Topic: "No Reserve" explanation (Read 8964 times)

i suppose i have been too negative about Bitcoinica.  most of it centers around philosophical issues more than fundamental issues with your service.  for instance:

i do believe that short selling should never have been implemented at such a young age in Bitcoin's evolution.  i think its like letting your 5 yo smoke.  you may not realize it's bad until 50 yrs later when he has lung cancer.  i think it has been very detrimental to the btc price as well as to the economy as it generates a very negative sentiment.

i also don't agree with the amount of leverage you're offering to customers.  i'm not sure i agree with leverage at all given what we're trying to accomplish here with Bitcoin. while you may have algorithms in place to protect Bitcoinica, i think its asymmetric protection and doesn't protect your customers nearly as well.

i understand that these are my own beliefs and that many others will disagree and that you are just offering a service that apparently has demand so in that sense i don't blame you.  but i do think ppl are getting hurt; perhaps deservedly so as this is the market sorting things out.  

my other source of extreme pessimism comes from what i was able to do to your algorithm 10 days ago:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.667447

and i'm just one guy.  what happens to your customers when a larger more motivated competitor comes along?

the fact that you have to keep adjusting the algorithm every time an issue comes up is concerning.  it seems like you're always playing catch up and its costing someone money; either you or your customers.

i'm just glad that the short selling didn't drive the Bitcoin economy off the cliff for good.  now that we've made the turn back up i'll try to be a little more objective when it comes to Bitcoinica.

I really appreciate your feedback. However, all the problems you pointed out had already been pointed out by someone else.

All in all, just a few issues in recent month:

- Transparency (pointed out by mjcmurfy, I already released the hedging volume data, and continue improving.)
- The spike algorithm (pointed out by phantomcircuit with solid data support. I reversed all wrong trades and apologized to affected customers. Fixed the issue in 3 days. Plus I released a nice chart to show all history prices to be fully transparent. You pointed out this problem after everything has been fixed.)
- Can't close position problem (pointed out by some customers, and further suggested by Mushoz. Fully fixed, plus some nice little features.)
- My "recommendation" (I regret saying that, and I'm really sorry.)

I feel sad that you felt that I was disrespectful to you. But really, there's almost no value to repeat others' valuable feedback and turn them to negative comments like angry complaints without being a customer at all. And removing all the repeating issues that you brought up, you had these original things to tell me:

- Bitcoinica's business model is doomed.
- Short selling is harmful.
- cypherdoc never used Bitcoinica before.
- Bitcoin leverage trading is like speculative derivative paper tower.
- Bitcoinica is always losing money!

These don't help me at all. We're a community that makes everyone better off. We need creative solutions and innovative ideas, not superficial complaints. Bitcoinica is a proven viable business and we have attracted a lot of interest from investor-like people. Bitcoinica believes in free market spirit and economic liberalization. Bitcoinica aims to push up the web-based development standard and professionalism of the whole community.

No disrespect here. I'm always listening. You just have to make sure what you said actually made a difference rather than merely making someone upset.

This forum already is a mess, it was designed as a quarantine, after all.

you're right.

True, and I agree with you there. But no need to become disrespectful towards him just because he has been disrespectful towards you. This forum would become a mess if everyone responded like that.

this is the first time i've lost my temper with him.

if you go back thru the threads, i've tolerated alot of disrespectful comments from him.

Calm down. The spread algorithm has already been fixed, and behaved perfectly during this rally. Also the prevention of people being able to liquidate has also already been fixed. And Zhoutong already said he would take the risk of the people unable to liquidate. I'm not sure how he could have possibly responded better to these problems? It's good, no great, you're bringing up (potential) problems, but there's no need to become disrespectful here.

Good lord calm down man. 

you know what?  i'm tired of being nice to you just b/c you're a 17 yo kid.  f*ck you prick!

i've rooted out several valid problems with the way Bitcoinica functions.  while i had to do some catching up with exactly how your service works b/c its so opaque, it turns out that most of my suspicions are real. 

and i would posit that NO ONE around here knew that your service could freeze up like this and prevent shorts and longs from covering or buying due to a red flag event.  too bad your short clients will have to be liquidated.  its either you or them who will take losses Zhou.  who will you choose?

the fact that you're constantly having to "revise" your algorithm is testament to this.  the fact that i was able to jam your algorithm as up to 4.95 10d ago is fact, not fiction.

you need to keep your mouth shut.

Actually our BTCs come from customers. Since the first week of launch, we allowed BTC deposits until now. BTC deposits are worth about 45%-55% at today's price in Bitcoinica's total portfolio.

Basically Bitcoinica is a pool of shared resources for everyone to utilize. There are limits sometimes (like today, once again, :-/ ), but generally we are very well balanced.

For every BTC shorted at Bitcoinica, a BTC was needed by Bitcoinica. How did Bitcoinica get those BTC? By buying them. You are correct it can have an upward effect though. (The investors of) Bitcoinica provided USD that can be used to buy more BTC, which in turn will drive up the price.

And I must say I agree that the "market advice" Zhoutong provided was unprofessional and out of line for someone in his position. I'm glad he apologized and hopefully such a thing won't happen again

A post in some thread on the Bitcoin forums’ speculation section is not the place to do a public announcement for Bitcoinica.

edit:

Good to see you acknowledging that, zhou.

Now I think both are wrong. I'm really sorry about the explicit "recommendation".

Same here, although I thought about buying Bitcoins with all my Bitcoin savings as margin, but ended up leaving it at a test of 2 BTC for 2 BTC, which are up from 3.5.

I’m not going to use it because it’s too risky for me, but if you are really certain about a move (or certain about a bottom), it should be a great tool.

I wonder if the ability of buying BTC on margin will have the same disastrous effect upwards as shorting had downwards?

It's better to do a public "recommendation" explaining the reason for it, rather than secretly betting against own customers.

I apologize for the words that shouldn't come from the mouth of a broker. I was too angry (or maybe excited) dealing with the flood of non-sense and unreasonable arguments. Really, it was beyond my logical control.

Please do not take it as a market recommendation. I just wanted to tell everyone that I was not going to take advantage of the possibility, and anyone who did would be out of my responsibility.

I can see both sides of it.  Overall I think Zhou does a good job of presenting himself and maintaining a good character, though I still think he shouldn't have made the explicit recommendations he did.

This situation only proves that he is an honest guy.
Otherwise he'd just get some USD by selling the customer's BTC.

Obviously bitcoinica needs an investor who'd put some cash in - it cannot go on like this.

I agree.  Those long-squeeze statements were out of character and a bad move on his part.  Doesn't change anything for me with regard to Bitcoinica.  I haven't used it and don't have any intentions to, not because I think it's necessarily a bad service, but because I simply don't want to get involved in that sort of leveraged trading.

That's not a market recommendation. I was just saying that I was not going to take advantage of this. And I didn't think anyone would.

You can assume that it's a good opportunity to manipulate the market when Bitcoinica is out of reserves. We had no way to hide the "insider information".