What do you want in a new Bitcoin Exchange?

[Stn]

Exchange should be distributed as Bitcoin itself. Private transactions between peers will reduce risk of potential legal actions. And exchanger would act similar to torrent tracker.

That would require distributed national currencies. Now how is this going to work?

Not really necessary. Private transactions over centralized systems, would be too difficult to control. I again refer to torrent model which is nicely works over centralized connection to internet providers.

But how do you want to do a SWIFT/SEPA/VISA/PayPal/whatever transfer to a decentralized system? I don't see how a decentralized system will get hooked up to the Swift network and a clearinghouse. These providers make assumptions about the nature of the entities that connect and a P2P network does not qualify.

"Whatever" transfers go between two peers, private entities, members of the "whatever" system. From the point of view of the "whatever" system another decentralized system even doesn't exist.

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[anu]

"Whatever" transfers go between two peers, private entities, members of the "whatever" system. From the point of view of the "whatever" system another decentralized system even doesn't exist.

I think you miss my point which is that a Bitcoin exchange must be a gateway between the proprietary, centralized world of financial institutions and the free, decentralized world of Bitcoin or other XCoin. As those institutions assume that the counter party is also a financial institution registered as a company, and possibly with a banking license, an exchange has to conform to those expectations.

[eldentyrell]

An API call to withdraw BTC.

Currently only MtGox and CampBX have this.

Tradehill claims to have this but it doesn't actually work (or at least their tech support staff doesn't think it works).

[eldentyrell]

Exchange should be distributed as Bitcoin itself. Private transactions between pears will reduce risk of potential legal actions. And exchanger would act similar to torrent tracker.

That would require distributed national currencies. Now how is this going to work?

+1

Thank you, anu, for striking yet another blow in the war to beat back this silliness that keeps popping up.

A big part of what exchanges (both currency and stock) do is interface with existing banks/courts/governments.  That role will never be "distributed".  But by playing this role, exchanges enable the distributification (?) of "everything else".

[eldentyrell]

I think there's room for a good gold and silver bitcoin trading platform

... although you have to provide a way to take delivery.

All fiat/BTC exchanges provide the ability to take delivery of the fiat via the banking system.  In order to have a credible (i.e. not-a-sham) metals/BTC exchange you need a way to deliver the metal.

[eldentyrell]

- Fixed deposit addresses, so we can deposit directly in from a pool

I'm not aware of any exchange that will ever "expire" a BTC deposit address they've issued to you.  What would happen if you sent money to it after the hypothetical "expiration" date?  It just disappears?  Very bad business.

I think what you're looking for is already possible.

[blueadept]

If there are exchanges with these features right now I will divert all Bitcoinica volume into it. And it will have at least 25% of market volume.

What about Bitfloor? I don't think they have all those features, but they do have a 0.1% liquidity rebate (which would make a high-volume market maker a good amount of profit).

[Stn]

I think you miss my point which is that a Bitcoin exchange must be a gateway between the proprietary, centralized world of financial institutions and the free, decentralized world of Bitcoin or other XCoin. As those institutions assume that the counter party is also a financial institution registered as a company, and possibly with a banking license, an exchange has to conform to those expectations.

And in your turn you miss my point which is exactly how to avoid those expectations. You can refer to www.centraw.com as an approximation to such model.

[Andrew Vorobyov]

I'm doing http://www.centraw.com/ clone now... who is the guy behind http://www.centraw.com ?

[anu]

I think you miss my point which is that a Bitcoin exchange must be a gateway between the proprietary, centralized world of financial institutions and the free, decentralized world of Bitcoin or other XCoin. As those institutions assume that the counter party is also a financial institution registered as a company, and possibly with a banking license, an exchange has to conform to those expectations.

And in your turn you miss my point which is exactly how to avoid those expectations. You can refer to www.centraw.com as an approximation to such model.

Not decentralized at all. It's a centralized order book / escrow service like http://bitmarket.eu. But I agee that this could in principle be distributed (except for resolving disputes) if you find an incentive for a community to play that game.

