them money. So their incentive to keep operating is pretty clear.

+1

Great. We've finally got a distributed P2P currency that cannot be easily regulated - and you call for regulation. Way to go!

Just some food for thought:

At which time do you want to close markets? Night-time in the US? That's Daytime in my country.

And how do you define a weekend? Saturday and Sunday? In some middle-eastern countries Friday is the weekend and Saturday/Sunday are normal workdays. And of course there you've got the timezone differences too.

15 minutes of sleep is better than no sleep at all!

Should the exchanges be close to what on the weekends?

Hi,

Were fine with the weekends. If customers wanted something different then we could change it up.

Regards,
Adam

Hi Adam, I think some of your darling users would prefer you remind them to get offline, go home, eat dinner, perhaps read them a bed time story and tuck them into bed. For a nominal fee, maybe you can also brew their coffee and ensure them not to worry, that the markets will be alright.

I belive in total 24/7/365 society. No artificial limits by time or cycles of cosmic events.

No, but banks should open on the weekends ;D

It's entirely up to the exchanges themselves, that's the beauty of a decentralised currency, I for one would be incredibly interested if Bitcoin businesses chose to stay open on traditional holidays compared to the conventional ones.

I'm sorry but only joke websites require 2 out of 7 day downtime ( that's 28% downtime or 72% uptime ). This is unacceptable by 2013 standards. Financial institutions, due to massive regulatory capture, are pretty much competition free. Which is why they are exasperatingly bad at any form of innovation - they just don't care. Would you imagine google or facebook being down on weekends ?

Bitcoin is reforming the financial industry.

Lack of new fiat going into the exchanges does change the circumstances but how on earth can you derive 'Economics no longer apply' from that?  The market is still the market and the circumstances are known creating opportunities to those who want (for instance by keeping some fiat on the exchanges specifically for the purpose) to take advantage of the lack of buying pressure from new money for themselves.  The Bitcoin to fiat markets are immature in terms of many of the self-correcting aspects that happen in well-established markets but it's getting there.  I am given to understand depending on the 'weekend dip' to buy low is no longer as profitable a strategy as it used to be.

Circumstances may be different but principles don't take a weekend break and the idea of even wanting to see markets close to suit our own vision of how they should behave seems to me to be the antithesis of the principles of Bitcoin.

Exactly, if a pattern becomes very predictable in trading, people will take notice and anticipate on it, so it will disappear again.

No. Please remember everyone else at different timezones.

crypto exchanges should not be relying on banking infrastructure to dictate when they should trade. think of crypto as a whole country. you would never ask a whole country to shut its shops and go home for the weekend purely because it cant get hold of a different countries money.

people in the community should have the freedom to continue trading with the currency they already have. and crypto shops like memory dealers, cupcakes and alpaca socks don't want to have to wait to trade their crypto. (meaning they wont take any sales at the weekend). they want and rely on 24/7 service, and so they should.

in england a few decades ago all shops closed on a bank holiday days as they knew the banks would not be open to take their daily profits. Now shops are going against this and continuing to do business, because they are realising they dont have to rely on banks on a daily bases.

instead of demanding a revolt simply because some people cant get money in on a saturday..you should BUDGET your money to cover the weekend.

Exchanges *should* do what they *want* to do. But if their goal is to maximize profits then they should do what their customers want them to do and market conditions permit them to do.

very true. and if customers didnt want a 24/7 service they would not be trading.  and exchanges would have already implimented daily closing or weekend closing during dull periods of business.

yet the community as a whole show that 24/7 is useful. and that a call of arms to boycott a service intentionally goes against freedom of choice.

im not saying people shouldnt stop using a service if they dont have the funds. but demanding a mass boycott purely on individuals circumstances, affects other individuals and other businesses. causing ripples.

much better to ask the exchanges for statistics of when they have typical dull periods of trade and ask them if they are considering a standardised shutdown period for those regular times. and if so to advertise a poll for people to vote on such an idea instead of boycotting a service without knowing all the details and effects it may cause.

