ExchangeBitcoins.com: A new Bitcoin exchange beta

[weex]

Hello all,

I wanted to open a Bitcoin exchange with a clear, easy-to-use interface, strong trading features and a focus on making transfers painless. I've been working on the site furiously and it's now ready for beta testing. If you open an account, it will be created with fake amounts of $1000 USD and 1000 btc so you can try out the interface and get a preview of what's to come. Later, the transaction histories and balances will be cleared so we can start with a small group of users who are familiar with how it works.

The site is at https://www.exchangebitcoins.com and is currently protected by user name: test and password: btctest to keep the crawlers out.

I thank every one of you who spends even a moment testing any part of it or commenting on it. If you do find a previously-unreported error that affects transaction amounts or account balances, email info@exchangebitcoins.com and I'll give you half-price trades for 90 days from site launch.

Thanks,

weex

[1714034348]

1714034348

[Longmarch]

Will you have an API?

[weex]

Yes, there's already the beginning of one at https://www.exchangebitcoins.com/data/ticker and http://www.exchangebitcoins.com/data/depth at least for the reading side of things. I'll be adding more and documenting them as I go.

Edit: Added https://www.exchangebitcoins.com/data/recent

[Mononofu]

I like it. However, you should add some other options for depositing / withdrawing money - as of right now Dwolla is only available in the US.

[weex]

I like it. However, you should add some other options for depositing / withdrawing money - as of right now Dwolla is only available in the US.

Thanks and yes I plan to add other options over time. If one in particular is preferable for those outside the US, let me know and I'll start with that.

[sandos]

Got a bug when trying to buy 10 btc at 8$, when I saw 7.23$ asks.

https://gist.github.com/990477

[fadisaaida]

"Order not placed. You must sell above your highest bid or buy below your lowest ask."

should it not be equal also ?

if i see a bid at 7.3 and i ask 7.3, i should not be blocked !

[davout]

Didn't try it but it does look simple and clean, always happy to see alternatives, especially a US based one.

I found that implementing a robust trading algorithm being actually harder than I thought, so I don't know about testing frameworks in PHP but I do recommend heavy unit testing and particular attention to rounding bugs.

I also recommend heavily using the transactional features of your RDBMS, not using MyISAM at all when using MySQL, and also pay attention and explicitly set high isolation levels.

[weex]

Got a bug when trying to buy 10 btc at 8$, when I saw 7.23$ asks.

Thanks...that's fixed.

[sacarlson]

Very nice easy interface I love it.  I might have missed it what are (or will) the trading fee's be?  It's on an order of magnatude better than my trading site at http://exchange.beertokens.info .  Mine uses the open source version of http://gitorious.org/intersango/ with only a few small modifications. If yours is open source I'll change mine to your format.  If it's not open source I hope someone makes one more like this.  Maybe you'll expand and trade other currencies some day like BeerTokens?  Keep up the good work I see you as a sure success.  oh and I havn't even checked out your API yet but will soon.

[clouds]

Looks like a good start.  The more exchanges the better, and the Bitcoin community definitely needs more competition in the exchange area.

I'd like to see automated deposits to make the process faster.  The website says Dwolla deposits take up to 24 hours, and Bitcoin deposits are manually processed and may take up to 12 hours.  Manual processing won't scale very well and will take a lot of your time, so I think that automating it will make you and your users happier.

I guess Dwolla's API isn't sufficient to automate Dwolla deposits in real-time yet, but maybe you could add your vote to this thread or start a new thread describing your needs:
http://www.dwolla.org/d/showthread.php?510-subscribe_notifications-POST-notifications

[weex]

"Order not placed. You must sell above your highest bid or buy below your lowest ask."

should it not be equal also ?

if i see a bid at 7.3 and i ask 7.3, i should not be blocked !

Thanks for the question. If you see a bid at $7.3000 placed by another user and you ask $7.3000, it will trade. If you are on both sides of the transaction however that's what that possibly-poorly-worded error means. You shouldn't, I believe, be allowed to trade with yourself. Make them 0.0001 different(our defined level of price precision) and they'll stand until pretty much any other order comes in. Let me know if I'm missing your real question.

[weex]

Very nice easy interface I love it.  I might have missed it what are (or will) the trading fee's be?  It's on an order of magnatude better than my trading site at http://exchange.beertokens.info .  Mine uses the open source version of http://gitorious.org/intersango/ with only a few small modifications. If yours is open source I'll change mine to your format.  If it's not open source I hope someone makes one more like this.  Maybe you'll expand and trade other currencies some day like BeerTokens?  Keep up the good work I see you as a sure success.  oh and I havn't even checked out your API yet but will soon.

You're too kind. We're starting with 0.59% per trade, $3 to send a check and free for everything else(at least for our part of the transaction).

The API is still just the few reads but if anyone has any view on it, do you prefer a trading api that is token-based (i.e. you login once via the api to get a token good for n hours) or prefer to send your credentials with every API request? I've not reviewed any existing trading bots but want to make it as easy as possible for existing code to work with the exchange.

[fadisaaida]

"Order not placed. You must sell above your highest bid or buy below your lowest ask."

should it not be equal also ?

if i see a bid at 7.3 and i ask 7.3, i should not be blocked !

Thanks for the question. If you see a bid at $7.3000 placed by another user and you ask $7.3000, it will trade. If you are on both sides of the transaction however that's what that possibly-poorly-worded error means. You shouldn't, I believe, be allowed to trade with yourself. Make them 0.0001 different(our defined level of price precision) and they'll stand until pretty much any other order comes in. Let me know if I'm missing your real question.

Sweet. it make since actually

[sirk390]

Nice to see some competitors to mtgox.
The interface is very nice and simple.
I didn't find the order book. Did you implement one? (appart from https://www.exchangebitcoins.com/data/depth)

[weex]

No order book yet but progress has been made on the API foundation. I'll post here as more methods become available.

[weex]

I created an account and wiped out the order book with my play money.  I was then able to sell at 0.0000001 (which got truncated to 0), and then re-buy from myself at the same price.  Instead of remaining the same, my available BTC doubled.  I repeated this a few times, and now have 38966307.8012 (more than 21M ) in my account.

This seems like a problem.

I sincerely thank you for pushing the logic. I'll post when updated code is in place.

Edit: Updated code is in place that disallows this activity with more comprehensive controls in process.

2nd Edit: Just an FYI, I reset the transaction histories and account balances for all accounts about an hour ago(midnight PST 5/29) just to erase any bug-related aftermath. Looking to release a next version adding a MtGOX-compatible API in the next day or two.

[weex]

Hello all,

Thanks to everyone who's tested the exchange so far. I'm pleased to announce the latest update with numerous bugfixes and introducing a formal API.

The API documentation is accessible now at https://www.exchangebitcoins.com/api. The API allowed us to do a much better simulation of real-world activity and we hope you'll find it helpful as well.

To facilitate testing, all accounts have again been reset to $1000 usd and 1000 btc. In case you missed it, you'll need to login to view the site first(http basic authentication) with test / btctest.

Thanks,

weex

[dacoinminster]

This site says they take personal checks.

How can they possibly do that with all the check fraud out there? What happens if somebody deposits a stolen check, then runs off with a bunch of bitcoins?