Bitcoin Forum

We were too lazy to put up a countdown. But well, now the new site is up, after a short period of downtime (mostly DNS resolution time).

https://www.bitcoinica.com/ (https://www.bitcoinica.com/)

New features:

- Refresh-less experience
- PJAX
- Better User Interface
- Account Ledger
- Order History
- Better Deposits and Withdrawals (No more emails to request for manual withdrawals)
- Currency Exchange with guaranteed rates and liquidity
- Advanced Charting, including over 20 technical indicators
- Hosted by Rackspace
- Partially Redis-backed - super-fast!
- More robust trading engine
- Customizable leverage, from 1:1 to 10:1
- … Experience yourself...

We hope we can continue setting high standards for Bitcoin web-based services in terms of innovation, quality of development and user interface. As usual, we welcome your feedback. Along with this launch of new platform, we would like to bring back our popular bug bounty program!

Security-related or critical loopholes: 5 - 100 BTC each

Operational bugs: 1 - 25 BTC each

User experience issues: 1 - 25 BTC each

We have been testing ourselves for more than a week, so we don't really rely on this program to fix things. However, we do want to hear your feedback and we will continue improving Bitcoinica! Please send your feedback to support@bitcoinica.com (if it's account-related or private) or feedback@bitcoinica.com (if it's public).

Thank you for your continuous support!

And it's gone!

Try refreshing :)

I'm currently waiting for four hours for a manual approval for a USD withdrawal via a MtGox code while the markets are moving quite a lot and I have no way of accessing my $ because I cannot operate with them neither on Bitcoinica nor on MtGox.
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/650/bitcoinicawithdrawal2.jpg

I also started a thread on Bitcoinica's support site three hours ago with no response.
http://help.bitcoinica.com/discussions/questions/19-manual-approval (http://help.bitcoinica.com/discussions/questions/19-manual-approval)

Bitcoinica seems to be making changes to the production site :O
I can't open my account menu, the exchange page doesn't "calculate", and a lot of things aren't working.

Fixed now.

Really sorry for the problem. I'm traveling at the moment and I don't have stable Internet connections in China. Your withdrawal request was received when we run out of limits at Mt. Gox. I will try to get your withdrawal request approved.

I imagine your backlog must be huge!

Well, you're right. There are a lot of pending withdrawal requests and I can't access the database, LOL.

Luckily the new system is perfectly stable and we don't have any data errors or scaling issues.

I'm busy replying customers' emails right now. :-D

Have you even tried to convince mtgox to lift their ridiculous limits?  Surely they can make an exception...

MtGox limits you in how much money you can transfer TO them?
So I can assume this is not a one-time-only hold-up and it is likely to happen again?
I'm glad you are trying to solve this issue, but it's been 6 hours now and I still cannot access my assets on your platform.

I haven't funded my account (on purpose), but I created two orders on it:  one to buy 1BTC, and one to sell 1BTC.  I can't cancel the orders via the UI (they're stuck in "insufficient margin"), and I can't seem to even be able to cancel them via API (though the last time I tried that, it was BEFORE this new version).

You don't have to cancel it. If there's no sufficient margin the order is discarded.

This is how most real-world trading platforms handle it.

Looks great Zhou!

So if I were to deposit a couple of bitcoins and a few dollars right now, neither of those orders would become active?

They won't be active again.

The main screen will show all active orders. Other than that won't be executed.

It's been 9 hours and I'm starting to lose my patience, because during that time the price was fluctuating quite a bit (2.65 - 2.98). I'm losing money here guys, can you please do something about it? Can't you cancel the withdrawal request so I can trade at least on Bitcoinica?

Minor thing, but the chart should keep your preferences saved so that you don't have to set it to log scale or turn off the indicators EVERY time you look at it.

I emailed you this one, but figure I'll post it here anyways since you are offering rewards. You can circumvent the high maintenance on the higher leverage by simply making your trades at a 10:1 leverage and then changing back down to 1:1 to reduce your maintenance amount. You can also exceed 10:1 leverage by taking a 10:1 position, then switching back to 1:1 and withdrawing everything down to the margin amount giving you a potential leverage of something like 200:1 with a 99% margin if we don't account for the spread.

