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Bitcoin has come a long way... 7 years ago I was writing perl scripts to cobble together a depth-of-market program that operated on the mtgox API. I would get e

Bitcoin has come a long way... 7 years ago I was writing perl scripts to cobble together a depth-of-market program that operated on the mtgox API. I would get excited scalping coins from $17-19 USD back then. No SEC/CFTC, no regulation, no anything, just good old fashioned auction market theory - combined with a sucker being born every moment and winding up on the other end of a mtgox trade. The sky was the limit, it was an exciting time if you were an oddball breed of programmer crossed with day trader. Fast forward.... WTF is going on now? Regulated exchanges for bitcoin, dozens of btc clones, new exchanges being birthed/destroyed each month, and the dinosaurs of finance adopting it 10 years too late. It's a crazy mixed up world.

surrey-fringe 9y ago
> Regulated exchanges for bitcoin Working on it. See: Bitshares, or any other decentralized excange
- nebabyte 9y ago
  He was answering his own question
ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
Are you comfortable saying how much you made with your program on mtgox?
- module0000 9y ago
  Sure, it's not too impressive though...I think my net gains were in the 15k area. I was a really small fish back then, I ended up making more(in BTC) by selling the actual program for other people to use. At the time, there wasn't a depth-of-market setup available for mtgox, so the majority of trading was people looking at the last sale price and throwing their bid/ask based entirely on that. Nowadays I think every exchange has their own flavor of depth-of-market platform available, and there are plugins for major trading platforms(xtrader/ninjatrader/multicharts) that work with the BTC exchanges. There is still money to be made scalping BTC, but since the price is higher the margin required is much, much, much greater. And with more margin comes more possibility of loss, etc.
adventured 9y ago
> the dinosaurs of finance adopting it 10 years too late The monoliths of finance will set the legislation that will determine everything about crypto-currencies in all major economies. And if their extreme political power isn't enough, they already by far own the most patents relating to blockchain tech. Bitcoin + Ethereum = $58 billion. JP Morgan = $330 billion. That's one "dinosaur" with $25 billion per year in net income. The notion that they're dinosaurs and they're ten years late, is laughable. Along with all the other banks and central banks, they'll dictate the terms by which crypto-currencies will exist (the only alternative to being controlled by the banksters that control everything related to finance, is to remain a niche that never goes big / mainstream).
- corporateslave2 9y ago
  Why do you say they will dictate the terms? They will own the mining? The whole point of bitcoin is decentralization (unless some large entity owns mining majority).
  - omarchowdhury 9y ago
    You don't think they can create their own distributed ledger?
    - corporateslave2 9y ago
      Oh I see. Bank/corporation owned currency is a weird concept....
      - omarchowdhury 9y ago
        What do you mean? Obviously if they can create their own blockchain they can issue their own currency, too. It's just a book of who has how much.
        campbelltown 9y ago
        Blockchains only improve the efficiency of permissionless system. If you're going to create an in-house currency, it would be idiotic to use something as un-scalable as a blockchain.
patrickk 9y ago
> dozens of btc clones Why is having new BTC competitors a bad thing?
- freeflight 9y ago
  Because the high number of these competitors make it look like the vast majority of them are just pump and dump speculation schemes. In a way cryptocurrencies have become the new Wallstreet where few people, with very specialized knowledge and connections, can make money while they keep telling everybody else "It's so easy everybody can do it" so they have a steady supply of new suckers.
ralfd 9y ago
> just good old fashioned auction market theory - Which is? I would love to read more, any pointer/links for reading about that?
- ice109 9y ago
  http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Auction+market+theory http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Auction+market+theory
- module0000 9y ago
  This is a good read about auction theory: http://www.mysmp.com/stocks/auction-market.html http://www.mysmp.com/stocks/auction-market.html It's easy to simplify though... imagine that all trades for anything, happened between $1 and $10. Now imagine a graph from bottom to top, starting at the bottom($1) and ending at the top($10). Horizontally, draw a bar next to each price, and the width of the bar should represent how many trades happened at each price. In my poorly drawn example below, you can see 2 trades happened at $1, while 4 trades happened at $3(more than any other price). Auction market theory says that the price is likely to return to $3, since that is where the majority of business was done. So to trade based on that, you are looking to sell at $5 and buy at $1, in anticipation of the market moving back towards that center of $3. It's a gross oversimplification, but that's the heart of auction theory. $5 ++ $4 +++ $3 ++++ $2 +++ $1 ++
- ronald_raygun 9y ago
  I'd highly recommend this book. The math is decently sophisticated, but it has a lot of cool insights. https://www.amazon.com/Auction-Theory-Second-Vijay-Krishna/dp/0123745071 https://www.amazon.com/Auction-Theory-Second-Vijay-Krishna/d...

