[ANN][XCP] Counterparty - Pioneering Peer-to-Peer Finance - Official Thread

[mtbitcoin]

Thanks for your input Vitalik. Speaking from the Wall Street perspective, not all exchanges out there are even suitable for high frequency trading (witness the recent rise of electronic exchanges - ARCA, BATS, etc). Not all participants are interested in "low-quality" liquidity so to speak, as provided by most high-frequency exchanges (which was one of the indirect causes of the infamous 2010 Flash Crash). Not all assets need to be traded on a real-time basis (real estate [which has many analogies with BTC], bonds, and mutual funds for instance). It's not also widely appreciated that official settlement for stock trades occurs not instantaneously, but 3 days (the T+3 rule). In contrast, 1 hour (6 confirmations) is widely acknowledged to be a reasonable settlement time for even the largest BTC trades.

The blockchain more closely resembles, say, the housing market or the contracts/swaps derivatives markets, which don't operate in any way similar to HFT even though they handle trillions of dollars in notional value. So the notion that non-highly liquid markets can't be valuable is absurd.

+1. Well said. I do believe that XCP will have its place in time to come.

[jl777]

cityglut,

When you said mastercoin, was, well not really as cleanly defined, I didn't understand how nice you were being!

From what I can tell, the MSC project was started by some software architecture guy working parttime who doesnt write code and that the code is written by committee or some hired guys, who are not the guy that designed it?!

No wonder they are so late. I am going through their main thread and I am surprised they were able to raise so much money. I dont want to offend anyone that is mastercoin fan, but realistically XCP improves daily before our eyes. This really reminds me of the constant improvement with NXT. Regardless of what you feel about NXT distribution, there is no denying the continuous improvement. That I believe is the key to success.

All this 2 week beta period, etc. reminds me of waterfall project management. I think they did that in the 1970's?

I am not trying to create a flame war, just trying to fully understand what XCP's first hurdle is. They do have a much bigger warchest, so XCP will definitely need to counter with better tech.

Any ideas on test suite from hell?

James

[BldSwtTrs]

I think having a OTC market without counterparty risk is huge. But what do you think will happen once MSC work?

Is it conceivable the two exist one next to the other? Can we imagine one capture 80% of the market the other 20% and both still exist, or one has to die?

[jl777]

I think having a OTC market without counterparty risk is huge. But what do you think will happen once MSC is out there?

Is it conceivable the two exist one next to the other? Can we imagine one capture 80% of the market the other 20% and both still exist, or one has to die?

Depends on the utility of each. Once people realize XCP is more reliable and costs less, then 80/20 does not seem too unreasonable. It is not like there is a lot of usage of the mastercoin system yet, still trying to find out usage levels.

James

[BldSwtTrs]

I think having a OTC market without counterparty risk is huge. But what do you think will happen once MSC is out there?

Is it conceivable the two exist one next to the other? Can we imagine one capture 80% of the market the other 20% and both still exist, or one has to die?

Depends on the utility of each. Once people realize XCP is more reliable and costs less, then 80/20 does not seem to unreasonable. It is not like there is a lot of usage of the mastercoin system yet, still trying to find out usage levels.

James

But from technical point of view, won't the blockchain too bloated if two protocol run on top of it? Also why are you saying that XCP cost less, is it true?

For the moment XCP>MSC, but we all know that MSC will finally come up with a working product one day or another.

[BitThink]

I think having a OTC market without counterparty risk is huge. But what do you think will happen once MSC work?

Is it conceivable the two exist one next to the other? Can we imagine one capture 80% of the market the other 20% and both still exist, or one has to die?

I think they are just like BTCT and BitFunder. Users will just go to the one they feel more comfortable.

[jl777]

I think having a OTC market without counterparty risk is huge. But what do you think will happen once MSC is out there?

Is it conceivable the two exist one next to the other? Can we imagine one capture 80% of the market the other 20% and both still exist, or one has to die?

Depends on the utility of each. Once people realize XCP is more reliable and costs less, then 80/20 does not seem to unreasonable. It is not like there is a lot of usage of the mastercoin system yet, still trying to find out usage levels.

James

But from technical point of view, won't the blockchain too bloated if two protocol run on top of it? Also why are you saying that XCP cost less, is it true?

