Bitcoin Forum

Hey there!

I'm Josh Jones, one of the co-founders of DreamHost, and although I'm new to posting on the forums, I've been lurking for a while, and have been interested in Bitcoin for about 2 years now (I even found a block on my home theater netbook back in 2010)!

Anyway, I've been buying coins on mtgox for a while now, and all the delays and manual clicking around were pretty frustrating! So, I set up a system to do what I like to do with my other investments: automatic dollar-cost-averaging!

The benefits of this type of (long term) investing are laid out well in this article:

http://www.automaticfinances.com/dollar-cost-averaging-and-the-benefits-of-automatic-investing/

I'll summarize:

* By investing a fixed dollar amount, when prices are low, you buy more, when prices are high, you buy less... resulting in a lower average cost per bitcoin.

 * You don't have to think about it or do anything once you've set it up. Timing the market is hard and usually doesn't work!

 * Spending a set amount per time period coincides nicely with how most people receive money: a set amount every two weeks!

Now, after running it for a few weeks for myself, I'm opening up the system for anybody to use..

https://www.bitcoinbuilder.com/

There's no cost (apart from the typical mtgox/dwolla fees they charge you), and no bitcoins are stored with me (you just make an API key with "trade" rights only and enter it on the site). Just set up a schedule of how much, what currency, how often, and when to start buying bitcoin on the site, and come back in 20 years a millionaire!  ;)

Soooooo.... please check it out, give it a try, and let me know any comments/concerns/congratulations!

Thanks!

Nifty, reckon you can do one for cryptoexchange? :)

Hmm, well I reckon I could!

I'll update here when it's ready... it may be a little while though!

Thanks!

suspicious website is suspicious.

Cool! I hope that mean dreamhost will accept bitcoin soon.

I hope so too!

I had suggested it a couple of years ago, but nobody got around to doing it back then (when it would have been like 1,000BTC/mo, dang it!)... and now I'm sort of in "retirement" and don't really have so much day-to-day influence. But I keep suggesting/pushing it....


A truer truism has never been commented!

Cool :) Thank you for bringing this free project to the community. I had a project years ago hosted with DreamHost :)

I will try your platform soon and let you know my thoughts.

Thanks!
Roberto

It would be awesome to have a business like DreamHost accept Bitcoin!

One feature request: defining the price of the purchase. Because price is sometimes fluctuating heavily, this could be useful.

It could be a simple dropdown, where there is a choice of selections, for example:

- Market price (default)
- Highest Bid
- 24h average

What do you think?

I'm already switching my clients to Dreamhost from GoDaddy in protest of SOPA.  I'm glad to discover the cofounder also supports Bitcoin.

Also I like the concept of this service.  Before trusting the site with an API key though, is there any way the community could verify Josh's identity?  Please understand the healthy need for suspicion.

So what's the difference between this and the Gox Trade Bot for Chrome? Are both using the EMA system, or is this sort of a rainy day system?

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iejmifigokhpcgpmoacllcdiceicmejb

Hmm, although it's sort of against the whole point of dollar-cost-averaging, that could be easily added. One thing, I don't think there's a difference between highest bid and market price... it's my understanding that placing a market order on mtgox will just match you up with the highest unfilled bid? One risk of doing 24h average is your order may NEVER get filled (if the 24hr moving average is the market bottom).. which would sort of suck that you didn't buy because you happened to be at the alltime low! But, let me know with those considerations if anybody would still like that option and I'll add it to the feature request list!



Nice, yeah.. GoDaddy BOOOOOOO! :)

Maged actually already confirmed my account as the Josh I say I am in order to get whitelisted, maybe he could reply to this thread confirming?

I did try to make the site as risk-free as possible by only requiring the trade API, so WORST case I guess the site could continuously buy and sell all your mtgox coins until their transaction fees ate them all up. Which admittedly would be pretty bad!


I hadn't seen that, interesting!

Here are some differences:

The chrome bot tries to do a momentum-based time-the-market system, buying and selling. Bitcoinbuilder does simple automatic dollar-cost-averaging, which just always buys the same ($) amount of bitcoin at whatever time schedule you set, regardless of the market.

