Should a bitcoinica clone be put online ?

[hazek]

Aren't copyright notices required or else information is in the public domain? If there are no notices then from my limited knowledge I would guess it was in the public domain legally.

Nope everything is IP automatically. For example if I come up with a new word that word is my property and if you use it without my permission I'm going to sue you for damages so that a gang of men in blue costumes can come and force you under threat of violence to pay me royalties you should have paid me in the first place, because I said you should because I was the one who thought up that word.


 

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[davout]

Aren't copyright notices required or else information is in the public domain? If there are no notices then from my limited knowledge I would guess it was in the public domain legally.

According to US law...

Q. Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
A. No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration.”

From http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html

I'd love a C&D notice, I'd publish it here so people know on which door they should knock to get their money back

[Raoul Duke]

Aren't copyright notices required or else information is in the public domain? If there are no notices then from my limited knowledge I would guess it was in the public domain legally.

According to US law...

Q. Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
A. No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration.”

From http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html

I'd love a C&D notice, I'd publish it here so people know on which door they should knock to get their money back

I support this method. Well played, Monsieur.

[MatthewLM]

Aren't copyright notices required or else information is in the public domain? If there are no notices then from my limited knowledge I would guess it was in the public domain legally.

According to US law...

Q. Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
A. No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration.”

From http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html

Placing a copyright notice is not the same as registration. I found this for US law:

A copyright notice is an identifier placed on copies of the work to inform the world of copyright ownership. The copyright notice generally consists of the symbol or word “copyright (or copr.),” the name of the copyright owner, and the year of first publication, e.g., ©2008 John Doe. While use of a copyright notice was once required as a condition of copyright protection, it is now optional. Use of the notice is the responsibility of the copyright owner and does not require advance permission from, or registration with, the Copyright Office. See Circular 3, Copyright Notice, for requirements for works published before March 1, 1989, and for more information on the form and position of the copyright notice.

http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html

UK law: http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p03_copyright_notices

There is no legal requirement to include a copyright notice. Whether a notice is used or not will not change the fact that copyright exists in the work. It is however strongly recommended that you include one on your work if all all possible to deter copyright infringement.
The aim of copyright notice is to:
Make it clear that the work is subject to copyright.
Provide a means of identifying the copyright owner.
Deter infringement or plagiarism.

So I was wrong but it had nothing to do with registration.

[[Tycho]]

What is the main difference between Bitcoinica and other trading platforms for you ?

Recently we finally opened futures trading on http://icbit.se , so I would like to know what features are missing there.

[hazek]

What is the main difference between Bitcoinica and other trading platforms for you ?

Recently we finally opened futures trading on http://icbit.se , so I would like to know what features are missing there.

How is it not obvious to you? Do you not see all these people waiting for their money? Do you not see all these people who put their trust into an organisation getting burned?

Can you really not figure out that the feature you're missing is transparency and security and some sort of contractual obligation?

[EnergyVampire]

Pros :

• There is demand for gambling margin trading

I like what you did there.  

Margin trading itself isn't gambling in my opinion (yes, we can argue this forever), I like to use certain references when I have doubts:
1. The Prudent Man Rule: Harvard College v Amory (1830) 26 Mass (9 Pick) 446
2. Internal Revenue Code (IRC): Section 165(d),income-tax deductions of gambling losses.
3. Various US Federal & State laws distinguishing games of chance versus games of skill.

With that out of the way...

I believe margin trading offers the best means (so far) to establish a bank offering interest on deposits for the Bitcoin community. Where the establishment's profit marging is (margin interest rate) - (deposit interest rate). Notice from the posts on Bitcoinica threads how people were using the site as a bank.

[markm]

I believe margin trading offers the best means (so far) to establish a bank offering interest on deposits for the Bitcoin community. Where the establishment's profit marging is (margin interest rate) - (deposit interest rate). Notice from the posts on Bitcoinica threads how people were using the site as a bank.

Yes, I agree, I brought that up in a "Shorting" altcoins thread in the altcoins section of the forum.

-MarkM-

[EnergyVampire]

What is the main difference between Bitcoinica and other trading platforms for you ?

Recently we finally opened futures trading on http://icbit.se , so I would like to know what features are missing there.

How is it not obvious to you? Do you not see all these people waiting for their money? Do you not see all these people who put their trust into an organisation getting burned?

Can you really not figure out that the feature you're missing is transparency and security and some sort of contractual obligation?

In addition to hazek's comment, I would like to add:

Options & Futures are derivatives (offered at icbit.se).
The Bitcoinica platform offers margin not derivatives.

As far as I know, margin is required to trade derivatives but derivatives aren't required to use margin.

[muyuu]

Yeah, let's do it with your liability 

[ninjarobot]

Aren't copyright notices required or else information is in the public domain? If there are no notices then from my limited knowledge I would guess it was in the public domain legally.

