Liron comments on A proposed inefficiency in the Bitcoin markets - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Liron 27 December 2013 03:48AM

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Comment author: Liron 27 December 2013 08:16:38AM *  6 points [-]

If you were a quant, you would know that random walks on a log scale (geometric Brownian motion) are what people normally use for asset prices. It's what's beneath Black-Scholes, for example.

Ok, I admit I was ignorant of this. I just observed that the graph in the Wikipedia article for "Random Walk Hypothesis" was linear-scale. Thanks.

Comment author: ChristianKl 27 December 2013 03:33:10PM 4 points [-]

What made you believe that the Wikipedia version of one article gives you an accurate understanding of the complex formulas and computer models that today's quants use?

Comment author: Liron 27 December 2013 09:25:26PM 0 points [-]

Why I wrote the article:

  1. It's plausible that quants' methodology breaks down in sufficiently unusual markets. In particular, markets with huge volatility.

  2. I want to propose the object-level idea that efficient markets should show a drag on price movement with respect to expected-value movement.

Comment author: ChristianKl 28 December 2013 12:44:22PM 1 point [-]

It's plausible that quants' methodology breaks down in sufficiently unusual markets. In particular, markets with huge volatility.

I would doubt that there aren't other markets with huge volatility. Certain options are probably high votilite right after related news items get posted.

On the other hand it might very well be possible that there are effects that you can find. There are quants that trade bitcoin but it's not a big market from a quants perspective

It might very well be that the particular trading algorithm that mtgox uses creates market effects that usual markets don't which are predictable when you throw the right math at it.

Personally akrasia was the only reason why I didn"t invest into bitcoin 9 months ago. I think that while it was possible that bitcoin might lose all it's value, the chances that it would get a multiptude of it"s value where high enough to counteract it.