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

[ThePok]

and he makes more monney this way Or is the swap feefree?

[EnergyVampire]

The trading range limitation is part of the marginal system which prevents market crashes due to margin calls. By limiting the price movement to a certain price range, a maximum loss could be estimated and protective measures added *before* the market crashes due to margin call sell off.

Oh, bummer! I didn't see this very important detail on your site: "Maximum change within one trading session: 5% in both directions."

I can see the new thread titles already: "WTF? Why do I get a Limit Down error at ICBit.se?! I need to GTFO now..."  


Edit: Yes, I'm against circuit breakers.

[FreeMoney]

please excuse my uneducated question... but what is the reasoning behind imposing a range limitation on the orders I can place. Again, in the situation showed above, the range is 8.6733 - 9.5863

Meanwhile the BTC rate has dropped significantly, and the futures market has adjusted. So, why preventing me from placing a buy offer at, say, 7.81  My position is profitable right now, and i'd like to close out partially and take some of the gains right now. Can someone please explain how this is supposed to work?

It is fine, it is obvious to me because I have many years of trading experience, however it might not be trivial for those who never dealt with exchanges.

The trading range limitation is part of the marginal system which prevents market crashes due to margin calls. By limiting the price movement to a certain price range, a maximum loss could be estimated and protective measures added *before* the market crashes due to margin call sell off.

So the theory is that people will make a bid inside of the range instead of just making no bid at all?

Because forcing it to stay in a range where no one wants to bid won't help you cash people out at all. When you run out of liquidity inside the range that's it, 0 way to force close anyone out.

Either way 5% is way too tight for bitcoin in december right now.

[Ichthyo]

Now, I've issued a "buy market" for 1 contract. But, surprisingly I got the following execution, according to the "orders" pane at the bottom

5136   07/20 03:38   BUZ2   Buy   MKT   Filled   9.5863   1   0   

Thus I got an execution a the worst possible price, while there are lots of matching sell orders with a way better price. For example, why isn't my buy order matched with one of the sells at 8.67?

This is often confusing, and I should perhaps just hide the order "price" if the type of that order is "market", because this is not the price at which your order was executed. It is price "up to which" you agree to buy. Market orders will always start matching from the best order in the orderbook.

OK thanks for the clarification!

The resulting price is written in your "Balances" window, and that's what matters.

for a single order that might be ok, but it doesn't help when increasing / or decresing an allready opened position. Of course then the value in the "Balances" window will be the effective average, yet still I'd appreciate to be able to see what executions I got.

It sounds perfectly logical to display the limit price, as long as an order isn't filled. But when it got filled, why not simply changing that value to the actual price accieved?

[Ichthyo]

The trading range limitation is part of the marginal system which prevents market crashes due to margin calls. By limiting the price movement to a certain price range, a maximum loss could be estimated and protective measures added *before* the market crashes due to margin call sell off.

So the theory is that people will make a bid inside of the range instead of just making no bid at all?

Because forcing it to stay in a range where no one wants to bid won't help you cash people out at all. When you run out of liquidity inside the range that's it, 0 way to force close anyone out.

Either way 5% is way too tight for bitcoin in december right now.

take for example the situation yesterday: the price dipped, and my short position became profiable. But no one really expects the price to stay down for a long time. The whole reason I'd like to open such a short position in that situation is to be able to (partially) hedge my BTC positions, without needing to sell off. Thus, obviouisly, I really want to take the gains when I think the trend will turn around.


But, since you state that feature is mainly in place as a protective means to prevent an avalanche of margin calls, why not allowing to lift that limitation manually, given an account has enough margin (or even can make additional gains right now)?

Just a proposal...

[Stephen Gornick]

Also, after clearing at 20:00 GMT everyday, if you have open positions, a variation margin is transferred depending on the market price to your account, and "execution price" for this position will be set to the price of the last clearing.

So after 20:00 GMT each day, I lose any record that shows my actual cost basis?  Not even in Logs?

[Fireball]

So after 20:00 GMT each day, I lose any record that shows my actual cost basis?  Not even in Logs?

It's all logged of course, and I'm going to deploy a more advanced Logs page which would show your trades history, executed orders, etc.

[Fireball]

Either way 5% is way too tight for bitcoin in december right now.

5% during one trading session relative to the closing price of the previous session. Even that seems to be too tight considering recent volatility.

