It's good to have both bears and bulls. If the market has only bulls, we'd call it bubble.

I'm interested in either 100% ownership or 0% ownership, not anything in between.

I would consider this option, but it's quite expensive.

Most brokerages don't open their books too, I know a few brokers who trade against their clients. (They told me secretly, LOL.) The forex market is so big that hardly any broker can run the stops himself. The only way for manipulation is to manipulate the market making price. That's why the number one assessment of a brokerage's reliability is the accuracy of the prices.

When Bitcoin gets larger (it's necessary to go to $100+ to get "larger"), Bitcoinica will no longer be a factor for instability.

I feel that there's no need to outdo a forex brokerage. If everyone gets third party for auditing, they will all miss a huge selling point - price accuracy.

Bitcoinica makes money by charging spreads for all transactions. The spreads are generally high, usually ranging from 0.9% to 1.6%.

Yes, we are very profitable. Our volume is about 1/4 - 1/3 of Mt. Gox's, and the business structure is extremely lean. I always believe in the philosophy of day one profitability.

Then there's a price of the hardware measured in US Dollar. It's the same as the price of a Bitcoin measured in US Dollar. The price of the physical assets now doesn't guarantee future value either.

What I mean is, we can forget about the "fundamental value" when we trade something, Bitcoin doesn't have a fixed minimum price. Whether the price we see now comes from speculation, bubbles, or commerce, it doesn't matter. As long as we have market liquidity, we can use, save and transfer the coins.

If you do so, we will just hedge your positions at Mt. Gox.

The market price will definitely go down. That's why Bitcoinica is not an exchange.

Whoops. Rally ended with a dead cross.

Running the stops will be far more easier if we open our order books. I have seen stop orders that can be triggered with less than $3,000 and potential rise/fall of $0.1 or more.

I know it's not good to hide trading information, but people need some kind of dark pools to reduce their market impact. The only "profitable" and viable way for me to trade against my clients is to run the stops myself. Not just the stop orders, but also the potential forced liquidations. Even if I open Bitcoinica's order book, I still have more information than everyone else unless I tell you their liquidation points.

Whether I make the limit orders, or both limit and stop orders available publicly, I still have more information. And trust me, based on my observation (not experience), running forced liquidations is more profitable than the stops.

I just don't understand, if people can trust me with tens of thousands of dollars, why not the simple promise of not to trade against them? There are easier ways to extract profits from clients that a market maker can do, such as manipulating the prices and spreads, creating artificial spikes or even deducting their account balance secretly. These things have never happened, and will never happen under my hands!

A centralized platform is already based on trust, so let's just face it. In my opinion, hiding Bitcoinica's order book is better for the community overall, since Bitcoinica is a market maker that takes a small risk before hedging, not an exchange that is never responsible for any trade (and trade reversals).

So what's the "fundamental value" of IBM's share?

Is it $0.01, $1, $100 or more?

It's a part of a company, yes, but it represents a completely unknown amount of cash flow. All the financial reports we see are history, and we all are predicting the future.

Same thing goes for Bitcoin. No company, currency or whatever will guarantee the value of something. We guarantee each other's value using our own judgement. Only an idiot will sell Bitcoin at "fundamental value" when someone offers $2.4 per coin.

1. Bitcoin Charts didn't accept Bitcoinica because we're not an exchange.

2. We're not associated with Mt. Gox in any way.

Any currency, stock or commodity has no fundamentals by this definition. Prices are determined by demand and supply, not the fundamentals. The fundamentals may influence the demand and supply. The extent of the influence is determined by the utility.

Bitcoin's fundamental has never changed - the easiest, fastest and cheapest way to send money internationally without being tracked or taxed. Bitcoin is not a stock that pays unknown amount of dividends or a fiat currency that pays unknown amount of interest.

Without looking at the price history, we all have absolutely no idea about the exchange rate of EUR/USD, for example. The exchange rate is determined by multiple unknown factors, such as imports, exports, economic growth, interest rates, etc.

Anything unknown is worth speculating.

When all 21 million coins have been generated, there's only network security left.

Let's just wait for another 130 years.

Hey, I'm not like some evil broker. Whatever things I post regarding Bitcoinica's trading activity or whatsoever, must be from the past (already hedged orders and liquidated positions). It's also morally incorrect (and sometimes illegal) to read customers' orders and trade at the same time.

I have a rule for myself (and I hope other exchanges' owners can follow):

Every time after seeing customers' orders, intentionally or unintentionally, refrain from trading or discussing them publicly for 24 hours.

Bitcoin is both.

Bitcoin solves the problem of fiat currency by creating natural scarcity not influenced by any entity, just like gold. (Better store of value than fiat.)

Bitcoin solves the problem of gold by being very convenient to use with good security and portability, just like fiat currency. (Better medium of exchange than gold.)

I don't trade myself. I posted this just for fun.

I was having a 300 BTC long position, but liquidated recently. I have never had any position over 300 BTC.

Is it bottom? No.

Is it double bottom? No.

Is it triple bottom? Seems no.

Is it quadruple bottom? Not likely.

Is it bottomless? Perhaps.

2. Now the first technical indicator option always gives "large" indicator. The rest will give smaller ones. This is my simplistic solution to your problem.

We don't really need income equality. Some people are lazy and some are hard working. They deserve to be treated differently.

Actually all we need is social mobility - everyone has a fair chance to get wealth through competition. All kinds of economic regulation, taxes, etc are plainly adding friction to the society. Economic growth is pretty much an excuse for degrading society today.

I mostly disagree on the protesters. The real people we should care about are the ones without the opportunity to protest. College graduates who are in the debt trap deserve empathy, but how about the other people who couldn't even go to college? With proper management skills, there should be no problems about the educated groups of people.

I don't feel sad for poor people who blame the rich for making too much money. The real problem is how fast can wealth be redistributed.

It is. I couldn't find some non-Flash charting software better than this.

Dealing with their Java-ish naming convention is a pain for a Ruby developer like me. But at least they support Ruby language.

Do we need SSL for this? The cookies of Bitcoinica are not accessible at subdomains. And since ChartDirector contains proprietary code, I have to run it on another server with a read-only database account, for security.

We have a wildcard SSL though. Will consider this option if really necessary.

1. I'm not sure about Bitcoin Charts. I'm using ChartDirector for Ruby.

2. I'm trying to improve this software, but no ETA yet. New version of Bitcoinica launching soon. Now I'm working hard on the landing page.