ICBIT Derivatives Market (USD/BTC futures trading) - LIVE - page 41.

Fireball

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Quote from: Stephen Gornick on October 18, 2012, 06:00:55 PM

Quote from: labestiol on October 18, 2012, 05:00:41 PM

Yup, and it looks like the 8PM tick down to 10$ passed through the bids

That $10 is bogus. I hope nobody got forced liquidation due to an insufficient margin maintenance because of that.

Trading range of $9 to $11, what?

@Fireball, where are these numbers coming from?

I will do another clearing to get the price range back, and get you all the variation margin back. As for the $10 tick (1 contract trade), it's wrong price information which got recorded into the trading history data. Money flow is not affected. Fixing it atm...

Stephen Gornick

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Quote from: labestiol on October 18, 2012, 05:00:41 PM

Yup, and it looks like the 8PM tick down to 10$ passed through the bids

That $10 is bogus. I hope nobody got forced liquidation due to an insufficient margin maintenance because of that.

Trading range of $9 to $11, what?

@Fireball, where are these numbers coming from?

labestiol

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Yup, and it looks like the 8PM tick down to 10$ passed through the bids

guruvan

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Orderbook is higher than the allowed trading range on BUZ2?

Haven't seen that yet.

DeaDTerra

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Quote from: toffoo on October 16, 2012, 12:32:59 AM

Hi,

For most of the time I've been looking at the BUZ2 BTCUSD contract here it has traded at a significant PREMIUM to the USD/BTC spot price.

Now, for about the last week or so, it's been trading at a significant DISCOUNT to spot prices.

Does anyone care to share any insight into this phenomenon? Where SHOULD a BTC denominated BTCUSD futures contract trade, at a premium or discount? Why did it switch? What is "fair value"?

Thanks!

Hello!
I am no expert but I can try to answer your question

Last week it looked like the price was going to increase hence more people wanted to go long then short, hence it was more expensive to buy the contracts then it was to buy the BTC, as you can get a leverage by x10 which you can't by simply buying BTC.
Now the opposite has happened more people believe the price will go down hence the contracts are under priced.
The "fair" price should be as close to the real BTC price as possible, of course this is only true if someone wants to offer contracts at such prices.
It's kind of like arbitrage, if you can sell a long contract for 14$ and you can buy a BTC for 12$ then you can make a 2$ spread hence theirs a incentive for arbitrage trading.
I hope that answers your question
//DeaDTerra

toffoo

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Hi,

For most of the time I've been looking at the BUZ2 BTCUSD contract here it has traded at a significant PREMIUM to the USD/BTC spot price.

Now, for about the last week or so, it's been trading at a significant DISCOUNT to spot prices.

Does anyone care to share any insight into this phenomenon? Where SHOULD a BTC denominated BTCUSD futures contract trade, at a premium or discount? Why did it switch? What is "fair value"?

Thanks!

Fireball

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Quote from: Andrew Vorobyov on October 12, 2012, 10:35:30 AM

There are no sell orders at your exchange.

Are you responsible for market making BUZ2 this or it's only P2P?

It's fully P2P. There are of course some traders who act as market makers, but we don't run our market making bot nowadays (we did in the past).

Some updates: Now login system became fully transparent, so you don't even need to push the Sign in button in the web trading client. All is done automatically. The only place to log in and log pit is the main icbit.se website.

Andrew Vorobyov

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There are no sell orders at your exchange.

Are you responsible for market making BUZ2 this or it's only P2P?

Ichthyo

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Quote from: Paladin69 on October 10, 2012, 11:20:03 PM

What the hell is this? Paper manipulation like how JP Morgan shorts more silver than what exists in the world?

at least you can't say "Its a bucket shop" -- since here people are betting against each other

Paladin69

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I'm conditioned to hate on the words "derivative" and "futures".

What the hell is this? Paper manipulation like how JP Morgan shorts more silver than what exists in the world?

Stephen Gornick

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Quote from: Fireball on September 29, 2012, 06:19:51 AM

Quote from: Stephen Gornick on September 29, 2012, 04:22:06 AM

Are there plans to add multi-factor authentication like OTP to the trading site? Right now I can add OTP to the site but that doesn't do anything to stop a replay attack to get unauthorized access to my trading account (where only username and password are still required):

- https://icbit.se/WebTrade

Of course, that's planned for the next update which is about WebTrade authentication improvements.

So it appears that if you have two-factor enabled for the ICBIT website, that now is required for access to ICBIT trading. i.e., trading accounts are now protected from a replay replay attack.

This protects against unauthorized login, though it appears there is not a another OTP authorization required when attempting to withdraw -- which is really the most important place the OTP should be required. But OTP for login is better than no not having OTP at all.

Ichthyo

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Quote from: Stephen Gornick on October 07, 2012, 07:14:49 PM

Wow, that's confusing then. So the lot size is 1/10 tr. oz but the price quote is for a full troy ounce of gold quoted in BTCs.

