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Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

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Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#81
> “Given that this is a new product, as expected we are evaluating the specifications and risk attributes for the bitcoin futures contracts as part of our standard due diligence process,”

How can you be diligent at identifying risks in bitcoin derivatives? O_o

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#82

>"The decision to clear client trades will be made on a case-by-case basis, the person said." Could someone say what "clearing the trades" mean here?

Clearing is all about novation. This basically means that the buyer and seller don't see each other as counterparties, but only see Goldman as the "middle-man" counterparty. It's a method of reducing counterparty risk, as both parties end up transacting with a credible institution, rather than directly with each other. This also means that the central clearing counterparty takes on counterparty risk, and that's pretty much what the clearing fees are paid to them for.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#83

Has anyone discussed the future of forks with respect to futures? Or indeed to any cryptocurrency denominated debts. The easy case is: Alice owes Bob 1.0 BTC in year 2020. Between then and now, BTC forks into BTC and BTZ -- and so now Alice Owes bob 1.0 "new" BTC and zero BTZ. On net, does this mean that whatever fork retains the legal position of BTC is going to be in more demand than hypthetical BTZs? Given that, w…

That is indeed a hell of a problem. The only thing you could objectively do is to nominate the bitcoin client that you use in order to retrieve coins. That includes the version. "Alice pays Bob 1.0 in year 2020 using bitcoin core node client v0.15.2"

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#85
post #26
post #15

This should give the big Wall St banks the ability to muck with crypto prices however they choose, just like they can do with gold and silver and other commodities (for example, Goldman magically closed gold positions and sold short 2 days before historic 25% price drop in 2 trading days in 2013[0]) Hopefully people will read those contracts and understand how delivery actually works and realize that COMEX or whoever…

> This should give the big Wall St banks the ability to muck with crypto prices however they choose, The current status quo is that large bitcoin holders can muck with crypto prices however they choose.

Futures exchanges will have to buy large sums of underlying assets (one reason for the recent spike.) So, in the end a lot of exchanges will be some of the largest crypto holders.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#86
post #82

>"The decision to clear client trades will be made on a case-by-case basis, the person said." Could someone say what "clearing the trades" mean here?

Clearing is all about novation. This basically means that the buyer and seller don't see each other as counterparties, but only see Goldman as the "middle-man" counterparty. It's a method of reducing counterparty risk, as both parties end up transacting with a credible institution, rather than directly with each other. This also means that the central clearing counterparty takes on counterparty risk, and that's prett…

As a footnote, I'm not sure how Goldman are going to novate the transactions - as in, will they actually issue 2 transactions on the blockchain?! I don't see a real need for that, given that the blockchain protects against such risks to a large extent. Maybe their definition of clearing for bitcoin is different to that for standard derivatives, in which case they will probably just help their non techy clients (i.e. many of the hedge funds in Mayfair and Manhattan) execute bitcoin transactions.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#87

Has anyone discussed the future of forks with respect to futures? Or indeed to any cryptocurrency denominated debts. The easy case is: Alice owes Bob 1.0 BTC in year 2020. Between then and now, BTC forks into BTC and BTZ -- and so now Alice Owes bob 1.0 "new" BTC and zero BTZ. On net, does this mean that whatever fork retains the legal position of BTC is going to be in more demand than hypthetical BTZs? Given that, w…

Another question (this is just my ignorance) but...if BTC has a fork, does that mean that the new fork has a new entire supply? I thought the "value" in BTC is that there is a limited supply and it can't be degraded like a fiat currency. If you can just keep forking...how is that not immeasurably increasing supply just like the ECB and Fed do?

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#88

Has anyone discussed the future of forks with respect to futures? Or indeed to any cryptocurrency denominated debts. The easy case is: Alice owes Bob 1.0 BTC in year 2020. Between then and now, BTC forks into BTC and BTZ -- and so now Alice Owes bob 1.0 "new" BTC and zero BTZ. On net, does this mean that whatever fork retains the legal position of BTC is going to be in more demand than hypthetical BTZs? Given that, w…

> Has anyone discussed the future of forks with respect to futures?

The reference bitcoin index for futures is well-defined: http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/files/bitcoin-reference-rate...

I would guess that this was done in collaboration with the relevant exchanges. So forks are pretty much a don't-care for the futures that begin trading in the next two weeks.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#89
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Or worse, you have orders that are filled, but because they are market orders and the market has disappeared, they aren't filled at anywhere close to the price you expected. At my first job I had a project that involved looking at the actual order book for various stocks on the NASDAQ. There's always some asshole who puts in a limit buy for $0.01 on the hopes that if liquidity dries up, they'll be the best bid…

>There's always some asshole who puts in a limit buy for $0.01 on the hopes that if liquidity dries up, they'll be the best bid and get the stock for literal pennies on the dollar ... Because your stop is actually a market order, you take whatever price the market gives you, which is...$0.01. Why doesn't everyone do this constantly if it's a possibility? Low chance of such a windfall, but what's the downside?

Basically extremely low chance of windfall, plus transaction costs. Most brokers charge you to place an order; even if the price is just a few pennies, if your chance of that order actually being filled is one in an extremely low number, you're still losing money on the deal. Additionally, "good till canceled" orders (which is what you want to use here) are time-limited on most exchanges, typically to 30 days. That means you need to spend mental bandwidth refreshing them every month, which for something that has an infinitesimal chance of paying out, usually isn't worth it. (I basically let my order lapse after a month because I forgot about it.) The orders exist because out of millions of market participants, somebody's going to place one, but it generally isn't cost-effective for that person to be you.

With regulated exchanges like the major stock ones, you also have to worry about your transactions being invalidated, eg. in the 2010 flash crash nobody who did this actually got paid out because the exchange said "Oops, software glitch" and canceled all transactions before settlement (with the stock market, you don't actually receive the stock until 3 days after you make the transaction).

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#90

Has anyone discussed the future of forks with respect to futures? Or indeed to any cryptocurrency denominated debts. The easy case is: Alice owes Bob 1.0 BTC in year 2020. Between then and now, BTC forks into BTC and BTZ -- and so now Alice Owes bob 1.0 "new" BTC and zero BTZ. On net, does this mean that whatever fork retains the legal position of BTC is going to be in more demand than hypthetical BTZs? Given that, w…

Another question (this is just my ignorance) but...if BTC has a fork, does that mean that the new fork has a new entire supply? I thought the "value" in BTC is that there is a limited supply and it can't be degraded like a fiat currency. If you can just keep forking...how is that not immeasurably increasing supply just like the ECB and Fed do?

No, the forked coins and the original coins aren’t fungible. It’s more like me saying “show me your dollar bills at the time of the fork and I’ll give you an equivalent amount of Monopoly money”. It’s not going to be worth anything unless you somehow convince a bunch of other people it’s worth something, and even then it’s likely going to be worth far less than the original coins because fewer people will accept it and it will be easily attacked due to lack of hashing power.
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