Topic: TradeHill issues: let's evaluate (Read 2886 times)

I think that speculation beats mining when it comes to making money 
But it's kind of hard to speculate without MtGox around 

Not so much that.  Rather, I've recently made my investment in my mining rig(s) and gotten everything set up on the financial back end (eg., banks to transfer to/from).  The Mt. Gox hack happened pretty much as I went live with everything and was ready to start mining + trading = making money.

As I've said, I can forgive someone (or some site) getting hacked.  That happens.  So like everyone else I've been patiently waiting.  I had created my gox account (unfortunately) on 6/20.  I wish they had just disabled the ability to create new accounts, instead of ENABLE the ability to create accounts you can't log into.

What is becoming hard to forgive (continuing in the mafia phraseology) is the fumbling that's going on over at gox since the hack.  That has NOTHING to do with them being an unlucky target.  It has to do with them being schlubs.

It was the single area of research that I wasn't able to get a solid hand on before getting involved.  So I just assumed that gox should be pretty solid on the back end since they were starting to handle a decent amount of $$$ on a daily basis.

Perhaps more than anything, I'm concerned about how gox can damage the entire btc phenomenon.  I hate it when a few schlubs mess things up for everyone else.  Remember, gox is making money too here.  They're not philanthropists.

If bitcoins can't be traded and converted into real currency, they will die.  It's that simple.

As an aside,  I've been a strong (published) advocate of open software and open standards in general since before Linux kernel 1.0.  It makes me "very angry" to think that yet another innovative and open idea might fall to the wayside ... because of schlubs.

Sadly, I wasn't able to get Furio on the phone.  He and I feel the same way on this one.

lol, you be mad

The above was a joke, I just wanted to get a response from Marvinmartian. Wasn't quite what I expected, either, lol

On a posting marathon, by any chance ?

If Tony Soprano ran mtgox they'd have been back up in an hour.

Tell "the boss" you're losing thousands of dollars a day because somebody hacked the website. 

Go ahead.

I'm gonna go call Furio.

Don't forget that TradeHill is run by the Chilean mafia 

Have you looked at "trading engines" over at places like:

eTrade
TD Ameritrade
Scottrade
OptionsXpress
Schwab
Merrill Lynch

or any online stock (or futures or optioons) trading site?

They all have limitations that would make the above you cite look like a mosquito bite.  TradeHill may have the earmarks of being new and growing pains ... but the issues mentioned above seem (oddly) very little source of concern.

well, they have good days and bad days, like everyone else 

for me it worked smooth there all the time until now...
no problems

Really? 

TradeHill ?? Issues !!! they never have, have they ?



lol

Im surprised there isn't much talk on improving the ACTUAL website.  


1. Transaction History! (Besides for the recent history which disappears, how am I supposed to remember how muh I paid?)
2. Rate Calculator- I know I can use the calc on my computer, but it would be nice to have one built into the website
3. Better Charting!
4. A nicer dashboard would be cool to. Where it has your recent history, balances, and a small chart with current bid/ask/volume

Fortunately I can't see them, because they are Flash.  Ugh.  Why?

If you used Mt. Gox in the past then your password has already leaked onto the web in the accounts.csv file.

Granted, with current technology it will take long to crack (if you made it long enough) but it was certainly no user error, and there is nothing you could have personally done to prevent it.

I'd treat it as gone for good & stop using that pass everywhere.

Good points Nagle! However, I stick to my opinion  that TradeHill should have only one trading pool and one rate at least for the USD/LR pair. Liberty reserve and the dollar are 1:1, so I really do not see the point of having two different trading pools. MtGox and Bitcoin7 do not have different pools...

It appears that TradeHill does not have enough LR liquidity to make this work, or is not willing to put in the extra effort. Again, NOT cool 

Don't expect BTC to be acting much as a currency for a long time.  Even if stable, Gresham's Law will make sure its status remains primarily as a store of value -- so long as legal tender laws force devaluing currencies to be accepted in payment.

