GDP grows approx. linearly, debt (=money) grows exponentially. Currently we're globally again (~70 years after WWII) at about the point where the interest on these debts will be bigger than GDPs.

The country that can delay this the longest will probably own the leading currency for the rest of this century. May the odds be ever in your favor!

Antwort: "Netzwerkhardware"

Die Dinger haben einen Netzwerkanschluss, ob das ein BTC ASIC oder eine seltsame Hardware-Firewall ist (oder sonstwas) erkennt man max. am großzügig dimensionierten Netzteil.

Bots sind meist selbst geschrieben, es gibt ein paar OpenSource Frameworks aber die "Idee" dahinter (wann genau weiß ich, dass es "high" ist und ich verkaufen sollte und wann ist es "low" genug zum Kaufen?) muss man dann noch selbst implementieren.

Bitfinex ist eine Meta-Exchangeplattform. Dort kann man "leveraged trade" betreiben, im Endeffekt borgt man sich Geld um Chancen auf höhere Gewinne zu haben mit der Gefahr auch höhere Verluste machen zu können.
Stell dir vor, du hast 100 EUR und glaubst der Preis (z.B. jetzt 50EUR) wird steigen, es wäre also klug jetzt BTC zu kaufen und später zu verkaufen.
Entweder du kaufst also 2 BTC, der Preis steigt wirklich und du verkaufst die um 60 EUR das Stück --> 20 EUR Gewinn. Alternativ fallen sie um 5 EUR und du steigst lieber aus: 10 EUR Verlust.
Bitfinex erlaubt dir nun, dir Geld zu borgen, sagen wir 500EUR um 1EUR Zinsen pro Tag. Damit kaufst du 10 BTC und behätst die ursprünglichen 100 EUR als Rücklage für Zinsen.

3 Tage später ist der Preis auf 60 EUR, du verkaufst, zahlst 500 + 3 EUR zurück und hast 97 EUR (statt 20 EUR ohne Hebel) Gewinn. Allerdings kann der Kurs auch fallen: Fällt der Kurs also auf 45 EUR nach 3 Tagen, hast du noch folgendes in deinem Konto: 500 EUR Schulden, 97 EUR (3 Tage = 3 EUR Zinsen) Bargeld und Bitcoin im Wert von 10*45 EUR = 450 EUR. Steigst du nun also aus, bleiben dir noch 47 EUR übrig, du hättest also 53 EUR statt 10 EUR Verlust.

Würde der Kurs weiter sinken, müsstest du entweder Geld nachschießen um Zinsen + Wertverfall ausgleichen zu können, freiwillig den Verlust realisieren oder es wird (falls es knapp wird) der Verlust von der Plattform realisiert ("force executed") um sicherzustellen, dass du nicht in's Minus rutschst (z.B. der Kurs ist auf 30 EUR, du hast aber nur 10 BTC und weniger als 200 EUR --> damit wärst du effektiv im Minus).


Auf diese Art und Weise kann man also (nicht nur mit Bitcoin, das Gleiche passiert genauso mit Aktien, Rohstoffen, Währungen...) sein Risiko erhöhen und sowas wird in den Medien auch oft als diese berühmte "Verzocken" bezeichnet. 1:5 ist noch einigermaßen sanft, auf Börsen oder im Forexbereich kann man dann schon weitaus höhere Hebel ansetzen.
Mit Bots hat das nicht sooo viel zu tun, Bitfinex verwendet dann natürlich einen (rel. dummen, der muss ja nicht bewerten was er macht) Bot um z.B. dann die Trades die du machst (oder die dir aufgezwungen werden) auch auszuführen.

Nicht jeder Bot ist also darauf ausgelegt für sich jetzt Gewinn zu machen oder sinnvoll zu traden, teils ist es einfach eine Notwendigkeit um gewisse Sachen umsetzen zu können (ein anderes Beispiel wäre Arbitrage --> wenn auf 2 Börsen unterschiedliche Preise sind, kann man bei der einen kaufen, bei der anderen zugleich verkaufen und hat damit insgesamt einen kleinen Gewinn).

Yes, and I also much rather have a kinda usable platform that is built on a solid basis instead of a bunch of hacks and the most glamorous UI instead.

Seems like current VIR is now displayed, thanks!

How high is this "reasonable" number? Depending on the time frame you look at, BTCUSD goes up in annual numbers I would deem "unreasonable".

Maybe you could just calculate VIR like this:

For every atomic time unit (seconds?) calculate the following number:
Total amount of interest paid on loans (either USD or BTC) / Total amount of USD/BTC currently in active loans

Then either take the arithmethic mean or (if you're really worried about outliers) the median value of these and call it the average interest of the hour/day/week...
Lenders then can choose to either lend out at the average value of the last X hours/days/weeks or enter their own offers into the engine.

