A feature request for Bitstamp (hazek, can you take a look please?)

[oda.krell]

I'm a pretty happy customer at Bitstamp. Wires go through quickly, support answers fast, security seems to be good so far.

However, I have one problem with bitstamp: market depth.

For several months, bitstamp volume has been catching up with the market leader mtgox. Which is great news, in my opinion. However, even though volume reached about 60% of mtgox, market depth (i.e. the order book) is much, much more shallow on bitstamp.

Why is that a problem? Well, if you trade with any greater amount than a few coins or hundred dollar, you will encounter a wild ride when you execute a trade. Just yesterday, slippage turned a trade that should have been profitable into a small loss.

Is there a solution? Maybe:

Right now, the default view under "Buy/Sell" on bitstamp is market order. I suspect that at least some people (well, new investors mainly) never bothered to check that there's an alternative option. So my question is, would you consider reversing the order, making 'limit order' the default view when you click on the Buy/Sell link, and 'market order' the secondary option?

Maybe it is a bit naive, but I would hope that this would increase the number of limit orders, which would increase market depth, which would make bitstamp a more "mature" market.

[Synapse_On_Slush]

And while you're at it (which going off that date of this post, you're not),

Can you give us the option on 'limit orders' to buy bitcoins by specifying the amount of USD to sell (as MTGox did), as well as the existing option to specify how many BTC to buy. It's one of the main reasons I used MTGox - untill they died and took all my money