Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: phooook on January 28, 2012, 07:23 pm
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EDIT: I was wrong and blamed the wrong persons.
This goes out to all vendors on SR,
it is very important that you keep updating your BTC prices according to the current BTC/US$ exchange rate. Yesterday I was going to make 2 orders here on SR. So I'm about to trade my money on Mt.Gox so I could transfer them here. It all added up, I even would have had some BTC left.
Then SR went dark, so I didn't do the exchange and left my money at Mt.Gox. Now as SR is up and running again I put the items in my basket as I did yesterday, looked at the total and went on to Mt.Gox to change my money. Turns out that now I'm missing some 1.5BTC cause the exchange rate changed, but the Vendors didn't change their BTC prices.
I know it's up & down at Mt.Gox, but the price is about 50ct higher since more than 10h. You need to update your prices in time or you lose orders.
Just saying...
Greetings,
(sad) phooook
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The vendors do not do it SR does it automatically but there does seem to be a couple hour lag time.
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Oh, I didn't know that. Thanks for telling me.
So, sry @ the vendors and now my rant goes to the SR updating system ;)
I want to buy stuff!
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Also it is not the current bit price, SR uses the mtgox 24 hour weighted average. Right now the bit price is $5.70 but the weighted average is only $5.53.
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Most vendors list their items in USD, not BTC. And SR adjusts the BTC prices automatically for those items (I don't know how often though, maybe daily?). Although the current BTC price is no longer visible at the bottom of the screen on SR (it was removed after a security audit), items listed in USD are then priced in BTC according to the 24-hour weighted average of BTC at MtGox, which can be viewed by going here and looking at the value after "avg":
https://mtgox.com/code/data/ticker.php
You can verify that SR uses the 24-hour weighted average by adding any item to your cart, seeing how many BTC it costs, take the price of the item in USD and divide it by the number of BTC, and you should see that the value matches the 24-hour weighted average at MtGox. Then remove the item from your cart (set quantity to 0 and update cart). You then may also need to do a hard refresh on your browser (ctrl+F5) if you're using the Tor Browser Bundle or Polipo.
I don't know how you lost 1.5 BTC. Did you have USD at MG, or BTC you had purchased? It sounds like you had USD and bought bitcoin after the value went up.
But one thing you can do to pay less for items on SR is place a buy order on a bitcoin exchange for under the 24-hour weighted average. If your order is matched to a sell order you will end up with cheaper bitcoins that are worth more on SR. Or buy bitcoin and after the value goes up then spend it.
Currently, the 24-hour "avg" is 5.56, and the last transaction on MG was 5.47. If someone spends $100 on BTC at MG and buys at 5.47 they'll end up with 18.28 or so BTC (before fees, maybe 18.17 BTC after fees). However, a $100 item on SR will be 17.99 BTC based on the "avg." That 18.17 BTC is worth $101.03 on SR. If they transfer 17.99 BTC and buy the item on SR, they'll have .18 BTC left, worth $0.98, so they saved 98 cents on the item (if they sell it for USD soon). You can save even more money on items if you buy low/spend high (buy BTC at a low price, and spend it when it's a higher price. This only works if the value of BTC is rising though).
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I have heard of vendors changing the pricing all day long. This still wont be 100 percent accurate due to the weighting that SR does. Thats one thing Ive never understood. Ill post an item for 60 dollars but it shows for 67 (before commissions, etc)..It should even out at the end of the day...