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Topic: High Freq - Bot-Trading (Read 2538 times)

full member
Activity: 151
Merit: 100
August 12, 2013, 03:00:25 PM
#30
The science is impressive, of course, but that's not a reason to advocate the use of it here.

I believe the opposite, I think their future are inextricably linked. Bitcoin is onto-itself a form of financial wizardry.

I think the proof-of-work block chain technology, Bitcoin and it's components have a real future as part of the fabric of HFT.

The underlying assumption being, at least for me, that the adoption of Bitcoin as a technology adapted for parts of HFT that traditional financial tech aren't well suited for.

See George Kledaras, http://www.advancedtrading.com/can-bitcoin-solve-wall-streets-soft-doll/240157515, disclaimer, I've spoken at length with Mr. Kledaras about these types of problems.
legendary
Activity: 1092
Merit: 1001
Touchdown
August 12, 2013, 01:40:24 PM
#29
Extracting profit by performing a service (in this case sub-millisecond trading) for the owners of the funds / banks isn't only important, I'd say it's perfectly moral. So long as your not cheating, and everyone knows the rules.
Yes, but patently not important to bitcoin or the bitcoin denominated market. It's potentially detrimental, in fact, to bitcoin and the bitcoin denominated market.

The science is impressive, of course, but that's not a reason to advocate the use of it here.

Obviously if bitcoin gains significant traction and the attention of big funds and banks, HFT (and other financial wizardry) in the bitcoin denominated market is inevitable (unless, perhaps, HFT is banned or otherwise hobbled in the real world - not totally beyond the pale if you consider the market dips and crashes already attributed to HFT).
member
Activity: 99
Merit: 10
August 11, 2013, 10:14:23 PM
#28
There are exchanges with lots of currency pairs. No need to move money from one exchange to another.

Even I understand that. But still the fees are killing that right. Might this also be the reason why it's so hard to get FIAT in/out of lets say.... MtGox?
full member
Activity: 151
Merit: 100
August 11, 2013, 08:05:25 PM
#27
I didn't say it wouldn't happen.  I'm just saying it's shit and bitcoin would be better off without it / careful what you wish for.  HFT will be pure profit extraction by banks and funds from people who are actually interested in holding or trading bitcoin denominated stock, nothing more. Smiley

Yes, but that's a double negative, saying we'd be better off without something that is inevitable is like saying, "well we'd be better off if we all lived forever..."

Extracting profit by performing a service (in this case sub-millisecond trading) for the owners of the funds / banks isn't only important, I'd say it's perfectly moral. So long as your not cheating, and everyone knows the rules.

People attack HFT, even legal HFT as being "immoral" or "illegal" because they don't understand it, so I guess I'm just overly sensitive since I'm a big fan of the science.

Physicists invented/discovered nuclear weapons, we don't blame them for nuclear war.
full member
Activity: 151
Merit: 100
August 11, 2013, 08:00:05 PM
#26
So are you interested in such technology? Interested in helping to create the required infrastructure?

Hell yeah! Lets do it... I make a market right now on a 15 second latency because, well, most exchanges have to spend their research and development dollars on legal compliance rather than technology...
legendary
Activity: 1008
Merit: 1002
August 11, 2013, 12:50:45 PM
#25
What happened to the days where (most) market participants would actually look at the company, the management, the business plan, etc, and actually place a value on shares. Huh

Those are long term traders. HFT is intra-day trading.
hero member
Activity: 882
Merit: 501
Ching-Chang;Ding-Dong
August 11, 2013, 10:45:49 AM
#24
Please, no.  HFT simply undermines how markets operate, increasing trade volumes yet doing nothing to increase liquidity.  HFT presents a new barrier to entry and exists purely to skim money.

This is fantastic btw - an animation of 1/2 a second of real world
trading activity in Johnson & Johnson stock Shocked - mind blown:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/ian-fraser-the-beauty-and-insanity-of-hft.html

What happened to the days where (most) market participants would actually look at the company, the management, the business plan, etc, and actually place a value on shares. Huh

The article above says it best, "high frequency trading has nothing to do with the efficient allocation of capital, and everything to do with socially-useless proprietary trading that runs counter to the interests of long-term investors".


"Watch High-Frequency Traders (HFT) at the millisecond level jam thousands of quotes in the stock of Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) through our financial networks on May 2, 2013. Video shows 1/2 second of time. If any of the connections are not running perfectly, High Frequency Traders can profit from the price discrepancies that result. There is no economic justification for this abusive behavior.
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/ian-fraser-the-beauty-and-insanity-of-hft.html#zEoMZVoX1Rmv95TX.99 "

@mtgox
legendary
Activity: 1092
Merit: 1001
Touchdown
August 11, 2013, 09:33:32 AM
#23
Gripe about it's "Lack of efficiently allocating capitol" all you want. I don't believe that HFT/MFT/Algo-trading will avoid cryto-currencies. It's just that the infrastructure doesn't exist yet for the real players to plug-in.
I didn't say it wouldn't happen.  I'm just saying it's shit and bitcoin would be better off without it / careful what you wish for.  HFT will be pure profit extraction by banks and funds from people who are actually interested in holding or trading bitcoin denominated stock, nothing more. Smiley
legendary
Activity: 965
Merit: 1000
August 10, 2013, 05:56:17 PM
#22
So are you interested in such technology? Interested in helping to create the required infrastructure?
full member
Activity: 151
Merit: 100
August 10, 2013, 03:05:32 PM
#21
Please, no.  HFT simply undermines how markets operate, increasing trade volumes yet doing nothing to increase liquidity.  HFT presents a new barrier to entry and exists purely to skim money.

