Tuesday, January 9, 2018

Stop the jamming with transaction fees

GDAX on Its Botched Bitcoin Cash Launch; “Heavy Buy Demand Resulted in Insufficient Liquidity”

This is Coinbase explaining why they froze the buy and sell order matching process.  They opened up the trade for bitcoin's new variant, BTH.  Buys exceeded sells by 9/1. So they had a big window mismatch.  This is where they should kick in transaction fees.

I like Coinbase, they get that they are  inherently holding some risk which  really motivates them to get it right.  Getting it right always means the trading bots have a prior agreement on jamming protocol.  Trading bots manage their transaction fees as well as observed prices or interest charges.  

The trading venue can use as much transaction fees as needed, both subsidizing the short window and increasing fees on the long window.  Nothing wrong with that.  Jamming is the fault of the traders and their bots, it is not the pit boss's fault, and the pit boss should price as needed to stop the jamming.

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