This makes sure 1 USD lent out at a few million% doesn't change interest rates that much. I still wonder if you really do a weighted average (over a few days!) how VIR can still vary that much even over 1 day. My suspicion is still that VIR itself is not factored in, only fixed rate loans (of which there might be fewer).


In general about lending:
* Grouping offers/demands makes 0 sense, if you then can't fill 'em! I click the check box next to a loan demand, some numbers get pre-filled and still have NO idea how high the real demand was, as I can't trust the interest rate displayed at all. Also even though I tried to use all information available to me, I still have to guess numbers, as "10%" means "0.0001%-10.0000%". I have no clear way to fill loan demand at the moment. Imagine placing offers with ONLY the MarketDepth chart on http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html available...

* It is hard to have this additional 3rd measurement (offer time) next to amount and APR. Maybe instead of clustering by APR, you could cluster by time? (Offers between 1-10 days, 11-31, 32-61, 62+)

* To also get a few trades on your platform going you might offer the setting that interest received from lending out BTC/USD gets automatically converted to the other currency (or only BTC/USD) via an automatic market trade on either the internal or MtGox market, whatever yields more (e.g. on internal I get 0.5 BTC after fees for my 40 USD, on MtGox 0.52 --> trade on MtGox). You might even offer a split (keep 10% of interest in USD to fight fiat inflation, convert rest to BTC because you're "cowardly long" on BTC )

* Please display offers as they were entered somewhere - it might be fine to display a grouping for overview (graphics might be even better...) but there should be some kind of advanced page where you can find exact numbers (maybe with some filters?) to post/fill offers.

* Please display the current (I think it's valid for 15 minutes, right?) APR next to "V.I.R." in brackets, something like "V.I.R. (currently 234.5678%)".

Also giving a few numbers on how much profit your traders + lenders make might be interesting and be good PR (as far as I've seen, most users should have profited quite a bit from the recent rally, even through some growing pains and MtGox lags!).

All in all thanks for addressing issues quite quickly so far and constantly communicating/looking for suggestions/solutions! This still is beta and especially the current issues in lending are probably also just display issues that need to be figured out (show each single offer of a few cents vs. when to group while still making sure offers can be actually filled and not spamming the page).

1) changes every 15 minutes AFAIK.

2) with vir it's hard. you can see the current averages on the stats page, but I'm not sure if they really show vir as it was changed to being an average over the past few days (30?).

3) same for me, my btc offers are not displayed even and I am not able to match the 10% loan demand. I first thought its a rounding display issue and the loan is really for 9.9999% or so, but it seems that either the display or something else got stuck.

TL;DR: Linear wachsende Wirtschaft und exponentiell wachsende Geldmenge/Schulden = Umbruch alle ~70 Jahre.

Ich würd mich freuen, weil ich dann mehr als 100k EUR auf meinem Konto hätte. Bei den Zinsen die man bisher auf diesen Konten hatte, ist das dann auch nicht mal so viel...

Ist das überhaupt jetzt schon fix von den Zyprioten beschlossen worden? Der erste Vorschlag hat's ja nicht lang überlebt...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_Japan

Vorgestern (20.03) sollte ein Feiertag gewesen sein. Allerdings hat MtGox ja auch die polnische Bankverbindung, oder?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_Poland
Derzeit wohl nix, aber wer weiß schon, was es da alles so an Feiertagen gibt...

Jetzt ist erst mal Wochenende und der Preis bleibt gleich oder lässt nach (oder steigt ).

Ich vermute ja noch immer, dass diese 15:30 Käufe offene ungedeckte Orders waren und MtGox da einfach alle Bankeingänge auf einen Schlag gebucht hat.

Naked wohl nur mit einem Idioten Mutigem hier der dir das vorstreckt, "normal" shorten kannst du z.B. auf bitfinex.com, da sind derzeit glaube ich 1:5 Hebel möglich... derzeit sind dort aber fast alle Long, was dich aber nicht abhalten soll.

Guess what, "Satoshi Nakamoto" also leads to a used brainwallet...

>50 BTC of mine currently up for grabs... together with ~1300 other BTC at VIR.
Loan demand: 0 BTC.

Of course 4digit APRs look ridiciulous, but these won't stay forever and BTCUSD currently shows far crazier APRs than anything I've even seen offered as a joke. Also these high interest (where interest = ~1/2 of money earned) loans so far seem to stay open for only short periods of time. The longer the position is active, the more important the interest on the loan.

If I converted my BTC to USD to gain on these "too high" 400% APRs, it might take me quite some time (depending on if the rally goes on) until I'm able again to even afford my BTC back. At that point of time however every lendee would have already realized their loss probably and switched to cheaper loans.

Again, current rates might seem crazy, but they are still only a very small cut of profits of traders. They might mess up 30 day VIR once the market goes down a bit though.

... oh, no problem, as I could send certified mails, PDFs and so on with my personal DIGITAL SIGNATURE that is valid even in court but apparently not good enough for this Florida "lawyer".