The chrome bot works with a fixed amount of money/btc; since bitcoinbuilder only buys, you will need to keep adding money to your mtgox account.

The chrome bot requires your web browser to be open to work; bitcoinbuilder.com runs as a web service all the time.

The chrome bot runs every hour on the hour your web browser is open; bitcoinbuilder allows you to set any schedule (from once an hour on up) and start it in the future (up to one year in advance).

Well, actually I use my own script, so I don't really need that feature for myself. But people have different investing strategies, so I think that additional possible strategies would be good. But it is your service, so you decide :)

Edit: The highest bid is lower than the market price. Executing at market price usually means lowest ask price, which is higher than highest bid. This kind of market activity might lower the spread.

It could be something like "advanced options". I just think that there are lots of people, who would like to have their own "bot", but don't have the coding skills/time etc., so this kind of service would be very useful for them.

Ah cool, gotcha about the highest bid vs lowest ask, dur. I guess that's like saying "I'm only willing to pay as much as somebody else is willing to pay." as opposed to the market order which is "I'm willing to pay the lowest somebody is willing to sell it for." The spreads are just so close on mtgox I was like "same thing!" But definitely not, especially if I expand this to other exchanges that aren't as liquid!

Thanks for the feedback, I'll work on adding this stuff as soon as I can get to it!

I wanted to report that it seems to be working great so far.

Thanks Josh.

Any news about this service? Any new features in planning?

Yes, finally!

New feature news!

1. Bitcoin Builder now supports the automatic SELLING of bitcoins (Bitcoin Unwinder?) ... perfect for miners who want to steadily convert their pool earnings into the fiat of their choice, but don't want to have to manually log in and worry about timing the market!

2. Even though it goes against the whole point of Dollar Cost Averaging, you can now choose a price other than "market price" for your automatic schedule (of buying or selling).

The additional options when buying are: highest bid, 24 hour low, 24 hour average, 24 hour volume-weighted average.
The additional options when selling are: lowest ask, 24 hour high, 24 hour average, 24 hour volume-weighted average.

Please note, choosing any of these options may result in your order not executing immediately, and therefore sitting in your mt.gox order book, possibly forever, or possibly getting executed at some later date when you lease suspect it! Use with caution!

3. The site has been slightly re-skinned to be more mobile-happy and better overall (thanks to twitter bootstrap)!

Check it out, https://www.bitcoinbuilder.com/

josh!

Hey Josh,

Really nice site you put together!

I have to ask, do you have any proof you are Josh Jones?

We have seen our fair share of scams, and since your taking clients MtGox API keys, thats a huge security risk.

Can you prove your identity?

Thanks

Charlie

I'll just note that the API key is only to be granted "trade" rights, and not "withdraw" or anything else. Suppose Josh could send Charlie an email from his Dreamhost address, perhaps.

Heya!

Yeah, maged had the same question when I first applied for whitelisting. I verified with him (you could pm him to check). Here's a copy and paste of our PM exchange:

Hey,

Cool! Awesome  ;D

I wasn't doubting you or anything, I figured I might as well ask nicely before some troll starts crying scam!

Anyways, feel free to reach out and get in touch

-Charlie

The new version looks awesome! I really like the feature where you can choose, which value to use.

Thanks guys! And yeah, no offense taken Charlie! And sure, pm or email me if you wanna chat sometime!

Hell yes!  I'm already a DreamHost customer.  Glad you've joined the conversation, Josh.

Hi Josh, I am interested in using the site but when I attempt to create an account and a first time automated trade I am brought to a blank page in Firefox. In Chrome it says there was a server error with create.php .

I have double checked my APIs....any advice?

Tried again 8/6 and it worked like a charm!

Thanks!

is there a STOPLOSS in bitcoinbuilder?
or is there a similar service that offers STOPLOSS?

I mean:
if bitcoin is lower than 120usd each = sell all my bitcoins on mtgox...

I think people would pay for this...

MtGox can't handle this.

anybody make a deal there? it is still working ?

The trade history seems active.