[Stephen Gornick]

So after 20:00 GMT each day, I lose any record that shows my actual cost basis?  Not even in Logs?

It's all logged of course, and I'm going to deploy a more advanced Logs page which would show your trades history, executed orders, etc.

Are those logs misreporting the transaction type?  It looks like it is reporting "sell" as the type when a "buy" is what occurred, and vice-versa.

[Stephen Gornick]

So after 20:00 GMT each day, I lose any record that shows my actual cost basis?  Not even in Logs?

It's all logged of course, and I'm going to deploy a more advanced Logs page which would show your trades history, executed orders, etc.

Are those logs misreporting the transaction type?  It looks like it is reporting "sell" as the type when a "buy" is what occurred, and vice-versa.

Hmm ... now it is reporting it correctly for new trades. That got fixed then, or am I misreading the log?

[Stephen Gornick]

Hmm ... now it is reporting it correctly for new trades. That got fixed then, or am I misreading the log?

Bah ... I think I see my problem.

When the log shows buy that means I bought a future position.  So even if I click "sell" I am actually buying (opening) a short position.   So it shows buy in the log, but doesn't say which type of position I am entering.

If this is what is happening, then the log could be improved by including a column with a long/short flag.  Or there are other ways of properly reporting these trades.

[Fireball]

Hmm ... now it is reporting it correctly for new trades. That got fixed then, or am I misreading the log?

That's really strange, nothing log-related was fixed during this period. Let me check now...

[Fireball]

Hmm ... now it is reporting it correctly for new trades. That got fixed then, or am I misreading the log?

Ok I found the problem, it was inverted condition when getting logs from the long term storage. And short term (quick) storage logic was not affected, so it was displaying correct buy/sell flag for new trades and inverted for previous trading session trades.

Now that's fixed. Of course, it was only displaying problem, so all log entries were correct, and you can check your log now which should show all trades correctly.

Thanks!

[Ichthyo]

is there a problem on ICBIT right now? 

suddenly, all values on the "Futures" tab are gone. No order book, no balances, no orders.
and the "Funds" tab yields an internal error...

the log tab seems to work though, it shows the result of my last trade

[EnergyVampire]

"There seems to be a problem with sell-side liquidity (too much buy pressure). We will be resolving that tomorrow." - icbit.se Twitter

 

[Fireball]

Yes, we are actively deploying various updates to the system as it's becoming more and more used. The best way to quickly know about possible interruptions in the service caused by updates is to read the twitter (the feed is also located in the left side of the frontpage, however in the worst case when the website is inaccessible it's best to just follow to see the updates in your own feed).

[Ichthyo]

Yes, we are actively deploying various updates to the system as it's becoming more and more used. The best way to quickly know about possible interruptions in the service caused by updates is to read the twitter (the feed is also located in the left side of the frontpage, however in the worst case when the website is inaccessible it's best to just follow to see the updates in your own feed).

thanks for the active improvements to your platform! Indeed, the bitcoin ecosystem urgently needs such a futures market.


Right now, the "futures" tab works as expected again, but when switching to the "funds" tab, I get

Server Error in '/WebTrade' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Update: problem is fixed now.

[Ichthyo]

...there is another minor problem with the "funds" tab: right now, it doesn't display completely on the firefox/iceweasel coming with Debian/stable. Well, who cares for debian/stable. It's an quite outdated browser version (Firefox 3.5.16). The problem is, when choosing "withdraw", there is no ComboBox to choose the method, nore are the imput fields for the address visible. There is only the table with the last transactions.

I've checked the same page in Firefox 7.0.1 and things work as expected there.


Btw: the "add funds" tab works as exepcted in both browser versions 

[Ichthyo]

Now there is a very surprising order in my account. To my best knowledge, I didn't open that order (at that time, 19:53, I wasn't even at my PC; moreover, I do not want to go long right now). Also notice the strange oder ID = 2.




Anyway, I tried to cancel that order, but the system gave no reaction. (tried that with multiple browser versions as well).
Well, I wouldn't be overly unhappy if that order was filled right now 

Any Idea what's going on here?


PS: the time display in this "Your orders" list should be UTC as well (as used on the history tab)

[Ichthyo]

Now there is a very surprising order in my account.

...and now that order shows up as "filled" and remaining == 0, but my position balance hasn't changed, its still at -55
(I did hit refresh and I even logged out and in again)