Silk Road forums

Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: eddiethegun on April 01, 2013, 05:06 pm

Title: Eight decimals, please
Post by: eddiethegun on April 01, 2013, 05:06 pm
At $104 USD/BTC, the rounding threshold is around $1. Is this getting rounded off into SR coffers?

DPR, are you pulling an Office Space scam on us?
Title: Re: Eight decimals, please
Post by: oldcactushand on April 01, 2013, 06:43 pm
I'm gonna post my newbieish question here because I think it's slightly related. I want to buy an item that costs $90.18 on the listings, but when I put it in my cart (with free shipping) it comes to more than that amount. I currently have just under 90.18, but as my money increases due to the exchange rate, the price of the item increases at almost the same rate. Currently, when the item is in my cart, the price is 90.65 - 0.92 btc.

Is this because 0.92 bitcoin is closer to $90.18 than 0.91 btc?

Edit: It just went down to $89.70/0.91btc and I bought it! Yesyesyes.
Title: Re: Eight decimals, please
Post by: kssr on April 01, 2013, 06:49 pm
I second this, if DPR could do this that would be terrific, OK?
Title: Re: Eight decimals, please
Post by: astor on April 01, 2013, 06:59 pm
I'm gonna post my newbieish question here because I think it's slightly related. I want to buy an item that costs $90.18 on the listings, but when I put it in my cart (with free shipping) it comes to more than that amount. I currently have just under 90.18, but as my money increases due to the exchange rate, the price of the item increases at almost the same rate. Currently, when the item is in my cart, the price is 90.65 - 0.92 btc.

Is this because 0.92 bitcoin is closer to $90.18 than 0.91 btc?

Edit: It just went down to $89.70/0.91btc and I bought it! Yesyesyes.

It's because SR uses an average price over 24 hours or some amount of time like that. When BTC price is rising, the exchange rate that SR uses will be a little lower. If BTC price drops, SR exchange rate will be a little higher. At this point, if you're a little short, you can wait a day or two and you'll probably have enough for the purchase.
Title: Re: Eight decimals, please
Post by: lelmeriodici on April 01, 2013, 07:04 pm
See:
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=140275.msg962745

lelmeriodici
Title: Re: Eight decimals, please
Post by: oldcactushand on April 01, 2013, 07:09 pm
I'm gonna post my newbieish question here because I think it's slightly related. I want to buy an item that costs $90.18 on the listings, but when I put it in my cart (with free shipping) it comes to more than that amount. I currently have just under 90.18, but as my money increases due to the exchange rate, the price of the item increases at almost the same rate. Currently, when the item is in my cart, the price is 90.65 - 0.92 btc.

Is this because 0.92 bitcoin is closer to $90.18 than 0.91 btc?

Edit: It just went down to $89.70/0.91btc and I bought it! Yesyesyes.

It's because SR uses an average price over 24 hours or some amount of time like that. When BTC price is rising, the exchange rate that SR uses will be a little lower. If BTC price drops, SR exchange rate will be a little higher. At this point, if you're a little short, you can wait a day or two and you'll probably have enough for the purchase.

I see what you mean. But maybe I'm missing something because that still doesn't really explain it for me. If this was about the exchange rate, surely the shopping cart would say that it costs 90.18/0.92 at X btc exchange rate? But it says 90.65... This is the amount converted to bitcoins.

Anyway, I didn't have to wait a day, barely half an hour in fact. The price came down to 0.91 btc, which came out on the shopping cart as 89.70. Am I wrong in thinking this is just a rounding up issue, due to the fact there is only two decimals of btc? I don't even really care about this anymore, I just wanted my shrooms to be honest! :)
Title: Re: Eight decimals, please
Post by: SelfSovereignty on April 01, 2013, 07:38 pm
I'm gonna post my newbieish question here because I think it's slightly related. I want to buy an item that costs $90.18 on the listings, but when I put it in my cart (with free shipping) it comes to more than that amount. I currently have just under 90.18, but as my money increases due to the exchange rate, the price of the item increases at almost the same rate. Currently, when the item is in my cart, the price is 90.65 - 0.92 btc.

Is this because 0.92 bitcoin is closer to $90.18 than 0.91 btc?

Edit: It just went down to $89.70/0.91btc and I bought it! Yesyesyes.

It's because SR uses an average price over 24 hours or some amount of time like that. When BTC price is rising, the exchange rate that SR uses will be a little lower. If BTC price drops, SR exchange rate will be a little higher. At this point, if you're a little short, you can wait a day or two and you'll probably have enough for the purchase.

I see what you mean. But maybe I'm missing something because that still doesn't really explain it for me. If this was about the exchange rate, surely the shopping cart would say that it costs 90.18/0.92 at X btc exchange rate? But it says 90.65... This is the amount converted to bitcoins.

Anyway, I didn't have to wait a day, barely half an hour in fact. The price came down to 0.91 btc, which came out on the shopping cart as 89.70. Am I wrong in thinking this is just a rounding up issue, due to the fact there is only two decimals of btc? I don't even really care about this anymore, I just wanted my shrooms to be honest! :)

I don't even understand the question?  Silk Road uses the MtGox average price.  Not their last price, or bid price, or ask price -- the actual average price.  If that's higher when you put the item in to your cart than it was when you started browsing the listings, it's going to be reflected in the price of the item in your cart.  I don't know how often that's updated, but it seems pretty frequently these days.  Does that answer your question...?