I have PROBELM?

I have over 38 GoxBTC I bought and I just received this email from Josh Jones josh@newdream.net

Hi there,

I really really apologize for "springing" this on you, but Bitcoin Builder has taken off just today in a way I hadn't really anticipated when I launched it on Tuesday, and as such, I got some legal advice on regulatory compliance and it's recommended that I get identifying information before processing withdrawals over a certain size.

Fortunately, all I need from you in order to process your withdrawal is:

1. Your country of citizenship.
  1A. If the US, your SSN. (or if you have a US. Taxpayer ID #, that)

2. Your birthday.

3. A scan of a government-issued photo ID.

This is a one-time thing and you'll be good to go afterwards! Just email them to me here and you'll be all set.

Again, I really appreciate this and apologize for not having this policy in place before and clear on the website. I'm working right now on adding it to the web interface and adding notices, etc!

Thanks so much,
josh!

i also have a problem. Yesterday i try to withdraw some realBTC. today i saw that my withdrawal is stoped and i have 7realBTC more on my acount and -11goxBTC. what is going on ?

lol, the Goxbug virus spreads out to bitcoinbuilder

Josh, I requested a double digit btc withdrawal.
Do you need ID from me?

Just received my double digit withdrawal, once verified.
Excellent service from Josh.

I'm having problems as well.  My BTC withdrawl request from Friday hasn't happened, my email to Josh hasn't been answered, and I have a negative balance in one of my addresses - how does that happen?

How long does verification take? I just submitted my forms and am eager to withdraw.

Thank you.

Happened overnight for me, a bit less than 24 hours.

Josh is definitely a smart guy who has such an idea of letting people trading between GoxBtc and realBtc and get profit from it.

But those who are trading on his website look like crazy because the biggest exchange MtGox is proved today to be so risky, yet you are moving your coins from it to a more risky site. It's like a gambler who had lost a lot just decided to risk everything on the last throw.

Wish you all good luck!

Well I'm now the owner of some shiny new GoxBox. Let's see what happens here. ;D

hgamezoom, I know what you mean.

I made a realbtc deposit there about 3 hours ago and it still hasn't shown up - something to do with the blockchain api I suppose.

Finally got my btc out of there.

Good site but the fact that if you try withdraw after 5 pst then it takes over 35hrs for withdrawal makes me feel extremely uneasy like gox did

I put an buying GoxBTC order for more than 12 hours and nothing is happening. Weird ...

I guess it never traded as low as you were looking for then? If someone ever agrees to sell at your price it should trigger instantly.

Same problem here, how did it get solved?

So let's say that I've bought some GOXcoins but I don't have a gox account.

I've requested a withraval of those coins through the site to a regular address but says it hasn't happen yet. When they process it manualy I guess GOX withraval problems will still be around. What happens to those coins?

"regular address" means an adress outside ox? you can not withdraw to there, only to a gox address
see faq:
https://www.bitcoinbuilder.com/faq.html

You can't withdrawal the GoxBTC to a non-Gox address until Gox reopens transfers. I'm not sure what happens if you try now. Same thing if anyone on Gox tried I guess. A rejection warning? A queue?

"Transfer queue is currently not accepting more requests, please retry later" :)

MTGOX have stopped trading, can I still buy some cheap GOX coin?

no

Yes.

BitcoinBuilder is still trading, around 0.14 BTC per GoxCoin. Apparently there are still people that believe that Gox will (partially) refund coins held in accounts. Of course, while Gox is down, people can't deposit/withdraw GoxCoins from/to their MtGox account.

Is BitcoinBuilder.com also involved in this MtGox scam? What was the returns in fees and how many mtgoxBTC are currently in the BitcoinBuilder.com MtGox account?

Thanks Josh! Awesome Job!

Hey Josh what happened to your site bitcoinbuilder.com  I hope you we won't get goxed from you too...

Since mtgox is still having issues, i suggest that https://www.bitcoinbuilder.com/ should integrate another exchange and not to make the website dormant due to lack of traffics.

"mtgox is still having issues"

Now that's funny. ^.^

=squeak=