CoinMKT Concern

General
1

I am curious, I’ll start with the basics and expand - but I got totally screwed on my overnight trade at CoinMKT I believe.
I had left a balance there at 1.247 BTC. I decided last night to move it to PPC so I could dissolve my final BTC into PPC.

Now, the basics, as of the trade point last night CoinMKT was listing at 500-513 USD per BTC
And in PPC the variance was 2.07-2.13 USD per PPC

I ran a single order market trade, was in no rush, but their system split it into multiple mini trades as the order was slowly being completed.
I came home from work to check, all trading was complete. I now have 48.2198 PPC… Something seem a little off to anyone?
Just rounding a bit, 620 dollars worth of BTC doesn’t equal 95 dollars of PPC.

I already sent them an email asking for an explanation of the discrepancy and why the costs are so screwed up.

If anyone here has any advanced experience trading (anywhere is fine) and could either PM me for greater details, or open the discussion here, I’m fine with it.
I just feel someone is trying to screw me over.

2

have you transaction history you can review, cos yes you should have a LOT more PPC than that for 1.2btc!1

Interested to follow this one as with the vircurex freeze accounts funds as well exchanges are the weak spot in the crypto scene

Hope all gets sorted for you.

Fuzzybear

3

Hey FuzzyBear,

Here is the first email I sent - followed by their first response - and the third is the one I just sent them a moment ago. Now, please keep in mind I am not
some eloquent speaker I’ve never been really good at sounding “professional” :slight_smile:

Dear CoinMKT Customer Suport,

I’m writing this email in regards to some very interesting trades.

I had a grand total of 1.247 BTC for trade sitting in my account.

I started to trade my BTC directly to PPC. The prices ranged from 500 to 513 USD for BTC on your site
last night (3/27(early)3/28) PPC’s price was around the 2.00 to 2.13 mark.

Given the current price(s) minus the small commissions I was wondering how 1.247 Bitcoins at
approximately 500 dollars, only translates into 48.2198 PPC.
48.2198 x 2.00 (at the low end) Equals 96.4396 USD. On BTC’s low side 1.247 x 500 USD Market value
even on lousy ask is still nearly worth around 600 USD. That’s a difference of at least 503.75.

Now… Either your site is totally screwed up and people are allowed to make ridiculous prices, or I got totally screwed
out of my BTC.

Help would be appreciated, the conversion from BTC to PPC is just a little screwed up on this trade.

This was their first response:

Did you place a market or a limit order ?

Limit orders allow you to pick the price at which you want to trade, while market orders fill at the nearest market price.

We merely match buyers and sellers, so users placed trades set the price. Make sure that if the market price does not reflect a price that you are happy with , that you place a limit order with a proper price.

CoinMkt Team

And this was the email I sent back as of today:

Dear CoinMKT Customer Support,

I placed this order as Market orders, not limit orders.

I understand the difference between the two, but “Nearest Market price” - Did you check the math?
Are you suggesting to me that on your site your “Nearest Markest Price” for 1.247 BTC at ANY point during the last few days was ONLY
worth 119.712 dollars? I checked your values before I even traded.
I’ve even reviewed the charts you provide on your own site, at no point in the nearest or most distance past did BTC’s market value drop to anywhere
nearing 100 USD per BTC, and the relative value of PPC didn’t climb high either.

In conclusion, your market prices at the time of trade would have been inaccurate, by a margin around 380-400 dollars
(That’s 1.247 BTC at 119.712 Dollars traded to 48.2198 PPC at a high of 2.48 per PPC) If I had ever dreamed
that someone could just “steal” my BTC at any price they choice once my order was placed I wouldn’t even consider using Market Orders.
The prices were checked before the orders went up I had no reason for concern, until now.

Just have to wait on their next email now.

Edit:
The initial transaction of 1.247 BTC was placed (according to their time) on 3/27 at 10:04:52pm the locked in at Ask Price BTC 0.005. Small portions of this order was filled while I slept/worked, but it changes, which I thought once you placed an order it was locked as you had requested at the ask price you started with (Which in the past it always stayed the same).

Now it started trades to fill the order at 0.005, then it changed to 0.006, then 0.009, then 0.010, 0.020, 0.030, 0.060, 0.060, and the final trade was 0.043

Make any sense at all?

How does it go from BTC 0.005 (2.50USD for 1 PPC) to BTC 0.060. At the current Market value it was at, which was around 500, wouldn’t that make the trade roughly 30USD to 1 PPC?

4

I received a reply from the last email, and here it is.

D,

I see the confusion. So our charts are simply ‘guides’ which display the market price of any particular coin pair over the past week. That is different from the market orders and orders which are in our book, that you see down below. For some of our coin pairs, liquidity is limited because we are a newer exchange and we’re working on growing and getting more liquidity.

Which means that some market prices for some pairs is not anywhere near the ‘real market price’ that you see aggregated in the charts. Your best bet is to always place a limit order for the price you want. Though it may not fill right away, if it is accurate of a true market price it should fill fairly quickly.

We hope that helps.

CoinMkt Team

The short version is I am out some monies. Not the end of the world, but that created a question they still have not answered - maybe anyone here can?