For the moment XCP>MSC, but we all know that MSC will finally come up with a working product one day or another.

both will exist. BTC blockchain will bloat, but since people will use either MSC or XCP, not both for the same transaction, the bloat will be about the same as if there was only one. I am assuming the load on blockchain is similar for XCP and MSC, otherwise need to weigh market usage by respective sizes. either way BTC blockchain wont meltdown, too much money at stake to keep it alive!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=265488.msg4940643#msg4940643 says that each mastercoin transaction sends "dust" to a fake address. However, my understanding is that something like 0.0001 BTC is sent to the mastercoin Exodus address. If they really wanted dust, why wasnt it set to 1 satoshi?

Also, I might be confused, but I am pretty sure JR has access to the Exodus address and it is not a "fake" address.

So, there is a built in extra transfer fee for every MSC transaction. XCP will always costs less than MSC, but XCP is also more reliable. The problem with software projects developed using architecture -> hire developers -> waterfall method -> slow and subtle bugs are usual. The reason is that the design is in one brain, but the code is written by somebody else. If the original design is done right, then eventually when the coders fully understand what the original designer meant in ALL cases, then it will be just fine.

I am reading the mastercoin thread. Do you get the feeling that the guys writing the mastercoin code to the mastercoin spec are 100% in sync with the mastercoin designer?

James

[maxmint]

Is there a way to transfer XCP from multiple addresses in a wallet to another address in just one single transaction?

Let's say I have 10 addresses containing XCP and I want to consolidate all of them in one single address. Do I have to create 10 send transactions or is there a way to do this with just a single transaction?

[DaFockBro]

This is an interesting concept but I don't expect widespread adoption of XCP.

First of all, its use is very limited. I don't think it will win over a single professional trader ever. In this time and age of HFT (high frequency trading) in most markets, especially the very liquid ones, where latencies are counted by the microseconds, the pace of 1 block per 10 minutes is not really going to cut it. This alone already rules out liquid markets like FX, MM, rates equities and commodities, where 99.999% of the trades are. Low Lack liquidity in XCP will translate to huge spreads and slippage from hell, making it unprofitable to trade through XCP, which in turn hurts liquidity. You can't break that vicious circle unless you can compete with the lightning speed and market depth at the exchanges. Unfortunately I don't see that ever happening. And oh, the exchange fees in these very liquid markets are negligible, especially for high volumes, so no advantage for XCP there either.

Mind you I'm not dismissing XCP, it's fantastic technology and it will have many novel applications. But I just don't think it's going to have the same level of impact as bitcoin, which was truly a paradigm shift.

I hope I'm proven wrong though!  

Blockchain-based technologies in general, whether BTC, MSC, XCP or Ethereum, will not be used for HFT. The scalability is simply not there for that. OpenTransactions servers, on the other hand, are excellent for HFT. Blockchains are for higher-value transactions and settlement.

Thanks for your input Vitalik. Speaking from the Wall Street perspective, not all exchanges out there are even suitable for high frequency trading (witness the recent rise of electronic exchanges - ARCA, BATS, etc). Not all participants are interested in "low-quality" liquidity so to speak, as provided by most high-frequency exchanges (which was one of the indirect causes of the infamous 2010 Flash Crash). Not all assets need to be traded on a real-time basis (real estate [which has many analogies with BTC], bonds, and mutual funds for instance). It's not also widely appreciated that official settlement for stock trades occurs not instantaneously, but 3 days (the T+3 rule). In contrast, 1 hour (6 confirmations) is widely acknowledged to be a reasonable settlement time for even the largest BTC trades.

The blockchain more closely resembles, say, the housing market or the contracts/swaps derivatives markets, which don't operate in any way similar to HFT even though they handle trillions of dollars in notional value. So the notion that non-highly liquid markets can't be valuable is absurd.

It makes an outrageous amount of sense for Asicminer to start using Counterparty.

The CEO of Asicminer, friedcat, currently keeps track of which bitcoin addresses own the 400,000 dividend-receiving shares with an excel spreadsheet.

He has to manually update this spreadsheet every time someone wants to transfer ownership of a share.

It usually takes days to transfer ownership of shares, 10 minutes would be a massive improvment.

