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I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

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Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#281

Post by sunchild »

nomurrcy wrote: post #277
sunchild wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, would you say the same if I placed a standing buy order two weeks ago, and it was automatically executed? How is a buyer supposed to know if the seller is making a bona fide offer, esp. where the buyer may place its buy order in advance of the sell order? I stand by my position that it's up to the exchange and the seller to protect against unauthorized sell orders. Of course, under extreme circumstances, the buye…

Yes I would say the exact same thing. The buyer was a direct counter-party to a trade involving stolen property. The buyer isn't liable as he didn't know the property was stolen, but he don't get to keep the property. Typically in this case he would need to seek damages from the exchange to recover his assets (the dollars used in the trade) IANAL but I have first hand seen this type of stuff on various exchanges. (i.…

I doubt you'll find much legal precedent (or published rules on the exchanges) supporting your theory, except in the case where a broker makes unauthorized trades on a seller's behalf. Feel free to prove me wrong...

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#282

Post by bxr »

spitfire wrote: post #114
nupark2 wrote: post #56

If there is real money in bitcoins, then there should be a real engineering staff running a real, secure trading platform.

Sounds like a market opening there. Who wants to start an exchange? A true exchange, so you wouldn't have to front a dime, except for the virtual server. IE: You're only matching orders and taking a cut, not putting any skin in the game.

Who wants to start an exchange?

I'd be down for that, it sounds like a fun project in an interesting domain and I was actually thinking about what building one would entail as I've been reading though the comments here.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#283

Post by pdovy »

Nrsolis wrote: post #280
bobz wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three day settlement rule applies to the NY equity markets. Other markets, including NY fixed income products, run under different rules, including same day settlement. And this isn't a fraud prevention measure, it's a legacy of the days when settlement included someone carting a stack of stock certificates from one bank's vault to another. Lastly, most traders trade on a contractual basis, not a settlement basis…

There are some other important differences: 1. In the US, most exchange operators are the counter-parties to all trades. They also interact with settlement and clearing services that ensure the verification of proper ownership and conveyance of securities. In the old days, something like a third of all trades failed to meet the three-day window because some part of this process would fail. 2. There are very very spec…

I'm not sure where you're coming from with #2. Most exchanges use price-time priority to determine execution order. From the description the best bid was $0.01, so obviously he would get filled first at $0.0101.

The real problem is that the market was able to descend to that level to begin with. There should have been some sort of circuit breaker limits in the Mt. Gox system that would have halted such a massive decline, similar to what exist in the US equity and futures markets.

As to #3, really the only thing that matters in terms of exchange access in the US is that you satisfy the appropriate compliance burdens (broker-dealer status) and can pay the fees required for naked access. That may be good selection criteria for "informed traders" but it certainly isn't any guarantee.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#284

Post by spitfire »

bxr wrote: post #282
spitfire wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a market opening there. Who wants to start an exchange? A true exchange, so you wouldn't have to front a dime, except for the virtual server. IE: You're only matching orders and taking a cut, not putting any skin in the game.

Who wants to start an exchange? I'd be down for that, it sounds like a fun project in an interesting domain and I was actually thinking about what building one would entail as I've been reading though the comments here.

Business processes. The code is dead simple. A few hundred lines of order matching. The real meat is handling all the business processes, clearing transfers, etc.

and finding a legally safe location to put a business like that.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#285

Post by zokier »

spitfire wrote: post #114
nupark2 wrote: post #56

If there is real money in bitcoins, then there should be a real engineering staff running a real, secure trading platform.

Sounds like a market opening there. Who wants to start an exchange? A true exchange, so you wouldn't have to front a dime, except for the virtual server. IE: You're only matching orders and taking a cut, not putting any skin in the game.

Bitcoin wiki already lists several exchanges. What would a new one do to make a difference?

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#286

Post by pnathan »

joe_the_user wrote: post #276
pnathan wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to view BTC as a commodity, it does look very boiler-room-y. If you want to view BTC as a currency, it doesn't look that way... IMO.

Uh, BTC appears entirely dysfunctional as currency. "currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency BTC is neither generally accepted nor does it have the STABLE VALUE needed to become more accepted as a medium of exchange . And last element is something the Bitcommunists just utterly miss. Because a currency is medium , just a means , it will not function unless it…

Well, as a currency, for it to 'increase in value', it needs to be more broadly accepted. That would increase ability for people to use it.

But currencies are also dual-purposed as commodities (c.f., forex traders).

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#287

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Tichy wrote: post #227
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is that the BTC being sold were stolen. First up, who stole the bitcoins from whom? Second, why allow trades that you know that you won't honour and will instead want to roll back? Third, rarely the bank loses, why do they get a do-over just because they lost at playing at forex?

"First up, who stole the bitcoins from whom?" Allegedly one account with a lot of BTC was hacked. The Bitcoins were stolen from that account.

There doesn't appear to be any evidence.

People on the Mt.Gox forums are sceptical because the amount traded appears to be equal to the entire Mt.Gox trading volume (from the little I've read).

The speculation is that it is either Mt.Gox himself/themselves, an account representing the entire volume of all Mt.Gox traders or some other buyer who has been in from the start and has somehow escaped the notice of the other traders (this last option also accounts for the ability to break in as the account security apparently was very weak and hasn't been forcedly enhanced).

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#288

Post by spitfire »

zokier wrote: post #285
spitfire wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a market opening there. Who wants to start an exchange? A true exchange, so you wouldn't have to front a dime, except for the virtual server. IE: You're only matching orders and taking a cut, not putting any skin in the game.

Bitcoin wiki already lists several exchanges. What would a new one do to make a difference?

Stability. People will pay for a known quantity.

If you create a clear, well defined entity there very well may be an opening in the market for another bitcoin exchange.

In fact, i'd say there absolutely is an opening and I presume the market will grow over time. Skim 0.75% off each side of the transaction and you're looking to be in good shape. Particularly as btc trading activity increases.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#289

Post by nomurrcy »

sunchild wrote: post #281
nomurrcy wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I would say the exact same thing. The buyer was a direct counter-party to a trade involving stolen property. The buyer isn't liable as he didn't know the property was stolen, but he don't get to keep the property. Typically in this case he would need to seek damages from the exchange to recover his assets (the dollars used in the trade) IANAL but I have first hand seen this type of stuff on various exchanges. (i.…

I doubt you'll find much legal precedent (or published rules on the exchanges) supporting your theory, except in the case where a broker makes unauthorized trades on a seller's behalf. Feel free to prove me wrong...

When I say I have seen it I mean I have seen it first hand. I have worked for banks where trades were unwound with the counter-party for this exact reason. The implementation is messy, but no bank on the other side of a trade wants to be party to trafficking in stolen goods resulting from a fraudulent trade.

What happened here is akin to me logging into your brokerage account with a stolen password and selling all your securities. This happens and those trades get busted. Sometimes the selling bank just eats the loss as it would take too much work or too much embarrassment to recover, but other times they work with the counter-party to unwind.

I'm not asserting this happens in all cases. As I said above, IANAL. I know equity laws in particular are a bit different than a lot of other types of property which fall under common-law.

That is kind of moot though as equity laws don't apply here - bit-coins aren't equity.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#290

Post by steveplace »

spitfire wrote: post #114
nupark2 wrote: post #56

If there is real money in bitcoins, then there should be a real engineering staff running a real, secure trading platform.

Sounds like a market opening there. Who wants to start an exchange? A true exchange, so you wouldn't have to front a dime, except for the virtual server. IE: You're only matching orders and taking a cut, not putting any skin in the game.

You just wrote out the business model of over 500 forex brokerage firms.
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