ICBIT Derivatives Market (USD/BTC futures trading) - LIVE

[picobit]

N may be considerably long, like, 15 or 30 minutes to prevent manipulation possibility.

I would think that 15 or 30 minutes is way too short, both to prevent market manipulation and to prevent rapid fluctuations.  Would there be anything lost if that time is set to an hour, with an automatic announcement half an hour before?

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[Ichthyo]

N may be considerably long, like, 15 or 30 minutes to prevent manipulation possibility.

I would think that 15 or 30 minutes is way too short, both to prevent market manipulation and to prevent rapid fluctuations.  Would there be anything lost if that time is set to an hour, with an automatic announcement half an hour before?

Even more, I think we're completely in the wrong category if we discuss minutes.
Let's see it this way: we have two clearings per day. Under any normal circumstances this should be enough. So IMHO the task is to detect the situation, when two clearings per day aren't enough.

Thus I'd propose this rule: if there is the situation of a dysfunctional market (i.e. only one side, ask or bid, and extended up to the trading range), and if this situation pertains for 2 consecutive clearing periods (or at least 90% of the time), then insert two additional clearings

I think the fact that the futures market moves and reacts slower than spot is a feature, not a bug.

[Fireball]

Some UI changes are necessary to further improve the functionality of ICBIT. I just deployed the first bunch of changes, so please update your pages.

Time & Sales widget is not functional yet (would be in the next update), and New Order widget on the Futures tab has some space reserved for enhanced functionality.

I hope you like those. And I would be glad to listen to your feedback - what's good, what's bad, how to make it better. Don't forget to check Exchange tab too.



FIXED: Bug (IE/Firefox only): In Exchange tab, the BUY/SELL switch always remains green instead of red.

[davidoski]

IMHO:

1. the chart is to high and makes the whole section to high and dominating the screen to much. New order section doesn't even reach the bottom of its place. Please make the chart smaller.

2. I would be pleased to see the Time&Sales section next to Order book and the chart far right.

3. Buy/Sell buttons would be better placed just below Total/Initial amount fields - and the hint and trading fee info should be placed below those buttons. ATM the buttons are pushed down at the very bottom in spite of being quite important.

[Fireball]

Another set of updates are deployed.
The most important visible change is that Time&Sales widget (modeled after Clark Moody's Time&Sales table) is now live. It doesn't include history pre-loading yet, but it shows you all trades of the selected futures or currency in real time.

Tomorrow - more improvements coming (as the empty Time&Sales box after page reload doesn't look very nice).

[Kyje]

I wanted to speak up to voice support of the changes Fireball has proposed.

To grow and mature this market it's essential that there be market makers. It means more liquidity, tighter spreads, and overall less expensive futures for everyone. Market makers will not participate if there is ever a time they cannot trade as this makes it impossible to continuously manage risk.  Unfortunately this is currently is the case due to the way clearings and limits are structured.

Clearings that happen automatically as a limit is hit gets us closer to this.  Continuous real-time clearing would be even better, but we can come back to that later.   

I urge all members to support these changes.

[zebedee]

It means more liquidity, tighter spreads, and overall less expensive futures for everyone.

That's best achieved by deciding not to charge 6 times Gox's already steep charges.

[boomerlu]

N may be considerably long, like, 15 or 30 minutes to prevent manipulation possibility.

I would think that 15 or 30 minutes is way too short, both to prevent market manipulation and to prevent rapid fluctuations.  Would there be anything lost if that time is set to an hour, with an automatic announcement half an hour before?

Even more, I think we're completely in the wrong category if we discuss minutes.
Let's see it this way: we have two clearings per day. Under any normal circumstances this should be enough. So IMHO the task is to detect the situation, when two clearings per day aren't enough.

Thus I'd propose this rule: if there is the situation of a dysfunctional market (i.e. only one side, ask or bid, and extended up to the trading range), and if this situation pertains for 2 consecutive clearing periods (or at least 90% of the time), then insert two additional clearings

I think the fact that the futures market moves and reacts slower than spot is a feature, not a bug.

The structure is pretty reasonable. 2 clearings is ample time to prepare, and adding them isn't killer.

I'm not sold on those indicators of dysfunctional market though.

[Fireball]

It means more liquidity, tighter spreads, and overall less expensive futures for everyone.

That's best achieved by deciding not to charge 6 times Gox's already steep charges.

"Challenge accepted"!

We just introduced a new, very experimental and short (one month) futures contract BUK3 (BTC/USD-05.13).

Features:
- 10 times lower trading fee! (subject to your usual volume discounts too)
- Expires 25th of May (so it trades roughly one month)
- 0.0001 BTC clearing fee per 1 contract (to fight buy-and-hold-till-expiration strategy). It's taken during each scheduled clearing (twice a day) if you have this futures in your balance tab by the moment clearing happens!

Let's see what this experiment shows. The first trading session has enhanced price limits and increased margin requirements. The first clearing will be free (no clearing fees will be deducted).