Agreed.  But if it routinely stays within, say, 5% over a week, a merchant could price something in Bitcoins and reprice daily or weekly.  When we were getting 50% variation in a week, that was hopeless.

If Bitcoins are to be a useful medium of exchange over the Internet, it has to be possible for a merchant to collect them over the course of a day, and at the end of the day, convert them into a real currency and deposit the value in that currency into a real bank. For that to happen:

• the conversion rate has to be stable over the course of a day
• the market depth has to be great enough that a merchant can sell their day's receipts without moving the market.
• the market has to deliver the real currency that day, every day, with no excuses

On a small scale, we're sort of there. Daily variation is now a few percent. Tradehill has enough market depth to absorb a few hundred Bitcoins (but not a few thousand). Tradehill seems to be paying out promptly via Dwolla, or at least we're not hearing people screaming about problems getting their money out. That's good enough for a small-sized business.  You could sell T-shirts, LED lightbulbs, or web hosting for Bitcoins right now.

However, a hundred businesses doing that, or one business that did $25K in business a day, would crash the market.  A business that operates on a thin margin, and can't tolerate 5% daily volatility, let alone the nonsense from the Mt. Gox era, could not afford to use Bitcoins. For that, we need a much more stable and deeper market, and exchanges with real financial solidity.

I suppose it is if an immature currency wants to pretend it's all grown up. The reality is, a "wait and see" attitude is what's causing it to not see some action. The bottom line, this thing is going to move violently next week. Most likely, in both directions. That's the way it should be, for some time to come.

It's a long way from being a mature currency, with a stable valuation.

FOREX?

That's what's supposed to happen with a currency.

Their charts are awful (really bad) and the market doesn't move for days on end.

Password recovery is no big deal IMHO. However, I just noticed something I don't really like.
Tradehill separates trading pools by currency. If you want to trade BTC/USD, it's one rate. BTC/LR different rate.
If I want LR for my BTC, I have to accept a lower price than if I wanted USD. This is NOT cool...

You do realize that both of those examples probably posses your full address, SSN, and DOB that they will then ask you to verify to confirm your identity.

I'm pretty sure you want to remain as anonymous as possible on these exchanges.  Because of that, this is an entirely different ballgame in terms of maintaining security with anonymity.  Hence why MtGox now requires people to to provide past trade information to regain access to their account.

Can't have it both ways.  IMHO, password recovery in this case should inconvenience the user.

Wow you must eat a lot of roses to keep your shit from stinking...        fiber is good for ya anyways...

Password recovery is not an issue to me as it takes user error in the first place. Don't lose passwords and it won't matter.

My only issue with Tradehill is their transaction times for depositing and withdrawing. Fast compared to mtgox, but slow compared to everyone else.

Im glad im not the only one, I signed up, must have typed the password wrong..

No password recovery, I gave up..     Their loss...

Automatic methods do exist:

https://trading.scottrade.com/Login/PasswordResetRequest.aspx?lang=en

https://us.etrade.com/e/t/user/resetpasswd

In the event that the TradeHill team is reading this thread, I realize my above comment may sound a little abrasive. I do realize that setting up a secure site is not easy, and you should be given credit for launching the site.

However, there are standard practices when developing sites which allow individuals to sign up, and when dealing with money, instilling confidence in the users is important.

I would suggest that the two items enumerated in my initial post be addressed.

After that, I think a review of this thread ( http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=20720.0 ) would be worth your while. It is an evolving document which makes suggestions for exchange developers.

Automatic password recovery, while efficient, is a bit of a problem from a security perspective...

Notes about TradeHill:

Let's just suppose you forgot your password. Where on the site can you request that a new one be emailed to you? Using the contact option is not good enough, as it does not sound immediate.

Let's just suppose your email address is greater than 30 characters. How do you sign up?

Given these two huge oversights, one wonders what is going on inside their trading engine.