Topic: [GLBSE] POLY - Persistent BTC/USD margin trading emulation (Read 6222 times)

RIP

allright, sad to hear but understandable.

I really liked the model and would've loved to see the higher-order bonds ("go longlonglong!") at some point.

be sure to revive this thread when you revive the idea and thanks for your work on this.

All POLY bonds have been recalled*. The Mtgox last price at the time was 10.92630 BTC; 428 POLY.10.1 bonds were bought back for 1.2*(10.92630/10) = 1.311156 BTC each for a total of 561.174768 BTC, and there were no outstanding POLY.10.-2 bonds. POLY is discontinued until further notice.

I still believe POLY is a viable model for a much-needed instrument and this was not an easy decision. Some of the contributing factors were:
1. Making POLY successful would require more work than I am currently able to allocate to it. This is exacerbated by the fact that GLBSE is lacking some of the features that could have made it easier.
2. The demand was mostly for the long bonds, which shorten my position; I had a need for this when I started, but I currently do not.
3. Due to various recent events I want to minimize my liabilities.

Thanks to investors and other supporters.


* (except for one account with 28 bonds which had a problem and Nefario says he's working on it.)

Great asset.

Would buy again.

Bot is back up. Due to the higher demand for the long bonds, POLY.10.1 is sold at 110% face value and bought at 106%, while POLY.10.-2 is sold at 104% face value and bought at 100%.

Update Aug 5 2012: Since there's not much trading activity anyway, to minimize overhead I've deactivated the bot. If you wish to buy or sell at the above prices contact me and I'll activate it.

Update Aug 22 2012: Bot is up buying POLY.10.1 at 106%. Live reserve is limited so PM me if you want to make a large sell. Other actions are not supported.

I have issued some more POLY.10.1 bonds and am now also offering bonds for shorting BTC, POLY.10.-2. Each of these bonds are targeted to have a total of 400 BTC outstanding face value.

UPDATE 27 Jul 2012: My GLBSE bot is acting funny, I think it may have something to do with their server migration. I'll look at it more closely next week, for now I've disabled the orders. While there are no automated bids, contact me if you want to exercise your right to sell the bonds.

I have issued a few more POLY.10.1 bonds. The bot will now put bonds up to sale (at 107% face value) as long as the total outstanding bonds have face value less than 200 BTC. This is subject to change.

damn those greedy bastards

The bot is fairly simple for now (mostly just upholding my contractual duty to buy bonds at face value), didn't take long to develop, just had to wait for me to come back home from miluim.

Yes. That's because they're all sold out . If someone sells to it it will put (some of) them back up for sale.

It's buying too, but to do that somebody has to sell .

too bad ;|

It seems the bot is only selling for now and the quantity so far was limited and reached.

that was fast!

So the bot should be buying/selling? I see no asks.

POLY.10.1 is now offered at 107% of face value. There's a bot that updates prices every 2 minutes.

How to decide the spread between the initial offering price and the face value is very interesting. It involves too many factors and I don't think any over-simplified pricing model will be useful. Starting small (200 POLY.10.1) and seeing what will happen is a good idea, but finally a reasonable pricing mechanism should be found, or it will always be highly speculative and risky for you.

The IPO is scheduled for June 14 2012, but bonds will start selling only after the necessary preparations are made.

Due to limitations in the characters allowed in a GLBSE ticker, the bonds are renamed to POLY.10.n.

I should have said 1, and I was talking about N - have one sheet with N=(-2) and one sheet with N=1.

I don't think it's 2 kinds of users but rather 2 mental modes that can be employed by the same user as is relevant to what he is trying to figure out at the time - as long as it's clear which is which. The trader doesn't need to physically buy or sell BTC for USD but he needs to know if a $10 profit means "$10 more than if he kept BTC" or "$10 more than if he kept USD".

I'd do the following:

1. Put the text "Assuming the alternative is keeping USD" above "USD gain".
2. Not put anything above "USD value".
3. Put the text "Assuming the alternative is keeping BTC" above "BTC gain".

Seems doable to me, however, I probably couldn't provide more professional quality than you can produce yourself.

Keep me in the back of your head if you like should you need any (non-professional) help going forward.

Hm, the next priviledge level would be "allow edit by anyone who has the link", which I don't want to do.

What do you mean by "add another sheet with -1" ?


true. there's 2 kinds of users: those who "think" in USD and invest USD and those who think/invest in BTC (and also want the gains in BTC).

Don't really know how to fix this. I put a text ("this assumes you sell the bonds and exchange the BTC for USD") above the "USD Value" and "USD Gain" columns. Does this clarify enough?

If you want I can give edit-control to you if you PM me your google id.

I have a consistent methodology for these things: Start small, see if it works, then expand. This way I can try out many different ideas without taking excessive risk.

Based on your description it looks like more of an order placement assistant. What I'd need for now is something that runs every ~1 minute and does the following:

• Cancel existing orders on GLBSE
• Collect data on the number of outstanding bonds, the mtgox last price, and some parameters such as my desired position, my net worth, and price volatility.
• Calculate the marginal value for me of each bond (I still need to work out some details with this).
• Place bids on the bonds at a little below the value, and asks at a little above.
• Alert me when my position becomes too unbalanced despite its efforts, so I can balance it by trading manually on Mt Gox, making CFD deals, or in the worst case, making a forced buyback of bonds.
• Send me a daily summary of its status (number of outstanding bonds, position, account balance...)

For now it seems simple enough that it would be better to develop it on my own. Going forward I'll consider getting something more professional made.

Great, this can be handy.

It seems this option is disabled for outsiders. "Download as" works but is a bit difficult because Google uses a different function name for POW than Excel/OO.

If you could either change the privileges, or add another sheet with -1, it would be good.

Looks good. It's important to clarify that all USD profits given are assuming that the alternative is to keep USD. This is made somewhat confusing by the fact that the field to enter is "BTC to invest".

Yes, GLBSE has a forced buy back feature - The issuer specifies an amount per bond, this is paid to bondholders and all bonds move to the issuer's account. Very useful. I haven't tried it yet but i hope it works.

The bond face value is never negative. Any losses cause the investment to shrink, so this is equivalent to margin trading while always being on the allowed margin - any losses cause immediate forced liquidation in the amount required to cover them. This is unrelated to the calling clause.

I don't understand how this works with glbse. Can the issuer forcibly buy back?

EDIT: Nebulous... will you just "virtually" buy back before the bond goes to negative value as in "liquidate"?