9 ms·

CBOE exchange website down minutes after releasing Bitcoin futures

82 points by kgos 9y ago

joezydeco 9y ago
So what keeps one of the so-called "whales" with massive balances from buying a huge amount of put orders and then tanking the market with a huge afterhours sell just before the execution date? Buy the coins back at the depressed price, and you could do this every month like clockwork.
- HankB99 9y ago
  (Not a trading whiz.) Is there anything in this strategy that would prevent any other trader from piggybacking on the swings and making money? I could it see it working the first month but I think a lot of other traders (perhaps with better trading equipment - think HFT) would be prepared and could split the available profit in subsequent months.
Narkov 9y ago
Just their "marketing" website. Trading systems look normal.
- wyldfire 9y ago
  Not sure whether it's the same site but the site which hosts current prices is unresponsive: http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cboe-bitcoin-futures http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cboe-bitcoin-futures
  - blibble 9y ago
    the trading system isn't a website: it is fix-fast (data) + fix (trading) over dedicated links they can't packet the actual exchange because they don't have a link to it
  - xiphias 9y ago
    Cool, it looks that the prices for 1 months now are set at about 15000-16000 (like what it's now). There's some volume (currently it's few million dollars in 10-20 minutes, we'll see if it really goes up to a billion per day)
narrator 9y ago
And here I thought it was Bitcoin that had scaling issues. Someone should make a futures market for Bitcoin on the Ethereum block chain settled in ETH just for irony.
- pmorici 9y ago
  Eth is totally fubar right now due to cryptokitties
  - mrgordon 9y ago
    Actually the gas prices are way down. Its working fine for me
    - pmorici 9y ago
      Looks like it is clearing up a bit. Had been waiting in excess of 48 hours for a token transfer. wasn't confidence inspiring.
      - 0xdada 9y ago
        You can use https://ethgasstation.info/ https://ethgasstation.info/ to determine the best gas price to use.
- michaelchisari 9y ago
  It's just the website. Per twitter, "All trading systems are operating normally."
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- nerdponx 9y ago
  I'm honestly surprised that there aren't more crypto financial instruments that are implemented/valued in other cryptos.
somid3 9y ago
Can someone explain how the bid/ask and data for futures can be interpreted? Sorry futures noob here.
- ShabbosGoy 9y ago
  Bid is latest buy order. Ask/Offer is latest sell order. Many exchanges have the “maker-taker” model. If you add liquidity to the order book, you are paid by the Exchange. If you take liquidity away from the order book, you pay the Exchange.
  - Veratyr 9y ago
    It's not the latest order, it's the highest (bid)/lowest (ask) _open_ order.
  - bob_theslob646 9y ago
    What the market is quoted at , is the latest buy or sell order. The price you can buy at is the ask, the price you can sell at is the bid.
- Veratyr 9y ago
  The bid is the highest price of all open buy orders. If you're selling, this is the maximum price you can make a sell order for and have your order instantly filled. The ask is the lowest price of all open sell orders. If you're buying, this is the minimum price you can make a buy order for and have your order instantly filled.
- bob_theslob646 9y ago
  You "lift the ask"(what you as a buyer are able to buy at), and "hit/slam the bid"( what you as a seller can sell at)
chicagomint 9y ago
Anyone have a link to a public API endpoint? Status Page? or has trading ceased entirely? Unanticipated demand? ddos? what's going on here?
- modeless 9y ago
  Trading is unaffected. You can see quotes at any brokerage that allows trading futures, though you may need a paid subscription for access to non-delayed quote data. Look for the symbol XBTF18. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a DDoS attack, as all bitcoin exchanges have suffered from them, but I don't know what they think they're accomplishing because unlike bitcoin exchanges the CBOE website is completely separate from the trading systems.
csomar 9y ago
I wonder if they are getting DDOS'ed. Many crypto exchanges do get DDOS'ed before a big move. It is the nature of the beast since these market are not regulated and the "elite" guys operating on it think this is how free markets work (whoever has the most toys win).
- ycombobreaker 9y ago
  The CBOE website is separate from the trading system. Futures in the US are regulated by the CFTC. There is no reason to believe that this is manipulation. As others have mentioned, it is likely that their website is simply getting hugged by the Internet due to the new contract.
  - csomar 9y ago
    I know that, but DDOSers target everything even if it doesn't stop operations. I also think some bitcoin exchanges are using this model too. Bitfinex trading did not stop when their website went down the last time.
shit-show 9y ago
All your resources needed for today's Bitcoin Futures Launch on CBOE: CBOE Chart Updates: http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/advanced-charts?ticker=XBT%2fF8 http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/advanced-charts?ticker=XBT%... CBOE XBT - Bitcoin (USD) Futures Table: http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/futures-quotes http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/futures-quotes Cryptonaire live forecast updates: https://cryptonaire.com https://cryptonaire.com Bloomberg Live Coverage: https://www.bloomberg.com/live/us https://www.bloomberg.com/live/us CMC for BTC indexing including non-US pairs: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets WCI for BTC indexing only US pairs: https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/bitcoin https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/bitcoin
