Rabu, 31 Desember 2014

GRÁFICOS PARA OPERAR CON BITCOIN- bitcoinbcn


Para operar con bitcoin o con cualquier otra criptomoneda necesitaremos apoyarnos en gráficos de cotización en tiempo real. Cualquier exchange dispone de gráficos de las altcoins que allí se comercian pero nosotros de momento solo vamos a centrarnos en bitcoin, por lo que haremos un repaso de una de las mejores páginas donde encontrar gráficos en los que apoyar el análisis previo a nuestra operativa.

No es otro que bitcoinwisdomEsta fantástica web nos muestra gráficos de bitcoin referenciados a dolares, euros, yuanes, dolares canadienses y rublos. 

Además nos proporciona enlaces a los más importantes exchanges donde se comercian, indicándonos ya en su página principal la cotización en tiempo real, la variación y el volumen comerciado en el día, o en los periodos 24 horas/ 7 días/ 30 días. lo mismo para litecoin

Añade también algunas de las más importantes altcoins con los mismos parámetros y enlaces. Ni siquiera es necesario registrase en la página para disponer de toda la información y herramientas de análisis que podamos necesitar.


Mitad superior de la página principal con todos los datos, enlaces y opciones de Bitcoin  y Litecoin.

Parte de la mitad inferior con los mismos datos y enlaces a los exchanges de algunas de las altcoins más importantes.

OPERANDO CON BITCOIN

Como vamos a operar con bitcoin obviaremos todos los demás datos disponibles y nos centraremos en la parte superior, concretamente en las cotizaciones bitcoin/dolar, bitcoin/yuan y bitcoin/euro. 

Aunque nosotros operaremos en futuros y utilizaremos el gráfico de futuros de okcoin, es importante que tengamos muy a mano los gráficos de los principales exchanges para poder ver la tendencia general y comparar cualquier movimiento en los diferentes mercados. 

Hay que tener en cuenta que los mercados tienen diferentes horarios y eso hace que aunque las tendencias principales se acaben confirmando en todos, algunas se anticipen en el gráfico del mercado donde empieza el movimiento. Asi, nos fijaremos sobretodo en Bitfinex y Bitstamp para el mercado americano y europeo en dolares, en Kraken para el mercado en euros y en BTCChina, Huobi y Okcoin para el mercado chino en yuanes. Veremos como ejemplo un gráfico de Bitstamp en intervalo de tiempo 1 hora.


Gráfico de Bitstamp

LA IMPORTANCIA DEL GRÁFICO ADECUADO

En este gráfico podemos, no solo seguir la cotización, sino cambiar los intervalos para observar mejor las tendencias generales o buscar señales ya sea para comercio intradía, o a corto, medio o largo plazo. Disponemos también de un sinfín de ajustes y herramientas para poder realizar un completo análisis técnico. Vemos también los cruces de operaciones en tiempo real y el volumen. 


Hay gráficos mucho más completos, como el de la web de Tradingview, posiblemente el mejor gráfico para análisis técnico que podamos encontrar, además de poder ser utilizado para cualquier divisa, commodity o mercado mundial. Es un gráfico excepcional con todas las herramientas y parámetros imaginables, el paraíso de cualquier analista.

Aquí un pantallazo de como se ve, solo hay que fijarse en la cantidad de herramientas técnicas de que disponemos así como las posibilidades de publicar, comentar o compartir nuestros resultados en uno cualquiera de los infinitos mercados a nuestra disposición.

Gráfico de Tradingview BTC/USD en Bitstamp rodeado de herramientas de AT.

Otros están más especializados, como el de altcoingraphs, que está basado en algunos de los más importantes exchanges de altcoins, o el de hypron, que basado en el de Wisdom te muestra en pantalla hasta cuatro gráficos al mismo tiempo, o el de cryptowatch, basado también en el de wisdom pero con la particularidad de incluir los mercados de futuros

Este gráfico va a ser el que tendremos en cuenta al operar en okcoin, concretamente el de futuros okcoin. Se ve así.


