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When Coinbase launched Bitcoin Cash at 17:20 PST (01:20 BST) it was valued at about $3,500 (£2,612) per coin. At the time it suspended it, the company was quot

When Coinbase launched Bitcoin Cash at 17:20 PST (01:20 BST) it was valued at about $3,500 (£2,612) per coin. At the time it suspended it, the company was quoting a price of about $8,500. Trade of Bitcoin Cash was frozen just four minutes after it began on the firm's Global Digital Asset Exchange (Gdax) and existing orders were cancelled. So the prices more than doubled in just 4 minutes. It might not even be a case of insider trading rather very, very thin order book. That is why this happened: https://status.gdax.com/ https://status.gdax.com/ > Update - All BCH markets will remain cleared and offline until 9am PST 12/20/17. At that time, BCH markets will enter post-only mode for a minimum of one hour to allow liquidity to be established. That is to say no matching orders allowed of any kind - limit or market which can suck the liquidity and cause a huge price jump. One might think that Coinbase/GDAX understand liquidity and market making after so many years. But no. Makes you wonder what kind of stuff is going on in other exchanges.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago
>People might not like it but if Coinbase/GDAX cannot understand liquidity issues after so many years, it doesn't bode well for cryptocurrencies in general. All of the exchanges are repeating mistakes already learned by the financial industry. It's why they'll always be amateurs until an actual major financial institution devotes serious time/effort/money to it.
notyourday 9y ago
Coinbase software does not do basic market unlock?! Is it another company that did not get anyone from Island or InstaNet or Brut?
- berberous 9y ago
  ELI5 market unlock?
  - notyourday 9y ago
    Book is a set of "I buy X at Y" and "I sell K at P" standing orders ordered by the "best to worst" based on the price: Buy|Sell 1000@5|100@5.1 <-- top of the book/best price 1000@4.9|100@5.5 .. .. .. 100000@1|1000000@10000 <--- bottom of the book, worst price - this is "sucker catcher". If someone clown with more money than brains throws a marker order with the quantity higher than posted by everyone above, it will catch the bottom of the book. At this point no trades are happening because no one is offering to buy at a price that someone else is willing to sell. A market order is an order that does not specify the price. Only action and qualities. This is the only type of an "immediate" order because as long as there is anyone on the other side willing to sell or buy a quantity, it will be executed against the most eligible entry ( top ) of the book. What happens when you do a limit order? The limit order "Buy 5@4.95" will be inserted into the book based on the price so with this order the book will look: 1000@5|100@5.1 5@4.95|100@5.5 1000@4.9| .. .. .. 100000@1|1000000@10000 As you can see still nothing is trading because there's still a spread. What happens if someone does "sell 5000@5" against the book above: 1000@5|5000@5 <--- locked market 5@4.95|100@5.1 1000@4.9|100@5.5 .. .. .. 100000@1|1000000@10000 The market is now locked - there's someone who wants to buy @5 and someone who wants to sell @5. Result of this is automatic market unlock: 5@4.95|4000@5 <--- unlocked market 1000@4.9|100@5.1 .. .. .. 100000@1|1000000@10000 with a single 1000@5 traded so the "new price" of the asset is now @5 What happens when trading is suspended and market "ran away" i.e. significantly moved. Nothing special actually. All non-canceled orders are entered into a queue in an order of entry and are executed based on the book replay as if there was no suspension at all.
- stuxnet79 9y ago
  > Is it another company that did not get anyone from Island or InstaNet or Brut? Do you mind giving some context to this statement? What I know of the ECNs you mentioned is from reading the book 'Dark Pools'. It would be great to get some insight into the innovations that were developed in all three projects, that have become a mainstay in 'fintech'.
  - notyourday 9y ago
