Re:Coinbase – Exchange API
by kasey_junk on Monday January 26, 2015 @10:50AM
(#8947600)
Given their maker/taker fee setup, they clearly are trying to attract liquidity providers, who definitely want to be able trade algorithmically.
But, other technical choices make it clear that they are not targeting existing HFT firms. For instance, cloud based virtualized servers are unacceptable for HFT firms. Not being located at one of the "major" exchange data centers is a problem for most firms as well. Finally, building an http/json based proprietary api instead of a standards based one or a proprietary binary format is a clear signal that they are not targeting existing HFT firms.
Re:Coinbase – Exchange API
by tlrobinson on Monday January 26, 2015 @04:30AM
(#8946175)
Heh, you could imagine Bitcoin HFT shops spinning up EC2 instances until they happen to get one close to Coinbase's.
(I don't know AWS networking well enough to know if this would make much of a difference, or even if the overhead of the HTTP API wouldn't make the difference negligible)
> could imagine
I imagine they are already thinking about it. Affinity and HFT go hand in hand.
They note that your trading 'bots should be running on Amazon AWS East for minimum latency. They're encouraging high frequency trading. Since they're coming up with zero fees, they may have huge 'bot volume. Then they can announce they are the biggest exchange.