- hanniabu 9y ago
  Loving the throwaway handle
- bob_theslob646 9y ago
  This comment is the exact reason why I cringe when anyone mentions anything related to trading. Notice, he/she did not link anything related to how the future contract works? How can you trade something you do not understand? I would be fired the first day if I couldn't explain to my boss how the instrument/contract was constructed. How do you think quants model? First they understand how the contract works If they mess the basics up, then "Houston , we have a problem."
  - lallysingh 9y ago
    Those links are relatively hard to find. For how futures work: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+futures+work http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+futures+work
  - Legogris 9y ago
    It's "resources needed for today's Bitcoin Futures Launch on CBOE", not "resources needed to understand how future contracts work". While those would certainly be good as well, they assume that you know what's going on in the first place. It's not like we need to post a primer on JS and node ever time a new npm package is posted.
empath75 9y ago
I think all the bitcoin fans making this out to be a big deal is kind of funny. The volume of futures exchanges shits on any of the fly-by-night bitcoin exchanges. Professional traders don’t google CBOE to look at marketing material, lol.
- adsfasdf2332 9y ago
  I think the consensus in the bitcoin community is that it won't have any effect and Bitcoin will continue chugging along as it has. It was mainly the bears saying the futures would increase shorts on bitcoin. Can't imagine anyone in their right mind would short bitcoin right now though...
  - GhostVII 9y ago
    > Can't imagine anyone in their right mind would short bitcoin right now though... Why not? I can't believe anyone in their right mind would significantly invest in Bitcoin right now.
    - namelost 9y ago
      That doesn't mean you should short it. Bitcoin is casually up 6% today, in recent history it has had daily gains in excess of 20%. It can rise by multiple percent in a few minutes. You would have to be completely nuts to short it, regardless of what you think it is going to do in the medium-term.
    - lallysingh 9y ago
      With this kind of volatility, you can do pretty well market making.
    - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
      One can simultaneously believe something is neither worth buying nor shorting. In this case, Bitcoin’s volatility and meteoric rise make predicting the timing of its crash risky.
  - Xixi 9y ago
apaprocki 9y ago
Just as a data point — as of this posting, the volume is a whopping... 828.
- tr4cefl0w 9y ago
  Trading just started and CBOE is not nearly as big and as active as CME. Also, trading volume for futures in general is pretty low. You're rarely going to see volume above 100k a Sunday night. Coffee futures have around 23k volume right now.
  - apaprocki 9y ago
    I’m well aware, it was meant as a data point for anyone not aware who could possibly think for a second their public website going down has anything to do with demand :)
    - tr4cefl0w 9y ago
      Ah! Ok makes sense.
    - lallysingh 9y ago
      I suspect a lot more people are interested in watching it than immediately investing in it.
- richardw 9y ago
  All indications were that volume and liquidity would be low initially. Give it a month to settle.
- crunchaboo87 9y ago
  Currently, volume is over 2k. On a Sunday night. That is over 30 million worth of Bitcoins. Volume will probably skyrocket come Monday when the markets are open. It's a sad day for Bitcoin market makers though. Previously there weren't many major players.
Maarten88 9y ago
Ok, so these bitcoin futures let people bet on the future bitcoin price without actually owning any bitcoins, without having any actual stake in the actual market. (these futures are settled in cash, so nobody ever has to deliver any actual bitcoins) That seems to be an ultimate insult and revenge of the finance industry toward the original idea behind bitcoin. I am again amazed how the finance industry gets to have their own tax-free casinos (where they play the game of I win / You loose with other peoples money) while ordinary gambling addicts have all kinds of rules to play by and taxes to pay when they need a fix for their habit. That said, I also fail to see why any sane person would want to play this specific bitcoin futures casino. Even at current market cap, the bitcoin price seems to be easily manipulated by a few "bitcoin whales", so it would seem the odds are stacked heavily against these new wannabee bitcoin investors. It seems like a new way to make even more money for big bitcoin traders. I'm grabbing popcorn.
- zodiac 9y ago
  > That seems to be an ultimate insult and revenge of the finance industry toward the original idea behind bitcoin. I don't think you need to pass any sort moral judgement about the existence of this. Cash-settled futures exist for almost all traded commodities (oil, gold, pork bellies at one point...)
  - Maarten88 9y ago
    Not my moral judgement, I think the creator of bitcoin was quite explicit in his (or her) disapproval of the finance industry and governments inflating the economy by injecting large amounts of money, and went on to create a currency with a fixed supply. It is ironic these futures are effectively leveraged bitcoins, needing central trust. I'm pretty sure Satoshi would not approve. That said, I do question the value of cash settled pork belly futures when you are not going to buy or sell any actual pork belly in the future. If I were to write tax law, I'd tax it the equivalent of casino tax, at least.
    - EpicEng 9y ago
      Well Satoshi also created a currency which is completely usuited for the task due to it's limited supply as well as a host of external issues. So... meh?
growthkarl 9y ago
Shocking, shocking...

