Bitcoinica - Advanced Bitcoin Trading Platform

[notme]

I recommend always using limit orders when doing any type of trading.  Market orders tend to end up at the worst possible price precisely because there is no "limit".

Unrelated, but @Zhoutong:
What does 240% hedged mean?  Is that a bug, or have you really traded 2.4X as much volume on MtGox as was traded on bitcoinica in the last 24 hours?  I suppose this could be the case if you were rebuilding your reserves, but I just want to be sure I understand what this number is telling me.

[1713509014]

1713509014

[1713509014]

1713509014

[1713509014]

1713509014

[zhoutong]

I recommend always using limit orders when doing any type of trading.  Market orders tend to end up at the worst possible price precisely because there is no "limit".

Unrelated, but @Zhoutong:
What does 240% hedged mean?  Is that a bug, or have you really traded 2.4X as much volume on MtGox as was traded on bitcoinica in the last 24 hours?  I suppose this could be the case if you were rebuilding your reserves, but I just want to be sure I understand what this number is telling me.

Yes, we hedged more than what our customers have traded. It's our regular maintenance to ensure that we're not under holding or over holding Bitcoins when the prices are changing very quickly. (Sometimes we do miss orders, but we will ensure that this is extremely rare.)

[chunglam]

We are talking exchange function not trading

Hi, I thought that the price that I saw was guaranteed for 50 BTC. I bought at 4.2 but it filled at 4.29!! What is going on? I ordered 50.

Same thing happened when I converted USD to BTC three weeks ago. It is a bug of Bicoinica exchange system. Below was my post to their help desk on 8 December -

Hi, I found a bug in your new USD/BTC exchange system. It is very easy to duplicate, just input amount of USD that is approximate to 50 BTC and use the Calculate button to check how many BTCs you can get back. For example, the current Guaranteed Exchange Rate is
V <= 50 -> 0.3315
50 < V <= 500 -> 0.3215
500 < V <= 5000 -> 0.305

You input US$ 149, you will get BTC 49.79382575
You input US$ 150, you will get BTC 48.62417213

More USD, less BTC?

A few days ago, I converted US$156 to around 49.x BTC. I believe the exchange rate should be the least one (BTC volume <= 50), but the system actually using the second tier price for convertion.

Reply from their staff Jon

Hmm. That's odd!
I'll have Zhou look at it. Thanks for the heads up!
Thank you for trading with Bitcoinica,
-Jon

No further reply after this

[notme]

Exchange is always market order on Bitcoinica.  If you can't tolerate the current volatility, "withdraw" via mtgox code, trade on mtgox, send it back with mtgox code.  Or maybe Zhoutong can add limit orders for exchanging, but maintaining another order book probably isn't real high on his list of improvements.

[chunglam]

I know it is market order. The problem is when you convert USD to BTC and the volume <= 50 BTCs, the system may use second tier price for conversion instead of the advertised first tier price and user may feel cheated by the system.

[Tril]

Frankly speaking, their leverage trading system is only game in town right now. My long position in Bitcoinica is more profitable then my 7G+ mining operation . But their exchange system is another story, it is OK as long as you don't convert more than 49BTCs per conversion.

In less than two weeks they will not be the only game in town. I feel I have been cheated so I have one foot out the door.

I'm quite curious. Who will join the game?

I'm guessing here, but it could be this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50817.0

[notme]

I know it is market order. The problem is when you convert USD to BTC and the volume <= 50 BTCs, the system may use second tier price for conversion instead of the advertised first tier price and user may feel cheated by the system.

I understand the problem, and I'll admit my solutions don't really address it directly.  However, this seems tricky to code properly.  I'm guessing here, but it seems like the code is along the lines of:

if USD/SUB_50_PRICE < 50:
  BTC = USD/SUB_50_PRICE
else if USD/NEXT_TIER_PRICE < TIER_THRESHOLD
  BTC = USD/NEXT_TIER_PRICE

The issue is, the amount is over 50 if you give the SUB_50_PRICE.  I don't see a way to do it without creating a continuous, monotonic function from USD amount to price, or having separate USD denominated thresholds.  You could probably fake it 90% of the time by smoothing near thresholds, but that is tough to get right without wasting a bunch of cycles.  Seeing as how this is a small bug in an auxiliary feature it is hard to justify him spending too much time on this when there are other concerns more closely related to his revenue/main product.  Perhaps something like

if BTC < 50 && PRICE_USED == NEXT_TIER_PRICE
  BTC = 2*USD/(SUB_50_PRICE + NEXT_TIER_PRICE)

might get him acceptably close (average the prices when the threshold is barely triggered).