Mercado de futuros semanal en okcoin en intervalo 15 minutos

CONCLUSIÓN


En definitiva, hay muchas web de gráficos, desde las más enfocadas a un completo análisis técnico a las más especializadas en un mercado o con funciones que pueden ser muy útiles como varios mercados en pantalla o los más importantes exchanges de altcoins con parámetros como el volumen comerciado para cada moneda, el diferencial de subida o bajada en un intervalo de 24 horas, etc...Sin olvidar que cada exchange, asset o mercado tiene sus propios gráficos, por lo que para cada necesidad tendremos una solución. 



Pero nosotros vamos a operar en bitcoin y concretamente en el mercado de futuros por lo que la única herramienta que de manera imprescindible deberemos tener siempre a mano es la página principal de bitcoinwisdom y el gráfico de futuros de cryptowatch/okcoin. En una próxima entrada hablaré de qué son los futuros y como operar con ellos.

¿Quieres seguir disfrutando del blog? Puedes leer esta entrada.


Ripple as middleware

As many people may know, the current banking system is a mess when you're dealing in multiple currencies. We have disjointed networks dealing in local countries, the eurozone, and international banking on a wider scale. Using Bitcoin means having to hop onto the currency and off of it on two exchanges. There is friction at every step and companies have to focus on creating big end-to-end solutions rather than focusing on just the part they can do really well. However, I believe all of this can be simplified if we used a system like Ripple as a middleware layer.

The current situation


Currently, there are many disjointed markets out there. If you want to exchange fiat currencies, you go to a forex. If you want to buy Bitcoin, you go to one of the numerous local exchanges. For altcoins, you will most likely need to go to one of the handful websites that specializes in them. All in all, there are many problems in efficiently dealing with say, exchanging precious metals for altcoins.

Ripple as a solution


While Ripple might not be able to completely replace centralized markets that have high transaction volume and extremely low latency, it could be a good enough approximation for a lot of the projects out there.

First step in doing this would involve the creation of various gateways for the currencies we wish to use, be it USD, gold or whatever else. Since the gateways can focus only on one thing at a time, creating them is more straightforward than bringing newer and newer exchanges onto the market. If you can only handle Bitcoin but can't make a trade engine or handle fiat, you're still in business.

The second step would be copying the existing markets into Ripple through automated arbitrage bots. For example, you could take Bitstamp's USD-BTC market and post trade offers in Ripple to mimic it, although with lower granularity. When a trade is made on the network, the bot would offset it at the exchange and create profit. Given enough bots, we can represent any number of financial exchanges inside of Ripple, no matter what currency they're dealing with.

The third step would be building services that use Ripple as middleware for their payment network. Say we want to tackle Europe<->Canada money transfers. We would connect to a gateway in Europe and a gateway in Canada. When we see a Euro payment on one end, we send it to the first gateway, use the Ripple network to trade it for Canadian Dollars, and send the money out on the other end as needed. Provided we have some floating balance on both ends, we just completed an international wire transfer in 5 seconds at a fraction of the cost.

The last step would be...

Optimization through competition


Obviously, the markets will only use a product if it’s competitive and affordable. Nobody will want to pay a premium to use one product over a cheaper one with the same features. However, the beauty of this approach is that all components are interchangeable and the best ones will win.

Looking at our BitPay example, their business can be broken down into the following components:


  • The frontend gets the current exchange rate and accepts payment for the goods from the user, eventually forwarding the coins to the exchange
  • A server offsets the trade at an exchange
  • A banking component withdraws fiat from the exchange and pays the merchant in their currency of choice


In Ripple those components could be run by different entities:


  • A system like BitPay would accept customers’ coins and use Ripple to pay the merchant. They could trade the coins directly for any fiat or any other currency on Ripple, and once the funds are secured, release the payment.
  • Trades would happen atomically in Ripple. No matter how many currency hops it requires, a trade could be made with one transaction. The Ripple network will find the most efficient route on its own.
  • Any trades happening in the Ripple system would be offset by independent bots arbitraging between Ripple and various exchanges (forex, Bitcoin exchanges, etc.)
  • Merchant payouts could be handled by dedicated gateways or payment processors working with the gateways. Say, any funds deposited to a given Ripple address could be paid to a specified bank account at the end of the day.


Since the system does not require one company to handle all of those steps, multiple entities can be competing against one another to build the most efficient pieces of the puzzle, and the system as a whole would benefit. If one arbitrage bot is replaced by another that has a tighter spread - the prices go down. If someone makes a direct market between two distant currencies - the network will route through the new path, saving money. If a new payment processor comes along, they don’t need to reinvent the wheel, they use the established network and focus on making a better product. All of the components are interchangeable, and the most efficient ones will win in the end.

