Ideas for the Perfect Bitcoin Exchange

[TKE406]

One thing I can suggest is that when buying/selling, take whatever number is put into the field.
What I mean is: for example, on MtGox, if you put up an offer to buy 1BTC @ $10... the website may automatically take as much as $11 from your wallet. In my case, a while a ago I wanted to buy at $19 per BTC, but for some reason, MtGox took $19.72 per bitcoin and I was like WTF!!

So there's an idea you could fix...

Do you think maybe that includes their commission cut of .67% or so?
That could be it, right? Or no? I have yet to trade with them, myself. Too many problems so far.

Im pretty sure thats just toe commission, although they really could be much more transparent about it, i had to go to the bitcoin wiki to find out what the commission was on mt.gox, it doesnt even seem to be on the site anywhere.

It is definitely NOT the commission, because a 0.65% does not justify an arbitrary buying price increase from 19 to 19.72; a 0.65% fee should at MOST increase that to 19.1235 per BTC. However, mine jumped to 19.72.

[Jack of Diamonds]

Enable SEPA wire transfers (which don't take 5+ business days) & withdrawals to Swiss francs / $US direct deposit and I'll switch all business away from Mt. Gox.

[bitrebel]

for me, a zero fee mtgox would be perfect

How would we make our money then, pay our tech people, lawyers, etc.
Are you one of those people who would prefer no money at all?

[bitrebel]

Our biggest legal problems will arise if it's treated like a currency, but if it's not, then we may be able to do this with complete anonymity. We're looking into that today as I type this.

Even without treating BTC like a currency, the U.S. could consider BTC exchanges like prediction markets, already illegal here. You should check with your legal counsel about that.

That's why we will probably stay away from futures, options and any stock or commodity trade platform. It will likely be simple buys and sells only. Otherwise, I fear it will turn into a gambling casino no different than wall street. If it becomes contracts for future performance we get into loaning credit in a sense, and I'm not comfortable with any of that. It can easily become a currency regulated issue if we do any of that, I think.

[bitrebel]

My friends and I are going to start an exchange, most likely, here in the US.

We want it to be as legal and upfront and trustworthy as possible.

My highlights. Not wanting to disappoint you, but I really don't think you can combine these two things. Either you do it out of US, or you do it knowing it won't remain legal for a long time.

I think too many people falsely assume bitcoin to be a currency when in fact it's no more than a series of encrypted number, not unlike a value storage card, but yet still legally removed from that, too.

If it were a currency, then it would be outlawed, period. But it's not, and so it will not be outlawed or treated as such, unless the company itself engages in currency trading of some kind. But then again, that's why were having a lawyer look into it all, because it's a murky and deep swamp of legal slim.

[FreeMoney]

Make it possible to only put BUY/SELL orders that are 2% higher or lower than the last 24 hours average price.

If the "price" of a free market is wrong, it will correct itself quite easily (for example if it should be 21$ instead of 20$, and the last 24 hours average price is 20$, then you can put orders of up to 20.4$, once those sell, the average will shift up to 20.4$, slowly allowing for higher bids, for example if everyone puts 20.4 then in 12 hours you should have an average of 20.2, thus be able to put a 20.6 bid). You will offer greater stability and trust to your customers. You will also lag behind other markets, and have people oscillate between yours and other markets due to arbitrage possibilities.

This would be awful.

If there is even one unrestricted market and the price moves down by 10% then your site will have 0 buyers, they will all be buying at a 10% discount elsewhere. Likewise on moves up.

Are you sure about that? Did you consider both parts of a market, eg. the sellers and the buyers?

Yes.

If the real price on Tuesday is $20 and you and mtgox reflect that and there is a drop in demand and the price is $16 you will still have a minimum listing price of $19.60. There will be only sellers and no buyers at your market. All buyers will go to mtgox where prices reflect current reality and trades can happen.

[Jack of Diamonds]

for me, a zero fee mtgox would be perfect

You can't run a professional exchange with zero fees.
Since actual human beings will be operating it full time (many transactions not automated), they will also need to cover their living expenses + risks incurred.

Not to mention office rent, lawyer fees if need to consult them arises, electricity, hardware, local taxes etc.

0.65% is actually very reasonable compared to other services like PayPal that charge multiple %.

[killer2021]

I think the key aspect is the fee structure. Personally I would only like to have a fee on withdraws. Preferably lowest possible, nothing over 1%.

[Timo Y]

SECURITY:

* Make everything in the front end open source and have the source code audited by an independent security expert.
* Offer a legally binding 1000 BTC bounty to anyone who discovers a security hole and privately informs you about it.
* Site should be at least as secure as any online banking site: Two-factor authentication should be standard for all users. Security tokens mailed in the post for power users.
* BTC withdrawal limit by default
* Email confirmation and secret question every time user logs in from a different IP address.
* Optional insurance of deposited BTC amount.  insured BTC held in bond by an independent trusted third party.

