Re: ICBIT Derivatives Market (USD/BTC futures trading) - LIVE
And a final comment: The leverage is getting a bit low. I know that is part of a strategy of reducing counterparty risk, but the only way of eliminating that is removing leverage altogether, and that would make ICBIT uninteresting. We are unfortunately moving in that direction. I would rather have a slightly larger counterparty risk, and then be able to trade at 1:4 or 1:5. I think that the combination of high fees and low leverage hurts the volume at icbit!
As for margin requirements, this is temporary, and it's going to be fixed properly soon.
To be fair, even with removed leverage, there are still some advantages over spot market (ability to short bitcoin rate, and, well, maybe a bit better trading interface, and slightly less lags). But as I said, it's not the direction where I would want ICBIT to move in.
About BUK3 clearing fees - that's an experiment, a way to see what our trading community actually wants. Some traders started criticizing us for high fees - so now there is a BUK3 with (amazingly) low fees for those who want to trade frequently. Those, who want to open long term positions, are welcome to use traditional futures contracts without clearing fee, but with higher trading fee.
So it's democracy in action: traders choose the best suitable tool for them
P.S. One minor update, the orderbook, now it displays a little better, and more compact. Work-in-progress, more usability features to come.