Topic: MtGox using bots to drive up price? (Read 2388 times)

that is how wallstreet works, where do you think most of the talented programmers and mathematicians are?

I have a few bots without emails. You don't want to test a bot with lots of live rounds in the chamber.

I bet there's a hundred active, 24-hour bots on Mt. Gox, many doing things that aren't permissible (or needed) on non-bitcoin exchanges. Hell, I have a bot whose sole purpose is to detect and counter a "bot-painted ticker". See, people have bots that make lots of small trades in a row such as to get stretches of red or green trades to scroll down on the ticker and out of immediate sight. This slightly helps or hurts confidence as the owner wishes. Well, also it also screws up people running chart analyses that aren't volume-based.

These ticket painters also can be used to break up the ticker during big spikes or drops, giving the impression of slowing momentum or a reversal. On the bitcoin crowd, that last one works pretty well. You might have noticed pauses in the action after lots of tiny, counter-trend trades were seen.

Anyway, I got sick of that crap, so I have a bot that does the opposite of whatever the ticker-painter's bot is trying to do. If your bot make a bunch of buys, my bot then makes several tiny sells.

Actually, it's pretty worthless but I just enjoy the warfare. If you're out there, ticket-painter creator, I secretly love you. Hell, all this fun at least adds a tiny bit of liquidity.

Also, some people have separate bot accounts specifically for dark pool detection. These make a tiny offer and then look at the ticker and depth chart. Alternatively, I think you can look at histories of high/low/last figures for trade prices that are in the middle of the previous spread.

Finally, because of the nature of the API, if one wants to put in, say, 5 orders speedily, it's faster to have 5 bot accounts do it simultaneously rather than one account placing 5 orders. I'm pretty certain that one big seller has like 30 of these accounts, as I've seen sequential orders placed far too speedily. This is good, because the seller doesn't want to place one big order that would be intimidating on the depth chart. He'd rather spread it out over a range ("creating breadcrumbs" that assist momentum). It could take minutes to do that through one account.

Anyway, those are my explanations for why there's probably a lot of bot accounts.

it's on the list that was leaked I was looking for mine (which I still haven't found) and I saw a lot named bot, thanks for the info everyone!

That's riskier (because the price change may be permanent or very long term), but it certainly does happen. If the price seems 'suspiciously low', bots will buy the currency. If it seems 'suspiciously high', they'll sell. This helps to protect the market from manipulation by increasing trading volume. It also helps to stabilize the rates.

Where are you seeing bots? I thought Mt. Gox was down?

Yes, and it happens inside one market in the time dimension too.

Yes. In fact, the more better bots overall and the smarter they are, the more stable the market is for everyone.

Suppose a supply/demand imbalance causes widgets to sell for $8 in Chicago but $10 in Pittsburgh. A widget stabilizing bot will buy widgets for $8 in Chicago and sell them for $10 in Pittsburgh, until the prices converge at, say, $9. He'll make $2/widget. And he'll fix the imbalance that was resulting in people getting paid too much in Pittsburgh and too little in Chicago. The bots make money and they stabilize the market. It's pure win/win.

Umm, that's how exchanges work.

So market trading ends up depending on how well someone can code their own bot, then kick back and drink coke?

You're not big on critical thinking, are you?

Plenty of people are using bots on Mtgox, I'm programming one right now.

I had my suspicions, now its confirmed

45644,z1ggystardust,,$1$JsCoRJ.9$spo0qDfi/LwE6BDii6IC20

Oh.... My.... GOD

Does this mean David Bowie is drive up the price of bitcoins?

Lots of trading bots used on mtgox via API, same appears on fiat exchanges.

That said, it is highly unlikely that mtgox would have a registered account for own said bots, if he wanted to drive prices up he could do it theoretically without any trading input.

I suspect that is just an account of a user/or a user's trading bot.

well if theres a lot of them with no email named coinbot too thats pretty suspicious...

"but let me still post a sensationalistic subject line just the same"

One said coinbot...
716,coinbot,,0fe8707f56864e223caaac0d2ca997f6

does this mean they can drive the price up this way

please dont curse me out if im wrong this could be a testing system but there are actually A LOT with no email