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A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

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Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#171

Post by intrasight »

wsc981 wrote: post #153
intrasight wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I first heard the term Initial Coin Offering last year, I laughed and thought "who would be so gullible as to just give someone their money?". Well...

It's just a way to finance a start-up. Sure most ICO's are scams, but surely there are a few gems. The way I see it, it's a way for a common man to become an angel investor. And just like with angel investing, most start-ups fail. But you could get lucky. Of course one should always do some research before investing. Figure out the history of the team members, check the source code commits if available, believe the u…

A start-up that doesn't make anything, and the effectively sells the same product as all its competitors.

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#172

Post by Latty »

dragonwriter wrote: post #110
Latty wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, we have attempted (at least in part) to create a system where acting selfishly in pursuit of money forces you to create value for society. That's literally the intent of the idea of capitalism. It's a good idea - people will act selfishly instinctively, so if you can align that to make it good, then everything works. Of course, we know raw capitalism doesn't work (e.g: monopolies break it). So our systems hav…

> I mean, we have attempted (at least in part) to create a system where acting selfishly in pursuit of money forces you to create value for society. That's literally the intent of the idea of capitalism. No, it's not; that's an after-the-fact rationalization. I mean, we were a few centuries into the feudalism-capitalism transition before anyone started even talking about property rights in those terms in general, at…

Yes, I'm talking about how we justify it now and why we continue to try to use it as our primary system. That is at the very least the sales pitch. I believe it's a sensible idea - trying to ignore or change human nature seems unlikely to work, trying to harness it and direct it seems viable, and works to at least some extent in our current system.

My point was that, while that may be the aim of the system, it's not inherent to it - you are backing up my point by saying that it was not always used that way.

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#173

Post by Latty »

andrepd wrote: post #120
Latty wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, we have attempted (at least in part) to create a system where acting selfishly in pursuit of money forces you to create value for society. That's literally the intent of the idea of capitalism. It's a good idea - people will act selfishly instinctively, so if you can align that to make it good, then everything works. Of course, we know raw capitalism doesn't work (e.g: monopolies break it). So our systems hav…

>I mean, we have attempted (at least in part) to create a system where acting selfishly in pursuit of money forces you to create value for society. That's literally the intent of the idea of capitalism. No that's completely false. Capitalism is the replacement (and logical continuation) of feudalism, after its collapse, as a system of social stratification. Saying that is trying to validate your thinking and ignoring…

I am talking about the idea as it exists now, not the historical thing. I accept that it didn't spring up as it stands, but the idea that it is a system to create the society we want is at the very least the current claim for why we use it. I believe it's a system that can be made to work well, given the right setup.

My point was that, while that may be the aim of the system, it's not inherent to it - you are backing up my point by saying that it was not always used that way. (You may argue it still doesn't, although I'd say it does at least to some extent).

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#174

Post by code_duck »

systems wrote: post #133
code_duck wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s somewhat like a conclusion I came to about another field I am in, glassblowing. For a long time, I thought the idea was to become more skilled at the art, and that would make me more sucessful… It turns out getting better at marketing is much more important, assuming the overall goal is to make money. Financially, mediocre glassblowers with excellent marketing do far better than excellent glassblowers with med…

well marketing is an art .. marketing was born with competition, you need marketing, because you are not the only one good at what you do marketing is anything and everything you do, to influence others, to achieve your objectives .. this does include the product design and features .. or in other words, the features you chose to include in your product marketing is not bad, and is not a waste marketing is not, in my…

Indeed, nothing bad about having marketing skill or excelling at it. Certain people can take average glass skill and, through marketing, networking` and product savvy, parlay it into greater fame and fortune than others - people who have been pounding at their craft for decades.

Building a brand is a skill many artists don't excel at. It requires similar people skills to being a salesman. Often they have to rely on dealers, gallery owners and store owners who have the people skills to do retail and wholesale more successfully. The situation is somewhat mirrored in tech with the schism between programmers and CEO/investor/founder type personalities.

In the niche I work in, some people got lucky and became 'famous' in a kind of underground video way on Instagram and Snapchat. These days it's starting to resemble a more traditional art market.

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#176

Post by sluggg »

tobltobs wrote: post #160
sluggg wrote: post #131

I am deeply surprised by how few people are mentioning bots. This is no doubt directly related to trading bots that are polling coinmarketcap and then buying/selling through some API like the one bittrex offers. The number of bots that are actively trading is unknown, but if you do some digging the amount of resources and interest there is around trading bots leads me to believe that the pool of bots must be massive.…

Have a look at http://http://www.dancingbots.com which visualizes Orderbook positions. Most of the action (95%?) close to current price looks like positions from bots. Compare the orderbooks of exchanges which have no fees for maker orders (like gdax, bitfinex) and are preferred by bots to those exchanges who do ask for a fee.

HEY! this site is amazing and is just what I am looking for. BUT the link you provided is missing a colon after "http" and I thought the site was down for a second. I am sure if others see this they will have similar issues. Please fix your link :)

Re: A Cryptocurrency Website Changes Its Data, and $100B in Market Value Vanishes

#177

Post by retube »

twinkletwinkle wrote: post #100
retube wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but at the same time there isn't realistically a way for them to "safely" adjust which exchanges they include in the averages. this is a very solved problem in financial markets: you source quotes from a set list of contributors, ditch a set number of the highs and lows and average rest, possibly weighted in some way, e.g trade volume.

Oh, like LIBOR! That's always worked perfectly, hasn't it?

Well actually, yes, pretty much. No trader actually succeeded in meaningfully moving the fix, precisely due to this mechanism - except for 1 guy - Tom Hayes, probably the best known of the Libor guys (the other guys were done for attempting to move the fix, not actually moving it)

Tom knew full well that it was impossible for a single guy to move the fix - go too high or too low and your submission gets chucked out. In the range, as 1 of 12 others, you aren't going to have a meaningful impact.

The only way of moving it is to get all submitters (or at least lots of them) to submit high or low fixes in your favour. But a cartel like that is never going to work:

1) It means revealing your positions to your trading counterparties and competitirs - not good 2) Others could be the other way round to you, and want to submit fixes against you 3) Even in those heady days of loose standards, setting up and running a cartel would be logistically tricky

So - what to do? Well Tom had a great insight. he realised that athe interbank lending market was pretty illiquid and there was wasn't much mush actual trading to reference. Most banks were submitting "best guesses" and those guesses were based on broker screens like ICAP. The rationale was that ICAP saw all the flows, so ICAP know the levels, so it was reasonalble to base your submission on the ICAP screens (ICAP screens are used as a reference in all sorts of markets, they are the gold standard).

Now Tom also raelised that ICAP weren't seeing much flow either and that their prices weren't much better than guestimates. So - he basically bribed a couple of brokers at ICAP to bump the screens. And that way he'd effectively bump the whole market as everyone was basing their prices on them! (He bribed the ICAP guys by executing "wash" trades, back-to-backs, that have no economic rationale, but generate brokerage fees).

So, in short, yes the top & tailing averaging approach is pretty robust. But of course no system is completely infallible.

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