17CRiJeKA58Ac6GipJNQWt4yE1V3oXrsy

I love it!

Zhou, the site looks great. The Active Orders are a huge improvement. However, the refreshing reorders by last Update. So, if I sort by Price, then seconds later, it's scrambled again. My sort preference should not be reset by each AJAX refresh. Furthermore, if I do sort by Update, the ordering tends to look random because (I presume) the order types are threaded and batched asynchronously; and because 'static' orders (all but trailing stops) have a new update date, even if their state hasn't actually changed. Cheers!

I agree, the "pending manual approval" is terrible. If I can't move my money, at least let me keep it. Now it is basically trapped, the worst of both worlds, and it means I have to keep checking in to see if a redeem code is available.

I've got an account leveraged way over 10:1 now and I missed the chance to use that money to buy at the price I wanted and I now I also can't get the money back into my account. If I get liquidated because of this pending approval issue I will be super pissed.

Most of my movements are between various Bitcoinica accounts. How about an internal system of transfer?

Here is another small issue. If you have a negative tradable balance, you can't "quick pick" against your current position. It will tell you that you have insufficient funds even though you are just erasing a position that you already have. Luckily you can still type in a value.

14mv8A7RVtG3dDCgrJAYDAw96BVaFHXCar

nvm

About liquidation: Bitcoinica once caused a small loss for me due to not withdrawing quickly enough.  I opened a support ticket and zhoutong refunded it!  One thing you cannot criticize about Bitcoinica is their customer service.   :)

edit: You got leverage OVER 10:1?  How high!?

I was just using the loophole I mentioned in the first page. I leveraged a small amount of money at 10:1 ( about $10) buying at 2.7. Then I switched the account over to 1:1 and withdrew about half of it to go into another account to leverage at 10:1 again. Except it got frozen when I withdrew it and that money is still frozen now. Luckily the first position paid off before it went to liquidation world.

I've been using Bitcoinica for a month now and I should know this by now, and I'm going to sound like an idiot asking it, but what is the difference between holding USD or holding BTC in the "Currency Account"?  Looking for an in depth answer on that if possible.

But why on earth would you leverage to 200:1 on BITCOIN of all things?! crazy ;D

BTC will just be converted into margin balance at the current exchange rate. What this means is that if you have Bitcoin your margin balance will change with price. I have learned from experience that you can even have a negative net value if the price drops and the bitcoin in your currency account doesn't cover a negative dollar amount caused by trading losses.

200:1 is not actually possible, but you can get some pretty high amounts. How else are you going to turn $1 into $10 in less than a day or lose it in less than a minute? Actually there are a lot of ways to lose a dollar faster than that even.

Bug report - The little grey question marks next to "Net Value" and "Maintenance" work fine if you mouseover, but if you click them the pop-up notification will not go away no matter where you click after.  Have to refresh page to get it to go away.  Hides the values underneath.

That might be a browser specific thing. What are you using? They work fine for me.

Chrome 16

Zhoutong, I have a question. Do you have any plans for added security by either offering two-way SMS authentication or Yubikeys? I'm interested in depositing some more, but I'm reluctant to do so with all these horror stories of hacking incidents. I do have strong passwords via KeePass, but thankfully my MtGox yubikey has already saved me against a phishing attack once...

I agree, some more security would be nice.

If anyone breaks into my account, by guessing the password or whatever, he can just steal it all.

Zhoutong, I found a bug in your new USD/BTC exchange system. It is very easy to duplicate, just input amount of USD that is approximate to 50 BTC and use the Calculate button to check how many BTCs you can get back. For example, the current Guaranteed Exchange Rate is
V <= 50           -> 0.3315
50 < V <= 500  ->  0.3215
500 < V <= 5000 -> 0.305

You input US$ 149, you will get BTC 49.79382575
You input US$ 150, you will get BTC 48.62417213

More USD, less BTC?

any chance on getting other currency pairs at the exchange.  specifically alt coins?   bitcoin-litecoin bitcoin-namecoin ?

I second this.

I negative this.