Singapore

[pitan]

How is the trade volume at FYBSG now any active trader there or anyone selling their BTC?

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[derekleong75]

Quite active. I been watching it closely now that btc start to fluctuate more.

[pitan]

ya me too... Looking out for any Euro crisis 

[SGExodus]

Quite active. I been watching it closely now that btc start to fluctuate more.

Orderbook of fyb-sg so small... how to be active?

[pitan]

Lol... What to do if too big also problem...

[worldinacoin]

Slow and steady lah, small can grow big

[andrewsg]

Quite active. I been watching it closely now that btc start to fluctuate more.

Orderbook of fyb-sg so small... how to be active?

Help it grow. Put in a bid / ask, if it's reasonable it will get filled pretty fast - regardless of what the orderbook looks like. I'm quite happy with their service so far and really hope they can grow the business and make it profitable.

[w8ks6]

I think it's still only amateurs or the exchange trading against itself at FYB-sg. That's why the price is staying so much higher during this last downturn. It would be about 5$ lower right now if there were professional traders, but they won't go there because FYB chages 3 times more than the BTC-e for example.
They say it's to cover development costs, but their trading interface is one of the lamest and most primitive I've seen.
The reason FYB is not growing is because they charge too much.

[pitan]

But then again how does withdrawal work on btc-e?

[andrewsg]

I think it's still only amateurs or the exchange trading against itself at FYB-sg. That's why the price is staying so much higher during this last downturn. It would be about 5$ lower right now if there were professional traders, but they won't go there because FYB chages 3 times more than the BTC-e for example.
They say it's to cover development costs, but their trading interface is one of the lamest and most primitive I've seen.
The reason FYB is not growing is because they charge too much.

If you think the price is $5 too high - sell some BTC. Deposits and withdrawals are free and FYB charges won't eat up the price difference.

If you have SGD and want to trade BTC, BTC-e will charge you fx into USD and very significant wire charges. I'm not saying fyb-sg is super-cheap, I wish it was cheaper, but they need more volume to get there, I'm sure they would lower their fees if volumes went up.

[w8ks6]

Help it grow. Put in a bid / ask, if it's reasonable it will get filled pretty fast - regardless of what the orderbook looks like. I'm quite happy with their service so far and really hope they can grow the business and make it profitable.

Right now, a "reasonable" price according to the main exchanges is around 91-92SGD. Let's see how fast that gets filled.

I already sold all the btc I wanted in order to see whether FYB is a good trading place. It works the other way around from what you say: if they lowered their fees, they would get more volume. The customer, which is the trader, and their competition, which are the other exchanges, drive that relationship, NOT what the exchange thinks it "needs" the fee to be.

Pro traders only exit the exchange in fiat once in a while, but they trade continuously. So, the exit fees are much less important than per-trade fees.

[pitan]

I think you failed to point out that we are at the mercy of the currency rate depending on who processes the deposit/withdrawals to whatever overseas exchange. And why do you keep attacking FYBSG. You should know how people are and how big the current btc market is like in Singapore.

[w8ks6]

I think you failed to point out that we are at the mercy of the currency rate depending on who processes the deposit/withdrawals to whatever overseas exchange. And why do you keep attacking FYBSG. You should know how people are and how big the current btc market is like in Singapore.

Every other exchange is also at the mercy of the deposit/wdl processing. Yet their trading fees are much lower.
That's not the point though: at FYBSB there is no api trading, and therefore no arbitrage to the exchanges overseas. So, there is no liquidity, plus much higher fees. That's preventing FYB from growing and keeps the rate artificially high.

92sgd has been at the top of the bids for hours now during a worldwide down trend, but no trades have happened at FYB in that price range. Until FYB becomes a real arbitraged exchange with an API that's actually used, and competitive trading fees, it's better for ordinary people just to exchange through LocalBitcoins.com or something. Right now, FYB is a joke, but wants to charge top dollar! 

The Singapore market isn't big, but the world of traders interested in trading SGD is...

[w8ks6]

These last few hours were exactly what I mean: I was trading this heavy downturn on 4 other exchanges - Bitstamp USD, RMBTB CNY, Ripple XRP, and BTC-e LTC. On every exchange I made money by taking manual short positions without using any kind of a trading bot!  It was hours of entertainment, and profit, even though BTC was crashing!

