Show HN: Bitfuture – Lock in the Bitcoin exchange rate | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Bitfuture – Lock in the Bitcoin exchange rate

bitfuture.com

16 pointsjboggan12 comments

This really should show more before you sign in. How are the contracts structured? What is the order book?

The contracts are 60-minute forwards; you are agreeing to buy/sell Bitcoin at the current price (determined by the CoinDesk BPI) but 60 minutes from now. At that time the Bitcoin is transferred from the seller to the buyer, and the strike price (denominated in $) is paid in Bitcoin at the current price. The net effect is that the seller nets a small amount of Bitcoin if the price falls, giving them an amount equivalent to the original exchange rate. If the price rises the buyer nets a small amount. This is essentially a way of locking-in the rate now if for various reasons (waiting on blockchain confirmation for example) you cannot immediately sell off a parcel of Bitcoin. This would be very useful to payment operators, ATM operators, and merchants, for example.

The order book right now is shallow and comprised of our own funds; however we are in the process of onboarding several interested parties so I know that will improve in time.

Showing more before signup is an excellent suggestion; if you are not averse to submitting an email address you can try the paper trading site with 100 fake Bitcoins at paper-trade-bitfuture.com . Thanks for the feedback!

Good luck with the project. I suggest getting these details on the front page above the signup.

Suggestion: no signup required on the paper trade site. Give people a quick, no-barrier way to see how it works.

No details, almost blank homepage asking for sign-up and a suspicious idea to begin with.

Our previous versions were solicited to friends and family, people who were going to sign up anyway and who knew roughly that we were trying to build a platform for Bitcoin derivatives. I suppose I've been way too focused on getting the double-entry bookkeeping and other accounting layers perfect to think "would I sign up for this landing page". So yes, this is very helpful feedback (even if it does make me feel a bit silly).

Previous feedback had been that our tutorials were extremely long and that our interface was too cluttered; I think it's probable we swung too far in the opposite direction and need to find a healthy medium.

I don't think it's a suspicious idea if you start to think about the problem that volatility causes with Bitcoin adoption. There are many derivatives platforms out there now beginning to grow but most cater to offshore sophisticated investors and speculators. We are trying to build a market around a derivative product that would be eminently useful to Bitcoin businesses and make serious steps towards other derivative products that would smooth out the bumps in the Bitcoin price.

Thanks for the feedback.

Ugh, Bitcoins aren't stock, but I suppose for those caught up in its (so-called) "volatility" and whatever "derivatives" are supposed to be, this could be helpful. Sorry, not for me.

The SEC agrees that they are not stock or securities! [1]

Bitcoin payment processing (or ATMs, or foreign remittances) is going to be a big business but many of the current operators are charging only 1-3% as a transaction fee. It's not uncommon for there to be drops of that magnitude during the time it takes the payment to process and the transaction to verify in the blockchain, let alone be sold off as fiat to balance the payment processor's books. This is one way of hedging against that.

It's also effectively a way to short Bitcoin in the short term (not to 0) since it gives you a way to profit from a downswing.

[1] - http://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-bulletins/investoral...

Futures are more important in commodities and currencies than they are in stocks.

Interesting idea, and I like the clean interface, but I could use a bit more info. Where are those really long tutorials? Do I have the option to match someone else's order, or can I only list my own orders and hope someone out in the ether matches it?

The really long tutorials are for options contracts which we are not offering to general users until there's some more regulatory clarity in the US. I am trying to adapt them to the forwards right now.

If you unclick "Zero Cost" and then click the Buy or Sell button it automatically populates the Cost field at the price that will immediately execute against a standing order. Or you can fill your own price in if you'd like to have a different cost (or none upfront at all). I should point out that negative costs are allowed (where the seller pays the buyer for entering the contract, instead of the other way around. Thanks!

Really cool idea!

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