Also, I doubt that the rounding is really an issue.  If it was just lopping it off and keeping the difference, then those silly "you do not have that much" errors when trying to withdraw the full balance wouldn't happen.  I suspect it's using more decimal places behind the scenes.  I doubt it's using all 8 though.  This could also be a nasty thing to have to change, which means I wouldn't hold your breath while waiting for it to happen.

Mostly for eddie: if your account balance is displayed in USD and not BTC, Metasilk calculates it out to 4 decimal places.  Would be interesting to compare that against the site's idea of what you have -- my account doesn't get enough activity to make it much of a sample though.
Title: Re: Eight decimals, please
Post by: oldcactushand on April 01, 2013, 09:08 pm
I'm gonna post my newbieish question here because I think it's slightly related. I want to buy an item that costs $90.18 on the listings, but when I put it in my cart (with free shipping) it comes to more than that amount. I currently have just under 90.18, but as my money increases due to the exchange rate, the price of the item increases at almost the same rate. Currently, when the item is in my cart, the price is 90.65 - 0.92 btc.

Is this because 0.92 bitcoin is closer to $90.18 than 0.91 btc?

Edit: It just went down to $89.70/0.91btc and I bought it! Yesyesyes.

It's because SR uses an average price over 24 hours or some amount of time like that. When BTC price is rising, the exchange rate that SR uses will be a little lower. If BTC price drops, SR exchange rate will be a little higher. At this point, if you're a little short, you can wait a day or two and you'll probably have enough for the purchase.

I see what you mean. But maybe I'm missing something because that still doesn't really explain it for me. If this was about the exchange rate, surely the shopping cart would say that it costs 90.18/0.92 at X btc exchange rate? But it says 90.65... This is the amount converted to bitcoins.

Anyway, I didn't have to wait a day, barely half an hour in fact. The price came down to 0.91 btc, which came out on the shopping cart as 89.70. Am I wrong in thinking this is just a rounding up issue, due to the fact there is only two decimals of btc? I don't even really care about this anymore, I just wanted my shrooms to be honest! :)

I don't even understand the question?  Silk Road uses the MtGox average price.  Not their last price, or bid price, or ask price -- the actual average price.  If that's higher when you put the item in to your cart than it was when you started browsing the listings, it's going to be reflected in the price of the item in your cart.  I don't know how often that's updated, but it seems pretty frequently these days.  Does that answer your question...?

Also, I doubt that the rounding is really an issue.  If it was just lopping it off and keeping the difference, then those silly "you do not have that much" errors when trying to withdraw the full balance wouldn't happen.  I suspect it's using more decimal places behind the scenes.  I doubt it's using all 8 though.  This could also be a nasty thing to have to change, which means I wouldn't hold your breath while waiting for it to happen.


I don't know if I'm being stupid, or just not explaining it well, or both. I understand that the price in bitcoin is calculated by the mtgox average price. So, if an item is listed at $90.18, then the shopping cart price should be, currently, 0.91 btc. I understand that this amount changes with the weighted average even when the item is in my cart. At the moment, this item shows up as: Total: ฿0.91 ($90.12 at $99.0311 per Bitcoin). The "90.12" number fluctuates with the bitcoin. Earlier on, as the dollar amount in my account grew, so did the price, up to $90.60. I wanted to know why this was happening, but I think I understand it now. Wasn't trying to come off as a "DPR is ripping us off" person, was just curious because I was 50 cents short on some shrooms.

Cheers for the response anyway. Have learnt a lot from your posts on here.
Title: Re: Eight decimals, please
Post by: astor on April 01, 2013, 09:34 pm
Earlier on, as the dollar amount in my account grew, so did the price, up to $90.60. I wanted to know why this was happening, but I think I understand it now. Wasn't trying to come off as a "DPR is ripping us off" person, was just curious because I was 50 cents short on some shrooms.

Keep in mind that the money in your account and the prices of the products are technically in BTC. There's an option to display USD in the interface for your convenience, but everything behind the scenes happens in BTC.

So, it may be that when a vendor pegs the price to a USD value, the site recalculates the price on a schedule which is not the same as the exchange rate update.


For example, a vendor pegs a product to $100. Exchange rate is $90 at that time, so the BTC value is set to 1.11 BTC. Several hours later, SR updates its exchange rate from the MtGox average to $92 but hasn't recalculated all listings yet. You look at the product, which is 1.11 BTC, but because your changed the display option to USD, it shows up as 1.11 * $92 (the new rate) = $102.12.

That's probably why so many listings have weird prices down to random cent amounts. What vendor would peg a product to a price like that?
Title: Re: Eight decimals, please
Post by: lelmeriodici on April 01, 2013, 11:10 pm
Vendors' prices can also look for a reason other than not pegging to USD.  Vendors have the option of setting prices pre or post-commission.  If a post-commission price of $39.50 is set, buyers will see the item listed at $43.45.

lelmeriodici