Bitstamp TX Fee Exploit - Fee 1.16% instead of 0.2% [Bitstamp Fixes on May 15th]

[windpath]

Proposed fix: Make $5 orders the minimum for both API and Web interface. Then all problems are solved

Great post shedding light on a common problem. We track Bitstamp in our index and I hope to see them implement a $5 minimum trade, there is absolutely no reason not to.

[1714145296]

1714145296

[davout]

their engine

http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=02-10-2013&bots=true#338159

[primer-]

Nothing wrong with rounding but charging a fee on every chunk is a plain old SCAM. Charge the buyer not the seller! Greedy Slovenian bastards!!
Can someone make a list of exchanges that charge the same way ?

[mmitech]

their engine

http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=02-10-2013&bots=true#338159

cangine ? why ? 

[mardaed]

Not trolling. I'm just exposing this is how rounding works in many scenarios. Even when you pay taxes at your store.

OP was selling, this small transaction rounding problem doesn't happen if you are buying BTC, only if you are selling in small chunks.
Just try it on the exchange and you will see.

Yea you're not getting it.

Even with rounding, when you put an ask / bid in you can determine your fee.... and make decisions based on that knowledge.  Take the TOTAL amount, multiply by the percentage, then round.  The fee should be accurately calculated.  This is how it is with other exchanges.

That's not the case in this example.  When OP puts a sell order, his fee is at the mercy of buyers... which is inconsistent with how other exchanges behave.  This is definitely a flaw.

[cypherdoc]

yep, that's ridiculous.

[pickaname]

Its the Stamp Misappropriateability! 

[ninjabenja]

I've posted a link to this thread on the Bitsamp Facebook page as well as tweeting to them asking why this shouldn't be fixed... and if they actually care to lose my account. I really want to hear them come back and say this is an error and we can rest assured it will be corrected so that the trading fee you think you're paying - is ACTUALLY what you are paying for the trade. Nothing is more important right now that being able to trust the exchange you use and if I get the slightest whiff that they're going to do this the wrong way- me an my trading volume are going elsewhere.

[eleuthria]

I like how the proposed fixes are all related to minimum order sizes rather than the obvious fix:

STOP ROUNDING TO THE NEAREST CENT!  You already support 8 decimals of precision on BTC.  Do it for fiat, and simply round down a user's available balance to 2 decimals when they want to pull money out.  Professional sites have done similar things for years.

Hell, even inept Karpeles at MtGox knew to do it that way.

[heunland]

I would like to report that on Kraken the fees are properly charged without rounding even when an order is filled by splitting it into several trades: Yesterday I had a buy order for 1 BTC on Kraken and this order was split up into 4 different trades: 0.49593 BTC, 0.1 BTC, 0.1 BTC and 0.30406 BTC.  For every one of these 4 transactions I was charged a separate 0.2% fee. The total transaction fee I was charged added up to about the same as it would have been if the trade would have been executed in one single transaction, in fact it was a little lower. So when you trade on Kraken, you will not have the inflating fee problem due to rounding reported by the OP for Bitstamp!.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Not trolling. I'm just exposing this is how rounding works in many scenarios. Even when you pay taxes at your store.

OP was selling, this small transaction rounding problem doesn't happen if you are buying BTC, only if you are selling in small chunks.
Just try it on the exchange and you will see.

Not true.  Say you place an order to sell $500 worth of BTC (or $5,000 or $5,000,000).  The fee is rounded on each trade that executes against it.  So if 1,000 $0.50 buys are made against it you don't have a single $500 sell you have 1,000 individual sales of $0.50 ea (that are all rounded up).  In any exchange you can only control what order YOU place not what orders the counterparty will place.  The size of each individual trade is based on the orders on both sides of the book.   The fee is based on the size of the trade not the order.

[ninjabenja]

I would like to report that on Kraken the fees are properly charged without rounding even when an order is filled by splitting it into several trades: Yesterday I had a buy order for 1 BTC on Kraken and this order was split up into 4 different trades: 0.49593 BTC, 0.1 BTC, 0.1 BTC and 0.30406 BTC.  For every one of these 4 transactions I was charged a separate 0.2% fee. The total transaction fee I was charged added up to about the same as it would have been if the trade would have been executed in one single transaction, in fact it was a little lower. So when you trade on Kraken, you will not have the inflating fee problem due to rounding reported by the OP for Bitstamp!.

Thanks for that! I've been meaning to look into Kraken but this just takes what had been a, "Yeah, I should look into that"... and turned it into I'm opening a Kraken account this week. Have you traded There for long?

[Littleshop]

Oh c'mon guys, this is math 101. This happens with so many transactions on a lot of things on a daily life. It's rounding and normal.

OP did transactions with a BOT lower than $1 as per indicated limitations. He probably was hoping that he would not pay transactions fees.

If you are doing that many transactions, just do larger transactions where rounding is in your favor. Why is he making thousands of really small transactions? He's probably just slowing down their system anyway.

I'm on with Bitstamp on this one.

Here's an example where I paid less than 0.5% because of rounding:
I bought 0.08774 BTC and only paid 0.047%

If you bought a gallon of milk and they split your order up into 64 ounces and rounded the price of the sales tax up each one up you would be pissed too. 

Again, it is ok to do this for small single orders.  It is not ok to split up a large and immediately executing order into many parts.  It is ONE order.  If there was not enough liquidity and part went now and part later that is different, but that is not what is happening.

