Bitoption.org -- ESCROWED LIVE Bitcoin Options Trading

[bitoption]

In less than eight hours, it will be up. Personal commitment to you and me. It's just down to extremely minor tweaks.

Re: Option type: American.

Re: Covered; right now, you must be able to cover with the underlying. v2(3?) you will be able to buy to cover. Later, it's possible we'll allow more speculative buy/sell, and just close you out when you get close to your limit.

As we all know, BTC make the lending / margining situation much more difficult than in most western countries, so I don't really expect we'll do much margining. It's possible I would eventually pre-auth credit cards against losses, but right now, I just want this thing out the door.

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[dacoinminster]

In less than eight hours, it will be up. Personal commitment to you and me. It's just down to extremely minor tweaks.

Re: Option type: American.

Re: Covered; right now, you must be able to cover with the underlying. v2(3?) you will be able to buy to cover. Later, it's possible we'll allow more speculative buy/sell, and just close you out when you get close to your limit.

As we all know, BTC make the lending / margining situation much more difficult than in most western countries, so I don't really expect we'll do much margining. It's possible I would eventually pre-auth credit cards against losses, but right now, I just want this thing out the door.

Dang. I am so excited to see this running. How are you going to insure yourself against loss of coins? Are you posting bond with someone?

[FreeMoney]

In less than eight hours, it will be up. Personal commitment to you and me. It's just down to extremely minor tweaks.

Re: Option type: American.

Re: Covered; right now, you must be able to cover with the underlying. v2(3?) you will be able to buy to cover. Later, it's possible we'll allow more speculative buy/sell, and just close you out when you get close to your limit.

As we all know, BTC make the lending / margining situation much more difficult than in most western countries, so I don't really expect we'll do much margining. It's possible I would eventually pre-auth credit cards against losses, but right now, I just want this thing out the door.

Nice. Any minute now...

Are you saying requirements won't net out? That seems pretty harmful if so. It seems like that just means we need to leave more with you than necessary, am I misunderstanding?

If I buy a put and sell a call do I need the full size of the call or my max loss?

Any margining should be from a straight loan where the lender takes risk of non payment. I don't think people will care if you are the lender, but not with our money. Perhaps eventually you could come up with a conservative rule set and give traders with extra dough the choice of using their money to lend at interest.

Do you have plans to get less dependent on MtGox? 

[bitoption]

Any minute now, indeed. Everything looks pretty good, I forgot to implement a withdrawBTC function, so that needs to go in, and I'm writing it right now.

I'm successfully writing, bidding, clearing and exercising contracts right now, plus exchanging on Gox.

Then, one final API check, and we'll be up, BUT you are going to have to write a client, or hand-post to the URLS (not hard to do).

Re: Margin / Balance, etc: I have gone to pretty significant lengths to make sure that the market and each account always stays 'above' water. Lots of assert x > 0 in the code. : ).

At any time, you can call getAvailableBTC(token), or getAvailableUSD(token) and see what your total free, uncommitted balance is. We'll ding you if you try and go over.

The market was also written with every transaction hitting a balance sheet realtime, and I get a notice if the balance sheet doesn't balance.

Put it this way -- I worry about the same thing you all do.

As far as loaning out people's money on the options market, I don't have any plans to do this, and understand completely why this would make people nervous. Right now, it's all hard assets.

[bitoption]

Ah, one more non-coding minute wasted talking about Gox:

I do have plans to be less reliant on Gox; we are all really quite exposed there right now, frankly. Those plans include some serious complications, though. I don't think anybody really wants to have to deal with which exchange your underlying assets are on for a single asset class, so getting some transparency there is an issue.

Long term, if I can solve the money transfer business / know your customer / money laundering issues, the sensible thing would be to just be like Gox and take/send wires; we'd then peg to some agreed-on formula for exchange. What I'm doing now is significantly less logistics, so that's where we'll start. : )

[FreeMoney]

Any minute now, indeed. Everything looks pretty good, I forgot to implement a withdrawBTC function, so that needs to go in, and I'm writing it right now.

I'm successfully writing, bidding, clearing and exercising contracts right now, plus exchanging on Gox.

