How many of you have been Zhoutonged?

[jimbobway]

Zhou'tong' song? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oai1V7kaFBk&feature=youtu.be&t=1m31s

[old_engineer]

I'd recommend that you add in the actual Mt. Gox price to your graph

If only for casual browsing, the Mt. Gox price rarely goes outside of the bitcoinica spread. Bitcoinica spread just expands like bollinger bands.

The Mt. Gox price is for reference, for comparison purposes.  Seeing the bands without the actual price doesn't fully inform the reader of the underlying market conditions.

I find it's far easier to make money on the price spikes or dips

Surely you are referring to Mt. Gox and not Bitcoinica?

Yes, I am referring to trading actual coins on Mt. Gox, a reference I clearly buried later in that paragraph.

[old_engineer]

The MtGox prices are shifted (i think i have a tiemzone issue).
http://beast.intersango.com/bitcoinica.svg

Though saved as SVG, Ttis is still a bitmap image. A true SVG image is vector (Scalable Vector Graphics), and zooming into the image allows the viewer to see details. Here's what an SVG graph should look like, where you can zoom in and still see details:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Graph_of_example_function.svg

Zooming into your image shows zoomed-in mush:


SVG is essentially like a graphics vector language: "draw line from 0,0 to 100,100", which works very well independent of screen resolution, rather than a bitmap that records the values of individual pixels, and will show pixelation when zoomed.

[caston]

I actually went back to CFD trading bank stocks and have been making a little money and keeping much better hours and not a forced liquidated yet!

 The thing I noticed about my CFD provider is that the amount of margin you are given is determined on where your stop loss is. Why not make something similar on bitcoinica? For example if you have no stop loss you can only trade 1:1 the closer your stop loss is the more margin you can use. That way there really shouldn't be any forced liquidations.

[phantomcircuit]

Though saved as SVG, Ttis is still a bitmap image. A true SVG image is vector (Scalable Vector Graphics), and zooming into the image allows the viewer to see details. Here's what an SVG graph should look like, where you can zoom in and still see details:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Graph_of_example_function.svg

Zooming into your image shows zoomed-in mush:


SVG is essentially like a graphics vector language: "draw line from 0,0 to 100,100", which works very well independent of screen resolution, rather than a bitmap that records the values of individual pixels, and will show pixelation when zoomed.

Yes I know what a vector is.

This information is inherently a series of points, whether it is plotted on a bitmap or as an svg, it is absolutely not an infinitely smooth line.

If you would like to find out why I didn't simply do this as a series of points simply try and load http://beast.intersango.com/dots.svg

[netrin]

For example if you have no stop loss you can only trade 1:1 the closer your stop loss is the more margin you can use. That way there really shouldn't be any forced liquidations.

I've wondered why/how anyone gets liquidated at all. People set a highly leveraged unprotected position and go on vacation (called sleep in the bitcoin world)?

[caston]

For example if you have no stop loss you can only trade 1:1 the closer your stop loss is the more margin you can use. That way there really shouldn't be any forced liquidations.

I've wondered why/how anyone gets liquidated at all. People set a highly leveraged unprotected position and go on vacation (called sleep in the bitcoin world)?

I like your idea about having multiple accounts. You keep a certain amount of reserve USD or BTC on Mtgox and if one of your accounts looks like its about to be liquidated you deposit some capital to take it back. The rational being that if the market moves against you it will eventually come back and you can exit without loss. Of course if the market REALLY moves like over a $1 change then you might lose your backup capital as well. You can also try to short the spike then there's another spike and your forever throwing in more capital to try to stop the forced liquidation. If you can get your money in fast enough is might be 3-4 days until you can exit your position without a loss.

Then your feeling sorry for yourself thinking about how rich you would be if you went long.

This all comes back to knowing what the trend is. At the moment we're still not quite sure if BTC is going back to above 5 or its crashing back to parity.

If you're going against the trend take out small profits. If your going with it wait for the large ones. Of course I got nuts just trying to work out what the trend actually is.

Same goes for if your making a small loss and your not sure if you should exit your position or not. The simple rule of thumb is are you bettering for or against the trend?

[netrin]

I don't recall my rationale for this ingenious idea.

I think it was just to keep track of my various positions experiments, or in protest for my trailing stops not working, or ... I'm now setting my position on Mt. Gox and then moving coins and codes over to Bitcoinica for more leverage and stops. So far that's not working brilliantly either. Fortunately, I happen to always know the trend and future direction*, I just can't always get the maximas.

* except when I don't.

[caston]

I don't recall my rationale for this ingenious idea.

I think it was just to keep track of my various positions experiments, or in protest for my trailing stops not working, or ...

I'm now setting my position on Mt. Gox and then moving coins and codes over to Bitcoinica for more leverage and stops. So far that's not working brilliantly either.

You can also look for outside news. For example there was a segment about bitcoin on Fox that came out on a Sunday and a few days later the mysterious MtGox countdown was due to finish. That WAS a very good time to long.

[zhoutong]

Done. Now Bitcoinica officially provides daily quotes charts.

Also, the new pricing algorithm is already running in production after testing against all historical data.

Available at: http://charts.bitcoinica.com/

Off-topic: The most exciting day since Bitcoinica's launch.

[finway]

Want to try Bitcoinica someday.

[caston]

Want to try Bitcoinica someday.

Nice to see the mother of all short positions

http://charts.bitcoinica.com/daily_quotes?date=2011-09-06

[finway]

Want to try Bitcoinica someday.

Nice to see the mother of all short positions

http://charts.bitcoinica.com/daily_quotes?date=2011-09-06

Sorry, i don't follow you.

[caston]

Want to try Bitcoinica someday.

Nice to see the mother of all short positions

http://charts.bitcoinica.com/daily_quotes?date=2011-09-06

Sorry, i don't follow you.

When bitcoinica first came out you could short bitcoins at about $7... if you did so then forgot about it and went away and did other things and then came back you would have found a very nice Unrealized P/L in your account.

[cypherdoc]

Done. Now Bitcoinica officially provides daily quotes charts.

Also, the new pricing algorithm is already running in production after testing against all historical data.

Available at: http://charts.bitcoinica.com/

Off-topic: The most exciting day since Bitcoinica's launch.

thanks for trying to make it better.  not sure it will make a diff in the end and i still won't use your service.

[molecular]

People set a highly leveraged unprotected position and go on vacation (called sleep in the bitcoin world)?

haha, you made me laugh. it's so true, too.

[gewure]

i have been zhoutonged recently. but i kind of zhoutonged back..

 

[cypherdoc]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=55563.msg665312#msg665312

Wow if this true Bitcoinica really is doomed.

[smickles]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=55563.msg665312#msg665312

Wow if this true Bitcoinica really is doomed.

yeah, not lookin' too good right now.

[cypherdoc]

How many?