Exchanges should never close in my opinion.  This is one of the reasons bitcoin is better than banks.

Should the internet close on the weekends?

+1

15 min down per day sounds reasonable...with all maintenance extending this downtime as necessary. 1 day off per month. 1 weekend off every 6 months for big upgrades.

Exchanges like any other website should decide when they want to go down for maintenance and if a exchanges wishes they can do it every week, but forcing all exchanges for a common window is the most ridiculous thing I heard in bit-coin economy a) how you will enforce it b) it doesn't make business sense because than I will open an exchange called window-exchange which will give me business for free in already crowded market, so please do it

No. Bitcoin has to be exchangeable 24/7 if it is to supersede cash. E.g. anyone can agree 24/7 to privately swap Mexican pesos for US$ in cash.

The scheduled downtime for upgrades is the only argument that holds water, and this is up to the individual exchanges. As pointed out, most major websites are 24/7 already.

I can't believe this is actually being discussed.

Rule of thumb: if it starts with should and includes Bitcoin it's probably stupid.

Or how about after hours (US time) so the people on the other side of the world can not use it during the day?

Bitcoin is the future! There is no reason for us to follow old world currency traditions!

Keep the exchanges open!

If it's a good idea for exchanges to be closed on the weekends, somebody should start an exchange and run it like that.  If it's a good idea, that exchange will prosper relative to the other exchanges.

There might even be room in the market for both.

 - http://www.investopedia.com/exam-guide/cfa-level-1/securities-markets/emh-efficient-market-hypothesis.asp
 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis

There aren't many (or any ?) methods for a retail investor to do forex trading over the weekend.   There was one, OANDA, but they claimed the low volume was too challenging for them where they would be taking on too much risk having to take the other side of the trades:
 - http://www.forexcrunch.com/oanda-closes-weekend-trading

Of course, there is a lot of forex trading over the weekend -- just not by you or I.  Central banks, corporate and institutional (government) bankers, multinational corporations and more are all trading 24x7.

So the market is efficient for them.  The rest of us stuck with a losing forex position thanks to news that occurs over the weekend are stuck with that increasingly deteriorating position until the markets open on Monday (or Tuesday, when Monday is a banking holiday like what happened this 3-day weekend.)  

That's not the definition of an efficient market.  Market-changing information occurs over the weekend as well (with announcements oftentimes timed specifically for release over the weekend.)  Bitcoin markets don't have this restriction.    That still doesn't mean bitcoin exchanges can be considered "efficient" though.  For instance, there was a pattern called the "weekend dip" in which buyers interested in buying had insufficient cash at the ready at the exchanges in order to buy and as a result there was little buying to counter a weekend selloff until new cash arrived at the exchanges when funds sent through the banking system were credited.   Lately, however, the weekend dip opportunity seems to have abated.

At some point a financial company will start using Bitcoin as the method for moving value in and out of other assets, including offering the ability for that to continue throughout the weekend as the way to differentiate that investment offering from the competition.

Example: Pirateat40 posted his announcement that he was going to shut down his ponzi on a Saturday afternoon (GMT+1) which caused a huge reaction in the market.

No.

Let me add some more emphasis so I am clear:

http://images.sodahead.com/polls/002494753/no_meme_rage_face_answer_2_xlarge.jpeghttp://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll299/nakedphilologist/do-not-want-dog.jpg

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9zwpkZsf01qfmt79.jpghttp://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/002/282/images_do_not_want-741689.jpg

Did anyone notice this thread is from 2011? This silly discussion was left alone for 2 years and just continues now? Wow.

Meh, IT downtime is typically because a company considers the cost/benefit ratio of instant (or near-instant) switchovers are not worth it. There's nothing inherent that requires that things be down for more than a marginal amount of time. Especially for something like an exchange which is, at heart, a somewhat simplistic beast.

Oh, we all fell victim to a vicious necromancer.

I love that song.

I've never seen google doing a planned maintance.
It must be a joke of a website.