Possible applications


Here is a list of applications that can easily use Ripple as a middleware money network, given enough development in the space:


  • Payment processing between any currencies (BitPay, Coinbase, PayPal)
  • Exchanges (using Ripple as an exchange engine)
  • Remittance and other international payment networks (Western Union, PayPal)


Near future developments


If our guess is correct, we expect to see the following projects to start appearing in the Ripple space in the near future:


  • More fiat gateways. They should appear in places financially close to big exchanges making payments between them easier. Alternatively, big exchanges will become gateways as well (like BitStamp)
  • Given efficient gateways, arbitrage bots will appear converting every Bitcoin exchanges’ market into Ripple. We’ll see BTC-e’s LTC/USD market reflected in Ripple, BTC China’s BTC/CNY market, and many more
  • Arbitrage bots will start appearing next to large forex markets, bringing in efficient fiat<->fiat exchange rates into Ripple
  • Given some of those, payment processors like BitPay will start appearing in the Ripple space offering payments to any currency accepted by the merchant
  • Either gateways will start offering new and convenient ways to convert people's traditional money into Ripple IOUs (say, through credit cards or other automated systems), or we might see companies like Coinbase appearing to offer this sort of services for them


Conclusions

As I wrote in a previous blog post, cryptos will succeed if the banks are failing. Due to the many inefficiencies of the current international payment systems, it is very likely that a system like Ripple would be used more and more as a common middleware to enable interoperability between many networks.

Recommended reading:

Senin, 22 Desember 2014

The need for a new measurement of value

As many of you might be familiar, there are a few key functions money needs to perform in our society. While the exact list may vary, here are some of the functions listed:

  1. Medium of exchange
  2. Measurement of value
  3. Standard of deferred payments
  4. Store of value

Today, I would like to talk to you about the measurement of value function of money in the context of the "Currency Wars".

Measurement of value


Money being used as the measurement of value (or a unit of account) means that we use the money units to denominate how much other things are worth. It is useful to have this standard reference because then we can compare things that would be otherwise hard to compare. While it might be easy to estimate that a loaf of bread is worth about a few buns, since they both fulfil a similar role and are essentially interchangeable, it is much harder to compare how many loafs of bread would be equivalent to a book in a pure barter system.

With money, everything is compared to the same unit of money, be it dollars, euros, bitcoin or otherwise. As such, everything has its own price and all of the prices are easily comparable, making everyone's life that much easier.

Currency wars


The topic of currency wars is rather big, and I don't think this post will do it justice. I recommend the book "Currency Wars" by James Rickards to learn more about this subject.

The short of it is, that a currency war, also known as competitive devaluation, is a competition between countries to achieve a relatively low exchange rate for one's own currency in comparison to everyone else. While at first it may sounds like a silly idea, after all, the stronger your currency is the more you can buy after all, it does make sense when you think about the state of your domestic industry.

If one's currency is going up in value relative to everyone else's, you will have more imports (you can buy more), but less exports (your products will become more expensive for everyone else and thus less attractive). In order to stay competitive on the global market, you want to reduce the cost of producing your goods. You can either do that through a long process of technical innovation and so on, or you can go the fast route and make your currency worth less. Since your money will be worth less, the wages you have to pay your employees are smaller, the cost to run your company are smaller, and thus your product gets cheaper.

This can be quite insidious, as it essentially means cutting everyone's wage without their consent or knowledge. One dollar today is worth less than one dollar last year and so on. Here is some rough overview of how much $1 is worth as expressed in 1913 dollars:


New measurement of value


As the money all over the world is fluctuating in value, its use as a measurement of value is a bit ridiculous once you think of it. You could compare it to trying to measure a height of a wave on a stormy sea in relation to other waves. We need a new form of measurement of value that would form a solid ground amidst the currency wars storm.

The reasoning as why we would want something like this is simple - for a lot of people, they would want to be earning the same value performing their jobs and pay the same value for their goods and services, no matter how much their local currency is fluctuating. This would allow them to detach themselves from the monetary policy of their countries that are doing their best to run it to the ground. Having an absolute measurement of value would promote real growth and innovation in becoming more and more competitive, rather than fake growth brought about through inflation.