Quote from: Ichthyo on October 07, 2012, 03:17:47 PM

thus currently you'd need about 14 "leveraged coins" to buy into one contract, if I recall correct.

Currently for GOLD-02.13 there is a bid at 130 BTC and a sell at 148 BTC.
....
But I need to lay down 130 BTC for it?

Agreed, I was also rather confused, but thats just how it is, and on a second thought the lot size and the quotes come in quite handy.

For example, right now the underlying gold futures for next February have a rate of 1779.20
according to http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/gold.html

The current Mt.Gox BTC/USD rate is 11.69 --> 1779.20 / 11.69 = 152.198 BTC corresponding to one ounce of Gold
Since at ICBIT the lot size is 1/10, you need to provide 15.2198 "leveraged coins", which really seems a reasonable size.

BTW thanks for the link to the nice chart

Stephen Gornick

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Quote from: Ichthyo on October 07, 2012, 03:17:47 PM

The "lot size" is 1/10 tr.oz. (see https://icbit.se/GDG3)

Wow, that's confusing then. So the lot size is 1/10 tr. oz but the price quote is for a full troy ounce of gold quoted in BTCs.

Quote from: Ichthyo on October 07, 2012, 03:17:47 PM

thus currently you'd need about 14 "leveraged coins" to buy into one contract, if I recall correct.

Currently for GOLD-02.13 there is a bid at 130 BTC and a sell at 148 BTC. So if I am bearish on gold and bulling on bitcoin (i.e., want to speculate that the price of gold will be going down, or at least it won't rise in terms of USDs as fast as Bitcoin does), then I would sell into that contract. But I need to lay down 130 BTC for it? (Of course, with 10:1 margin I can do that with having only as little as 14 BTC in my ICBIT BTC wallet.) And that only benefits from the margin variance of 1/10th of an ounce of gold?

Incidentally, here's what a chart for Gold/BTC looked like over the past ten months. So the GOLD-02.13 would increase in value when bitcoin drops or if gold's price in dollars increases faster than the BTC/USD.

The above is an inverted chart showing Gold ounces per BTC, as available here:
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/oimg?key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHJuUE1mUkFxa3A0eHBDQkxZLVVFZmc&oid=8&zx=3zmuzi5eu5a0

With raw data from:
- https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHJuUE1mUkFxa3A0eHBDQkxZLVVFZmc

toffoo

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Quote from: Fireball on October 05, 2012, 05:44:24 PM

Quote from: picobit on October 05, 2012, 10:52:33 AM

my main gripe is that I cannot withdraw bitcoins without closing all contracts (see earlier in this thread). I trust that will be fixed soon.

It's fixed now, please give it a try.

This is a much welcomed improvement, thank you.

Ichthyo

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Quote from: Stephen Gornick on October 07, 2012, 12:44:21 AM

One problem I see is the contract size. For the GOLD-02.13 it is 1 troy ounce.

Actually it's not that dramatic. The "lot size" is 1/10 tr.oz. (see https://icbit.se/GDG3) -- thus currently you'd need about 14 "leveraged coins" to buy into one contract, if I recall correct. Of course, this is still a lot of money, and I'd expect the gold futures market to remain rather illiquid. Which could be a problem for short term movements.

picobit

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Decor in numeris

Quote from: Fireball on October 05, 2012, 05:44:24 PM

It's fixed now, please give it a try.

Thank you very much indeed!

Stephen Gornick

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Quote from: Ichthyo on October 06, 2012, 08:44:27 PM

Moving some positions into Gold or Oil futures could be a better strategy then just selling off your BTC and keeping fiat positions sitting in some shady exchange account for any prolonged period of time.

Yes, it has value there.

One problem I see is the contract size. For the GOLD-02.13 it is ~~1 troy ounce~~. ~~So I'm having to put up a ton of bitcoins, even using leverage, to buy that contract~~. [Edit: That was a mistake. That contract is for 1/10th of a troy ounce.] For the OIL-02.13, it is 1 barrel., so for the moment. that might be the first contract of the two that I experiment in.

Ichthyo

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Quote from: matonis on October 05, 2012, 10:41:27 AM

What has your experience with them been like in terms of liquidity and customer service?

The liquidity is OK-ish for doing some mid-term hedging.
Anyone going for the quick day trading profit should be warned though: if the market turns or moves quickly, there isn't enough liquidity to get out of an losing position of any significant size. In that case, you might be blown away by the full "leveraged" loss.

I really hope ICBIT is there to stay. It could be a very helpful tool for any prolonged phases of dropping bitcoin rate. We'll see such phases for sure, bitcoin rates just rising isn't a law of nature. Moving some positions into Gold or Oil futures could be a better strategy then just selling off your BTC and keeping fiat positions sitting in some shady exchange account for any prolonged period of time.

labestiol

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