ActiveMining is getting set up to trade on Crypto-Trade, based in Hong Kong. Could that be an option for LRM?

Some people can be overly demanding regarding the frequency and detail of updates they want, but on the other hand, it would be nice if, given the amount of bitcoin that has been invested in this enterprise, we at least got *something* on a regular basis.

It takes a minute to create a Twitter account and 30 seconds to compose a quick tweet along the lines of "No news today, still waiting", or "Current hash rate 5TH/s, expecting equipment next month". Etc.

I would like to very politely request that LabRat (either directly, or via grnbrg) make some kind of basic effort to at least give us a regular Tweet, or Wordpress.com blog post (just a paragraph would do) keeping us up to date. We've invested in this enterprise and some communication would be really appreciated.

Look, we know stuff can take time to come to fruition and sometimes there really isn't much new to report, but communication is so important to keep trust and goodwill strong! Stick a wordpress blog up (seriously, this will take you a minute at wordpress.com, you don't have to install a thing) - or just use a Twitter account (again, super quick and easy and you'll keep everyone happy). And give us the courtesy of a regular tweet or blog paragraph (not even a full post!). It's neither hard, nor particularly time consuming, and doesn't even have to contain any new information. Just let us know you're alive, still waiting, etc. Tell us whatever the hell you want. We'll understand and most of all, we'll appreciate that you thought it was worthwhile at least keeping us in the loop.

I never contribute to the thread generally speaking, but jeez kids, can you quit it? Nobody wants to read your spammy mud slinging back and forth. Just shut the hell up if you don't have anything constructive to say.

This is going to come off inflammatory, but I'm only saying what I've noticed many others insinuating in their responses to you as well. Your securities exchange is extremely unpopular because you have no interest in usability or user experience and have an arrogant attitude that tends toward assuming your users are idiots if they don't want to machette their way through your archaic user interface instead of expecting you to actually take some pride in your site's presentation and do something about it. I've no doubt that your technical ability is great and that the technology powering your exchange is wonderful, but seriously, usability is important. Give a shit about your site's presentation.

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-introduction-to-usability/
http://www.visiblelogic.com/blog/2011/03/study-shows-people-dont-trust-badly-designed-websites/
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/definition-user-experience/

Give a shit about your design and assume that feedback from your users is worth considering, because right now, you are hamstringing yourself with that god-awful mess that you're flogging as the best exchange around. If you sorted that out, I'd happily be an advocate for your service.

Just to clarify, securities issuers would simply set themselves up as a Ripple gateway. They would issue a set number of security IOUs and take Bitcoins in return. Those IOUs could then be freely traded by the market, while the issuing gateway would be free to fund their projects using the Bitcoins that were received in return for the IOUs (shares/bonds) that they issued. Dividends would simply be paid as BTC to whoever happens to hold the IOUs for the given security.

There's a clear problem with the Bitcoin securities market, and that's one of centralisation attracting regulatory problems. BTCT closed down for this reason and BitFunder shut its doors to US citizens for the same reason. In response, the value of these securities has largely artificially been forced down, despite the real practical value the shares may have, due to forced sell-offs by Americans who have lost their means for practical trading of these securities. I'm invested in two of these myself; ActiveMining and LabRat Mining, and both are looking at their own private methods of managing their share/bond allocations, but these are still going to be problematic, because there's still not an easy way for them to be either be discovered by newcomers, or traded back and forth by the existing market.

Guys, Ripple is *perfect* for Bitcoin securities! You can issue your own arbitrary units of value that are tradeable using the Ripple protocol. It's decentralised, so regulatory issues can't get in the way of trading and transacting, and it gives each issuer the power to allocate some arbitrary number of shares and trade them out in exchange for the Bitcoins they need to fund their project. And because they're all managed by the Ripple protocol, you don't have to worry about managing some sort of separate altcoin representing each security.

Finally, for those concerned about XRP being a scam because it's centrally-issued, it's not relevant, because trading XRP is not what's happening here. All XRP would get used for in this case is transaction verification, so that argument is really somewhat irrelevant to this use case.

Would like to hear other people's thoughts on this, as I for one am somewhat upset about the massive unnecessary loss of value that my shares have suffered, all in the face of regulatory fears, when those fears can be completely bypassed by decentralisation, and Ripple provides a perfect vehicle for that to happen.

Interestingly, almost all of the money is made during April's volatility. If you start the simulation in May, almost no profit is generated (less than $100 total) for the whole May, June and July periods.

I think he has died, and because he never revealed his identity, nobody will ever know for sure. All that's left is a very fat Bitcoin wallet and a gaping silence in his place.

