ICBIT

ICBIT is a universal trading platform which has a few sections. Both the currency exchange and futures market are live.

This exchange is said to be founded by Fireball and DeepBit by combining best practices in high-performance trading and Bitcoin experience.

Technically ICBIT is a futures exchanged combined with a clearing chamber. According to their website users are partilly exposed to counterparty risk from other traders whose identities are concealed from them; the exchange does not pledge its own assets to back the other side of a customer's position (this is controversial because of what's written below). Traders are not allowed to conduct background or reputation checks of any kind on these anonymous counterparties. However, according to Fireball's forum post the exchange took all "bad customers" debt to itself and thus the first futures contract was fully settled.

Features

For its currency exchange section ICBIT makes an accent on the following:

• State-of-the-art technologies usage. Instead of using old, slow, polling-based algorithms ICBIT builds atop of the most up to date technologies. Its web trading client is in pure HTML and JavaScript (even compatible with most mobile devices), however it's fully realtime thanks to websockets and AJAX.
• Speed of trading. Bitcoin forum is full of anger against slowness of existing exchanges. ICBIT implements special high performance trading engine and uses high-performance "no SQL" database to eliminate the problem.
• No limits. Most of the existing exchanges put rather restrictive limitations and require users to prove their identity. ICBIT finds this totally unacceptable and does not put any limits at all.
• "Specialize on what you do best". For handling fiat money ICBIT partnered with AurumXchange which provides an unmatched set of depositing/withdrawal services for US dollars and other currencies.

Exchange

Traded on the exchange are:

• BTC/USD
• BTC/RUB (Russian Ruble)
• DB.RCLMR bond (bonds that can be exchanged for purchase of DeepBit Reclaimer ASIC hardware)

Futures

Futures traded include:

• BUH3 (Futures contract, expires March 15, 2012, settled in BTC)
• CLG3 (Crude Oil Futures contract, expires February 14, 2013, settled and quoted in BTC)
• GDG3 (Gold Futures contract, expires February 14, 2013, settled and quoted in BTC)

Settled futures:

• BUZ2 (Futures contract, expired December 15, 2012, settled in BTC)

Adding Funds

BTC

There is no fee for Bitcoin deposits to the account's BTC EWallet. Funds are added to the account's wallet after six (6) confirmations.

USD

VouchX redeemable codes from AurumXChange can be used to add funds to an account's USD EWallet.

RUB

QIWI vouchers can be used to add funds to an account's Russian ruble EWallet.

Widthraw Funds

BTC

There is no fee for Bitcoin withdrawals from the account's BTC EWallet.

USD

Funds can be withdrawn from the account's USD EWallet as VouchX redeemable codes from AurumXChange.

RUB

Funds can be withdrawn from the account's Russian ruble EWallet as QIWI vouchers.

Security

Accounts can be protected where both login and any money withdrawal operation requires the one-time password (OTP) feature known as two-step authentication. A mobile smartphone with Google Authenticator is the most commonly used OTP device.

History

First mentions of ICBIT appeared in June and July 2011 in the Bitcoin Stock Exchange Security Standards thread at bitcointalk.org and Bitcoin futures market discussion . By that time a very first version of the trading engine was developed.

A more detailed thread specific to ICBIT futures market was started in November, 2011. The first closed test of futures market was performed, and work on the new version of web trading client was started.

Finally in January, 2012 the currency exchange section went live

See Also

• Buying bitcoins
• Selling bitcoins

External Links

• ICBIT website.
• Trading client Direct link to the web trading client logon.