Bitcoinica - Advanced Bitcoin Trading Platform

[tvbcof]

I'm suspecting that both you are a Windows user and that 'nslookup' and 'whois' are ported to that platform.

Good job with the false assumptions.

Anyway, thanks for telling me what I already know, and here is nslookup output to make you happy:
Server:      192.168.5.1
Address:   192.168.5.1#53

** server can't find bitcoinica.com: FORMERR

Whois is fine, but that's not an ISP provided service.

Ok, back to google DNS I go.

That tells me that the (presumed) DNS server at 192.168.5.1 is fucked up since pretty much every other DNS server is able to resolve it.  What does it tell you?  (192.168 is private space address BTW, in case you don't know.)

[1714079662]

1714079662

[1714079662]

1714079662

[1714079662]

1714079662

[notme]

That tells me that the (presumed) DNS server at 192.168.5.1 is fucked up since pretty much every other DNS server is able to resolve it.  What does it tell you?  (192.168 is private space address BTW, in case you don't know.)

I know... it's my router, which uses my ISP provided DNS.  That's the problem.  I have the credentials to properly determine this, and I'm not about to tear apart my setup to prove it again for you.  I understand having to have low expectations from people, but you're just coming across as arrogant since you don't know the entire situation, but seem to have all the answers.  Zhoutong is cutting corners on his DNS provider and it is unprofessional and extremely inconvenient.  I wish the internet could just work, but it seems if you don't play fair with the big boys they cut you out.  So by using a technically correct DNS provider who doesn't play by the political rules he is cutting out a large group of users.  I can fix this issue for myself, but many can't.  It's a sad and shitty situation, but such is the state of the internet.

[2112]

bitcoinica.com appears to have been set up with DNSSEC. I see records type 43 (DS) and 46 (RRSIG). Comcast is one of the few ISP that advertises support for DNSSEC. I'll venture to guess that people who experience problems also have routers/gateways that choke on DNSSEC that they receive from their ISP.

I wouldn't recommend that Zhoutong disables DNSSEC. I would recommend that people who can't resolve Bitcoinica look into upgrading their equipment to something that supports DNSSEC.

Edit: I may have misremembered about Comcast. They may be the ones who advertise support for IPv6. Bitcoinica.com has both IPv4 and IPv6 name servers. So the intermediate equipment may choke on IPv6 or DNSSEC. Anyway, the solution is the same: upgrade the equipment to something that supports both IPv6 and DNSSEC.

Edit#2: Updated post in another thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=60741.msg708383#msg708383

[tvbcof]

That tells me that the (presumed) DNS server at 192.168.5.1 is fucked up since pretty much every other DNS server is able to resolve it.  What does it tell you?  (192.168 is private space address BTW, in case you don't know.)

I know... it's my router, which uses my ISP provided DNS.  That's the problem.  I have the credentials to properly determine this, and I'm not about to tear apart my setup to prove it again for you.  I understand having to have low expectations from people, but you're just coming across as arrogant since you don't know the entire situation, but seem to have all the answers.  Zhoutong is cutting corners on his DNS provider and it is unprofessional and extremely inconvenient.  I wish the internet could just work, but it seems if you don't play fair with the big boys they cut you out.  So by using a technically correct DNS provider who doesn't play by the political rules he is cutting out a large group of users.  I can fix this issue for myself, but many can't.  It's a sad and shitty situation, but such is the state of the internet.

You are accusing Bitcoinica of commissioning DNS resolution service and asserting that it is not being done right without saying what is not right about it.

  http://dnsstuff.fastnext.com/index.php?fDNSreport=bitcoinica.com

I see no defects that a semi-capable resolver should not be able to overcome.  I personally rely mostly on my own resolver.  It is ancient (djbdns) but it is able to resolve bitcoinica.com just fine.

The fact that bitcoinica.com feels the need to use a privacy service is a little bit unsettling to me, but it seems to me to be working fine and since they hold only a few residual coins and some pocket change of mine, I'm not sweating it.