FEATURES:

* User friendly way to configure simple trade bots.
* Loans, options, and futures supported by:
* GPG web of trust.
* EDIT: site should work without javascript!   

[Timo Y]

I think the key aspect is the fee structure. Personally I would only like to have a fee on withdraws. Preferably lowest possible, nothing over 1%.

The problem is that if there is a zero fee on trades people are going to try to game the volume charts by trading back and forth with themselves.  Though I think a trade fee of 0.65% is too high. Trade fee should be 0.1%, withdrawal fee 0.5%.

[BombaUcigasa]

Make it possible to only put BUY/SELL orders that are 2% higher or lower than the last 24 hours average price.

If the "price" of a free market is wrong, it will correct itself quite easily (for example if it should be 21$ instead of 20$, and the last 24 hours average price is 20$, then you can put orders of up to 20.4$, once those sell, the average will shift up to 20.4$, slowly allowing for higher bids, for example if everyone puts 20.4 then in 12 hours you should have an average of 20.2, thus be able to put a 20.6 bid). You will offer greater stability and trust to your customers. You will also lag behind other markets, and have people oscillate between yours and other markets due to arbitrage possibilities.

This would be awful.

If there is even one unrestricted market and the price moves down by 10% then your site will have 0 buyers, they will all be buying at a 10% discount elsewhere. Likewise on moves up.

Are you sure about that? Did you consider both parts of a market, eg. the sellers and the buyers?

Yes.

If the real price on Tuesday is $20 and you and mtgox reflect that and there is a drop in demand and the price is $16 you will still have a minimum listing price of $19.60. There will be only sellers and no buyers at your market. All buyers will go to mtgox where prices reflect current reality and trades can happen.

I guess you are correct. I mean now on mtgox you can buy bitcoins for 0.01$, so that is where the trades happen

Who needs built-in price protection mechanisms, not mtgox for sure. What a bad idea, right?

[EpicFail]

I guess you are correct. I mean now on mtgox you can buy bitcoins for 0.01$, so that is where the trades happen

Who needs built-in price protection mechanisms, not mtgox for sure. What a bad idea, right?

They tried that with some commodities futures exchanges. Remember in the 70's silver locking limit up when the Hunt brotheres tried to corner the market? The price protection rule could not keep up with the market and the first trade of the the day would lock the limit and nothing else got traded for the entire day. This repeated day after day until the price reached market value. Only then did the market unfreeze.

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

I think too many people falsely assume bitcoin to be a currency when in fact it's no more than a series of encrypted number, not unlike a value storage card, but yet still legally removed from that, too.

If it were a currency, then it would be outlawed, period. But it's not, and so it will not be outlawed or treated as such, unless the company itself engages in currency trading of some kind. But then again, that's why were having a lawyer look into it all, because it's a murky and deep swamp of legal slim.

It doesn't matter if it's "no more than a series of numbers". It's already illegal in many places to transfer particular series of numbers (piracy).
Law makers don't give a damn, many of them will try to outlaw it. And I believe it will probably be outlawed by every government which strongly depends on their central bank, that is, most of today's governments.

[BombaUcigasa]

I guess you are correct. I mean now on mtgox you can buy bitcoins for 0.01$, so that is where the trades happen

Who needs built-in price protection mechanisms, not mtgox for sure. What a bad idea, right?

They tried that with some commodities futures exchanges. Remember in the 70's silver locking limit up when the Hunt brotheres tried to corner the market? The price protection rule could not keep up with the market and the first trade of the the day would lock the limit and nothing else got traded for the entire day. This repeated day after day until the price reached market value. Only then did the market unfreeze.

I don't know how that worked, but in the case I proposed it's not a fixed limit, it changes every time a trade is executed or a second elapses. If the market were to go rapidly into one direction, it would stall every few minutes and continue into the specific direction. Why would there be a reason for the price to be 17$ and not 15$? Right now it's because more people buy than more people sell. Any preferred percentage could be used, or time period or whatever, but in any case it would protect agains bombing like we had last two weeks on mtgox. Once it was a stolen quantity of bitcoins from a wallet, another instance was a hacked mtgox account. In both cases two individuals basically fucked up everyone's participation in the project, especially for the two people that happened to lose their bitcoins. With such limits in place, it would have taken days to sell out the whole quantity of bitcoins.

It's not like we have a healthy mass of market moderators (that buy and sell close to the moving price to shorten the gap), which instead prefer to oscillate the price rapidly and rake in shallow bids at great profit, again, manipulating the market since there are no limits.