In terms of SGD, at the main place of today's action - Bitstamp - the rate declined to 81 SGD, and now bounced back. At the FYB-SG "exchange" - NOT A SINGLE TRADE during those hours - the top bid stayed at 92SGD!  Pathetic!

I wanted and would have traded this crash manually at FYB, if there were other traders or even their bots, but they will never come at these per-trade fees!  Look at RMBTB - the latest Chinese exchange. It's even newer than FYB, but their fees are half those of FYB, plus they give a high-volume discount, AND they already have more volume!

It's also a much better built site. Compared to that, FYB looks like some school kids hacked it out in their spare time... 

I really want to trade SGD at FYB, but they have to make it appealing for serious traders! My suggestion is that those school kids log into BitStamp, and make FYB work like that...

[worldinacoin]

MTgox controls 80% of the trades, also Singapore doesn't have much of a base for Bitcoin, patience, you need to slowly win over the converts from MTgox

[pitan]

The problem is there is not enough volume, in regards to the website I understand what you are saying. Until the trade volume is substantial if not there will not be an improvement or any other new SG exchange

[arbitrage001]

There are reasons why bitcoin isn't picking up by local people in Singapore. Your currency has been relatively stable and your economic isn't build on Ponzi scheme like the US or Europe.

When people are not worry about their saving, why bother seeking alternative currency.


With that being said, there is no reason why Singapore can't be another major hub for bitcoin trading in Asia.

The owner running the exchange here can do the following to attract volume:
1) Open a foreign currency account with your local bank and let customer deposit money in currency other than Singapore dollar. You can pass the incoming and outgoing fee to customer.
2) Let people trade in currency other than Singapore dollar (ie, Euro, pound, USD, Aussy).
3) Reduce the transaction fee to attract Market Maker, trader, and people doing arbitrage. I can assure you if the wire fee and transaction fee are low enough, you can attract all kind of people to your exchange from all over the world.
4) Have adequate support staff. The support team doesn't even have to be good. Just competent enough to beat the one at Mtgox (I can assure you this isn't even hard to beat seeing many of their angry customers (I am one among them) have their money stucked for over 1 month)
5) The bid and ask trade engine has to be reasonable. Bitstamp and Mtgox have pretty lame matching algorithm yet they still manage to become the major exchanges. Finding a competent programmer to write a better bid-ask engine and matching algorithm shouldn't be too hard.


Enough of ranting. Peace

[w8ks6]

MTgox controls 80% of the trades, also Singapore doesn't have much of a base for Bitcoin, patience, you need to slowly win over the converts from MTgox

That 80% figure has never been true!
Gox controls no more than 70% of major exchange trades now:
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/volumepie/

That's not even counting Localbitcoins.com, Bitcoin-OTC markets, the new Buttonwood exchanges, meetups, and other private trades.

How much market share gox has nothing to do with the fees FYB charges or how much volume it does either. Exchanges are not religions, where one has to be converted from one to another. Pro traders trade on multiple exchanges at the same time, IF the cost structure is right.

[w8ks6]

The problem is there is not enough volume, in regards to the website I understand what you are saying. Until the trade volume is substantial if not there will not be an improvement or any other new SG exchange

Start with Walmart and ask any successful company that trades in commodities: "If your trade volume is low in a worldwide market of a certain commodity, can your volume be increased by charging the highest markup in the world?" The answer is obvious to a school child.

That's what FYB is doing though - charging top-level markup on a transaction in a widely available commodity. If they want more volume, it's exactly the wrong thing to do.
It's so wrong to do from a business perspective, it makes me wonder if FYB is actually a Singapore government honeypot, which they hope to use to keep track of local btc flow. 
If it's not, we've seen a lot of "exchanges" like that come and go in bitcoin land.

[w8ks6]

There are reasons why bitcoin isn't picking up by local people in Singapore. Your currency has been relatively stable and your economic isn't build on Ponzi scheme like the US or Europe.

When people are not worry about their saving, why bother seeking alternative currency.
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Because there is more to currency than "saving" a.k.a "hoarding" and "capital preservation".
If you are a small importer in SG, buying say even from China or Japan. Try to send a payment to your export partner in those countries using SGD, as cheaply as you could using Bitcoin! Then try to send the same payment to Europe or the US!

EVEN IF you pay 0.99% to a payment processor like BitPay to protect you from Bitcoin exchange voliatility, I think it would still be cheaper than using any other method available to a small business.