I expect that a lot of people will become much more familiar with name resolution issues in the fairly near future as that is the most likely attack mode that against 'rouge' sites.  I wonder if Comcast has not started already.  Although I am a Comcast customer, I use either my own recursive resolver, or Google's, so I cannot trivially verify.  Unlikely, or a lot more people would be shrieking.  Maybe you've got an ancient broke-ass router.

[M4v3R]

I'd like to give thumbs up on fixing DNS issues. For me it's not impossible to use Bitcoinica on the go, on my iPhone/iPad, over the cellular network. They give me fixed DNS server that I can't change on my device. And Bitcoinica fails to load on those. It's a shame, because when there is some action on the market and I'm not at home, I'm basically helpless and can't react on this.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Bitcoinica generally appears to be a very professional operation

Alas, professionally presented and professionally managed are two different things.

Zhou has suffered numerous setbacks since the beginning of Bitcoinica, mostly related to his choice of hosting provider, but life complications as well. Everyone remembers that he's in high school still right? When he's out, I bet he'll be able to sit at the computer all day long and help everyone. In the meantime, I'm never surprised by a moment of downtime or server issue. It's simply impossible for one person with other responsibilities to be abreast of every situation at the same time.

Definitely deserves being looked into however. I'll ask him about this in our interview this week on BitTalk.TV.

[speeder]

Double Zhoutonged again


Not only it forced close my position (something expected given the drop) it also sold all my BTC on the account Considering the crap exchange rates of Bitcoinica (in comparison to mtgox exchange rates) this is not nice.

Also, again, it does not show in the order history (only the forced liquidation is there, the forced sale of BTC is not).

This is not nice you know? I complained last time of forced sale of BTC that does not show up on the story, and now it happen again even on the new site, this does not please me.

[pirateat40]

Double Zhoutonged again


Not only it forced close my position (something expected given the drop) it also sold all my BTC on the account Considering the crap exchange rates of Bitcoinica (in comparison to mtgox exchange rates) this is not nice.

Also, again, it does not show in the order history (only the forced liquidation is there, the forced sale of BTC is not).

This is not nice you know? I complained last time of forced sale of BTC that does not show up on the story, and now it happen again even on the new site, this does not please me.

It should show in the ledger.

[speeder]

Indeed, it is there...





Got massively screwed (thanks to a mistake that I did and was not much into undoing to not lose half of my money, now I lost all of it   )

[nrd525]

The Asterisk: it'd be nice to document it on the website.

For instance, say what it means when you mouseover it.

[g00dnight]

Hello, Zhou!
I've found a bug in API. Try to get active orders by link:
https://www.bitcoinica.com/api/orders/active.json
And you'll see that field "created_at" is changing randomly (or almost randomly, not sure about this). For example:
"2012-01-18T13:21:47+08:00"
"2012-01-18T06:21:47+01:00"
"2012-01-18T09:21:47+04:00"
...

[zhoutong]

Hello, Zhou!
I've found a bug in API. Try to get active orders by link:
https://www.bitcoinica.com/api/orders/active.json
And you'll see that field "created_at" is changing randomly (or almost randomly, not sure about this). For example:
"2012-01-18T13:21:47+08:00"
"2012-01-18T06:21:47+01:00"
"2012-01-18T09:21:47+04:00"
...

Thanks for reporting this. It seems that the system gets confused which time zone should be in the output. Currently you can convert everything to UTC since the time zone is given. I'll fix this issue by forcing UTC output.

[g00dnight]

Thanks for reporting this. It seems that the system gets confused which time zone should be in the output. Currently you can convert everything to UTC since the time zone is given. I'll fix this issue by forcing UTC output.

Ok, I'll try this. Thanks for your feedback!

By the way, I'm developing a mobile trading app for Bitcoinica, primarily for my own needs, but I wonder if anybody also interested in this too.

[BTCurious]

Trailing stops still don't work. They're quite convenient, maybe they can be fixed?

[barbarousrelic]

I apologize if this has been discussed somewhere in the previous 23 pages. . .