    Fundamentally, what ECNs brought to market is a total automation (and enormous speed) of running a basic limit book both internally and against other market participants. Pre-ECN having major volume if one wanted to sell a million shares and not to get screwed, one needed to develop a very good relationships with specific traders. Now most of such trades are considered to be pretty basic - you may get a little bit of slippage but by god you don't need to call a desk. It really solved front-running issue - it is possible to do a limit 5.1722 500k order but tell ECN to only display "100@5.1722 until 500k filled". So no desk knows that some fund wants to by 500k shares so it can't trade against this order. ECNs were f!cking amazing and when Datek started routing limit orders to Island (genius play) from retail investors the days of crazy spreads, slippage and free money became history. Some of them also allowed you to do cross-exchange routing - I think BRUT was first to do it - so you could send your order via BRUT to a specific exchange. This killed NYSE/PHL/AMEX arbitrage (AMEX and PHL were slower than NYSE so it was possible to do a trade on NYSE and take offsetting position on PHL/AMEX immediately locking the spread) Since ECNs would self-cross at the NBB and NBA even if the market had no action because the likes of NITE and GSCO were slowing down just to get better money on the order flow, the trading simply moved to Island and Instinet forcing regular market makers to play ball. The effect of ECNs in trading was equivalent of introducing Ansible and Puppet management in server management. Crypto-exchanges now act the same way as the who who say "We only manage our servers using Vt100 terminals using vi"
    - stuxnet79 9y ago
      Fantastic response, I appreciate it!
- stygiansonic 9y ago
  As another comment pointed out, this is yet another example of cryptocurrency markets having to relearn what the financial industry has already learned. In a way, it's interesting to see this sort of recapitulation take place.
  - michaelchisari 9y ago
    It's been interesting watching 100 years of financial lessons, failures and calls for regulation playing out at 20x speed.
wjoe 9y ago
While it's valid to question insider trading in cryprocurrency, I don't think that's what made the difference here. Coinbase had said they would add BCH to their exchange before the end of the year months ago. And people had noted BCH appearing in their API a day or two ago, and then the trading pages were up for an hour or two before the official announcement, with some very large orders being placed in advance of trading going live, with the price already set at $1000 dollars higher than any other exchange was offering. Add to this the fact that anyone who held BTC on Coinbase in August receiving BCH, plenty of people still holding BCH from the last time the price spiked, and the exceptionally deep pockets of certain people/groups who are supporting BCH. You didn't need to be a Coinbase employee to know this was coming, and that it would, at least short term, have a significant effect on the price. Crypto traders live on big news and swings like this, and it was inevitable that it would be a big event.
- avenoir 9y ago
  Bitcoin price started to tank on December 18th @ 00:00 UTC while BCH started an up-climb at right about the same time. This could be explained by the anticipation of the announcement from Coinbase. But then shortly after Coinbase stopped all trades for BCH, I saw this on Twitter [1]. I don't know, but this last bit is definitely looking very odd. [1] https://twitter.com/whalepool/status/943279673554894848 https://twitter.com/whalepool/status/943279673554894848
  - thisisit 9y ago
    Here's a question - What was the end game of the guys during the accumulation phase? To pump the price and sell, right? So we see the pump in action. Then there should be the sell/dump. What happened to that? If I scroll to a week ago between 13th and 14th there is an identical pattern. There is accumulation and then a pump followed by sell: https://imgur.com/a/Hysfc https://imgur.com/a/Hysfc Is this also related to Coinbase?
  - altocr 9y ago
    I might be an insider but I bought BCH before the pump. The news was everywhere in the crypto space (telegram, tradingview, twitter) last week. Ps: I don't trade, I'm a hodleur
pducks32 9y ago
I have a pretty good understanding of economics but what makes market and limit alone responsible for a price jump. When matching orders were allowed yesterday didn't the price also jump? Thanks.
- thisisit 9y ago
  It seems there is some misunderstanding here. Post only mode means they will disallow any price matching to happen. So you can only enter limit orders and that too which doesn't match with any other price.