Asicminer on Counterparty would be an epic combo.


Come join the discussion in the Asicminer thread and help bring Counterparty to friedcat's attention!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.msg4907871#msg4907871

[DaFockBro]

This is an interesting concept but I don't expect widespread adoption of XCP.

First of all, its use is very limited. I don't think it will win over a single professional trader ever. In this time and age of HFT (high frequency trading) in most markets, especially the very liquid ones, where latencies are counted by the microseconds, the pace of 1 block per 10 minutes is not really going to cut it. This alone already rules out liquid markets like FX, MM, rates equities and commodities, where 99.999% of the trades are. Low Lack liquidity in XCP will translate to huge spreads and slippage from hell, making it unprofitable to trade through XCP, which in turn hurts liquidity. You can't break that vicious circle unless you can compete with the lightning speed and market depth at the exchanges. Unfortunately I don't see that ever happening. And oh, the exchange fees in these very liquid markets are negligible, especially for high volumes, so no advantage for XCP there either.

Mind you I'm not dismissing XCP, it's fantastic technology and it will have many novel applications. But I just don't think it's going to have the same level of impact as bitcoin, which was truly a paradigm shift.

I hope I'm proven wrong though!  

Blockchain-based technologies in general, whether BTC, MSC, XCP or Ethereum, will not be used for HFT. The scalability is simply not there for that. OpenTransactions servers, on the other hand, are excellent for HFT. Blockchains are for higher-value transactions and settlement.

Thanks for your input Vitalik. Speaking from the Wall Street perspective, not all exchanges out there are even suitable for high frequency trading (witness the recent rise of electronic exchanges - ARCA, BATS, etc). Not all participants are interested in "low-quality" liquidity so to speak, as provided by most high-frequency exchanges (which was one of the indirect causes of the infamous 2010 Flash Crash). Not all assets need to be traded on a real-time basis (real estate [which has many analogies with BTC], bonds, and mutual funds for instance). It's not also widely appreciated that official settlement for stock trades occurs not instantaneously, but 3 days (the T+3 rule). In contrast, 1 hour (6 confirmations) is widely acknowledged to be a reasonable settlement time for even the largest BTC trades.

The blockchain more closely resembles, say, the housing market or the contracts/swaps derivatives markets, which don't operate in any way similar to HFT even though they handle trillions of dollars in notional value. So the notion that non-highly liquid markets can't be valuable is absurd.

It makes an outrageous amount of sense for Asicminer to start using Counterparty.

The CEO of Asicminer, friedcat, currently keeps track of which bitcoin addresses own the 400,000 dividend-receiving shares with an excel spreadsheet.

He has to manually update this spreadsheet every time someone wants to transfer ownership of a share.

It usually takes days to transfer ownership of shares, 10 minutes would be a massive improvment.

Asicminer on Counterparty would be an epic combo.


Come join the discussion in the Asicminer thread and help bring Counterparty to friedcat's attention!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=99497.msg4907871#msg4907871

o.O so what happens if that excel spreadsheet is lost?

ASICMINER listing on Counterparty could be its Netscape moment 

I'm sure he has many backups.  The current method of transferring shares of Asicminer is to create a thread in the auction section, like this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=439392.0

Then private message and/or email friedcat so he can change the addresses on the spreadsheet.

Many times people also use an escrow provider (such as John K.) to escrow the transfers.


This is a ridiculously inefficient, slow, manual process of transferring ownership of Asicminer shares.

If you're not familiar with Bitcoin securities, Asicminer is the most prominent of them all.

[halfcab123]

My

Code:

Bitcoind -reindex

is still running after 24 hours...
Is this normal  

[kdrop22]

My

Code:

Bitcoind -reindex

is still running after 24 hours...
Is this normal  

Mine ran for about 12 to 24 hours (on a machine with SSD drive).

[kdrop22]

Issue:
XCP not returned from escrow after cancellation of Order

http://blockscan.com/address.aspx?q=17PgVzRSSSjc2aN8Lyp1x9QayKzPzY2pKj

a) I placed a sell order for 250 XCP order
b) the order was matched by the engine, but the buyer did not make any payment yet.
c) I cancelled the order
d) I did not receive back the XCP from escrow

The Balance should be: 1432-400-200-200=632
Instead it is 382 XCP and 250 from Escrow is missing.

