Cool. Thanks so much for the clarification.
Hey, I'm not like some evil broker. Whatever things I post regarding Bitcoinica's trading activity or whatsoever, must be from the past (already hedged orders and liquidated positions). It's also morally incorrect (and sometimes illegal) to read customers' orders and trade at the same time.
I have a rule for myself (and I hope other exchanges' owners can follow):
Every time after seeing customers' orders, intentionally or unintentionally, refrain from trading or discussing them publicly for 24 hours.The temptation to do this surely must be great though. I find it worrying that the operators of dark-pool trading platforms like bitcoinica (perhaps ONLY bitcoinica) are privy to the collective trade decisions of it's users when everyone else is not. Especially when these businesses are not subject to the stringent external auditing processes as real world institutions.
I know you have stated that you promise not to trade based on this information, but it is not really good enough for me because a promise is hardly a rock solid guarantee. How can we be sure you are telling the truth, and are not going to trade against your clients? Trust is just not enough, even though you seem like a decent guy zhou.
Given the open-source spirit of bitcoin, I think it would only be right to open your order books the same way mtgox and the other exchanges do. I know you said that this would leave bitcoinica open to manipulation, but my (admittedly poor) understanding of game theory is that as long as everyone has access to the information, it would be no more problematic than it is now. What do you think about this?
Running the stops will be far more easier if we open our order books. I have seen stop orders that can be triggered with less than $3,000 and potential rise/fall of $0.1 or more.
I know it's not good to hide trading information, but people need some kind of dark pools to reduce their market impact. The only "profitable" and viable way for me to trade against my clients is to run the stops myself. Not just the stop orders, but also the potential forced liquidations. Even if I open Bitcoinica's order book, I still have more information than everyone else unless I tell you their liquidation points.
Whether I make the limit orders, or both limit and stop orders available publicly, I still have more information. And trust me, based on my observation (not experience), running forced liquidations is more profitable than the stops.
I just don't understand, if people can trust me with tens of thousands of dollars, why not the simple promise of not to trade against them? There are easier ways to extract profits from clients that a market maker can do, such as manipulating the prices and spreads, creating artificial spikes or even deducting their account balance secretly. These things have never happened, and will never happen under my hands!
A centralized platform is already based on trust, so let's just face it. In my opinion, hiding Bitcoinica's order book is better for the community overall, since Bitcoinica is a market maker that takes a small risk before hedging, not an exchange that is never responsible for any trade (and trade reversals).