A circuit breaker would do nothing for the exchange at this point. The way to solve this moving the trading engine to it is own server/program. It is right now connected to the front-end. Also the great thing about bitcoins is how open and free market it is, if bitcoin free falls to $0.01 it should be able. Just like it should be able to go to $1000, if the market dictates it.
When I read Nova's post I didn't think that he was suggesting that a circuit breaker would fix the exchange's problem, just like a real life circuit breaker doesn't fix the electrical fault in your house wiring when some dumbshit threw a toaster in the bathtub. It prevents the house from burning down.
Now think about it if that toaster was thrown in the bathtub every day, wouldn't you at some point get a new toaster. That is where the issue is. Circuit breaking wouldn't fix anything. It would be tripped every day, and just kill trading.
I acknowledge that you have pointed out that if the breaker was tripped over and over, this will have a ripple affect on the flow of trading. That is valid.
You seem to have missed my point entirely. Let's pretend that whatever was causing the engine lag is not happening anymore. That is not the topic of this thread.
Why would you not want to have something like this in place? So far it seems like your main argument is that you think that the market should be entirely free, and no one appears to be proposing that a regulation be put in place that forces all exchanges to implement this. It seems like a common sense good practice to follow and this thread might be a good place to hammer out that framework. Not discuss how you think that the coders of the engine are idiots.
I am still not seeing your point can you clearly state it cause it sounds like circuit breaker would be a regulation and would overall hurt bitcoin trading.
Sure, it's just a ruleset that any exchange can follow to make themselves and bitcoin less of a target to the sorts of manipulations we are seeing right now.
If a then b. It could be implemented by any exchange to reduce the value of these attacks.
It wouldn't be anything more than that. If an exchange wants to adopt it, it would be up to them to do so and craft the particular implementation.
I may implement a free to use exchange in node.js or something as an example of how this would work, perhaps provide a RESTful trading API or something. Just for proof of concept purposes. I would probably base it on the mtgox websockets API and just extend that API to show how I think a circuit breaker should be done.
This discussion is more or less to help solidify what the ruleset should look like (if a then b). One thing is for certain, having bitcoin in a freefall due to mass panic does nothing to spur long term adoption of the currency and harms the confidence of the merchants and individuals that would like to use it for a day to day spending.