As for what this measurement would be, this might be a bit complicated. If it was a commodity like gold, everyone would start hoarding it and its value swings would affect the economy. It cannot be a national currency, since those are too easily printed and manipulated. It cannot be a currency like Bitcoin, since it can be too easily gamed through a cycle of hoarding to increase its value and releasing to flood the market. I doubt there is anything that could be used as money in traditional sense that could be used for this purpose.

At the same time, none of this matters if we don't make it a currency. If instead, we take the VALUE of anything, be it $1 today, 100 years ago, 1BTC from January 1st 2015, or some handful of magical beans, and use that VALUE as a new standard for measurement of value of everything else, it would become like a metre stick (of for folds on imperial system, a yard stick) for the economic world. A metre is not a measurement of anything in particular, it's not a metre rod of iron, or a metre of water, it's a metre no matter what it's measuring. Similarly, our new Value Stick could be use to measure how much a dollar is worth and how much a euro is worth without actually being anything in particular.

So instead of seeing tags with dollar prices, we could see tags with Value prices, and an exchange rate of Value to dollars or any other currency, perhaps computed on the spot, like in BitTag:



Conclusions


In a world where countries go out of their way to change the value of their currency, we need a new standard for the measurement of value that is independent of any national currency, commodity or otherwise.

Jumat, 19 Desember 2014

Crypto success vs. Bitcoin success

After researching a lot of Crypto 2.0 systems (tiny.cc/Crypto), I started thinking about whether some systems could surpass Bitcoin. We have a lot of proponents of a world with only Bitcoin, only some Bitcoin copy, or all of the cryptos going the way of the dodo. While I'm personally a proponent of the Singularity of Money concept (a world with many interchangeable currencies), it is still interesting to ponder whether Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general will gain mass adoption among the general population.

Thinking about this for awhile, the conclusion seems to be that

Cryptos will succeed if the banks are failing. Bitcoin will succeed if the governments are failing.

Let me explain why.

People want faster horses


A lot of you should be familiar with the quote allegedly by Henry Ford - "If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse". A similar sentiment can apply to cryptos. People don't want a new currency, they want their old currency to be better and faster. People are used to thinking in USD and Euro, not Bitcoin or Dogecoin. It would take a lot of mental effort for people to switch over to a new currency, and that might be a large barrier to overcome, not to mention the issues of price stability and so forth.

At the same time, if you have a system that offers what the banks offer only better, you are very likely to be able to compete with them. This is why PayPal and Alipay are very likely to be used for online payments, while bank wires in North America are not as popular.

Banks surround themselves with a lot of policies and discriminate against their customers. International payments are a pain, credit cards are outdated and the whole system is filled with inefficiencies. As such, if you'd have crypto systems that allow you to pay in your national currencies only better and faster than a bank, those systems are likely to succeed in the modern world.

It is very likely that the 2.0 systems that allow people to deal directly with their local currencies without jumping through random hoops will thrive in the near future. Ripple is already positioning itself to be "the internet of money" and appealing to the current financial systems.

While Bitcoin and similar systems might be a part of the solutions used, it might also be seen as an unnecessary step when it comes to money exchange not denominated in BTC. However, there are some cases where Bitcoin might be the solution needed

Governments failing


If a national currency is stable, people want to use that currency. If the national currency is not stable, people want to get rid of it and use something else. If you're in a country like Argentina or Venezuela with an inflation rate of 10% or even 60%, or perhaps have experienced the Cypriot financial crisis or the more recent fall in the price of Russian Rubles, you might be thinking to yourself "I don't want to use this currency any more".

At times like these, we start looking at alternatives - gold, dollars, franks, etc. However, those can be seized or frozen. A more modern alternative would be to look at cryptos.

And herein lies the strength of Bitcoin. While it might look unappealing to the western world, it offers an alternative to people that are losing it all. It is apolitical, not controlled by any government and is easily transportable. As such, in a world where the governments fail everyone with their monetary policy, Bitcoin and similar currencies have a room to thrive.

Conclusion


It is very likely that cryptocurrencies will succeed in the near future due to the stagnation in the modern world. However, for Bitcoin to become widely adopted, we would need to see entire regimes start to fail and people wanting to take their economy into their own hands.