71–80 of 197 posts
> The story of how a misplaced decimal point at Alameda Research caused a market crash that echoed around the world Hang on a second. It caused a dip in the price of Bitcoin, that is not a "market crash". Bitcoin is a toy and not a real market, its price is set almost entirely by bullshit wash trades and other forms of fraud.
Reading stories like this makes me wonder why I don't have a long term trade in place for a low amount and hope to fish a good one during a flash crash. Seen them on the stock market too. Back in my day I wrote a few trading bots, they never went anywhere positive after about a week of profit. Seems to me now that the smartest robo-trader algorithm is... 10 wait for human mistake... 20 goto 10
Reading stories like this makes me wonder why I don't have a long term trade in place for a low amount and hope to fish a good one during a flash crash. Seen them on the stock market too. Back in my day I wrote a few trading bots, they never went anywhere positive after about a week of profit. Seems to me now that the smartest robo-trader algorithm is... 10 wait for human mistake... 20 goto 10
Yes we call this a stink bid, and it’s a valid strategy. Keep one open just in case. Most exchanges have slippage protection in place but some are better at it than others.
Honest question: How do you determine that something like this was an honest mistake? Once, when I was much younger, I had a side gig dealing poker at an underground club in NYC. One morning at the end of 10 hours dealing, I accidentally exposed a burn card which turned out to be something one of the players was representing (bluffing), with about $10k on the table. It was an honest mistake - literally a fat finger m…
I can easily believe that development was lax without proper monitoring, controls and testing. Typically for any kind of trading system there'll be multiple layers to help catch these kinds of errors or deliberate fraud. This could include some or all of:
1. A separate system that monitors and clears orders looking for pricing mistakes;
2. A risk management system that looks at your total position and can block orders if they would make your position too long or short;
3. Another system might monitor actual assets vs custodial assets to see if you ever "leak" assets.
To trade any US securities you'd have to go through SEC compliance to make sure you have sufficient systems and monitoring in place, particularly if your system is facing unsophisticated investors. Crypto has largely avoided this kind of scrutiny and rigor.
Part of all this is separate systems help prevent both accidents and fraud. A pricing check in a trading system could be broken by a code change or bypassed by a malicious change. Subverting an external system you may not have access to gets more difficult.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heh. I love being able to pseudonymously tell HN my crazy stories from time to time. It's the only online chatter I indulge in. Sadly I have no colleagues who I can both talk shop with and also talk about my previous lives. "Build what makes you happy..." is a darn good philosophy, btw.
I've played one of those spots by union square. Was fun to feel like a gangster for an evening but ultimately not a crowd I want to spend a lot of time around.
Let's just say your money isn't going to anything good if you play in one of those places.
> The story of how a misplaced decimal point at Alameda Research caused a market crash that echoed around the world Hang on a second. It caused a dip in the price of Bitcoin, that is not a "market crash". Bitcoin is a toy and not a real market, its price is set almost entirely by bullshit wash trades and other forms of fraud.
Bitcoin has a market cap of $530B and at its peak was over $1.3T. That is not a "toy" but a very real financial market.
Honest question: How do you determine that something like this was an honest mistake? Once, when I was much younger, I had a side gig dealing poker at an underground club in NYC. One morning at the end of 10 hours dealing, I accidentally exposed a burn card which turned out to be something one of the players was representing (bluffing), with about $10k on the table. It was an honest mistake - literally a fat finger m…
I once watched a new (I assume) dealer make two large mistakes at a blackjack table, in Vegas, of all places. One, I had put down $500 in twenties, and he was giving me chips, except he was going to give me $1,250 in chips, like he thought they were fifties. Pit Boss looked at him, looked at the chips, "What are you doing??", let him fix the error. A couple of hands in, dealer gets an Ace, so he checks the hole card.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess they thought I produced the bluffing player's card to prevent the other player from folding. But you're right that a dealer who was trying to do that could've done so in any number of subtle ways. I couldn't really figure out why they were accusing me at the time, or what I would've gained from it, but it all happened very fast. There are dealers who are true shuffle mechanics and either know for sure or have…
> there's a scene where the Joe Pesci character cans a floor man for not stopping a slot machine run Robert de Niro. Joe Pesci plays a thug.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is my sense too. What's kind of funny is we weirdly get caught up and excited by the hype... every single time
“We” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I am proud that I have never gotten burned by this sort of thing because I understand that if there’s a lot of hype it’s probably too good to be true.
And for me personally, I will say every time the economy booms for a few years I start to ask: gosh is this ever going to stop?
For example with real estate, I haven't bought any because the prices always seem insane to me. But I'd be far wealthier (on paper at least) if I'd bitten the bullet and bought into the real estate market a few years ago.
Reading stories like this makes me wonder why I don't have a long term trade in place for a low amount and hope to fish a good one during a flash crash. Seen them on the stock market too. Back in my day I wrote a few trading bots, they never went anywhere positive after about a week of profit. Seems to me now that the smartest robo-trader algorithm is... 10 wait for human mistake... 20 goto 10
If you aren’t paying attention you just might end up trading on a real crash too.