Bitcoinica - Advanced Bitcoin Trading Platform

[apetersson]

i looked at the prices they seem right for me..

2.61232 / 2.72033

[CoinLab]

The problem has been fixed.

It would be bad for business if Zhou banned accounts for trading when the site is in error.

We called a Bitcoinica employee in the states and told him about the problem while we were waiting to see how the situation resolved itself.  Will be interesting to hear how this happened (if we ever do).

[fastandfurious]

The problem has been fixed.

It would be horrible for business if Zhou banned accounts for trading when the site is in error.  This is a caveat emptor situation.  

And before you throw me under the bus, we called a Bitcoinica employee in the states and told him about the problem while we were shorting and waiting to see how the situation resolved itself.  Will be interesting to hear how this happened (if we ever do).

I think he should reverse the trades, this is the way it works on the financial markets, and I because of that didn't make any short selling trades. I can say that with 100 % confidence, that reversing is the right choice.

[CoinLab]

Zhoutong commented on the error here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49746.0

[neofutur]

bitcoinica: no reversals. congrats to all the lucky winners

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49746.0

 they re professional on this issue ! unlike ruxum . . .

[Adam]

I keep getting an error when I try with withdraw USD to a mt gox code.  It says it was submitted but the status instantly says "Error: An error occurred. Please check your input and try again."  What does this mean?

[neofutur]

I keep getting an error when I try with withdraw USD to a mt gox code.  It says it was submitted but the status instantly says "Error: An error occurred. Please check your input and try again."  What does this mean?

confirmed, same here, I reported it to the bitcoinica support

[netrin]

Hi Zhoutong,

It's taken me a while to go from hating to loving Bitcoinica. I was very often not quite sure what each feature did and I risked loss just experimenting. I feel comfortable with the order types and mechanisms, but I still think the UX and explanations could be better.

For example, when I set a Stop Loss: "Your order is executed when the market price is higher (buying), lower (selling) or equal than your specified price." Is the market price the average between bid and ask, or the ask when selling, or...?

Cheers,
Netrin

[cypherdoc]

Hi Zhoutong,

It's taken me a while to go from hating to loving Bitcoinica. I was very often not quite sure what each feature did and I risked loss just experimenting. I feel comfortable with the order types and mechanisms, but I still think the UX and explanations could be better.

For example, when I set a Stop Loss: "Your order is executed when the market price is higher (buying), lower (selling) or equal than your specified price." Is the market price the average between bid and ask, or the ask when selling, or...?

Cheers,
Netrin

it would be the last executed price.

[zhoutong]

Hi Zhoutong,

It's taken me a while to go from hating to loving Bitcoinica. I was very often not quite sure what each feature did and I risked loss just experimenting. I feel comfortable with the order types and mechanisms, but I still think the UX and explanations could be better.

For example, when I set a Stop Loss: "Your order is executed when the market price is higher (buying), lower (selling) or equal than your specified price." Is the market price the average between bid and ask, or the ask when selling, or...?

Cheers,
Netrin

class Order < ActiveRecord::Base
  def current_price
    current_price = Ticker.where(:pair => pair).last.selling if amount >= 0
    current_price = Ticker.where(:pair => pair).last.buying if amount < 0
  end
end

Here, selling == ask, buying == bid in common context.

[netrin]

Thanks Zhoutong,

I see my stops get triggered much more easily than I intend. I'm curious if you are willing to discuss your thought on spreads, your risk margins, cut, future volume:spread expectations, etc. I fully respect your need and desire to make money. I wonder, however, if you wouldn't make more money by reducing your rake. I strongly believe I (and most any active trader) would make more trades (by an order of magnitude or two) if the spread were one half or a quarter.

[zhoutong]

Thanks Zhoutong,

I see my stops get triggered much more easily than I intend. I'm curious if you are willing to discuss your thought on spreads, your risk margins, cut, future volume:spread expectations, etc. I fully respect your need and desire to make money. I wonder, however, if you wouldn't make more money by reducing your rake. I strongly believe I (and most any active trader) would make more trades (by an order of magnitude or two) if the spread were one half or a quarter.

Thank you for your feedback. Currently we are unable to provide more information on the spread because we don't have any formal partnership with Mt. Gox. A disclosure of such information may lead to abuse of our system. (It has happened once, but we quickly changed the algorithm to a more sophisticated one.)