82 points by kgos 9y ago

So what keeps one of the so-called "whales" with massive balances from buying a huge amount of put orders and then tanking the market with a huge afterhours sell just before the execution date? Buy the coins back at the depressed price, and you could do this every month like clockwork.

HankB99 9y ago
(Not a trading whiz.) Is there anything in this strategy that would prevent any other trader from piggybacking on the swings and making money? I could it see it working the first month but I think a lot of other traders (perhaps with better trading equipment - think HFT) would be prepared and could split the available profit in subsequent months.

Narkov 9y ago

Just their "marketing" website. Trading systems look normal.

wyldfire 9y ago
Not sure whether it's the same site but the site which hosts current prices is unresponsive: http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cboe-bitcoin-futures http://cfe.cboe.com/cfe-products/xbt-cboe-bitcoin-futures
- blibble 9y ago
  the trading system isn't a website: it is fix-fast (data) + fix (trading) over dedicated links they can't packet the actual exchange because they don't have a link to it
- xiphias 9y ago
  Cool, it looks that the prices for 1 months now are set at about 15000-16000 (like what it's now). There's some volume (currently it's few million dollars in 10-20 minutes, we'll see if it really goes up to a billion per day)

narrator 9y ago

And here I thought it was Bitcoin that had scaling issues. Someone should make a futures market for Bitcoin on the Ethereum block chain settled in ETH just for irony.

pmorici 9y ago
Eth is totally fubar right now due to cryptokitties
- mrgordon 9y ago
  Actually the gas prices are way down. Its working fine for me
  - pmorici 9y ago
    Looks like it is clearing up a bit. Had been waiting in excess of 48 hours for a token transfer. wasn't confidence inspiring.
    - 0xdada 9y ago
      You can use https://ethgasstation.info/ https://ethgasstation.info/ to determine the best gas price to use.
michaelchisari 9y ago
It's just the website. Per twitter, "All trading systems are operating normally."
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nerdponx 9y ago
I'm honestly surprised that there aren't more crypto financial instruments that are implemented/valued in other cryptos.

somid3 9y ago

Can someone explain how the bid/ask and data for futures can be interpreted? Sorry futures noob here.