I know there was similar issue not sure what the resolution for that was. (I am on the latest build).

[520Bit]

I created a buying 3 BTC for 200 XCP order, and checked the transaction.

https://blockchain.info/tx/5222ce10128b9040c0d67ae2d7422d7f359307312504efb99c6618c1d69abc91

There are two Escrows: 18DuqefxEr... and 19htBgLiSs... , click them to expand them:
https://blockchain.info/address/18DuqefxErdAtXLfamxbiZSSFp5gxCydaa
https://blockchain.info/address/19htBgLiSsj5UB8oKpNJCSMY3ZxDFEZrao
Both of them have 0 BTC balance, but 0.0001086 BTC has been deducted from the selling address 1BuMkY3wGb2f6axSt528uBfUT54EduDqjZ.

My question is where did the two amount of 0.0001086 BTC go? Did they go to the counterparty protocol escrow themselves? But why can't I look up balance in blockchain?

Why does it need two kind of exact 0.0001086 BTC but not other amount?

[lonsharim]

My

Code:

Bitcoind -reindex

is still running after 24 hours...
Is this normal  

Mine took as long. Final weeks are the slowest. It's only a one time thing so bear with it.

My advise will also be to backup the blockchain in a compressed file so if you have a problem in future you can at least get back to this point.

[lonsharim]

Issue:
XCP not returned from escrow after cancellation of Order

http://blockscan.com/address.aspx?q=17PgVzRSSSjc2aN8Lyp1x9QayKzPzY2pKj

a) I placed a sell order for 250 XCP order
b) the order was matched by the engine, but the buyer did not make any payment yet.
c) I cancelled the order
d) I did not receive back the XCP from escrow

The Balance should be: 1432-400-200-200=632
Instead it is 382 XCP and 250 from Escrow is missing.

I know there was similar issue not sure what the resolution for that was. (I am on the latest build).

Are you saying that you cancelled the order before it was due to expire? Might have to wait until the order expires to see them XCP back.

[jimhsu]

Hi, can someone check this transaction?

Placed a test order to sell 200 XCP for 1.23 BTC: http://blockscan.com/tx.aspx?q=3247
1AQPf7f3y37NN9XsYkfGGALHQiW1ig3MXbfilled 17.886 XCP of the order paying 0.11 BTC but is awaiting payment: http://blockscan.com/order_match.aspx?q=3247
Meanwhile there is a BTCpay of 0.11 BTC going to 1JBp8tdzwzo5VKcKpg1QHKbYP2sKDNWGnk, but 1AQPf7f3y37NN9XsYkfGGALHQiW1ig3MXbfilled  has not been updated with an order match or a proper XCP balance. http://blockscan.com/address.aspx?q=1AQPf7f3y37NN9XsYkfGGALHQiW1ig3MXb

Something similar also happened here where an Order Match failed to go through, no BTCpay in this case though.
http://blockscan.com/order_match.aspx?q=3086

So far none of my sell side XCP orders have gone through successfully (for one reason or another). Selling to buy side XCP orders works fine though.

Also note that the last 3 btcpays have invalid order match IDs: http://blockscan.com/btcpay.aspx#

[jl777]

My

Code:

Bitcoind -reindex

is still running after 24 hours...
Is this normal  

Mine took as long. Final weeks are the slowest. It's only a one time thing so bear with it.

My advise will also be to backup the blockchain in a compressed file so if you have a problem in future you can at least get back to this point.

This is why I advocate checkpoint files as per prior discussion. It is possible to do with decentralized trust built in

James

[roede94105]

Hello kind Sirs,
Is there any way to monitor the evolution of the price of XCP, and the trades done without installing everything?
Sorry for my newbie question, and have a nice day!

[ginko-B]

@phantomphreak needs to get up on an interview panel! Like on this video

BitShares(Protoshares)
Mastercoin
Ethereum

People from these foundations talk for over an hour. Very uhh.. confusing ? haha, but interesting.
http://youtu.be/w-9miCOsg4g

He is too busy actually coding 

Better if make best system what working not talk shit in some video 

Yes, better to have a coder than a talker!