Bitcoin Forum

There has been a lot of bad news in past few months. Some of them almost halved the BTC price. When I caught it in the right time, I could make quite a profit by selling my BTC immediately and hour or two later bought them cheap (resulting in more BTC, compare to holding them).

So I started thinking, how can I catch all the news in the right time? I realized that I can't do it alone. I can't watch news when I sleep or while I'm at work. So I created a simple SMS service, where other people like me can join into small groups of 30. People, who are willing to alert the rest of the group, if someone notices something important. In that way, everyone has the probability of catching the news 30 times higher.

If you want to join group, you can do it so at www.btc-report.org. This concept is not very healthy for the market, it can make price drops even bigger, so I will limit number of groups that can be made this way.

I also would like to get suggestions, if there are some features missing on the web. I will be improving the service continually. At this time, this is just a proof of concept.

EDIT: I just added an affiliate program. You get 30%, it is really simple, check it out: http://www.btc-report.org/affiliates

interesting idea..
i assume by SMS you mean.. txt message (or sms as we call it in australia :p)

If your not in Aus, and looking to service Aus people I have an SMS gateway you could perhaps use to SMS Aus folks

Yes, I mean mobile text messages, thank you for pointing that out. It is called SMS here in Europe too.

I already use SMS gateway that can send messages to almost every country, australia's six providers included (Globalstar Australia Pty Ltd, Telstra, Optus Mobile, Lycamobile, Hutchison 3G Australia Pty Ltd, Vodafone), I don't know if there are any more of them in Aus (can you confirm?).

You know there are loads of Android apps for alerting on exchange prices, right? SMS could be an option for those without smart phones, but as a smart phone owner I prefer the app.

Sure, I use one of those too. But I have alerts set on 5% or 10% drop, so it doesn't disturb me too often (5% is usual even if there aren't any bad news). But when the price is 5% or 10% already down and I just start to wonder what's happening, it is usually already too late.

ah ok NP.

their are soooooooooo many mobile "providers" however I believe they all just re-use optus, telstra, vodafone and 3.. and just have the name changed to their own service, e.g "aldi" - as part of the virtual mobile service provider service that the 4 carieers i mentioned provide.

sounds like you know whats what, so good luck. nifty little idea, let me know if you need some Aus guinea pigs.

I just edited my post and added new information about new affiliate program. Check it out!

Its a bad idea, you have to think that if everyone is signed up, they will all dump, and crash it more. You may want to look into insider trading to make sure its not connected.

You are right. That's why I wrote in original post: "This concept is not very healthy for the market, it can make price drops even bigger, so I will limit number of groups that can be made this way." Simply put I won't allow this site to grow that big.

Im not so sure if this really leads to more drastic crashes (lower minimal values). It will just reach the minimum faster and the market price will thus reflect the "true" price sooner than without such a service (where i have to way until i have time to check google news). Fundamental indicators are used by fiat-world-traders all the time and thats not bad. In the end liquidity and fast trades establishing market prices quickly are good things that could still be enhanced in the bitcoin world.

That's probably right, good thinking.

By the time you realize there is an issue and manually put out a text message, every automated BOT in existence will have already executed a trade.  Not to mention by the time your recipients get the text and react everyone else would have already got a twitter feed and reacted sooner.  I see no benefit in your system.

Usually there is insider trading before announcements are even made. The Gox fiasco was full of that, so using simple price alerts is almost as efficient as this system..

A tool that prevents you from panic selling would be more valuable.

I think this could be a great idea if you were the central news source sending out text messages with IMPORTANT updates.
I'm home almost all day, and hardly miss any news as reddit or twitter is usually up, but when im not home id love to have some updates sent to my mobile instead of having to stare at the small screen and hurt my head trying to read a lot.

Big news usually starts as a rumor, followed by denial, and then confirmation by an authority. This happened during the China crash with leaked weibo messages and the Gox crash with leaked documents. Central news sources are always late waiting for full confirmation, by that time most of the market action already occurred.

I don't think that majority of traders use automated BOTs, it is rather opposite. I am not saying that the system will give you heads up hours before something happens, but it can save you some precious minutes when something is already happening. Don't you think?

It could just as well work with sending out e-mails. Most phones can receive e-mails these days.

Not everyone is always connected to the internet though.

And who would determine what to be bad news or good news, and how could we trust that person. What when this person sleeps. Is there going to be a dedicated team doing this? Or if it is crowdsourced, how do we only get trustworthy people into the system?

What are some of the better apps out there?  Any recommendations?

I like "Bitcoin Checker" on Android as it is free and can check multiple exchanges, with multiple custom alerts for both lower and upper bounds.

 ;D very funny, I wish I had such a tool, once I was very stupid being in a hurry sold too much :'(

This is a community project, if it is good service or bad is up to people who are joining it. There are people with common goal. You have always trust someone at some point when joining anything. Even exchanges, who guarantee you that someone in charge of exchange won't steal your money there? Goxed people could talk about that I think, there is always some portion of trust. BTC report service is not some ultimate tool with guarantees you will be alerted always in time. This tool couldn't exist. It is up to you people, how good it will be. I have faith in Bitcoin community.

If you panic sell before most, wait a little bit, you can buy back and have more bitcoins.  ;D

Hi, I listed some bounties for affiliate program here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=516979.0
Check it out!

I like eCoin on Android because it can check multiple altcoins, not only Bitcoin.

And I guess most of us do own Bitcoin as well as some altcoins.

But this app does not have custom alerts, and this may be a room for improvement.

Right now it supports just text messages and you have to subscribe for at least a month. Would you appreciate an option for email reports as well? Lets say without need of subscription or with a small fee?

What about a tiny forum, where you can discuss the news being reported?