Everyone,
I'd just like to point out that if we did not have stopped the trading engine, the cascading effect of liquidations would have been terrible (just look at the charts already).
So we DID make the right choice in halting the trading engine to avoid this situation by letting price calm down a bit.
One day the Bitcoin market will become mature enough to support this level of volume, right now it isn't;
THanks for your comprehension
Raphael
I just like to point out that it is the responsibility of the margin traders to know and own the risks of margin trading, including the limitations of BFX trading engine. If the market crashes and their positions are liquidated, they will just need to accept it.
Regarding the BTC liquidity issue at Bitstamp, I think that it is not acceptable. Yes, it is challenging to estimate the number of BTC kept at Bitstamp. But does it mean that everytime there is a crash, BFX needs to halt trading?
What I really am interested to know is: If a crash of this scale happens again, should we expect BFX to halt trading? No doubt the answer will affect our trading strategy.
This is a fantastic point, and I think the one everyone here not just 'flaming' is trying to get to. Is the random unannounced failure of the BFX system something we are supposed to account for when using your system?
As I posted earlier, I saw nothing on your site, and didn't receive any emails. How should we expect to be informed that you are halting the system, or the system has glitched? Is this thread supposed to be our primary source of information?
Furthermore, for those of us who were trying to close shorts with buy orders, doesn't that actually help stabilize the price? Many of us aren't pissed that we couldn't buy 25 dollars bitcoin, I was trying to close a short at 578 which hardly seems unreasonable to me.