ShabbosGoy 9y ago
Bid is latest buy order. Ask/Offer is latest sell order. Many exchanges have the “maker-taker” model. If you add liquidity to the order book, you are paid by the Exchange. If you take liquidity away from the order book, you pay the Exchange.
- Veratyr 9y ago
  It's not the latest order, it's the highest (bid)/lowest (ask) _open_ order.
- bob_theslob646 9y ago
  What the market is quoted at , is the latest buy or sell order. The price you can buy at is the ask, the price you can sell at is the bid.
Veratyr 9y ago
The bid is the highest price of all open buy orders. If you're selling, this is the maximum price you can make a sell order for and have your order instantly filled. The ask is the lowest price of all open sell orders. If you're buying, this is the minimum price you can make a buy order for and have your order instantly filled.
bob_theslob646 9y ago
You "lift the ask"(what you as a buyer are able to buy at), and "hit/slam the bid"( what you as a seller can sell at)

chicagomint 9y ago

Anyone have a link to a public API endpoint? Status Page? or has trading ceased entirely? Unanticipated demand? ddos? what's going on here?

modeless 9y ago
Trading is unaffected. You can see quotes at any brokerage that allows trading futures, though you may need a paid subscription for access to non-delayed quote data. Look for the symbol XBTF18. I wouldn't be surprised if this was a DDoS attack, as all bitcoin exchanges have suffered from them, but I don't know what they think they're accomplishing because unlike bitcoin exchanges the CBOE website is completely separate from the trading systems.

csomar 9y ago

I wonder if they are getting DDOS'ed. Many crypto exchanges do get DDOS'ed before a big move. It is the nature of the beast since these market are not regulated and the "elite" guys operating on it think this is how free markets work (whoever has the most toys win).

ycombobreaker 9y ago
The CBOE website is separate from the trading system. Futures in the US are regulated by the CFTC. There is no reason to believe that this is manipulation. As others have mentioned, it is likely that their website is simply getting hugged by the Internet due to the new contract.
- csomar 9y ago
  I know that, but DDOSers target everything even if it doesn't stop operations. I also think some bitcoin exchanges are using this model too. Bitfinex trading did not stop when their website went down the last time.

shit-show 9y ago

All your resources needed for today's Bitcoin Futures Launch on CBOE: CBOE Chart Updates: http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/advanced-charts?ticker=XBT%2fF8 http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/advanced-charts?ticker=XBT%... CBOE XBT - Bitcoin (USD) Futures Table: http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/futures-quotes http://www.cboe.com/delayedquote/futures-quotes Cryptonaire live forecast updates: https://cryptonaire.com https://cryptonaire.com Bloomberg Live Coverage: https://www.bloomberg.com/live/us https://www.bloomberg.com/live/us CMC for BTC indexing including non-US pairs: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets WCI for BTC indexing only US pairs: https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/bitcoin https://www.worldcoinindex.com/coin/bitcoin

hanniabu 9y ago
Loving the throwaway handle
bob_theslob646 9y ago
This comment is the exact reason why I cringe when anyone mentions anything related to trading. Notice, he/she did not link anything related to how the future contract works? How can you trade something you do not understand? I would be fired the first day if I couldn't explain to my boss how the instrument/contract was constructed. How do you think quants model? First they understand how the contract works If they mess the basics up, then "Houston , we have a problem."
- lallysingh 9y ago
  Those links are relatively hard to find. For how futures work: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+futures+work http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+futures+work
- Legogris 9y ago
  It's "resources needed for today's Bitcoin Futures Launch on CBOE", not "resources needed to understand how future contracts work". While those would certainly be good as well, they assume that you know what's going on in the first place. It's not like we need to post a primer on JS and node ever time a new npm package is posted.

