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Comment by jnordwick | Hacker News Reader

This is really old, from around the end of 2014 it appears.

Also there is no HFT in cryptos: there is no colocation and not a single exchange can support either the market data dissemination or order processing capabilities right now. Every crypto exchange is horribly slow and appears to be terribly written.

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That doesn't mean there's no HFT; automated trading as fast as the exchanges allow is HFT.

Not by any definition I've seen. There's always the notion that hft techniques have always existed and there is some validity to that but usually when referred to in a modern context it relies on qualities that make speed of light (hence colocation) a limiting factor.

On a modern exchange it does mean that because that's what it takes to trades as fast as possible, on a low tech bitcoin exchange where such speeds are not possible, it takes much less; it's HFT none the less. It's still computer programs trading the same algorithms offering up liquidity to flip a quick profit as fast as the tech allows.

I work in HFT and i probably couldn't run most of my stats on these exchanges. There are some that can be but their performance limits what can be run.

The ones that could be run are often the same that were run on the exchange floor but you wouldn't call those 20 years ago HFT.

Bitcoin exchanges are full of manual TA chart traders, to them everyone running algo's is a HFT; context matters, you can't compare the nascent tech in Bitcoin to a modern Wall Street exchange. If you're algo trading as fast as technically possible on the exchange, you're HFT'ing. Words have meaning, you can't get any higher frequency than as fast as the exchange allows.

HFT'ers collocate because it gives them an edge, they were HFT'ers before they discovered that edge, collocating isn't what makes it HFT. Trying to trade faster than your competitor, competing on speed, that's what makes something HFT.

I have heard that in BitShares all the transactions occur on-chain and it can be HFT'd.

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