P.S. Buying and holding previous contract would cost 0.003+0.003 BTC = 0.006 BTC. Buying and holding BUK3 for 30 days will be 0.0001*62 = 0.0062 BTC, so it's nearly the same for b&h strategy.

[zebedee]

It means more liquidity, tighter spreads, and overall less expensive futures for everyone.

That's best achieved by deciding not to charge 6 times Gox's already steep charges.

"Challenge accepted"!

We just introduced a new, very experimental and short (one month) futures contract BUK3 (BTC/USD-05.13).

Features:
- 10 times lower trading fee! (subject to your usual volume discounts too)
- Expires 25th of March (so it trades roughly one month)
- 0.0001 BTC clearing fee per 1 contract (to fight buy-and-hold-till-expiration strategy). It's taken during each scheduled clearing (twice a day) if you have this futures in your balance tab by the moment clearing happens!

Let's see what this experiment shows. The first trading session has enhanced price limits and increased margin requirements. The first clearing will be free (no clearing fees will be deducted).

Hey now that's more like it!  Thanks for giving this a go, I'm very interested to see how this works out.  I hope and expect you'll pick up more speculative volume.

Wow the trading range is wide too.

I think you mean 25th May not March above.

[Fireball]

It means more liquidity, tighter spreads, and overall less expensive futures for everyone.

That's best achieved by deciding not to charge 6 times Gox's already steep charges.

"Challenge accepted"!

We just introduced a new, very experimental and short (one month) futures contract BUK3 (BTC/USD-05.13).

Features:
- 10 times lower trading fee! (subject to your usual volume discounts too)
- Expires 25th of March (so it trades roughly one month)
- 0.0001 BTC clearing fee per 1 contract (to fight buy-and-hold-till-expiration strategy). It's taken during each scheduled clearing (twice a day) if you have this futures in your balance tab by the moment clearing happens!

Let's see what this experiment shows. The first trading session has enhanced price limits and increased margin requirements. The first clearing will be free (no clearing fees will be deducted).

Hey now that's more like it!  Thanks for giving this a go, I'm very interested to see how this works out.  I hope and expect you'll pick up more speculative volume.

Wow the trading range is wide too.

I think you mean 25th May not March above.

Thanks, fixed, and also added a simple calculation that holding this contract for 30 days would end up with the same fee as to buy and hold a usual contract.

[zebedee]

I'd misunderstood the twice-daily clearing fee.  That still makes it seem expensive unfortunately.  I wish you'd just tried a much lower-fee contract to see what happens, rather than complicating it in this way.  It's not obvious what effect that will have; it's seems negative psychologically.

[J_Coin]

Perhaps you should only charge the clearing fee to contracts not purchased/sold in that interval.

[Fireball]

Perhaps you should only charge the clearing fee to contracts not purchased/sold in that interval.

It's charged only for those contracts which are held through clearing. You're free to trade within a trading session as much as you like, if you end up with 0 contracts by the session end you are not charged clearing fees.

[[Tycho]]

I wish you'd just tried a much lower-fee contract to see what happens, rather than complicating it in this way.

That would be just too simple.

[J_Coin]

What will the margin requirements be for BUK?

[davidoski]

P.S. Buying and holding previous contract would cost 0.003+0.003 BTC = 0.006 BTC. Buying and holding BUK3 for 30 days will be 0.0001*62 = 0.0062 BTC, so it's nearly the same for b&h strategy.

0.0062 BTC at the current price of 140USD is 8,68% fee.

1:2.5 leverage is not worth paying nearly 9% fee. It's increasingly more attractive to trade on Mt.Gox without leverage and with 1.2% fee or on other exchanges with even lower fees.

[xeverse]

"Challenge accepted"!

0.0001 BTC clearing fee per 1 contract (to fight buy-and-hold-till-expiration strategy).

Something new and interesting.
But why do you need "to fight" b&h at all?

[[Tycho]]

P.S. Buying and holding previous contract would cost 0.003+0.003 BTC = 0.006 BTC. Buying and holding BUK3 for 30 days will be 0.0001*62 = 0.0062 BTC, so it's nearly the same for b&h strategy.

0.0062 BTC at the current price of 140USD is 8,68% fee.
1:2.5 leverage is not worth paying nearly 9% fee. It's increasingly more attractive to trade on Mt.Gox without leverage and with 1.2% fee or on other exchanges with even lower fees.

8.68% sounds scary, but you should also note that you are comparing 2 trades at Mt.Gox with 62 trades+clearings at ICBIT
Also there is a BUU3 contract that has 0.001 BTC fees (down to 0.0005 BTC if you have volume discount).

[[Tycho]]

"Challenge accepted"!

0.0001 BTC clearing fee per 1 contract (to fight buy-and-hold-till-expiration strategy).

Something new and interesting.
But why do you need "to fight" b&h at all?

This is an experimental contract which will allow us to see if there will be at least more intraday trading comparing to other contracts so we can come up with correct fee policy for the next contracts.