BitcoinAverage.com - bitcoin price index

[bernard75]

Thanx BitcoinAverage for the fantastic site and awesome support.

[Kupsi]

Thank you for a great service. I have one suggestion for you.

I'm Norwegian, and it should be possible to get the global average price in NOK in the HTML title instead of the Norwegian markets average price. The volume in Norway is so low, so the global average price makes much more sense. Is this possible?

Hi Kupsi

Hmm, I see what you mean. Probably it would make sense to show global price in page title for each currency, not only low volume ones like NOK.
Implemented, will release this week.

Regards
Alex at BitcoinAverage.

Thank you! Looking forward to this 

[BitcoinAverage]

Update released. Changes:

- bitcoin.de added back, now with proper direct integration.
- page title switched to show global average for each currency
- twitter bot updated to tweet global average, not local USD market price
- bitcash integration suspended (their website is hacked, bitcoins stolen)
- bidextreme integration removed (their website is legally shut down)
- CHF (Swiss Franc) added (MtGox and localbitcoins)
- itbit.com integration implemented, but is offline now, API period problem, support request sent.

We're still thinking about millibits and about other more massive updates, probably will release something about this soon also.


Alex at BitcoinAverage.

[BitcoinAverage]

Just an update to say Bitcoinium support is now done, so you can have a BTCAVG ticker on your android homescreens!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.veken0m.cavirtex

Big thanks to mike for getting this done as we're a little overrun at the moment

Regards
Shaun at BitcoinAverage

[Kupsi]

Just an update to say Bitcoinium support is now done, so you can have a BTCAVG ticker on your android homescreens!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.veken0m.cavirtex

Big thanks to mike for getting this done as we're a little overrun at the moment

Regards
Shaun at BitcoinAverage

It would be nice if the Bitcoinium widget also could use the global average converted to NOK instead of the NOK markets average 

[BitcoinAverage]

Millibit is live!
All rates on live site are now calculated for m฿ as default base. There is a button to switch back to full ฿ if needed.

Another important change - we have decided to remove the famous "No MtGox" button. Since the time this button was introduced global situation has changed, we've seen China rising, and global weights moving east, so now MtGox has about 8% of total global trading volume, not 30-50% it used to have, so it's effect on the global average price is not worth a special button anymore. So the button is gone.
/no-mtgox API is still present, for those who are still using it. We encourage everybody using it now to switch to global average instead, we will monitor it's usage and will switch it off eventually.

As of other changes - bitcoin-central.net integration added.

Regards,
Alex at BitcoinAverage.

[Roy Badami]

Good work, I have to say that the global index is the way to go.  I really question the usefulness of currency-specific indices, at least for freely-convertable currencies.

I'm in the UK.  If I want to buy XBT, I would probably buy on Bitstamp.  Even though this is an EU-based exchange, they run their market in USD.  They accept SEPA transfers (the internal EU bank transfer mechanism) which are much cheaper than wire transfers, but only available denominated in EUR.

So what would happen is that I would instruct my bank to send funds from my GBP denominated bank account by SEPA to Bitstamp.  My bank will convert my GBP to EUR and make the transfer.  Bitstamp, on receiving the transfer, will convert the EUR into USD and deposit it in my account, and finally I would trade that for XBT.

In the past when I used Gox, I might have made a similar transfer to Gox's European account.  Again my bank would have converted my GBP to EUR and sent them to Gox, who would have deposited the EUR to my account.  I would then place a buy order on Gox.  But the way Gox's multi-currency orderbook works, my EUR buy order might well (for a small fee) get matched against a USD sell order, with Gox doing the currency conversion.  So again, multiple currency conversions.

The fact of the matter is, it makes no difference to me whether the exchange is denominated in GBP or EUR or USD or JPY - these are all freely convertible expressions of fiat, and it's often the norm that the fiat will be converted between currencies multiple times. It's just a units change (albeit one that incurs a small fee).  So the idea that anyone might care about what currency the exchange's orderbook is actually denominated in has always seemed bizarre to me.

What I care about is exchanging fiat for coins (and vice versa) and I'll use whatever exchange is best for me in terms of costs, convenience, reliability, etc.  I care not one jot what units the fiat quantities on their orderbook are quoted in.  This is one thing that Gox has understood for a long time - their multicurrency orderbook essentially regards fiat as a single market.  You can pull currency-specific datafeeds off Gox if you really want (and people like you and Bitcoincharts do).  But it's not really that meaningful because Gox will happily match buy and sell orders that are denominated in different currencies.

So I encourage you to continue to shift the emphasis away from indices that select a subset of exchanges based on the fiat currency their orderbook happens to be quoted in to global, or at least regional indices.  What we need are global (and possibly regional indices).  But what fiat currency we choose to express the index in should have no impact on how the index is calculated.