empath75 9y ago

I think all the bitcoin fans making this out to be a big deal is kind of funny. The volume of futures exchanges shits on any of the fly-by-night bitcoin exchanges. Professional traders don’t google CBOE to look at marketing material, lol.

adsfasdf2332 9y ago
I think the consensus in the bitcoin community is that it won't have any effect and Bitcoin will continue chugging along as it has. It was mainly the bears saying the futures would increase shorts on bitcoin. Can't imagine anyone in their right mind would short bitcoin right now though...
- GhostVII 9y ago
  > Can't imagine anyone in their right mind would short bitcoin right now though... Why not? I can't believe anyone in their right mind would significantly invest in Bitcoin right now.
  - namelost 9y ago
    That doesn't mean you should short it. Bitcoin is casually up 6% today, in recent history it has had daily gains in excess of 20%. It can rise by multiple percent in a few minutes. You would have to be completely nuts to short it, regardless of what you think it is going to do in the medium-term.
  - lallysingh 9y ago
    With this kind of volatility, you can do pretty well market making.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    One can simultaneously believe something is neither worth buying nor shorting. In this case, Bitcoin’s volatility and meteoric rise make predicting the timing of its crash risky.
- Xixi 9y ago

apaprocki 9y ago

Just as a data point — as of this posting, the volume is a whopping... 828.

tr4cefl0w 9y ago
Trading just started and CBOE is not nearly as big and as active as CME. Also, trading volume for futures in general is pretty low. You're rarely going to see volume above 100k a Sunday night. Coffee futures have around 23k volume right now.
- apaprocki 9y ago
  I’m well aware, it was meant as a data point for anyone not aware who could possibly think for a second their public website going down has anything to do with demand :)
  - tr4cefl0w 9y ago
    Ah! Ok makes sense.
  - lallysingh 9y ago
    I suspect a lot more people are interested in watching it than immediately investing in it.
richardw 9y ago
All indications were that volume and liquidity would be low initially. Give it a month to settle.
crunchaboo87 9y ago
Currently, volume is over 2k. On a Sunday night. That is over 30 million worth of Bitcoins. Volume will probably skyrocket come Monday when the markets are open. It's a sad day for Bitcoin market makers though. Previously there weren't many major players.

Maarten88 9y ago

Ok, so these bitcoin futures let people bet on the future bitcoin price without actually owning any bitcoins, without having any actual stake in the actual market. (these futures are settled in cash, so nobody ever has to deliver any actual bitcoins) That seems to be an ultimate insult and revenge of the finance industry toward the original idea behind bitcoin. I am again amazed how the finance industry gets to have their own tax-free casinos (where they play the game of I win / You loose with other peoples money) while ordinary gambling addicts have all kinds of rules to play by and taxes to pay when they need a fix for their habit. That said, I also fail to see why any sane person would want to play this specific bitcoin futures casino. Even at current market cap, the bitcoin price seems to be easily manipulated by a few "bitcoin whales", so it would seem the odds are stacked heavily against these new wannabee bitcoin investors. It seems like a new way to make even more money for big bitcoin traders. I'm grabbing popcorn.

zodiac 9y ago
> That seems to be an ultimate insult and revenge of the finance industry toward the original idea behind bitcoin. I don't think you need to pass any sort moral judgement about the existence of this. Cash-settled futures exist for almost all traded commodities (oil, gold, pork bellies at one point...)
- Maarten88 9y ago
  Not my moral judgement, I think the creator of bitcoin was quite explicit in his (or her) disapproval of the finance industry and governments inflating the economy by injecting large amounts of money, and went on to create a currency with a fixed supply. It is ironic these futures are effectively leveraged bitcoins, needing central trust. I'm pretty sure Satoshi would not approve. That said, I do question the value of cash settled pork belly futures when you are not going to buy or sell any actual pork belly in the future. If I were to write tax law, I'd tax it the equivalent of casino tax, at least.
  - EpicEng 9y ago
    Well Satoshi also created a currency which is completely usuited for the task due to it's limited supply as well as a host of external issues. So... meh?

growthkarl 9y ago

Shocking, shocking...