Bitcoin Forum

Considering the obvious that you can not transfer cash funds to your account on weekends (due to banks being closed) why not close the markets on weekends.

Just wondering what people think.

Why impose limitations for the sake of imposing limitations?  If some people want to trade on the weekend, they should be able to trade on the weekend.  No one is forcing you to trade on the weekend.

Well the idea is so that the market is not so volatile due to outside forces. Also people wont FREAK OUT cause they ordered to withdraw their money on Sat and its Monday morning and "WTF ITS NOT HERE!"  In my opinion less volatility I think is better for the market.

 No. I would like to make money

That's the beauty of the free market - it corrects things like this automatically, without regulation.  Have you noticed that there is less and less of a dip on the weekends, since more and more people have recognized the dip and decided to take advantage of it?  Their taking advantage of it means that they are selling during the week when the prices are theoretically higher, then buying on the weekend, when the prices are theoretically lower.  This causes the price during the week to drop, and the price during the weekend to raise, evening out the discrepancy.

Not only that, but there would be no way to force ALL exchanges to cease activity on the weekend.  The moment one exchange closes for the weekend, people will simply move to the next exchange that doesn't close on the weekend.

This about sums it up.

If people don't want the risk of owning them over the weekend close your position before the weekend. But for those who don't mind it let the traders trade.

Why not open banks on the weekend instead?

People can still deposit via LR, Dwolla balance, TC, and various other methods (or just keep some balance on the exchanges). Even with closed banks there are ways to move funds around.

(and I say this for most exchanges, since Dwolla/LR are widely supported)

No. that's an absure idea. I specifically want the ability to trade 24/7.

Cash out to your wallet or dwolla account if you are nervous.

i personally think the idea of 24/7 needs to get removed from peoples heads.
this is a global thing, it will be Required to be 24 hours a day, its noon somewhere all the time.
a majority of people in the world dont recognize the rest days people get in the US.

Trading can be closed for you on the weekend. Just don't trade.

It's obvious what the disadvantage would be -- people who wanted to trade on the weekends could not do so. I'm still trying to figure out what the advantage would be. Care to help me out?

The market depth is much thinner on the weekends.

Official exchanges are closed on the weekend not because they are lazy, but to make speculator's job more difficult.

So what would the advantage be? Do we just hate speculators and like to make them suffer if possible?

So what would the advantage be? Do we just hate speculators and like to make them suffer if possible?
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Speculators become rich by sucking money out of the system.


We all work hard ( I guess ) to make bitcoin more widespread, and thus increasing its value.

Instead the effect of a speculator is just the opposite.

Umm, no.

No.

Speculators become rich by stabilizing prices across varying supply and demand bursts. One of the biggest things Bitcoin needs to be seriously useful as a currency is a more stable value and better resistance to supply and demand bursts. Right now, the more speculators, the better for bitcoin.

no

I agree if you tell me that speculators help to reduce the spread in the market.


I disagree if you say we need more speculators, or if you say that speculators stabilize the market. Dont you remember the 33$ price spike?

They do.

I agree that speculators can destabilize a market when they speculate badly. However, these are not really speculators -- they are gamblers. Speculators, in the sense of rational speculators, stabilize the market.

I think if it wasn't for automated traders, not trading weekends would make a lot of sense. As it is, though, they're out there and should be capable of stopping the market going insane over the weekend. Also, if Mt. Gox announced they weren't going to trade at weekends, how long before weekend traders move to another exchange?

...Why?!

What I think is that there is no obvious cause and effect in your premise. One doesn't have to trade the instant there is fresh cash in one's trading account. Why can't someone deposit cash that is credited on Thursday and then they wait until Saturday or Sunday before trading with it?

Just so I can be clear I do not want to stop trading on weekends. I just brought up an argument for discussion and one idea why I thought it would be useful. I just wanted to see what people had to input into the discussion.

definitely not, the reason trading is closed on weekends for currencies is due to open hours etc of major business that is kinda backing the currency (see banking) since we dont have these limits and are a word wide currency closing trading on the weekends seems ridicules.. and even if you were to close on the weekends.. what timezone weekends would they be ?

I like when people are freaking out.   ;D

When it is the weekend for you it is not the weekend for me :)

Why don't we get the entire worlds population to just come hang out at your place in the weekends so we can all be in the same time zone.

I'll bring some chips and dip.

With the advent of the internet, there's no need to limit trade time.

"lunch is for wimps"

You see, just as soon as the human is removed completely from trading, other than the consumer, we will have 24/7, 365 days (364 on leap years) trading. Things like currency and stock market trading are still limited, but even they will change.

maybe someone could build an exchange for you and similar people that is only open from 9:30 am to 4pm EST time M-F, closed on USA Fed Holidays, and throttle it at noon for lunch. </sarcasm>

It's more complex when it comes to marginal trading. Imagine that you bought a position with say 1:10 leverage for all your depo size. Now, during weekend the market depth is very low and someone significantly pushes the price down by selling a big lot. This leads to a margin call situation and your position forcibly gets closed by selling at market price.

And if it would be closed over weekend, there would be no such situation, the exchange would open smoothly next working day, or open with a gap if something serious happened.

But, I'm not proposing to limit exchanges time at all, just stating an example, especially that such exchange doesn't exist yet I (marginal futures trading). Well, except the one (ICBIT) I am creating :)

I <3 all you free marketers out there!!!!  You can see some people's thinking so limited by current paradigms.  One day we will all be free thanks to bitcoin!

@joelkatz

speculators also provide an addidiontal critical function, they provide liquidity.

currently i see no top notch exchanges (offering margin, futures, options, shorts) with top level profsionalism.  I think when we see the trading market mature we will see even more stability, thanks to speculators and investors alike.

Weekends are the best tradding times.

Saturday here = Friday in US
Monday here = Sunday there
So sell on Saturday which always seems to be a high.
Buy on Monday which always seems to be a low.

One thing you can do is transfer money during the week, and not spend it. Then spend it on the weekend. There's no problem on your side. And there's still a good amount of people trading on the weekend. So I don't see any problem. And there's not much affect on the next week either.

This is an open currency. Making rules like this is restricting it.