But the really bad thing IMHO is that you have to manually deal with all transactions your offer is matched with. Which can be quite a bit of PITA if you do large amounts. On MtGox this is completely transparent. My BTC 10,000 ask can be matched with 10,000 BTC 1 bids on MtGox without me having to to 10,000 Bank transfers like I have to do on Centraw.

[Stn]

I believe that currency speculation and down-to-earth-need-it-right-now currency exchange are completely different operations. Even they referred by the same term "exchange". Volumes are different, purpose is different, choice of currencies/means is different, time frame demand different. So it is better not to mix them up the same way as forex is not mixed with currency exchange booth in airport.

[anu]

I believe that currency speculation and down-to-earth-need-it-right-now currency exchange are completely different operations. Even they referred by the same term "exchange". Volumes are different, purpose is different, choice of currencies/means is different, time frame demand different. So it is better not to mix them up the same way as forex is not mixed with currency exchange booth in airport.

Agree, but the problem is that only MtGox is anywhere close to a viable business. Just do the math:
BTC 50k /day *0.6% = BTC 300 / day ~ USD 1200 / day ~ USD 36,000 / month  (@ $4 / Bitcoin )

Any Xchange booth at the airport with that kind of revenue will have to close down.

[Stn]

MtGox is fine but leave it alone. It is just another niche which already accomplished and hardly need any improvement at the moment. While exchange system for lay people (not forex traders) is merely doesn't exist. That why we are talking here about exchange (network of booths or whatever else).

[qxzn]

An API call to withdraw BTC.

Currently only MtGox and CampBX have this.

Tradehill claims to have this but it doesn't actually work (or at least their tech support staff doesn't think it works).

I use Tradehill's API withdraw call all the time.

[nmat]

I use Tradehill's API withdraw call all the time.

With bitcoins? I also couldn't get it to work...

[qxzn]

I use Tradehill's API withdraw call all the time.

With bitcoins? I also couldn't get it to work...

Yes, with bitcoins. Do you get an error?

[papa_snurf]

A friend of mine is thinking about opening a Bitcoin exchange and I told him I'd see what the community is looking for. I know a lot of the exchanges have problems so I'm wondering what you would like to see in the 'perfect' exchange?

TMA

Shorting. Options. Futures. Security. And auditing by a serious audit company.

[papa_snurf]

A friend of mine is thinking about opening a Bitcoin exchange and I told him I'd see what the community is looking for. I know a lot of the exchanges have problems so I'm wondering what you would like to see in the 'perfect' exchange?

TMA

Shorting. Options. Futures. Security. And auditing by a serious audit company.

[giszmo]

Holy crap, that's complicated.

Not really. It could be additional to the pure text based interface just to let you easily see where you have your orders. A personal market depth should not be complicated for a trader that also somehow has to understand the global market depth. Allowing to manipulate the own market depth is only logical.

I'll stick to price, quantity, submit thank you.

My main criticism was the case where I want to change an order, so you stick to delete one order, enter a quanity, enter a price and submit.

BTW, on MtGox, your fist example would be activated just fine (buy 50BTC@$2).  The fee comes out after the trade, so you would end up with 0.994*50 BTC if your order was filled.

I'm pretty sure I ran exactly into this problem. They improved a lot since then.

Even if you only had $98, the order would automatically split into an active order of 49BTC@$2 and an "insufficient funds" order of 1BTC@$2.

Splitting is definitely new.

The behavior I have described has been in place for at least 8 months (including on the previous trading engine).  I guess in the big scheme it may be "new".

Ok, now I just tried it out and instead of my available €€ I set an order that was rounded up. Result is that I have one order with state "Not enough funds".
I have no idea if you opted in for automated splitting or what but here it does not work that way out of the box.

[giszmo]

Ok, now I just tried it out and instead of my available €€ I set an order that was rounded up. Result is that I have one order with state "Not enough funds".
I have no idea if you opted in for automated splitting or what but here it does not work that way out of the box.

:/ ok, now the order got clipped to the available amount somehow but it was first listed as "not enough funds".