Bitcoin Forum

I have been in the Bitcoin community since 2011 and now I smell something that is not right about Bitfinex recently. I believe it is the right time to start this post, to let the community to have a full records of the ongoing history. I also want to start this post to let the whole community watch out for this risk. People are still using Bitfinex, and the trading volume of Bitfinex is still among the largest. However, I have already find the clue of fraud, and the evidence of amateur.

This unregulated exchange is a huge risk for the Bitcoin economy. We need to let more people to know about the risk associated with this exchange, and we should let other traders know.

I am living in China and getting communicated a lot with the bitcoin community there. On 14th Aug, the COO of btc123.com, Chandler Guo, has removed bitfinex from their list of quotations.


Chandler shared a very important piece of information in a Wechat group, indicate that a China arbitrage trading team have find issues when withdrawing bitcoin from the Bitfinex exchange. Soon, I myself get confirmed from the leader of the team, Mr. Zhao, confirmed it. He said that he had to "rummaged around" the whole Bitfinex contact list and trying every way to have a respond, and then got the Bitcoin withdraw done. The bitfinex give him an excuse of something with the evil U.S. government seizing their fund. This has never happened before. Mr Zhao showed us the email:

https://i.imgur.com/xx4tLWy.jpg?1

Evil U.S. government are seizing our fund. The withdraw is slow. Signs of market manipulation. Doesn't it looks pretty familiar? When we find signs of similar problems with mtgox, mtgox is not shutting down immediately. The whole situation of mtgox evolved in about 10 months time.

Now it is the time to be very cautious for us to look into what is happening with Bitfinex. And for those who are not trading there, I believe you will have a good time to look at the show in the next months.

I bet your "Chinese arbitrage trading team" must be moving large amount of fiat, particularly USD across different banking systems?
You cannot stop the "evil US government" from studying you when you are moving large amount of their currency around the world.
I never have any issues withdrawing USD or BTC from Bitfinex

No, he was withdrawing the Bitcoin.

I have been able to withdraw 40+ BTC multiple times without any issues. They were always processed almost immediately with a transaction being broadcast prior to the next block being found. The only delays I have ever experienced with them was during the stress tests however I believe that was due to the unavailability of confirmed unspent inputs.

Their number and severity of problems is small IMO

Below is written by the user on Reddit whose ID is "elux". When I submit this, it has get 26 up votes already.

There is similar long time of history, when everything with mtgox is right. However, from some time the mtgox started to show very risky signals, and less than one year later, it collapsed.

When the very risk signals start to appear I will start to worry and sell.

Until now, I don't think there is enough evidence to justify panic or fear about another gox event

Aug 31st, 2015.

Bitfinex is offline again.




Rumor goes that in webchat groups,

next in line: BTER. they're withholding withdrawals for at least 2 altcoins I know of for more than 12 weeks now. I guess they collapsed already and are illiquid

What is their cold wallet address?

They're offering to give me back 2344.5 of 6537.61  USD lost from a good faith effort to close a position. I am guilty of hitting close more than once, but I refreshed before doing so and the info displayed in the browser obviously did not indicate that previous market orders had gone through (otherwise their engine would have bounced the new orders because they're not supposed to stack). I got caught in a loop of confusion where i was a short then a long etc, but since their web server was feeding me wrong info during the crash I feel wronged by bfx. I do not know how to respond to the offer.

Sorry to hear that, I know of many other people who had problems with hitting buttons multiple times  :-X
However I would take their offer. It obviously sucks but that is the most you will get from them as a
gesture of goodwill.

The button bug could very likely be intentionally. We can all image who is getting benefit from the 6537.61-2344.5= 4193.11, the unregulated Bitfinex exchange.

Derp, my brainfart, it was a different exchange. Apolog!es

so long story short, anyone dealing with bitfinex is screwed entirely.

i dont see them doing any form of business any time soon, if they have their thing frozen.

??? Do you have a source on this? A quick google search on this reveals nothing, as does looking at their twitter page, and website/announcement page.

It appears that there is a lot of negative information about bitfinex on this (and other) threads from a number of users, however very little of it is being backed up by publicly available information....

Well this is the last freaking thing that we need at the moment. Like we don't have enough on our plate, the whole Bitcoin community. I will withdraw all my funds from Bitfinex as we speak. I mean 1 thing adds up to another and honestly, this has become a bit to much. Something fishy is going on.

So everyone should just withdraw while they still can, and let's hope nothing happens at all. Last thing we need is another earthquake, now while the Bitcoin is very vulnerable.

Derp, my brainfart, it was a different exchange. Apolog!es!

Posting mostly just to monitoring this thread since it seems active and with decent info.

For my part, I did not even consider using Bitfinex due in part to the involvement of a guy who went by the name ~unclescrooge here.  He seemed to me  like the kind of guy who would get involved in a scam.

I pulled what money I had in MtGox out in time.  (Sorta.  I've still got a $5000 claim for a fiat wire they never sent me.)

I figure that what Bitstamp did was a little internal scam to save on taxes.  They got on my shit-list when they snuck in a KYC without letting people remove their funds first.  Glad to see that they have not stolen peoples money in bulk.  Yet.

Since the 4-figure valuations I've not been an active participant.  I used Coinbase because I could, and because I figure I can sue them if the rob me.

Perhaps it's time to think up a name permutation for Bitfinex:

 - Tradehill --> Tradehole

 - Mt Gox -->  Mt Lox?  Mt. Sux?

 - Bitcoinica --> Bitgonica

 - Bitstamp --> Bitstump

 - Bitfinex --> Bitfin-ex

Guys i have been using bitfinex for 3 years.

Their team is not the best, I agree with that. But I do not suspect any fraud is going on.

If you lose money please do not complain. Their platform is very high fees and liquidity is not very good.

It is very difficult to make a profit using Bitfinex.

However I have made money using Bitfinex before. I have deposit and withdrawn 100's of bitcoins from them and never any problem. So I do not believe it is a fraud BUT if you are trading on Bitfinex you will find it difficult to make money especially these days 90% sure you will lose your money.

I believe OkCoin/Huobi are more suspicious than BitFinex especially since in Chinese I do not understand what they are doing, their culture, everyone know Chinese are lying, cheat, shadow bank problem etc etc.

I have used Bitfinex for about six months.

I've mostly made position trades (3-4 week holding period), with some algorithmic, automated trading through their API.

I have had no issues.  In fact, I wish it were this easy and low-cost to do business with a fiat broker.

My one disappointment is that they charge $20 per international wire transfer.

I am still having faith in bitfinex, which used to ico at NXT asset exchange and have a very good record of paying dividends! Not long ago they dissolved it by redeeming all of them! Many ppl knows NXT is decentralized unregulated  platform! Many asset issuers just disappear after finishing the ICO or a short time! Bitfinex was  still redeeming their asset there, which means they still care about their reputation and commit to the business!

fraud on bitfinex? I only have a little bit of shock, bitfinex is not a very formal business companies, in my opinion, it is more like a underground MLM organization, just like btc-e, do you think btc-e is a regular exchange? of course not, money laundering is the focus of btc-e, and bitfinex won't go well.

This thread is more than four months old, an update from the thread starter would be appreciated. I personally have never used Bitfinex but I know it's one of the largest exchange out there if this isn't FUD, you should keep people informed about what's going on especially if you possess information not readily available to everyone.  It's not going to be easy for Bitcoin to digest another Mt.Gox incident.

I have used Bitfinex for a lot of time and have no reason to complain. All the issues I had (and it weren't many) were solved in time and didn't affect me at all. So I consider that Bitfinex is still a trusted exchange, unlike Craptsy!