According to US law...

Q. Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
A. No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration.”

From http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html

I'd love a C&D notice, I'd publish it here so people know on which door they should knock to get their money back :D

I like the way you think! :)

Although I doubt they would actually serve a C&D letter. I understand the new Bitcoinica owners found so many holes in the current code that they most likely decided to not to maintain and and instead develop a new platform from scratch. Unfortunately Bitcoinica came tumbling down before the new platform was ready. (not that it would have mattered because their non-code related security practices were lacking/non-existent)

[davout]

I understand the new Bitcoinica owners found so many holes in the current code that they most likely decided to not to maintain and and instead develop a new platform from scratch. Unfortunately Bitcoinica came down before the new platform was ready.

The more I read the code, the more I see it is very very messy. I think the reason they'd want to rewrite it from scratch would have been for maintenability, not security.

[Fireball]

What is the main difference between Bitcoinica and other trading platforms for you ?

Recently we finally opened futures trading on http://icbit.se , so I would like to know what features are missing there.

...
Options & Futures are derivatives (offered at icbit.se).
The Bitcoinica platform offers margin not derivatives.

In addition to the above comments, I would like to state one very important fact which makes futures trading platform like icbit.se superior to a bucket-shop marginal trading one like Bitcoinica:
When you trade futures, the market is open and decentralized. There is no single point which calculates spread and decides what price you can close your position at. The market decides, its hundreds and thousands participants. It's way more honest and reliable method. Everyone could be market maker and earn money by providing liquidity to the market.

So why recreate a clone of something which is a "previous step" already?

As for margin. Trading with leverage is an option but not a requirement. Margin trading must be used with caution, if you're provided with 1:4 leverage it doesn't mean you have to buy 4 BTC having only 1 BTC in your account, otherwise you risk loosing all money due to a margin call situation.

[[Tycho]]

How is it not obvious to you? Do you not see all these people waiting for their money?

Well, partially. I understand that losing money is not cool, but how deploying a clone of that system can return their funds ?

[davout]

How is it not obvious to you? Do you not see all these people waiting for their money?

Well, partially. I understand that losing money is not cool, but how deploying a clone of that system can return their funds ?

Because it would generate profits that could be, at least partially, allocated to the compensation of the victims.
That was my original idea.

I'm not sure however that I like the way Bitcoinica actually works (based on my first analysis of the actual matching code see http://pastie.org/4257541) but the reverse engineering task is not finished yet.

[hazek]

How is it not obvious to you? Do you not see all these people waiting for their money?

Well, partially. I understand that losing money is not cool, but how deploying a clone of that system can return their funds ?

You just don't get it do you? What I was trying to get across is that your exchange with regards to features it offers is probably equally appealing as was Bitcoinca and that if you really want to entice more people to use your service, new and better features aren't what you should be thinking about given the current post Bitcoinca fiasco environment but rather transparency, security and contractual guarantees.

[2112]

Because it would generate profits

Maybe profits maybe losses. Now that the previosly secret algorithm is in the open traders could tune their strategies off-line with no capital layout. It isn't immediately obvious that there is no algorithm that could push the resurrected Bitcoinica into red.

[tvbcof]

With the leak of the code I'm asking myself whether it would be a good idea to setup a bitcoinica clone.

...

Thoughts ?

You are one of a handful of people I would trust with non-trivial amounts of Bitcoin.  Cannot quite remember the reasons why though.  After a few hours of piddling with Bitcoinica I lost interest.  If I do such gambling again, I have enough stock to risk my own funds and not pay the premium so that's what I would probably do (vs. using some Forex style platform.

As for trying to make Bitcoinica's victims whole, I see utterly no point (and I'm one to the extent that I planned, BTW.)  I'd rather see MyBitcoin folks receive a little relief as they were just trying to find a convenient way to store their wealth vs. trying to capitalize on one another's misfortunes.  It seems to me to be much more in the interest of Bitcoin to designate any profits toward future legal and lobbying efforts and that sort of thing.  Were that happening reliably and transparently, I might be tempted back into the casino should I find myself with some time and money to kill.

[crazy_rabbit]

I picked up the domain Litecoinica.com just recently, and I think its a worthwhile idea to not only resurrect Bitcoinica, but to do something like it for Litecoin as well.

[dizzy1]

Would it be possible to hold bitcoins and use them to trade in a way like how blockchain.info has their wallet service setup? This would put everyone who deposits money in control of their own money in case the site goes down. If it is hacked, the private keys could be revealed so you would need to do the interaction with the wallet client-side. The downsides to this are that if the site goes down, the money in open positions (which would have to be moved from the clients wallet to a communal one) could be lost, and it would lead to massive bloat on the blockchain. To be effective (if ignoring bloat) the system would have to rely on 0 confirmation transactions.