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I can see the sharks swarming already.

I feel... used.... but i like it.

According to Kokjo's vague definition, most of us are socialists. How lovely.

have you ever speculated about if you was a part of the "few thousand"? i think that we agree on many points, but you have an inability to see how socialism would work. Socialism DOES NOT requiter a central authority. People often don't want freedom, but security.

if you think that socialism needs a central point of power. you are no better then all the people who thinks money MUST BE printed by the state/FED/banks/some-sort-of-authority.

(but im all for the freedom)

going to 2.6

then to 2.9

then above 3, stall out early in the week

big sell off back to 2.8

upswing to 3.5

Atlas has never begged for money, last I checked. I haven't seen him under his original name for awhile now. I wonder if that alias will ever come back?

I petitioned Zhoutong to put in a simple calculator for exactly that purpose.

If you want to do it yourself, just multiply the number of bitcoins by their purchase value to get their total value, then subtract how much you need to lose from your margin balance to hit your maintenance amount then divide by the number of coins to get the new price. So in this case, the liquidation price = (20*2.79-30.42+2.23)/20 or $1.38.

If you want to figure out how much more you can buy to stay safe above 2.50 at the current price. We will say $3. You just need to figure that each bitcoin loses $0.5 on the way down from $3 to $2.50.  So since your current net value is $34 and your maintenance is $2. You can lose $32 before being liquidated. At $0.5 per coin, that translates to about 64 more coins at $3 each before you get liquidated at $2.50... not taking into account the change in maintenance... so closer to 60 actually.

Totally OT, I know, but I have a bitcoinica-related question maybe someone here can answer:

This is what my account looks like:

Margin Balance   $30.42
Tradable Balance   $29.49
Leverage   2.5 : 1
Unrealized P/L   $3.70
Net Value?   $34.13
Maintenance?   $2.23

I have this position:

BTCUSD   20.0   $2.7914   $3.70    6.634%

I hope that's readable.

Now for the question: I understand I can trade more than the $30 I put into the account initially (margin trading).

What I'm not sure about is how to calculate the risk of being zhoutonged.

As I understand, if the rate drops (in my case) low enough, bitcoinica will auto-liquidate my position and I'll be left with no money, right?

How can I calculate how low it can drop without margin call?

I'd buy more BTC at this point, but maybe this is already too risky? I'd like to allow the rate to drop down to $2.50. Am I beyond that point?

Thanks Zhou, I understand your hesitation to make a definitive statement. I don't want any guarantees, just to make the connection between triggers and published buy, mean, and sell prices.

Suppose the Mt. Gox price is currently $2.999 bouncing on a huge $3 wall. I would expect the Bitcoinica BUY price to be about $2.95 and SELL price to be maybe $3.05 (the actual spread prices don't matter in this example). Are you saying that my $3.05 STOP-BUY might be triggered when the SELL price is $3.05? I would have expected the STOP-BUY to be triggered when the BUY price is equal to or greater than the STOP-BUY order. ... or if published BUY and SELL prices have nothing to do with it, what triggers a stop order? When you say 'price', can you qualify that (such as the BUY-SELL mean)?

EDIT: Are you saying that Bitcoinica's algorithm anticipates bringing down a wall and will trigger orders before the movement actually happens on either Bitcoinica or Mt. Gox?

what do they do?

For a man who made such poor and violent choices, he was of great insight:

19. The leftist is not typically the kind of person whose feelings of inferiority make him a braggart, an egotist, a bully, a self-promoter, a ruthless competitor. This kind of person has not wholly lost faith in himself. He has a deficit in his sense of power and self-worth, but he can still conceive of himself as having the capacity to be strong, and his efforts to make himself strong produce his unpleasant behavior. [1] But the leftist is too far gone for that. His feelings of inferiority are so ingrained that he cannot conceive of himself as individually strong and valuable. Hence the collectivism of the leftist. He can feel strong only as a member of a large organization or a mass movement with which he identifies himself...

...50. The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society with out causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.

http://www.paulcooijmans.com/psychology/unabombmanifesto.html