The article above says it best, "high frequency trading has nothing to do with the efficient allocation of capital, and everything to do with socially-useless proprietary trading that runs counter to the interests of long-term investors".

I disagree, I think that the future of trading Bitcoin is the same as trading any other instrument in the world today.

It's just a matter of implementation, and it's coming.

Gripe about it's "Lack of efficiently allocating capitol" all you want. I don't believe that HFT/MFT/Algo-trading will avoid cryto-currencies. It's just that the infrastructure doesn't exist yet for the real players to plug-in.
legendary
Activity: 965
Merit: 1000
August 10, 2013, 01:36:29 PM
#20
There are exchanges with lots of currency pairs. No need to move money from one exchange to another.
legendary
Activity: 1008
Merit: 1002
August 10, 2013, 10:58:15 AM
#19
You only considered technical trading. Triangle arb might work.

There are theoretical massive wins to be had through arbitrage in bitcoin, but it's just so, so hard (and slow) to get fiat in and out of exchanges that this is currently impossible.

How do I know it's impossible? Just take a look at the difference in BTCUSD across exchanges - it's massive. That says arbitrage is currently not possible because otherwise the gap would already have been arbitraged away to 0.
legendary
Activity: 1008
Merit: 1002
August 10, 2013, 10:48:53 AM
#18
So high freq. on an exchange with 0.6% fee (Gox) is not going to work at all?
The price needs to move at least $1.2 to make 0% profit. Is that correct?

That's correct.

In order for proper high freq. market makers to be profitable the fees need to be handled differently, as it stands now the higher the price of bitcoin, the further the price will need to move to make break even on a round-trip trade at 0.6% fee:

* At $100/BTC, its ~$1.2
* At $200/BTC, its ~$2.4
* At $1000/BTC, its ~$12.11

So, as price rises it becomes more and more difficult to break even, unless the market gets more and more volatile at the same time.

Something like a fixed spread fee of some number of satoishis might work, as you have in some forex ECN brokers.
legendary
Activity: 965
Merit: 1000
August 10, 2013, 08:32:57 AM
#17
You only considered technical trading. Triangle arb might work.
member
Activity: 99
Merit: 10
August 10, 2013, 06:06:14 AM
#16
So high freq. on an exchange with 0.6% fee (Gox) is not going to work at all?
The price needs to move at least $1.2 to make 0% profit. Is that correct?
full member
Activity: 151
Merit: 100
August 09, 2013, 10:24:48 PM
#15
Uhm...are there any 'high-frequency' exchanges? Most of the ema-crossing bots make maybe 1 trade / day. So a bot, that makes 1 trade / hour is already 'high-frequency' in the bitcoin world, I guess. Most exchange will ban you, if you request data more often than every 15s, or so. So I guess bitcoin HFT is not comparable to 'real-world' HFT.

Request frequency is simply not the problem with HFT on BTCUSD, it's the massive, massive spreads which exist due to the huge transaction fees.

HFT bots are mostly market-markers which make profit by providing liquidity on both sides of the spread, but given a 0.6% trade fee, at BTC being $100, break even is when price moves $1.211 which is a vast amount. This is why trades are so infrequent, nothing to do with exchange limits.

Cheers, Paul.

Hence the reason we traders like to call Magic the Gathering Online Exchange by it's real name: A joke.

No market makers (those whom trade for free to tighten spread), one sided trades markets, lagging trading engines, a liquid and orderly market does not this create.
legendary
Activity: 1008
Merit: 1002
August 09, 2013, 05:17:40 PM
#14
Uhm...are there any 'high-frequency' exchanges? Most of the ema-crossing bots make maybe 1 trade / day. So a bot, that makes 1 trade / hour is already 'high-frequency' in the bitcoin world, I guess. Most exchange will ban you, if you request data more often than every 15s, or so. So I guess bitcoin HFT is not comparable to 'real-world' HFT.

Request frequency is simply not the problem with HFT on BTCUSD, it's the massive, massive spreads which exist due to the huge transaction fees.

HFT bots are mostly market-markers which make profit by providing liquidity on both sides of the spread, but given a 0.6% trade fee, at BTC being $100, break even is when price moves $1.211 which is a vast amount. This is why trades are so infrequent, nothing to do with exchange limits.

Cheers, Paul.
legendary
Activity: 965
Merit: 1000
August 09, 2013, 01:34:06 PM
#13
Uhm...are there any 'high-frequency' exchanges? Most of the ema-crossing bots make maybe 1 trade / day. So a bot, that makes 1 trade / hour is already 'high-frequency' in the bitcoin world, I guess. Most exchange will ban you, if you request data more often than every 15s, or so. So I guess bitcoin HFT is not comparable to 'real-world' HFT.
legendary
Activity: 1092
Merit: 1001
Touchdown
August 09, 2013, 11:04:47 AM
#12
Please, no.  HFT simply undermines how markets operate, increasing trade volumes yet doing nothing to increase liquidity.  HFT presents a new barrier to entry and exists purely to skim money.

This is fantastic btw - an animation of 1/2 a second of real world
trading activity in Johnson & Johnson stock Shocked - mind blown:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/05/ian-fraser-the-beauty-and-insanity-of-hft.html

What happened to the days where (most) market participants would actually look at the company, the management, the business plan, etc, and actually place a value on shares. Huh

The article above says it best, "high frequency trading has nothing to do with the efficient allocation of capital, and everything to do with socially-useless proprietary trading that runs counter to the interests of long-term investors".
member
Activity: 99
Merit: 10
August 09, 2013, 10:36:26 AM
#11
I just found out the bot is of the "high-frequency" type.
How could that work out?
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