Then, one final API check, and we'll be up, BUT you are going to have to write a client, or hand-post to the URLS (not hard to do).

Re: Margin / Balance, etc: I have gone to pretty significant lengths to make sure that the market and each account always stays 'above' water. Lots of assert x > 0 in the code. : ).

At any time, you can call getAvailableBTC(token), or getAvailableUSD(token) and see what your total free, uncommitted balance is. We'll ding you if you try and go over.

The market was also written with every transaction hitting a balance sheet realtime, and I get a notice if the balance sheet doesn't balance.

Put it this way -- I worry about the same thing you all do.

As far as loaning out people's money on the options market, I don't have any plans to do this, and understand completely why this would make people nervous. Right now, it's all hard assets.

You mean there is no interface? Is that your next work?

[bitoption]

Ooh, I hate to disappoint you!

I will write a simple client, python based, most likely, just to demonstrate how to use the API. But, >>>it's reasonably well documented, and all the commands have the proper arguments pre-filled on the current documentation, it's not TOTALLY opaque. Just not for non-tech savvy types.

Because anyone can add their own 'provider' commission, I'm hoping someone will punch out an awesome web and client interface; they'll get a cut of any cleared transactions, and I'll get to work on the parts I want to. If that doesn't work, I'll probably put out a bounty for same.

[bitoption]

It's up:

https://bitoption.org/

[bitoption]

Bitoption.org is officially in beta.

There are instructions available on the site.

Enterprising programmers: make money by building a web interface, registering as a provider, and getting a little bit of commission for every trade made through your website!

Also, build an API for merchants to use to hedge out their risk -- it would be great to sell things for BTC and know you have a week or two to convert to USD, don't you think? This should be built into BTC merchant apis. Again, you could charge for this.

Enterprising Option traders: make money by trading! I will punch out a short example python client soon.

Finally, I'm tired! I will be available by e-mail, but might not read many forum posts in the next 48 hours.

Enjoy! I will likely ask on some early september calls at 10 if there are any BTC bears out there, just to get the ball rolling.

[bitoption]

Update: the market has spoken with deafening silence.. I'll be putting together a web interface in response.

Requests?

[FreeMoney]

Update: the market has spoken with deafening silence.. I'll be putting together a web interface in response.

Requests?

That's what I'm waiting for

I figure maybe I could learn to use it as is, but there won't be enough trading partners until it is easy, so might as well wait.

[bitoption]

Update, we have our first calls posted. Check out https://bitcoin.org/securitiesList

I'm working on the interface spec now.

[bitoption]

p.p.s, the securitiesList api now lists best ask and bid right in the main list, a little more useful.

[FreeMoney]

https://bitoption.org/securitiesList

[FreeMoney]

[{"num_asks": "5", "best_bid": "None", "underlying": "BTC", "num_bids": "0", "num_active": "None", "strike": "12.0000", "closedate": "2011-08-04", "type": "call", "best_ask": "4.0000"}]

So this means someone has offered to deliver a coin on Aug 4th at $12/BTC in exchange for $4 now and is willing to do that for up to 5 coins. Do I have that just right?

[bitoption]

Yep, and those coins are lockboxed while the offer is open; no reneging or cheating is possible (or at least, should be possible!)

[bitoption]

If you wanted those coins at $12, but only wanted to pay $2, you could write a call at that date for 12 strike, and bid $2. Then the bid/ask spread would be $2/$4, and you'd wait until someone agreed, or a new person came in and made a new offer.

[dacoinminster]

That's what I'm waiting for

I figure maybe I could learn to use it as is, but there won't be enough trading partners until it is easy, so might as well wait.

What he said.

Also, I want to wait awhile and make sure nobody gets their money stolen.

[bitoption]

I hear that. Keep the questions coming; I'll keep the updates coming. Working on display of quotes and then user system right now.

[bitoption]

Update: I am SUPER close to having the web interface out the door. Sometime today (GMT).

What's left for an initial humble launch is UI for registering, and hooking up the UI for withdrawing your BTC from the options exchange to the existing API. There are a few niggly backend details to take care of, all told maybe a few more hours of coding, although I have to stop right now for a while.

Also, that call is looking more appealing..