[heunland]

I would like to report that on Kraken the fees are properly charged without rounding even when an order is filled by splitting it into several trades: Yesterday I had a buy order for 1 BTC on Kraken and this order was split up into 4 different trades: 0.49593 BTC, 0.1 BTC, 0.1 BTC and 0.30406 BTC.  For every one of these 4 transactions I was charged a separate 0.2% fee. The total transaction fee I was charged added up to about the same as it would have been if the trade would have been executed in one single transaction, in fact it was a little lower. So when you trade on Kraken, you will not have the inflating fee problem due to rounding reported by the OP for Bitstamp!.

Thanks for that! I've been meaning to look into Kraken but this just takes what had been a, "Yeah, I should look into that"... and turned it into I'm opening a Kraken account this week. Have you traded There for long?

I opened my account on Kraken just about a month ago. Its a small exchange but so far it looks secure and professional to me, with lots of advanced trading options (you must be verified to be able to use them). Also they have responsive tech support to answer any questions you may have.

[primer-]

I would like to report that on Kraken the fees are properly charged without rounding even when an order is filled by splitting it into several trades: Yesterday I had a buy order for 1 BTC on Kraken and this order was split up into 4 different trades: 0.49593 BTC, 0.1 BTC, 0.1 BTC and 0.30406 BTC.  For every one of these 4 transactions I was charged a separate 0.2% fee. The total transaction fee I was charged added up to about the same as it would have been if the trade would have been executed in one single transaction, in fact it was a little lower. So when you trade on Kraken, you will not have the inflating fee problem due to rounding reported by the OP for Bitstamp!.

Thanks for that! I've been meaning to look into Kraken but this just takes what had been a, "Yeah, I should look into that"... and turned it into I'm opening a Kraken account this week. Have you traded There for long?

I opened my account on Kraken just about a month ago. Its a small exchange but so far it looks secure and professional to me, with lots of advanced trading options (you must be verified to be able to use them). Also they have responsive tech support to answer any questions you may have.

So much Kraken spam in this thread, reason more NOT to use them!

[ninjabenja]

I would like to report that on Kraken the fees are properly charged without rounding even when an order is filled by splitting it into several trades: Yesterday I had a buy order for 1 BTC on Kraken and this order was split up into 4 different trades: 0.49593 BTC, 0.1 BTC, 0.1 BTC and 0.30406 BTC.  For every one of these 4 transactions I was charged a separate 0.2% fee. The total transaction fee I was charged added up to about the same as it would have been if the trade would have been executed in one single transaction, in fact it was a little lower. So when you trade on Kraken, you will not have the inflating fee problem due to rounding reported by the OP for Bitstamp!.

Thanks for that! I've been meaning to look into Kraken but this just takes what had been a, "Yeah, I should look into that"... and turned it into I'm opening a Kraken account this week. Have you traded There for long?

I opened my account on Kraken just about a month ago. Its a small exchange but so far it looks secure and professional to me, with lots of advanced trading options (you must be verified to be able to use them). Also they have responsive tech support to answer any questions you may have.

So much Kraken spam in this thread, reason more NOT to use them!

If by spam you mean "Reasons Bitstamp is currently giving their customers (me), to look someplace else to do business", then - yes it's spam. My typical 30 day trading volume is 300k at minimum. That might not be much for some, but it adds up to a lot of fees for me. Maybe you want to be a bitsamp fanboy and hate on the competition for no good reason; but guys like me work on trust and facts. If I can't trust the place where I do business, I bounce to a place I can. That's a fact. 

[heunland]

I would like to report that on Kraken the fees are properly charged without rounding even when an order is filled by splitting it into several trades: Yesterday I had a buy order for 1 BTC on Kraken and this order was split up into 4 different trades: 0.49593 BTC, 0.1 BTC, 0.1 BTC and 0.30406 BTC.  For every one of these 4 transactions I was charged a separate 0.2% fee. The total transaction fee I was charged added up to about the same as it would have been if the trade would have been executed in one single transaction, in fact it was a little lower. So when you trade on Kraken, you will not have the inflating fee problem due to rounding reported by the OP for Bitstamp!.

Thanks for that! I've been meaning to look into Kraken but this just takes what had been a, "Yeah, I should look into that"... and turned it into I'm opening a Kraken account this week. Have you traded There for long?

I opened my account on Kraken just about a month ago. Its a small exchange but so far it looks secure and professional to me, with lots of advanced trading options (you must be verified to be able to use them). Also they have responsive tech support to answer any questions you may have.

So much Kraken spam in this thread, reason more NOT to use them!

LOL there are a total of 6 posts in the entire thread mentioning Kraken, including this one. I only mentioned my recent experience with this exchange since it relates to the issue with splitting up orders into several smaller trades reported by the OP, and someone earlier mentioned they were looking at Kraken for an alternative to Bitstamp.  My second post was in reply to a question of another user about my experience. I don´t know how you conclude from this that the thread is full of Kraken spam? I certainly have nothing to gain from sharing my experience about this particular exchange here, other than possibly helping other users make their own decisions.

BTW I also use Bitstamp and have not had any negative experiences with them so far myself, but do appreciate that the OP started this thread to alert us about their inflated transaction fees.

And I totally agree with ninjabenja´s last post.

[davout]

My typical 30 day trading volume is 300k at minimum.

And you didn't notice you were being ripped off?

[valiron]

Fee malleability 

[samson]

My typical 30 day trading volume is 300k at minimum.

And you didn't notice you were being ripped off?

This issue looks like it was pre planned and calculated. It stinks.

Has it always been this way or was there a recent change ?