FLUX-YOU 9y ago

>People might not like it but if Coinbase/GDAX cannot understand liquidity issues after so many years, it doesn't bode well for cryptocurrencies in general. All of the exchanges are repeating mistakes already learned by the financial industry. It's why they'll always be amateurs until an actual major financial institution devotes serious time/effort/money to it.

notyourday 9y ago

Coinbase software does not do basic market unlock?! Is it another company that did not get anyone from Island or InstaNet or Brut?

berberous 9y ago
ELI5 market unlock?
- notyourday 9y ago
  Book is a set of "I buy X at Y" and "I sell K at P" standing orders ordered by the "best to worst" based on the price: Buy|Sell 1000@5|100@5.1 <-- top of the book/best price 1000@4.9|100@5.5 .. .. .. 100000@1|1000000@10000 <--- bottom of the book, worst price - this is "sucker catcher". If someone clown with more money than brains throws a marker order with the quantity higher than posted by everyone above, it will catch the bottom of the book. At this point no trades are happening because no one is offering to buy at a price that someone else is willing to sell. A market order is an order that does not specify the price. Only action and qualities. This is the only type of an "immediate" order because as long as there is anyone on the other side willing to sell or buy a quantity, it will be executed against the most eligible entry ( top ) of the book. What happens when you do a limit order? The limit order "Buy 5@4.95" will be inserted into the book based on the price so with this order the book will look: 1000@5|100@5.1 5@4.95|100@5.5 1000@4.9| .. .. .. 100000@1|1000000@10000 As you can see still nothing is trading because there's still a spread. What happens if someone does "sell 5000@5" against the book above: 1000@5|5000@5 <--- locked market 5@4.95|100@5.1 1000@4.9|100@5.5 .. .. .. 100000@1|1000000@10000 The market is now locked - there's someone who wants to buy @5 and someone who wants to sell @5. Result of this is automatic market unlock: 5@4.95|4000@5 <--- unlocked market 1000@4.9|100@5.1 .. .. .. 100000@1|1000000@10000 with a single 1000@5 traded so the "new price" of the asset is now @5 What happens when trading is suspended and market "ran away" i.e. significantly moved. Nothing special actually. All non-canceled orders are entered into a queue in an order of entry and are executed based on the book replay as if there was no suspension at all.
stuxnet79 9y ago
> Is it another company that did not get anyone from Island or InstaNet or Brut? Do you mind giving some context to this statement? What I know of the ECNs you mentioned is from reading the book 'Dark Pools'. It would be great to get some insight into the innovations that were developed in all three projects, that have become a mainstay in 'fintech'.
- notyourday 9y ago
  Fundamentally, what ECNs brought to market is a total automation (and enormous speed) of running a basic limit book both internally and against other market participants. Pre-ECN having major volume if one wanted to sell a million shares and not to get screwed, one needed to develop a very good relationships with specific traders. Now most of such trades are considered to be pretty basic - you may get a little bit of slippage but by god you don't need to call a desk. It really solved front-running issue - it is possible to do a limit 5.1722 500k order but tell ECN to only display "100@5.1722 until 500k filled". So no desk knows that some fund wants to by 500k shares so it can't trade against this order. ECNs were f!cking amazing and when Datek started routing limit orders to Island (genius play) from retail investors the days of crazy spreads, slippage and free money became history. Some of them also allowed you to do cross-exchange routing - I think BRUT was first to do it - so you could send your order via BRUT to a specific exchange. This killed NYSE/PHL/AMEX arbitrage (AMEX and PHL were slower than NYSE so it was possible to do a trade on NYSE and take offsetting position on PHL/AMEX immediately locking the spread) Since ECNs would self-cross at the NBB and NBA even if the market had no action because the likes of NITE and GSCO were slowing down just to get better money on the order flow, the trading simply moved to Island and Instinet forcing regular market makers to play ball. The effect of ECNs in trading was equivalent of introducing Ansible and Puppet management in server management. Crypto-exchanges now act the same way as the who who say "We only manage our servers using Vt100 terminals using vi"
  - stuxnet79 9y ago
    Fantastic response, I appreciate it!
stygiansonic 9y ago
As another comment pointed out, this is yet another example of cryptocurrency markets having to relearn what the financial industry has already learned. In a way, it's interesting to see this sort of recapitulation take place.
- michaelchisari 9y ago
  It's been interesting watching 100 years of financial lessons, failures and calls for regulation playing out at 20x speed.

wjoe 9y ago

While it's valid to question insider trading in cryprocurrency, I don't think that's what made the difference here. Coinbase had said they would add BCH to their exchange before the end of the year months ago. And people had noted BCH appearing in their API a day or two ago, and then the trading pages were up for an hour or two before the official announcement, with some very large orders being placed in advance of trading going live, with the price already set at $1000 dollars higher than any other exchange was offering. Add to this the fact that anyone who held BTC on Coinbase in August receiving BCH, plenty of people still holding BCH from the last time the price spiked, and the exceptionally deep pockets of certain people/groups who are supporting BCH. You didn't need to be a Coinbase employee to know this was coming, and that it would, at least short term, have a significant effect on the price. Crypto traders live on big news and swings like this, and it was inevitable that it would be a big event.

avenoir 9y ago
Bitcoin price started to tank on December 18th @ 00:00 UTC while BCH started an up-climb at right about the same time. This could be explained by the anticipation of the announcement from Coinbase. But then shortly after Coinbase stopped all trades for BCH, I saw this on Twitter [1]. I don't know, but this last bit is definitely looking very odd. [1] https://twitter.com/whalepool/status/943279673554894848 https://twitter.com/whalepool/status/943279673554894848
- thisisit 9y ago
  Here's a question - What was the end game of the guys during the accumulation phase? To pump the price and sell, right? So we see the pump in action. Then there should be the sell/dump. What happened to that? If I scroll to a week ago between 13th and 14th there is an identical pattern. There is accumulation and then a pump followed by sell: https://imgur.com/a/Hysfc https://imgur.com/a/Hysfc Is this also related to Coinbase?
- altocr 9y ago
  I might be an insider but I bought BCH before the pump. The news was everywhere in the crypto space (telegram, tradingview, twitter) last week. Ps: I don't trade, I'm a hodleur

pducks32 9y ago

I have a pretty good understanding of economics but what makes market and limit alone responsible for a price jump. When matching orders were allowed yesterday didn't the price also jump? Thanks.

thisisit 9y ago
It seems there is some misunderstanding here. Post only mode means they will disallow any price matching to happen. So you can only enter limit orders and that too which doesn't match with any other price.