I recently bought shares in a company with this signature, which was magnitudes above what I'd get out as dividend in Bitcoin here...
Anyways, I'm still waiting for that "soon" update about how many shares were claimed by how many shareholders and how many are still out there not claiming under these conditions.

As I said before, lenders are in a worse position if the market moves in the other direction. Take a look at the btc lending market right now for example.

I saw about 3% gain in USD from the current rally, that went up for far more than 10 times that amount. Yes, lending is more secure which is why I do it - but once the rate dips the people I lend to might get force executed and then I'm left with a bunch of money nobody wants, just like btc right now.

The asymmetric thing is that a lender can't know beforehand how long a position will last. If I can force a lendee to keep my money (and be able to pay the interest) for the time he actually asks it from me I'd be more than a willing to get less interest. Right now though the high rates just reflect the fact that lendees also just have short positions that are incredibly profitable even with 0.5% interest per day and more. I today tried to move away from vir and already filled 350%(!)offers... And I think even then it might be profitable for lendees, though one has to remember: Weekend is coming!

Hm, I guess something like "VIR 1 day average", "VIR 7 days average" etc.?

Sounds interesting but then also risky where to offer loans - but definitely a possible improvement, thanks!

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_4:_Using_external_state kinda covers your usage scenario. As killerstorm said, you'd have something like the blockchain.info client with a single "trading" address that you have to fund but that can be saved locally, not on your servers.

Then the client creates a bet by sending some amount (of up to 100 BTC) to you or to itself on a certain date and time, depending on the oracle that you control. The oracle would simply return the current BTCUSD rate, something that's easily verifiable to work correctly. You then also release a transaction that either gives the person betting the money or takes it back, also depending on the oracle (thinking of it, the oracle could even be supplied by a third party, like MtGox. I'm not 100% sure if it can be open source (show both outcomes) though, gotta read the stuff again).
The user then can be sure that you have the funds to cover his bet and you can be sure to get the money. It might also allow for even more flexibility, as you can dynamically set the time when the oracle shall be asked.

Isn't it a bit unfair that VIR is only moving very slowly (average of the last 30(?) days) while traders can act much faster?

While Bitcoin did rise from 50 to 60 USD I earned ~2% on my USD deposit in interest. If I don't (auto)lend out for VIR, I have a hard time to keep up with demand, since traders borrow, wait for a 5% rise (in these crazy times that seems to be quite easy) and then exit the position again. If I make sure money is put up as fast as possible for VIR, I am lending out for nearly the cheapest rates possible atm., if I set a percentage I would have to adapt it to the market from time to time to stay attractive...

The current rush will drive up VIR, yes, but if there's a crash afterwards a high VIR doesn't help me at all because my offers then just won't be taken (like in the BTC lending market atm. - "Short your coins, weekend is coming" by the way!) and the high VIR will actually do more harm than good.

I understand I complain on a high level (at least no matter in which way the rate moves, I'm kinda guaranteed to get a share of the profit, as I hold USD and BTC) but slowly adapting VIR rates are not very nice to lenders in a high demand scenario and even worse in low demand. Maybe there can be a measurement of volatility that factors in to how many days are considered for the VIR? If volatility is high, I'd expect the VIR to go up much higher than it currently is.

Real world number time:
APRs for the last 5 days as lender in the USD market (you can check yourself on bitcoincharts how much traders made on that money...), yesterday on top, then day before yesterday etc.:
177,2044
130,2016
125,0596
127,7510
141,9950

Looks impressive, right? Well, all in all it's a ~2% increase so far which is nice, but there was much higher demand for sometimes much higher rates (today I rarely saw demand to borrow for less than 150%). If I took one of these 150% offers though, I risk: Pulling down VIR even more, under-/overselling the market after the loan ends (which is NOT predictable at all since traders get bust or exit their position to take their profit/loss randomly) or (if I want to look how offers look after I get the money back, to maybe grab a better rate) to have stale money lying around.

Maybe my thoughts on the topic are all wrong though and there are convincing reasons (other than to protect traders from sudden VIR spikes) to keep VIR rather smooth?

Well, I could trade on MtGox in BTCUSD and BTCEUR if I know EURUSD (or assume EURUSD as static - compared to BTC that might even be true)...

If there's a plugin for other "real" Forex brokers that might even work quite well! Still it might be enough to do fiat trades in bulk after some time, as the volatility is quite different there. Hence it might be possible to trade two currency pairs on the same "market".

Something like using smart contracts (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts) might be a really interesting way of doing business, on the other hand it might be too much for the average user. Also it might likely require a specialized client.
On the other hand this offers a good chance to build a better brand, if you have to load your "trading wallet" first. The upside for you and the users would be that you actually never have to keep bitcoins that aren't in use and users always have control over their keys.