ICBIT Derivatives Market (USD/BTC futures trading) - LIVE - page 43.

Ichthyo

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Quote from: ThePok on September 25, 2012, 03:11:29 PM

Future for Gold/BTC Huh

Thats terrible. Bitcoin is much more voilatile as Gold.

Why not USD/Gold and the winnings and losses are payed in BTC?

While USD/Gold is certainly doable, I think that its really an achievement to have a site which
is really "bitcoin based" and thus treats BTC as the primary currency. Using USD as intermediary
or exchange currency would again rise all those concerns of being a "bucket shop" (is the USD
there for real, i.e. in a bank account, yes or no? And who carries the risk of slippage).

Volatility of Bitcoin rates is a concern in itself, and futures could serve as a means to hedge
against this risk. Being able to hedge into the Gold market sounds like a nice addition, more so,
since there is (hopefully) some leverage, so you don't need to expose all your real assets (BTC)
to counterparty risk just for hedging.

ThePok

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Future for Gold/BTC Huh

Thats terrible. Bitcoin is much more voilatile as Gold.

Why not USD/Gold and the winnings and losses are payed in BTC?

picobit

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Hi Fireball!

I have a suggestion for the user interface. If a user has typed a price, and then clicks buy market or sell market, he probably wanted to place a limit order instead, and a confirmation dialog should appear. In fact, a confirmation dialog would always be a good idea, but in particular when the input by the user is ambiguous.

I have made that mistake twice already, such mistakes can in principle be quite costly! In my case, I actually earned half a bitcoin, but that is besides the point.

EDIT: One more suggestion: I just got a partially filled order, it is printed on my order list with yellow text, presumably to highlight it. Unfortunately, yellow text on a light grey background is unreadable, I had to select the text to see what it was!

Fireball

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Quote from: labestiol on September 25, 2012, 09:06:17 AM

- It looks like there's a bug in the order book (same for all contracts, futures and exchange). I can only see the first bid, and no asks. I think it started yesterday.

That's fixed now - please reload the webpage (if that does not help, clear the cache). Problem was a typo which sneaked into javascript client code before new version deployment yesterday.

Fireball

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Quote from: labestiol on September 25, 2012, 09:06:17 AM

- It looks like there's a bug in the order book (same for all contracts, futures and exchange). I can only see the first bid, and no asks. I think it started yesterday.

It seems to happen only in one browser, we are investigating it right now.

Quote

- I saw in the "my account" section that you were implementing google 2fa. I configured it, but I can still login without entering the code.

It's in progress too. As soon as it's works, an announcement will be made.

labestiol

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Hi,

I have two questions :

- It looks like there's a bug in the order book (same for all contracts, futures and exchange). I can only see the first bid, and no asks. I think it started yesterday.
- I saw in the "my account" section that you were implementing google 2fa. I configured it, but I can still login without entering the code.

picobit

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Quote from: DeepBit on September 20, 2012, 03:23:53 PM

Quote from: picobit on September 20, 2012, 03:16:42 PM

Is your site having IT trouble? On the Futures tab, all my futures are gone (the BTC are still there)

We are updating our software at this moment. Trading will be resumed in a couple of minutes.
Some maintenance was required to add support for our new futures, sorry for any inconvenience.

I see you are back up now! Thanks for your quick reply.

DeepBit

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Quote from: picobit on September 20, 2012, 03:16:42 PM

Is your site having IT trouble? On the Futures tab, all my futures are gone (the BTC are still there)

We are updating our software at this moment. Trading will be resumed in a couple of minutes.
Some maintenance was required to add support for our new futures, sorry for any inconvenience.

picobit

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Is your site having IT trouble? On the Futures tab, all my futures are gone (the BTC are still there), and the Funds tab give a Runtime Error - apparently the default error message of your CMS.

Fireball

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Quote from: picobit on September 20, 2012, 12:16:15 PM

As for the real bank: Our local bank claims on signs all over the place that their main safe is protected with a time lock taking 10 min to open. I guess that is also to protect their employees from failed robbery attempts. But yes: sometimes financial institutions brag about security, but of course never without careful consideration.

That, kind of, makes sense and is similar to those signs in the shop which say that cashiers does not have keys from the main safe box in the shop.

picobit

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No, that kind of information would be silly to disclose, of course.

As for the real bank: Our local bank claims on signs all over the place that their main safe is protected with a time lock taking 10 min to open. I guess that is also to protect their employees from failed robbery attempts. But yes: sometimes financial institutions brag about security, but of course never without careful consideration.

Fireball

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Quote from: nimda on September 19, 2012, 07:54:20 PM

Security through obscurity is no security at all.

To give one more insight, how obscurity helps.
Everyone can see that our servers seem to be hosted by Hetzner (IP lookup). However, noone can be sure they are physically located in Hetzner's datacenter or we just use those servers as proxy/forwarders.
Obviously, this kind of info will never be revealed to make the real servers' location hidden from thieves.

Fireball

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Quote from: nimda on September 19, 2012, 07:54:20 PM

Quote

It's quite bad to brag about security. And it's even worse to provide additional details. That's helping an attacker, not users. What matters is a reputation, and steady organic growth instead of a fast rise and painful fall.

