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GDAX will restore the balance of margin called users with company funds

blog.gdax.com

11–20 of 52 posts

Re: GDAX will restore the balance of margin called users with company funds

#11
post #2

They must be making a lot of money to be able to do something like this. I understood it to be millions of dollars.

There was about 128,000 in volume, Assuming worst case scenario, it appears that the compensated loss would be ~$40 million dollars. If you assume buy limit order book was triangular it's about ~$25 million dollars. That's about 100-200 days of ether trading fees.

Re: GDAX will restore the balance of margin called users with company funds

#12
post #3

This is interesting because it gives them a huge incentive to prevent this from happening again, if it costs them millions of dollars each time. I wonder what changes they will institute?

Also gives them a huge reason to operate as a fractional reserve.

This will not end well.

Re: GDAX will restore the balance of margin called users with company funds

#14

Wait I'm confused... The market moved dramatically and quickly, which can happen dealing with something as speculative as cryptocurrency, and yet they are refunding people? Did I miss something? Isn't this part of the risk investing?

It is probably also illegal for them to compensate some customers and not others. There are FINRA regulations against that.

Re: GDAX will restore the balance of margin called users with company funds

#15

Wait I'm confused... The market moved dramatically and quickly, which can happen dealing with something as speculative as cryptocurrency, and yet they are refunding people? Did I miss something? Isn't this part of the risk investing?

Problems:

1) Flash crash 2) Horrible customer support 3) Delayed Ethereum widthdrawals when the network isn't under stress

They have a lot of problems. They may be happy to spend the money to clean up one of them.

Re: GDAX will restore the balance of margin called users with company funds

#16

Wait I'm confused... The market moved dramatically and quickly, which can happen dealing with something as speculative as cryptocurrency, and yet they are refunding people? Did I miss something? Isn't this part of the risk investing?

It is probably also illegal for them to compensate some customers and not others. There are FINRA regulations against that.

If people could get refunds in the US stock market because of flash crashes, algo trading, that sort of doesn't make the market a balanced market anymore.

See 2010 flash crash. "Procter & Gamble in particular dropped nearly 37% before rebounding, within minutes, back to near its original levels. The drop in P&G was broadcast live on CNBC at the time, with commentator Jim Cramer commenting."

Re: GDAX will restore the balance of margin called users with company funds

#17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably also illegal for them to compensate some customers and not others. There are FINRA regulations against that.

If people could get refunds in the US stock market because of flash crashes, algo trading, that sort of doesn't make the market a balanced market anymore. See 2010 flash crash. "Procter & Gamble in particular dropped nearly 37% before rebounding, within minutes, back to near its original levels. The drop in P&G was broadcast live on CNBC at the time, with commentator Jim Cramer commenting."

Exactly. There are a lot of problems with compensating customers who lose money. This is why it is unethical for Financial Advisors to do that.

Re: GDAX will restore the balance of margin called users with company funds

#18

Wait I'm confused... The market moved dramatically and quickly, which can happen dealing with something as speculative as cryptocurrency, and yet they are refunding people? Did I miss something? Isn't this part of the risk investing?

Unless it's an issue with the trading platform itself and they think this is cheaper than a class action lawsuit.

Re: GDAX will restore the balance of margin called users with company funds

#19
post #18

Wait I'm confused... The market moved dramatically and quickly, which can happen dealing with something as speculative as cryptocurrency, and yet they are refunding people? Did I miss something? Isn't this part of the risk investing?

Unless it's an issue with the trading platform itself and they think this is cheaper than a class action lawsuit.

[deleted]

Re: GDAX will restore the balance of margin called users with company funds

#20

Wait I'm confused... The market moved dramatically and quickly, which can happen dealing with something as speculative as cryptocurrency, and yet they are refunding people? Did I miss something? Isn't this part of the risk investing?

It takes a few hundred ETH to have worthwhile leverage.. so they probably risked losing a substantial amount of trade volume and liquidity with the fiasco aside from loyal customers and early adopters. It wasn't just the natural market forces. They directly manipulated the market by stopping trading, and indirectly during and after the event with a variety of system issues that are not comforting.

IMO this move to replenish traders was a mature business decision that many tech companies would have failed at let alone crypto companies. There is massive money in the long game for Coinbase/GDAX, and providing real and imaginary assurance could cement them to become the Visa of the next decades.

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