[chunglam]

I would suggest to provide warning message that your input USD amount has triggered 2nd tier price. A better way is a shortcut button to fill proper amount USD for 50 BTC in 1st tier price.

[zhoutong]

FYI, my response to chunglam just now:

4 Posted by zhoutong on December 27, 2011 @ 11:11 AM


Hi,

Sorry for the late reply!

We have two different tiers of currency exchange rates with 50 BTC as the divider. If you enter $150, using the first tier rate, it will result in more than 50 BTC. As a result, the system used the second tier rate and resulted in even less BTC.

We will change to sliding rate to prevent these issues from happening again. In this case, we will simply indicate the rates for different amounts, and customers are required to "Calculate" to know the exact rate.

Thank you for your valuable feedback. We will credit you 1 BTC for this bug report!

[smickles]

Zhou, have you changed the way Trailing stops work? Because they don't seem to be trailing...

+1
they're not moving for me either

Hi,

I have fixed the trailing stop error. Now it's trailing again.

Thank you for your feedback. Each of you will get 1 BTC bonus. (Both, please give me either your Bitcoinica account or a Bitcoin address so that I can send money to you.)

I PM'd you about this, but I guess you don't check your PM's that often. Or, there could have been some kind of foul up I suppose. Anyway, I haven't received that 1 BTC yet. I really like BTC, can I have it now?

[netrin]

ditto

[zhoutong]

Zhou, have you changed the way Trailing stops work? Because they don't seem to be trailing...

+1
they're not moving for me either

Hi,

I have fixed the trailing stop error. Now it's trailing again.

Thank you for your feedback. Each of you will get 1 BTC bonus. (Both, please give me either your Bitcoinica account or a Bitcoin address so that I can send money to you.)

I PM'd you about this, but I guess you don't check your PM's that often. Or, there could have been some kind of foul up I suppose. Anyway, I haven't received that 1 BTC yet. I really like BTC, can I have it now?

Whoops. Sorry about that. I forgot to check PM for this.

I have credited 1 BTC to both accounts. Thank you for your support!

[smickles]

Zhou, have you changed the way Trailing stops work? Because they don't seem to be trailing...

+1
they're not moving for me either

Hi,

I have fixed the trailing stop error. Now it's trailing again.

Thank you for your feedback. Each of you will get 1 BTC bonus. (Both, please give me either your Bitcoinica account or a Bitcoin address so that I can send money to you.)

I PM'd you about this, but I guess you don't check your PM's that often. Or, there could have been some kind of foul up I suppose. Anyway, I haven't received that 1 BTC yet. I really like BTC, can I have it now?

Whoops. Sorry about that. I forgot to check PM for this.

I have credited 1 BTC to both accounts. Thank you for your support!

Thanks!

[netrin]

Muchas gracias

[Bigpiggy01]

Zhoutong,

What exactly happens to an order that gets flagged "NO RESERVE" I thought you were guaranteeing 50 BTC liquidity on trades  

And how is not allowing people to buy during an uptrend supposed to make profiting easier?

[randomusername8236]

I am also getting the "No Reserve" status and I'm attempting to sell short.

[ahbritto]

The NO RESERVES issue has been resolved.

[smickles]

The NO RESERVES issue has been resolved.

not without a shitload of FUD flying around now.

[netrin]

A minor but constant annoyance: my browser does not remember my Bitcoinica username and password whenever my session expires (daily) and so I have to hunt for my super-secure password each time. Does anyone else experience this annoyance? What is it about my configuration or Bitcoinica's HTML that's not sticky?

[zhoutong]

A minor but constant annoyance: my browser does not remember my Bitcoinica username and password whenever my session expires (daily) and so I have to hunt for my super-secure password each time. Does anyone else experience this annoyance? What is it about my configuration or Bitcoinica's HTML that's not sticky?

I think I should remove the PJAX now. It doesn't provide much benefit but it's always causing minor troubles, including SSL redirection problems.

I will look for alternatives of implementation too. Thank you for your feedback!