Topic: ICBIT Derivatives Market (USD/BTC futures trading) - LIVE - page 38. (Read 97702 times)

It is really strange what is going on right now.  Just have to hope this is a desperate bear, and not what is being insinuated (well a bit more than insinuated) here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/icbitse-the-bucket-shop-125376

this is not good

whoaaa the bear seems to be raging in despair now   

....and again the whole ask side sprayed with dummy offers, so no one can see the market depth

hey... getting BUZ at $9    

Oh man, that totaly makes no sens! Are we now all gone kickt out of our Positions becaouse of empty Orderbook?

nervous bear just ate up the all bids

or was that the maintenance ;-)

Clearing will be delayed up to 20-30 minutes because of the need to perform some maintenance within current trading session.

Yes, indeed 
But beware. If everyone jumps upon that wagon, on closure we might enter what Fireball termed "the worst case scenario": The bear will be squeezed out of his position, and everyone else would not get all the theoretically possible profit, but just what can be distributed from that position.

Thus I'd really prefer if the market slowly grinds towards the spot rates, since the mark-to-market on this way will prevent such a situation (and squeeze the bear(s) exactly at that point when their positions are burned).

What you indicate here would be a more advanced kind of platform, technology-wise. Exactly that kind of development the bitcoin trading community would badly need, to get out of that situation where you're forced to expose your BTC when you need to hedge or want to trade. So, from a theoretical point of view (or let's call it bitcoin project roadmap), such a platform would be very desirable.

Regarding the actual market demands. Yes, there is need for leveraged trading (both because of speculation and because of the need to hedge with limited risk exposure). My gut feeling is that there is enough demand to support several offerings.

On the other hand, it looks like even very basic financial instruments are still a bit of a challenge for many community members. A good example is the complete failure of the BitcoinOPX platform this summer. Probably this was partially due also to usability problems, but such could have been worked out if people really wanted bitcoin options. Indeed, it is a bit surprising, that there isn't more demand for options. Maybe everyone loves Contracts-for-Difference, since these are easy to grasp. You know, "If war is God's way to teach geography to Americans, then Bitcoin is God's way to teach geeks economics!"

Would that mean that, when placing a bid/ask, you would also indicate the provided margin, so the counter party could make an educated decision if (s)he wants to enter into such a contract?

I was developing my own derivative trading platform a while ago, and now as people are actively trading USD/BTC futures on ICBIT, I wonder if there is any interest for other kind of derivative contracts.

Let's call them "capped non-deliverable forwards":

• capped: there is a hard limit on maximum profit/loss
• non-deliverable: settled in bitcoins, exactly like ICBIT futures contracts
• forwards: there is no such thing as variation margin and there is no such thing as margin call. Initial margin is your maximum loss.

So unlike futures, forward is essentially a contract between two parties, exchange does not need to manage it. And since they are capped and initial margin is required, there is no counterparty risk.

However the downside is that initial margin might be considerably higher than you have with ICBIT futures. (But it's up to market players, it might be tiny if they are OK with small profit caps.)

Also since forward is settled between two parties it can be done via multisig escrow, so there is no need to trust exchange your money, at least in theory.

(I'm sorry if it looks like an advert for my non-existent service, but I was discussing this topic with Fireball before he made ICBIT and I wonder what people think about it now. That's all.)

That is of course a loosing strategy, unless the spot BTC prices falls between now and 15. dec.  The rest of us can try to benefit from his strategy. :-)

Looks like someone has opened too many shorts around 10 and now holding the market to avoid losses.

With it being exactly one month to settlement now, I would think the gap between the spot price and BUZ2 would start to narrow.  It is instead growing, the BTC/USD is going up and at the same time BUZ2 is going down.
 - https://icbit.se/BUZ2

Anyone have thoughts as to why BUZ2 is bifurcating from BTC/USD, ... more than 10% below the spot market price now?

I didn't have any issues reported, so it must have been a connectivity issue.
Minor platform update is scheduled for today (after clearing), I will provide more detailed info when it happens.

seems to have resolved

Is the Web trading down? I can see the chart and the framework, but no data, not even my margin.

And again today someone is hiding the market depth with small entries.  We really badly need a way to see the full depth.  Anyway, even if it means entering a cryptic url and getting a json back :-)  But a nice table would of course be nice....

yes,yes,yes!

Ah, yes, we're working on that.