It does make sense to construct regional indices based on access to exchanges; e.g. BTC China's rate is not of much relevance to me because I have no access to that exchange.  Even though CNY is somewhat convertible these days, BTC China is only open to people with Chinese bank accounts.

But mainly - global is the way to go.... I'd put much less focus on currency-specific markets.  Oh, and any chance of history for the global index? :-)

Access to historical data is going to become an increasingly common requirement in order to provide valuations for accounting or tax purposes....  Currently we have the Coindesk BPI, but the more indices to choose from, the better.

roy

[Mike Hearn]

Thanks for adding CHF! But I agree with the poster above - for thinly traded currencies, it'd be better to calculate a cross-rate. I don't know how easy it is to obtain "regular" currency market conversion rates so they can be multiplied through, but it's really hard to use Bitcoin in a country when your local currency isn't listed. Simply providing cross-rates would be a big boost to Bitcoin commerce throughout the world as then they would start showing up in wallet apps that are switching to bitcoinaverage.com

[Roy Badami]

Thanks for adding CHF! But I agree with the poster above - for thinly traded currencies, it'd be better to calculate a cross-rate. I don't know how easy it is to obtain "regular" currency market conversion rates so they can be multiplied through, but it's really hard to use Bitcoin in a country when your local currency isn't listed. Simply providing cross-rates would be a big boost to Bitcoin commerce throughout the world as then they would start showing up in wallet apps that are switching to bitcoinaverage.com

That's true, but my point is broader than that.  Even if you're in a currency zone with a relatively liquid XBT market (the EUR countries spring to mind) then it still doesn't make sense.  If trading on a USD exchange gives a better rate than an EUR exchange why would you not take advantage of that?

You can argue that other-currency markets are less relevent because they're more expensive to access - but I'm not convinced that 'same currency' is a good proxy for identifying which markets are cheaply accessible from a particular country.  And once you get into wire transfers, fees aren't necessarily that strongly correlated with whether or not there's a currency conversion involved...

roy

[Ibian]

Let's get the button to ignore mtshit back.

[teukon]

Very nice site!

May I ask why you've opted to plot all the charts on a linear scale?  Is it just that this is the default used by the charting extension you've employed?  Wouldn't a logarithmic scale be more appropriate in view of:

• The general preference by most FX traders and charting programs for the logarithmic scale.
• The extreme volatility of Bitcoin relative to the biggest fiat currencies.

A quick glance at some long-term Mt.Gox logarithmic and linear charts highlights the absurdity of conveying Bitcoin price data on the linear scale.

[ChipGeek]

There seems to be something strange going on with the "Global Average" number.  Even though the USD and CNY (converted to USD) prices are very close and >90% of the volume, the Global Average number is much lower than either of these prices.  That would imply the rest of the world is WAY below this price - which seems to NOT be the case. 

(I have a web page image to insert here but don't know how to do it.)

[Newar]

(I have a web page image to insert here but don't know how to do it.)

Google "free image hosting", take your pick, upload your image at that site and it will return a link. Post this link here.

[FoldingTime]

A great idea. Any reason why the all time stats (per_day_all_time_history USD) cannot be extended before 03/09/2013?

To make good trading decisions you need ALL the data.

Thanks

[bernard75]

Data wasnt collected before.

[marketGuy]

I really appreciate your website but i think some of your chinese markets show completely wrong numbers for the volumes. For example fxbtc shows a 24h volume of 22620.9 BTC probably from here: https://data.fxbtc.com/api?op=query_ticker&symbol=btc_cny

But that seems completely unplausible. According to bitcoin-analytics their complete order book is only 1200k CNY and 180 BTC. In the chart on the homepage you can actually see very small trades and a daily volume of about 490 BTC. So maybe that 22620.9 from their api is the 30 day BTC volume. You should clarify that or remove it from your computation because now it is by far the largest contributing market.

And do we know whether we can trust data from okcoin now? They had been accused to fake their volume and are still reporting far more 24h volume than even mtgox/bitsamp/btce. That's also not plausible.

Maybe you could add a switch to remove suspicious markets from price computation.

[bernard75]

That is not BTCAVG mistake, but the Chinese exchanges tempering with their API streams.

[Alpaca Bob]

Let's get the button to ignore mtshit back.

Yeah I liked that button.

[marketGuy]

That is not BTCAVG mistake, but the Chinese exchanges tempering with their API streams.

Yes its the chinese mistake. But it is also BTCAVG responsibility to handle such situations when we know something is wrong. Manipulated volumes are a serious issue.

[row5_seat47]

This has me thinking ..couldn't the Chinese Gov't Use the exchanges as pawns and put through fake sell orders?

Reminds me of precious metals markets where there are claims of naked short selling to manipulate the market.

This could be a reason Chinese Gov't Keep Markets alive...so they could manipulate it?

Nothing like a good conspiracy theory on a Sunday Afternoon.

 

Perhaps there should be a filter to exclude markets that are not truly liquid? Like the old Mt. Gox Filter?