surrey-fringe 9y ago

> Regulated exchanges for bitcoin Working on it. See: Bitshares, or any other decentralized excange

nebabyte 9y ago
He was answering his own question

ghostbrainalpha 9y ago

Are you comfortable saying how much you made with your program on mtgox?

module0000 9y ago
Sure, it's not too impressive though...I think my net gains were in the 15k area. I was a really small fish back then, I ended up making more(in BTC) by selling the actual program for other people to use. At the time, there wasn't a depth-of-market setup available for mtgox, so the majority of trading was people looking at the last sale price and throwing their bid/ask based entirely on that. Nowadays I think every exchange has their own flavor of depth-of-market platform available, and there are plugins for major trading platforms(xtrader/ninjatrader/multicharts) that work with the BTC exchanges. There is still money to be made scalping BTC, but since the price is higher the margin required is much, much, much greater. And with more margin comes more possibility of loss, etc.

adventured 9y ago

> the dinosaurs of finance adopting it 10 years too late The monoliths of finance will set the legislation that will determine everything about crypto-currencies in all major economies. And if their extreme political power isn't enough, they already by far own the most patents relating to blockchain tech. Bitcoin + Ethereum = $58 billion. JP Morgan = $330 billion. That's one "dinosaur" with $25 billion per year in net income. The notion that they're dinosaurs and they're ten years late, is laughable. Along with all the other banks and central banks, they'll dictate the terms by which crypto-currencies will exist (the only alternative to being controlled by the banksters that control everything related to finance, is to remain a niche that never goes big / mainstream).

corporateslave2 9y ago
Why do you say they will dictate the terms? They will own the mining? The whole point of bitcoin is decentralization (unless some large entity owns mining majority).
- omarchowdhury 9y ago
  You don't think they can create their own distributed ledger?
  - corporateslave2 9y ago
    Oh I see. Bank/corporation owned currency is a weird concept....
    - omarchowdhury 9y ago
      What do you mean? Obviously if they can create their own blockchain they can issue their own currency, too. It's just a book of who has how much.
      - campbelltown 9y ago
        Blockchains only improve the efficiency of permissionless system. If you're going to create an in-house currency, it would be idiotic to use something as un-scalable as a blockchain.

patrickk 9y ago

> dozens of btc clones Why is having new BTC competitors a bad thing?

freeflight 9y ago
Because the high number of these competitors make it look like the vast majority of them are just pump and dump speculation schemes. In a way cryptocurrencies have become the new Wallstreet where few people, with very specialized knowledge and connections, can make money while they keep telling everybody else "It's so easy everybody can do it" so they have a steady supply of new suckers.

ralfd 9y ago

> just good old fashioned auction market theory - Which is? I would love to read more, any pointer/links for reading about that?

ice109 9y ago
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Auction+market+theory http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Auction+market+theory
module0000 9y ago
This is a good read about auction theory: http://www.mysmp.com/stocks/auction-market.html http://www.mysmp.com/stocks/auction-market.html It's easy to simplify though... imagine that all trades for anything, happened between $1 and $10. Now imagine a graph from bottom to top, starting at the bottom($1) and ending at the top($10). Horizontally, draw a bar next to each price, and the width of the bar should represent how many trades happened at each price. In my poorly drawn example below, you can see 2 trades happened at $1, while 4 trades happened at $3(more than any other price). Auction market theory says that the price is likely to return to $3, since that is where the majority of business was done. So to trade based on that, you are looking to sell at $5 and buy at $1, in anticipation of the market moving back towards that center of $3. It's a gross oversimplification, but that's the heart of auction theory. $5 ++ $4 +++ $3 ++++ $2 +++ $1 ++
ronald_raygun 9y ago
I'd highly recommend this book. The math is decently sophisticated, but it has a lot of cool insights. https://www.amazon.com/Auction-Theory-Second-Vijay-Krishna/dp/0123745071 https://www.amazon.com/Auction-Theory-Second-Vijay-Krishna/d...