Who is the idiot posting hundreds of 0.01 orders?

[dego]

What is that good for? To jam the exchange?

[Ichthyo]

of course we don't know for sure, but likely these tiny orders are created by trading bots.
These computer programs use various strategies to test out the market. Often they flood the available spread with tiny orders and watch how long it takes for them to be bought or sold away. From that it is possible to guess the current market momentum. Other bots have been observerd to try to push up or down the visible rate, especially when the spread between buy an sell is rather large. Some people can be tricked by the impression of e.g. a constantly sinking nomial rate to believe that the market is going down, even if there is no real movement.

[massivebitman]

Actually. I think it's good. It raises the price.

[Sage]

Market manipulation, nothing more.

Scumbag hackers are making way too much in ill-gotten gains praying on naive new Bitcoin users.

[Frost]

Is this really a good moment to buy now? I could buy 0.33 now

[chrsjrcj]

Actually. I think it's good. It raises the price.

No it doesn't.

[HappyBitCoinUser]

What is that good for? To jam the exchange?

I wanted to get rich some day.

[M4v3R]

Two reasons:
- MtGox trading engine hates many orders, so one could place them to slow the engine down while he is buying/selling.
- to manipulate the charts. With volatility like we have now the spreads are very big, and executing such orders ensures that charts always display the better price for the bot owner. It may sound trivial, but actually can make a big difference.

[essem]

right im going to do it again, people adjust your bids I will be placing these very very low

[Manticore]

of course we don't know for sure, but likely these tiny orders are created by trading bots.
These computer programs use various strategies to test out the market. Often they flood the available spread with tiny orders and watch how long it takes for them to be bought or sold away. From that it is possible to guess the current market momentum. Other bots have been observerd to try to push up or down the visible rate, especially when the spread between buy an sell is rather large. Some people can be tricked by the impression of e.g. a constantly sinking nomial rate to believe that the market is going down, even if there is no real movement.

But all the bot trades yesterday were meant to make the market look like it was bouncing not up, not down. There were 100s of tiny .02 buys that were placed well above pricing action to stem the psychology of a panic sell.

[Sage]

Is this really a good moment to buy now? I could buy 0.33 now

Yep!

Be greedy when everyone is fearful... heard Warren Buffet say that.  But I'm never greedy...that's my policy.  Just well-informed.

[TTBit]

MtGox should consider a fee for orders. You get 500 free per day, after that, must pay a token amount to get your order in their DB. Or consider a mtgox subscription fee for bots. This is assuming that it was a flood of orders that caused the lag.

[deadweasel]

MtGox should consider a fee for orders. You get 500 free per day, after that, must pay a token amount to get your order in their DB. Or consider a mtgox subscription fee for bots. This is assuming that it was a flood of orders that caused the lag.

They should get servers and systems that can handle the load.  How they haven't done this yet is appalling. 

Also, people still trying to use it after it's a proven failure (when it counts) is also appalling.  A small percentage learn, but most just bitch and moan and tell someone else to fix it.

Bitcoin is in BETA people and MtGox is an old Magic The Gathering site run by incompetents.  WTF do you expect?