Methinks thou art being facetious.

What a deep and insightful analysis. You've helped us all out today, and for that I thank you.

How do you identify a bear trap though? The market can go either way for a variety of reasons. Are you just guessing based on experience and a gut feeling?

Ah, that makes a lot of sense. I'm still getting a feel for a lot of this. I feel like I've gotten through the panic buy/sell phase, having lost a bit in the process of selling low and buying high a few times, and now the trends and changes are starting to feel a bit more normal/obvious. Your strategy sounds a lot less risky, and still quite lucrative.

What signals do you use to decide when a trend is about to change?

Bump. Anyone able to provide this?

I'd be perfectly happy with a raw dump of the JSON data that comes from the websocket firehose.

The MtGox WebSocket API is a firehose of depth updates. I know some of you store this data as it is generated and I've just started to do the same, but I'd really like a historical archive of depth data for use in my own trading simulations. MtGox itself seems to offer the full *current* set of depth messages but as hard as I've tried, I can't seem to find an archive of depth messages that I can aggregate and query to show me what the depth and spread on a given historical date and time was.

Does anyone have a relatively complete, and up to date archive of this data that you've been capturing for at least the last few months? I saw a thread where somebody had offered an archive for 2012 data, but they'd been truncating fractions of a bitcoin, which reduces the accuracy. I'd potentially be willing to offer payment in BTC if the data is of a good quality. Plain old raw, parsable JSON messages saved as text would be more than enough.

Sources please?

I don't think you understand what you're even asking; you're just parroting what you've heard other objectionists say. The importance of being "backed" by something is so that it is anchored to something that we *know* has value, based on its inherent utility and finite supply, thus ensuring that the currency always holds a consistent value and can be relied upon as an agreed value exchange mechanism.

Bitcoin doesn't quite follow the traditional currency story though, because its utility and finite supply is built in, thus obviating the need for it to be backed by some other commodity of value. It is in this way that we can say that it is backed by mathematics, cryptography and the internet, which are the foundation of its usefulness and limited supply.

A limit order is an order placed to wait and buy or sell only at a specific price, and it will sit there until a market order comes through that satisfies it.
A market order is an order to buy or sell at whatever price is acceptable right now, as per the available limit orders.
The set of unsatisfied limit orders at any given time is the "order book".

When an order occurs within an exchange, it has two sides; a market order which initiates one or more transactions, and one or more limit orders that are consumed to satisfy the whole of the market order.

Let's say that the current order book shows 25BTC available to buy @ $99.00, then 20BTC @ $99.10, then 130 @ $99.20, then 50 @ $99.30. This means the current buy price is $99.00 because I can buy bitcoins right now at $99.00. Now let's say I want to place a market order to buy 100BTC right now. To satisfy this order, I first buy up the 25 BTC inventory available at the $99.00 price point. Now that there are none left at that price, I need to buy at the next price point, $99.10. So far I've bought 45BTC of my 100BTC order. Now the cheapest remaining BTC in the order book are the 130BTC at the $99.20 price point, so I buy 55BTC of that, thus completing my market order, and leaving 75BTC still in the order book at the $99.20 price point. Given that that is now the cheapest available price for BTC in the order book, we can say that the price just changed from $99.00 to $99.20, hence the price moved up, as you would see at a glance.

Similarly, if I place a market order to sell, then I am consuming limit orders on the buy side, starting with those paying the highest rate, then the next highest rate and so on until my sell order is satisfied (i.e. my BTC are bought by the buyers who placed the limit orders to buy). Because I'm consuming limit orders that pay the highest price first, then they will no longer exist when I am done, and the next highest will be the best remaining price that anyone is willing to pay, so it can be said that I am driving the price downwards.

You will note of course that both of these (market orders to both buy and sell) can consume the available limit orders in both directions at the same time. That's where the "spread" comes in. It's the area between the highest "buy" price and the lowest "sell" price. If market orders are executed that consume all of the limit orders around a given price point, the spread grows. What happens next is that people who want to be the first to be chosen to be bought from or sold to then go and place new limit orders inside the spread area, thus closing the gap between the highest buy price and the lowest sell price. A healthy market generally has a low spread, as people exist who both want to buy and sell. If the market is falling, the spread will tend to be filled only with limit orders to sell, which pushes the spread area down towards lower price points. When the market is rising, the opposite happens.

Trade data is one thing, but for more accurate backtesting, it'd be nice to have some historical depth data to calculate slippage and the actual trade value at the time a test trade is performed. I can start catching it via the WebSocket API, but that'll only help me going forward.

Does anyone know where historical depth data can be found for 2013?