Andy asked if we pay interest on USD or BTC. The answer is no, sorry to be so cryptic!

jed, great.

Re: enforcement -- it's all escrowed, so no worries about trading partners.

Anti,

I need writing for bitoption.org. PM me with thoughts if you like.

You're right, my bad.

Someone else offered something where it would (say every 5 minutes) parse your amazon wishlist, then email you a receipt to buy what was on it in BTC. You'd send, and the items would go to you immediately. That was hot, and hits some of the issues you're talking about re: simplicity.

Hey w0mbat, I appreciated the listing. I think the question you need to answer is what people care about. There are a number of exchange-statistics sites already which provide the listings plus some data on what's happening. Check out some of their threads; I bet you'll find out more what people want and are excited about in this space.

Regards!

Totally; tweet away to him.

Re: interest -- nope.

No, spendbitcoins.com

Update: If you click on "USD-BTC" at the top, you can see the prices inverted. Also, Mt. Gox at the money is updated every three seconds now.

You still have to place your trades in BTC-USD, but this helps, I think.

A little bit better every day!

Re: mega-bulls, there are a lot of economists and bloggers who keep promising to take the other side of this trade. I'd love to see a grassroots "come on, put your money where your mouth is" short campaign.

I would suggest you work on implementing a version of the wishlist bot somebody around here did; I think it's a nicer system. Surely there's room for more than one such service.

I qualify as a super-bull. Why not throw a few BTC into some outrageous trades 6 to 12 months from now? That's my plan once programming slows down a bit.

Re: risk spreads: yes. I expect some significant automated trading coming soon; I'm hoping those guys get everybody riled up and using the site.

I made a major update to the initial post; thanks for the tips. dacoinminster; your math wasn't right, you might want to review mine if you've made any trades! I want you to make money. : )

Nonexistence of nonexistant as a word is confirmed. Thanks for the catch.

Longmarch, frustrating! I just registered and logged in successfully with a trial login. I'm guessing (hopefully politely) it's user error right now. I should have password resets running shortly, so you can use your second login (that one had an email attached to it). For my records, what browser/OS are you using? I assume you're using the site, not the API?

Dacoin, thanks for the suggestion. I'll shamelessly steal your examples unless you have objections.


@longmarch, make sure you've capitalized your first initial.

@jed, from the logs, it looks like you didn't enter a password, or yours was too short.. You need a nine character password. If you still have trouble, email me, and I'll get you sorted. The system should complain about a short password, though, so it's a little mysterious.

@buryfarmer, on my side, the ledger that I expect is associated with your account reads 10.0 BTC. Can you confirm that you still get the empty report on your side? It does take a while for confirmation.

Re: pricing, what I'm going to do is provide a little switch that will re-render either way. We need to store in BTC for USD because we are also going to do BTC for other underlying items.

Re: BTC for BTC, we launched with that, but it was really confusing.

Re: commission, you're absolutely right, it was listed here, but not in the FAQ. 1%.

The call: each call is for one USD.

So, 200 calls is the right to buy 200 USD at .05 BTC per USD. The writer will need 1 USD in their account per contract they write.

I'm too sleepy to re-confirm that buying these is actually a bullish strategy, but I believed it was when I bid on them.

Shorts,

You know who you are. It is time to put your money where your mouth is, and do some option trading.

https://bitoption.org is up and running. It will keep gaining features this week, but there are currently over $1k USD in options offers on the site, and more coming in quickly.

I'll look forward to seeing those bear trades roll in.

You now have a way to actively trade against BTC; enjoy! I have had fun building it.

So, we escrow both sides, BTC and USD.

However, we don't (yet) accept USD receipts. So, to get USD, you must send us BTC, then exchange. We use Mt. Gox for the exchange.

So, you send, say 20 BTC. You trade 10 BTC for dollars, and get 180 USD. Your account with us has 10 BTC and 180 USD at that point.

We'll support sending USD out through Mt. Gox sometime soon, and may support receiving USD from them as well, I have to talk to Magical Tux about it, though.

At any rate, once your money is in, and you place an order, we lock the BTC or USD; you are not allowed to withdraw or spend until the contract is canceled or executed or expires. In that way, you should feel confident about any contract you purchase.

The idea that the exchange itself vets participants and makes sure they're not scammers sure isn't new. It's going to be needed, and I'd say that's how you'll earn your money, Nefario.

It would make sense you'd escrow off the first bit of fees against costs? This will probably take some time to sort out exactly.

Ah, funding methods:

Send BTC to us. You can then convert via Mt. Gox for USD.

It's up, short away. (Or post enticing long trades.. Or hedge out your risk by making awesome offers on puts, your call!)

https://bitoption.org


Currently 1200 USD in options with bids waiting to get picked up.