When you place your Market Order and the order is basically “automatically” set and locked at a price(in this case it was 0.005), AFTER you place it can that ask price change on the fly?
As in this example the ask was 0.005 when it was sent to trade and that price changed from 0.005 to 0.060, and swung slightly back. Does that make any sense to anyone? I usually don’t worry about limit orders when the current ask is within market levels. I’ve never had this issue on others sites.

And it begs a few questions… “Liquidity is limited because we are a newer exchange…” So that means prices wildly fluctuate from 500usd per btc to 100 per btc?
That part still greatly confuses me since my ask was at 0.005. And if anyone can answer my question it may ease the confusion or add to it.

Thanks!

5

The chart usually should show high and low prices for a given period. The highs and lows should include all filled orders. Compare cadlestick day charts for the periods before and during the week your order was filled. If both charts have high and lows ranging from 500USD and 100USD, then it was normal for that pair for the exchange. You shouldn’t have put in a market order. On the other hand if your week have exceptionally large range of highs and lows, that is fishy.

6

Thanks for the reply MHPS. I know I do not have a 100% grasp of trading and I have no shame in using this thread to express any potential ignorance I have towards that end. I trust this community and I will take in any input provided.

I have pretty much come to terms with not using Market Orders anymore, I was basing this on previous experience at a few of the other sites I use and I
NEVER had a fluctuation to that degree. The most I’ve dealt with in range is 4-12USD differences.

It’s a burn I will deal with as par for course and continue moving forward.
As far as massive changes in the graph and orders I saw nothing that indicated concern. The previous filled orders are displayed and none of them were outside the norms for Market Orders. I guess “Fair Market Value” has a different meaning to them, or I am a total fool and missed something :slight_smile: in either case, life goes on!

And for the record I looked at some of my Math, I should actually hang my head in shame.
this line

"...How does it go from BTC 0.005 (2.50USD for 1 PPC) to BTC 0.060. At the current Market value it was at, which was around 500, wouldn't that make the trade roughly 30USD to 1 PPC?"

I was frustrated when I was typing, I should have considered looking back before hitting send (and that wasn’t the only spot), but I hope the good folks here got an understanding of what I meant.

Thanks!
Drum

7

Anyways it has happened before that some exchanges made insider trades against their clients in situations that seemed to happen due to market fluctuations. I think you are entitled to ask for a copy of detailed trade history for the period. If similar trades happens to very small orders, too, the events are probably real. If they only happened to relatively large order such as yours, something is fishy.

8

I went ahead and sent a request in. I looked around the exchange, they didn’t have any detailed information available on the surface. I will wait and see
if they are able to comply with the request. Never thought to ask that directly, so thank you.

9

I’m use to exchanges that normally just have a BUY / SELL column. I’ve also noticed some showing up with limit orders.

Looking at this page:

https://coinmkt.com/#!trading_guide

[b]Market Order[/b]

A market order is an order to buy or sell a security at “market price”, i.e. at whatever price the market is willing to execute the order.

Limit Order

A limit order is an order to buy or sell a security at a specific price.

So I guess what you really wanted was a Limit Order. The fact you went to bed, meant you really figured it would take some time for your 1.27 BTC order at 0.005 to be filled in small increments until complete.

It sounds like CoinMKT made api calls to external exchanges (like Cryptsy, BTC-E, Bter, etc) and re-sold you some PPC at a premium in order to fill your “market order”.

The good news is that they claim to be a registered Money Service Business (MSB) with FINCEN compliance:

https://coinmkt.com/#!aml_compliance

So they should aid you in your investigation. Even if they refuse to refund any thing (which I expect), they should be very helpful providing what ever information you require about this particular transaction.

I also hope that they take your case and concerns legitimately and make the necessary change to their website so this will not come as a surprise.

A confirm button that would said something like “Confirm this Market Order. Buy as much of this at 0.005 or even higher if necessary”, you would have probably pushed cancel.

This could have happened to me as well, or any one that is new to trading. So thanks for sharing it on the forum and let us know what happens in the long term.

Good luck.

10

If your transactions were legit due to natural fluctuations then you can probably set up some price-limited orders at normally unlikely good prices (use the transaction history of your loss orders as a guidance), and expect those orders to be filled. What goes around comes around.

11

ppcman, I am not concerned with a refund. A risk is a risk, so I am ok with this.

I did request further information and any details they can provide for the two days specified so I can research the details. So far I have not heard back
from them.

And you are correct

A confirm button that would said something like "Confirm this Market Order. Buy as much of this at 0.005 or even higher if necessary", you would have probably pushed cancel.
if it read like that I would have said no way. A Fair Market fluctuation is one thing, a bomb dropped in your lap is entirely another.

I will continue to share updates if/when the become available. I’ll give them a day or so to process my request. If I don’t hear back I will ask again and then go from there.

12

So first my personal opinion: coinmkt.com is a terrible trading site, very confusing. I don’t recommend it.

This is what I would recommend though:

  1. Look up the high volume exchanges, for example here: http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/v2/coins/show/ppc and trade at those like BTC-E.com
  2. NEVER do any market orders, it will buy stuff available on the market, since coinmkt has a very low volume and almost no sell entries, you basically bought everything available pushing the price up by a lot.

It was a tough lesson but hopefully you can now avoid costly mistakes in the future.