Security through obscurity is no security at all.

It's not security by obscurity at all.

Remember all those exchanges who claimed "we are secure advanced trading platforms"? Where are they now, and where are people's money?

Or another example. Have you seen any bank office which have a large banner which says: "Our doors are very well protected, and windows are hard to break. Money are stored in the basement in a special storage made of steel and concrete, currently containing $10 mln in cash and 10kg of gold"? Who benefits from this information? Thieves who robbed a bank in Stockholm a couple of years ago, maybe?

Sum up: saying "we are super secure" won't change anything. Explaining details of the setup will help thieves but won't help average users at all (they have no way to verify anyway). The only positive thing is constructive discussion (e.g. 2-factor auth demand - ok, implementation is going).

nimda

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0xFB0D8D1534241423

Quote from: Fireball on September 18, 2012, 04:38:57 PM

Quote

But what about the site security? The security stuff they mention on the front page appear a bit minimal. They use https and salt the passwords. Fine, my password won't be easily recovered if the site is hacked (unlike Linkedin Angry

). But all coins will be gone ?

It's quite bad to brag about security. And it's even worse to provide additional details. That's helping an attacker, not users. What matters is a reputation, and steady organic growth instead of a fast rise and painful fall.

Security through obscurity is no security at all.

Fireball

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Quote from: Stephen Gornick on September 19, 2012, 02:12:23 PM

There are announcements made on the site's Twitter feed @ICBIT_se that don't appear in this thread.

- https://twitter.com/icbit_se

One that was just made, so I thought I would cc: it here:

Quote

Margin requirements for BUZ2 are going to be increased after clearing. Pls make sure reserved funds are less than available.

- https://twitter.com/icbit_se/status/248495421859713024

Yes, thanks for pasting it here. Margin requirement was increased from ca. 0.07 to 0.1039 BTC per contract as a safety measure because of a possibility of rapid rate fluctuations.

Stephen Gornick

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There are announcements made on the site's Twitter feed @ICBIT_se that don't appear in this thread.

- https://twitter.com/icbit_se

One that was just made, so I thought I would cc: it here:

Quote

Margin requirements for BUZ2 are going to be increased after clearing. Pls make sure reserved funds are less than available.

- https://twitter.com/icbit_se/status/248495421859713024

picobit

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Thanks, Fireball, for your reply.

Yes, only keeping a margin account is better than keeping a lot of money. I tend not to daytrade (since I do not believe that I am better than the market at predicting fluctuations), but to make longterm trading. Send money to exchange, buy bitcoins, withdraw bitcoins - or reversely; minimizing my exposure to hacking to a short time. But if I want to hold a long-term position on ICBIT, my margin account is exposed for a longer time.

Well, your reply eased my worries somewhat, in particular the part about cold storage (and steady growth).

The only part I disagree about is the "not bragging about security". We need a lot more bragging about security to put pressure on the insecure sites. And if security is weakened by bragging about it, it was not good to begin with. Solid security can stand scrutiny.

As for having everything in cold wallets and delay withdrawals: That would annoy me too, but less than having my funds stolen

Of course I might come in a situation where I need to access my funds here and now....

Stephen Gornick

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Quote from: Fireball on September 18, 2012, 04:38:57 PM

Quote

But they do not offer two-factor authentication

We are working possible options. Google 2-factor would be the first implemented, and SMS checks might follow.

This is why I'm trading on ICBit with only a trivial amount for now.

Also, when considering how to implement it, please read the following:

A plea to exchanges ... lets do 2 factor right!
- https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/a-plea-to-exchanges-lets-do-2-factor-right-109424

Fireball

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Quote from: picobit on September 16, 2012, 02:26:21 PM

SECURITY AT ICBIT.

Quote

on ICBIT you need to have money in your margin account for an extended amount of time. That increases the need for good security, both against my account getting hacked and against the ICBIT site getting hacked.

This scheme is better because for the value of futures contracts you have you need to keep only a small fraction of that value as a margin reserve. Unlike trading at spot market where you need to keep all money all the time to be able to trade.

Quote

But they do not offer two-factor authentication

We are working possible options. Google 2-factor would be the first implemented, and SMS checks might follow.

Quote

But what about the site security? The security stuff they mention on the front page appear a bit minimal. They use https and salt the passwords. Fine, my password won't be easily recovered if the site is hacked (unlike Linkedin Angry

). But all coins will be gone ?

It's quite bad to brag about security. And it's even worse to provide additional details. That's helping an attacker, not users. What matters is a reputation, and steady organic growth instead of a fast rise and painful fall.

Quote

What fraction of the bitcoins are in cold storage?

It was done this way in the start, however users were quite annoyed that they have to wait this long for their withdrawals. So now a small fraction of the total assets is maintained in the hot wallet, and majority is stored offline.

Quote

Sorry for being so negative, but the bitfloor f***up was a bit scary. And in some ways ICBIT is the successor of Bitcoinica, hopefully not in too many ways

It's not negative at all, it's realistic!

toffoo

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Hey Fireball,

What do you figure the "fair value" of one of these BUZ2 BTC-USD futures contracts is?

Topic: ICBIT Derivatives Market (USD/BTC futures trading) - LIVE - page 43. (Read 97703 times)