If Bitcoinica allows users to borrow Bitcoins for margin purposes, and to borrow Bitcoin for short selling, obviously it all works out if the trades go in favor of the users. But what happens if the trades go the other way, the users are now in debt to Bitcoinica, and let's say some users don't pay Bitcoinica what they owe them? If users can profit when the market goes their way (and keep their Bitcoins as profit), and they can abandon their accounts when they go the other way, how does Bitcoinica not swiftly go bankrupt?

[tvbcof]

I apologize if this has been discussed somewhere in the previous 23 pages. . .


If Bitcoinica allows users to borrow Bitcoins for margin purposes, and to borrow Bitcoin for short selling, obviously it all works out if the trades go in favor of the users. But what happens if the trades go the other way, the users are now in debt to Bitcoinica, and let's say some users don't pay Bitcoinica what they owe them? If users can profit when the market goes their way (and keep their Bitcoins as profit), and they can abandon their accounts when they go the other way, how does Bitcoinica not swiftly go bankrupt?

I think the general principle is that before you get in debt to Bitcoinica, you get liquidated.

Bitcoinica ends up getting screwed only in the event of very high price volatility in which liquidations cannot be done within anticipated ranges, or in the event of coding errors.  My understanding is that Bitcoinica maintains a reserve of their profits to (hopefully) allow for either of these eventualities, and anticipate that many users would walk away from obligations such as you are describing.

[barbarousrelic]

I apologize if this has been discussed somewhere in the previous 23 pages. . .


If Bitcoinica allows users to borrow Bitcoins for margin purposes, and to borrow Bitcoin for short selling, obviously it all works out if the trades go in favor of the users. But what happens if the trades go the other way, the users are now in debt to Bitcoinica, and let's say some users don't pay Bitcoinica what they owe them? If users can profit when the market goes their way (and keep their Bitcoins as profit), and they can abandon their accounts when they go the other way, how does Bitcoinica not swiftly go bankrupt?

I think the general principle is that before you get in debt to Bitcoinica, you get liquidated.

Bitcoinica ends up getting screwed only in the event of very high price volatility in which liquidations cannot be done within anticipated ranges, or in the event of coding errors.  My understanding is that Bitcoinica maintains a reserve of their profits to (hopefully) allow for either of these eventualities, and anticipate that many users would walk away from obligations such as you are describing.

That makes sense for margin trading, I suppose, but what about shorting? Aren't you necessarily in debt to your brokerage when you are short selling something?

[BTCurious]

You have to put funds into bitcoinica for short selling. If the price goes up too much, where you risk not being able to pay for the shorted bitcoins anymore, you're automatically liquidated: You automatically buy back the bitcoins you shorted.

[tvbcof]

You have to put funds into bitcoinica for short selling. If the price goes up too much, where you risk not being able to pay for the shorted bitcoins anymore, you're automatically liquidated: You automatically buy back the bitcoins you shorted.

This is what makes a 'short squeeze' such a wonderful and delightful thing to watch.  As the price rises, more and more people buy (albeit not particularly willingly though that does not matter to the market.)  So the process perpetuates itself until it burns out (as people who have some powder dry recognize the situation and capitalize on it.)

Really interesting things can happen when a lot of the shorting was 'naked'.  That is, there was actually no borrowing of the item by the person going short.  In this case a situation can occur where the curves never cross and things cannot 'burn out'.  Then we get a great deal of market instability and loss of confidence.  In markets where naked short selling is possible and tolerated, great efforts are made to avoid such an event and obscure it if it happens.

[barbarousrelic]

You have to put funds into bitcoinica for short selling. If the price goes up too much, where you risk not being able to pay for the shorted bitcoins anymore, you're automatically liquidated: You automatically buy back the bitcoins you shorted.

If that's the case, then I don't understand the benefit of Bitcoinica, because the following seem identical to me:

a) having 10 bitcoins deposited with Bitcoinica, and borrowing 10 bitcoins with the hope of buying them back at a lower price

b) selling your own 10 bitcoins with the hope of buying them back at a lower price?