No, the root of all reversibility is the Visa/MasterCard credit card system used by Americans.

Chinese banking system is entirely different. Chinese people don't use Visa/MasterCard for domestic purchases, online payments require strict authentication, banks are usually not responsible for fund losses, etc.

Everything is very Bitcoin-like, and non-reversible.

More than half of Alipay's transactions are escrows.

Sure. I'll go to Trinity College in March.

We will consider Alipay withdrawal option soon. Currently there's an API for mass payments, but it requires a service contract with Alipay.

When the CNY deposit volume is higher, we will have better chances of getting the service contract signed.

It's like a dual-currency account. This is a good idea.

However, we have already eliminated the starfish problem. Currently all interest rates are dynamic, and people are shifting their deposits and positions fast enough to provide liquidity when we need.

We're glad to announce that Bitcoinica now supports Alipay, the most popular payment website in China with hundreds of millions of active users.

From now on, anyone with an Alipay account, a UnionPay credit/debit card or an online banking account with major national and regional banks will be able to deposit into Bitcoinica instantly, with zero commissions (currency conversion fees apply).

We believe that entering Chinese market by integrating with the most popular e-commerce payment tool will be a significant boost for the Bitcoin community in the long run.

Now we're going to post this announcement in Chinese:

我们很高兴地告诉大家 Bitcoinica 现在正式支持支付宝，中国最流行的第三方支付工具。

从今天起，任何拥有一个支付宝账号，中国银联信用卡和借记卡或主要国有银行和地区银行的网上银行业务均可使用支付宝网关来进行 Bitcoinica 的在线充值。整个过程是全自动的，瞬间即可完成。同时，我们不收取任何的手续费（但是会有货币转换费，体现在汇率上）。

我们相信通过集成中国最大的电子商务支付工具来进入中国市场对比特币社区的发展是有长久的好处的！

Screenshot:

Currently we don't support stop-limit order and if-then order. If you want to liquidate a 50 BTC long position and create a 50 BTC short position, you can just place a 100 BTC stop sell order.

For example, you want to buy Bitcoins *only* when it rises above $4.5. Then you can set a stop buy order at 4.5.

In Bitcoinica, orders and positions are not linked at all. If there's any position, the system will always add/subtract from it. If there's no position, the system will create one. Whenever a position becomes zero, the P/L will be realized and it will be removed.

There's no compound for unpaid interest. The current interest rate for Bitcoin deposit is 0.55. So if you have ฿1, you will be paid ฿0.000055 every day. Then it's going to take about 200 days to make the first 0.01.

If you have ฿100, you'll receive an interest payment approximately every 2 days based on current rate.

We will try to contact them before the deadline.

Unfortunately, we don't offer API data for open interest currently.

But we will consider doing this. Thanks for the idea!

Bitcoinica now publishes all the open interest data since January 20, 2012.

Open interest is often used in futures market as a technical indicator. Since Bitcoinica does not always have equal long positions and short positions, we only take the less one as the value of "open interest", so that the data will reflect exactly how many Bitcoins are being involved in both long and short positions.

For example, the open interest at this moment is 54600. This means that there are at least 54600 BTCs of long positions and at least 54600 BTCs of short positions on Bitcoinica.

Available at: http://charts.bitcoinica.com/open_interest

Sample (2012-02-19 Open Interest):

Now it's in Rackspace Cloud ORD1 data center.

That's why I won't use Mt. Gox personally.

We will give you a plenty of time before the deadline. We announce this change early because we want to know the community's feelings towards this change.

Unfortunately, we find being regulated as a financial services provider with specific licenses to issue loans, exchange currencies, pay interests on deposits and issue means of payments much more important than making short-term profits.

It's totally understandable that some people are not willing to submit IDs before more details are posted. But I can assure you that you will have at least 30 days before we suspend trading, and you can withdraw any time until 90 days after the "deadline".

All the legal solutions are in-house. We have bank-like functions so Bitcoinica USD account can be segregated. So your funds are always protected.

We won't freeze accounts. Everyone will be able to withdraw regardless of verification status. You're safe to continue trading until we announce further details.

Currently there's no deadline. Our company is in the transitioning period and we have to "try our best" to collect IDs. You will enjoy unlimited instant withdrawals (including Mt. Gox and Bitcoin) if you verify now. Otherwise, the same approval process will apply.

We will roll out a series of incentives for verified customers. And after we announce the deadline, unverified customers will have to withdraw all their funds and close their accounts before that date.

Soon. We have hired a few legal and financial professionals to work on corporate structure. We already got the licenses so we have started collecting identifications.

You get the buying interest rate, so it can be lower. The rate is dynamic, but 3% to 6% APY should be the norm.

Yes, you don't have to do anything, and you can withdraw any time. Interest is calculated hourly and paid daily.

Trading carries risk, so people trade only when they are confident about their decisions. A few cents of swap don't affect their decision much.

Deposit is risk-free, so there's a lot of difference between no returns and some returns.

By the way, you are not getting 20% APY. You always get the buying interest rate.

Well, it's different. The position swap is the difference between the buying rate of one currency and the selling rate of the other.

When we have enough USD, the buying-selling spread is larger, because more depositors share the fixed amount of interests (from position holders). Same thing applies to BTC.

Now, when you start a short position, you are selling BTC and buying USD. So you are paying the BTC selling interest and collecting the USD buying interest. In terms of BTC, what you pay will be used to pay the people who provide the BTC for you to sell. In terms of USD, you are collecting payments from people who use the USD you bought to trade.

However, the interest you collect can be less than what you pay, hence the negative swap.

We have the absolute incentive the stimulate trading activity so that we can earn more spreads (which earns us over 100x more than interest), but we have carefully considered the interest system to be the best solution to the reserve problems that we had in the past. In Economics terms, the demand for funds (position holding) is relatively price-inelastic and the supply of funds (deposits) is relatively price-elastic. Our aim is to ensure sufficient reserves while not affecting trading too much, and the base interest that we set exactly achieves this aim.