Currently you can view the average spread over the last 24 hours on our home page.

In the future, when we are able to settle the metrics and algorithms to a more robust level, we will definitely disclose as much as we can to ensure transparency.

If you are interested in some specifics of our data available, please send an email to support@bitcoinica.com. We are willing to discuss with you.

[speeder]

Thanks Zhoutong,

I see my stops get triggered much more easily than I intend. I'm curious if you are willing to discuss your thought on spreads, your risk margins, cut, future volume:spread expectations, etc. I fully respect your need and desire to make money. I wonder, however, if you wouldn't make more money by reducing your rake. I strongly believe I (and most any active trader) would make more trades (by an order of magnitude or two) if the spread were one half or a quarter.

I lost about 25 USD today in spurious stop being triggered :/

(and my huge 1000+ USD loss was when I did not put a stop, specifically because I was annoyed with spurious stops).

I wonder if somethign can be done about that...

[ineededausername]

Thanks Zhoutong,

I see my stops get triggered much more easily than I intend. I'm curious if you are willing to discuss your thought on spreads, your risk margins, cut, future volume:spread expectations, etc. I fully respect your need and desire to make money. I wonder, however, if you wouldn't make more money by reducing your rake. I strongly believe I (and most any active trader) would make more trades (by an order of magnitude or two) if the spread were one half or a quarter.

Join the
Spread Is Too Damn High Party
by placing this post in your sig. (minus the quote!)

[Littleshop]

Thanks Zhoutong,

I see my stops get triggered much more easily than I intend. I'm curious if you are willing to discuss your thought on spreads, your risk margins, cut, future volume:spread expectations, etc. I fully respect your need and desire to make money. I wonder, however, if you wouldn't make more money by reducing your rake. I strongly believe I (and most any active trader) would make more trades (by an order of magnitude or two) if the spread were one half or a quarter.

Join the
Spread Is Too Damn High Party
by placing this post in your sig. (minus the quote!)

I am not against you posting that in your sig but....

Just stop using the damn service and pull your coins out.  That will do more to encourage the owner to reduce the spread.   The high spread is the reason why I stopped using the service.

[cypherdoc]

Thanks Zhoutong,

I see my stops get triggered much more easily than I intend. I'm curious if you are willing to discuss your thought on spreads, your risk margins, cut, future volume:spread expectations, etc. I fully respect your need and desire to make money. I wonder, however, if you wouldn't make more money by reducing your rake. I strongly believe I (and most any active trader) would make more trades (by an order of magnitude or two) if the spread were one half or a quarter.

I lost about 25 USD today in spurious stop being triggered :/

(and my huge 1000+ USD loss was when I did not put a stop, specifically because I was annoyed with spurious stops).

I wonder if somethign can be done about that...

ZHOUTONGED!

[Steve]

I agree that the spread is too high.  I understand that this is how he makes money with the service and is able to provide a liquidity guarantee.  But I would prefer it if it had spreads that very closely follow mtgox and simply had a transaction fee (that is factored into the P/L calculation) and no liquidity guarantee.

[BitMagic]

Edit: nevermind.

[netrin]

Twice now, I've created a limit order, set the amount and the price and submit forgetting to select "Buy" or "Sell". I don't know what Bitcoinica assumes, that I want to buy by default, or to automatically buy if higher than market and sell if lower, but I would have assumed (and would appreciate) the following:

If I make a LIMIT order, and the price is above the current ask, then I probably intend to set a future SELL order. If I set a price lower than the current bit, I intended a future BUY order. If I expected immediate execution, I would have made a MARKET order.

Similar logic should be assumed for STOPs. If I set a stop that is above the current ask, then Bitcoinica should assume I mean a BUY STOP. Whereas if I set a stop below the current bid, Bitcoin should assume I mean a SELL STOP. (I don't know if this is currently the case, because I have yet to make stop mistakes (I think) )

[robocop]

No fees?? 

Every transaction with 1.3% spread means that 10 transactions are a win of 13% and in 100 transactions 130% !!

I don´t need such trading platforms, i don´t need leverage trading and some speculative shit. Maybe short-selling could be a possibility to stabilize the own bitcoin depot.