Bitcoin Forum

Hi everyone, I trade actively on bitfinex and poloniex, and usually end up keeping big amounts of USD on the exchanges (mostly bitfinex)
Sometimes exceeds 50k USD. And my concern is, what if bitfinex closes down or vanishes? The funds will be gone along with them.
And to prevent such tragic loss, withdrawing the USD to my bank account (a procedure that takes 7 business days +2 business days to arrive to my account) isn't an ideal method as that prevents me from trading. And I also dont want to keep say 50k USD sitting in an exchange with fingers crossed that nothing bad will happen.
I usually trade BTC/USD, ETH/USD pairs, so buying other currency (for example ltc, with current high rates) isn't ideal either.

What do you do? And what would you suggest in my position?

Thanks for your time.

Margin trading?

if you are a trader then you should accept your looses too. it is possible that bitifinex or any other exchange can go down without notice. just keep this in mind "dont put all your money in any exchange site".

If one of those exchanges closes down then there won't be much to do. Maybe if you live in the same country as the company operates, you can sue them locally. Other than that not much.

Use more exchanges, if you spread your trades amongst several exchanges if/when one of those fails at least it won't take all your money with it.

I believe you post bullshit on topics to raise your post count in hopes of increasing your membership rank and get some satoshis from signature campaign  >:(

How legit is Tether? Any thoughts on that? I could exchange the USD to Tether and store it inside Tether, and then when I need the USD, send the Tether to bitfinex and then buy the CC of my needs and participate in trades.. But don't know much about Tether, and it could go down aswell..

This is actually very easy.  Let's say you need to keep $50K denominated in dollars - but don't want the exposure of the exchange failure risk, just buy Tether.  Tether is USD 1:1 and never changes.  Trades with BTC in an instant.  So, sell some trading pair to get USD, then convert those to Tether.  Let them sit around until you think BTC, or LTC price is low against the dollar and convert the Tether (tUSD) back into BTC.  Full solution.

Tether is 100% on the bitcoin blockchain - it isn't some wonky bullshit chain.  Tether is always 1:1.  Very cool.  It is like USD is already a cryptocurrency.

You have answered my question, thank you

Who guarantees that there will always be a counterparty to trade you 1 USD for every 1 Tether that you have?

It sounds to me like you are just swapping trust from an exchange to the entity guaranteeing Tether's exchange rate.

If it were me I couldn't bring myself to leave that much on an exchange. If the exchange dies then you're just another creditor at the bottom of a long line. And I guess you're just another creditor while it's operating too.

I really can't wrap my mind around what happened to all the fiat on Gox. There's been virtually no mention of it and surely it's easily traceable.

I'd be running in and out with Bitcoin only even if I was losing a bit in fees and sales.

Gemini and Itbit do have full insurance for your dollars but I guess that margin stuff is too tempting.

RawDog has it spot on, but do you want something pegged to the dollar, with the dollar losing it's value? I would just split the risk and go for more exchanges, to prevent a situation where you lose everything in

one go. We have learned from Mt Gox that saving loads of coins on exchanges are not a good idea... let's not repeat the same mistakes twice. I also like  https://1broker.com/ if you are into CFD's. In any way,

split the coins over different exchanges and your losses will be less. Good luck.  ::)

How tether work? Why it always at 1 dollar?
Does it also had price determined by market, buyer and sellers?

tether.to

You are going to withdraw the usd means you will not trade with that value. So why not just conbert them to bitcoin and make them rest in a cold wallet. When you will see the price is going to decrease too much just trade them again to usd.

I suggest you put about $40k of that in a buy and hold bitcoin position and lock it up for 5 years.  Then trade with the other $10k surely that is enough?

I actually converted my BTC holdings at 448.9 thinking it was the hight, and the next day the price jumped to 550+ (couldnt see that coming), now I dont want to buy BTC at this price, and specially keep it for years in cold storage. My plan is to buy ETH dip, and waiting for it. But just paranoid to keep a lump sum sitting in bitfinex.. paranoias man

Why not split your funds in three or four exchanges btc-e kraken poloniex etc.

I also agree on this suggestion and i also personally devide all my coins between bitfinex, poloneix, yobit, bittrex, btc-e so that even one go down i will only loss around 10-20% of my fund. I believe bitfinex for bitcoin and poloneix for altcoin trading more than others.

Perhaps using regulated exchanges such as Gemini or GDAX will solve your problems. They both trade BTC and ETH.

What???
What country do you live in? Or do you live in the XIX century? If this is true, you need to change bank. I haven't seen a bank transfer taking more than 2 business days since 2003.

I assume Bitfinex's bank is an obscure one in a far off land. Even sending from the UK to the EU has taken 3-5 days for me sometimes.

Some was recovered but it's pretty obvious what happened to the rest: stolen by someone that is/was above the law. Identity unknown. Hence, it's not coming back, despite how traceable it is/was.

I want to use Tether too, but I find that it has a rather strict verification process. No biggie, in fact, I am on my way to submit the required documents/IDs. I don't know how solid Tether is, afaik it has a page about how much USDT is in circulations and stuff like that: https://wallet.tether.to/transparency. Other options are nubits (https://www.nubits.com/about/faqs#how-is-the-price-of-nubits-determined-on-coinmarketcap) and BitUSD.

OP you're playing with fire. As you stated these exchanges are not insured so if they go under your money is gone!

Unless your Bitcoins are in a privates wallet on your own computer all you own are IOUs.

In the coming years I guarantee you more exchanges will go under. Its just the nature of industry!

Try to remember these are ether private businesses owned by the founder and some investors or worse an arm of a larger corporation run by investors legally obligated to protect the investors not the users like you!

Again I repeat the boards of these companies are legally obligated to get as much money back for the original investors as they can if things go south. That includes fucking over as many people as they can just like Mt_Gox did in the weeks leading up their closer. They can shut down withdraws and allow deposits for weeks and release statements insuring that "everything is fine! No need to worry! Its a small bug in our system! It will be fixed soon!" And then without any warning close down with as much money on their books as they can get!!

OP they can't hear you, they higher PR staff to deal with people like you! Your nothing but a account number and a balance on their books. You have no rights you can't make any demands because you are nothing to them! And your government couldn't care less about your misfortune. And when they take everything they can from you and discard you with nothing you will have devised it. Its your responsibly to protect your own wealth.  

You're playing with fire and your going to get burned!

very interesting, i had no idea about tether until i read it in this topic. but a bout those two others, they don't seem like doing the same.
i am looking at coinmarketcap, tether is $1 but the other two are ~$0.98 how is that?

i mean are nubits and BitUSD same fixed value with $ or not?

Bitfinex takes 7 business days to process and send withdrawal request.
And the transfer they send usually takes 1-2 business days to arrive to my account.

Sadly, Gemini and itBit don't operate in my country, just found that out.
So I will withdraw my balance from bitfinex, and spead it through exchanges as advised. I couldn't trust Tether as it seemed shady.

that's what i think,why OP just used one or two exchanges with very long witdraw period and its will make him worry about her money. i think many exchange have better service than bitfinnex and poloniex.

Try other currency too, dont stick to one or two. Every coin falls in  the market so predict what is the right coin for that time

If you are scared that they will just vanish someday and take your money. You should just withdraw it all and find other way to invest it. Or put only what you trade or what you can afford to lose as we all know that any site can close anytime they want or what is their motive to create that site. It's very hard to trust someone these days so if are not sure from it better you just put what you can afford to lose.  :)

this is a valid concern that all of us who trade on any exchanger have. and there is not a damn thing that we can do about it. we have to accept this big risk if we want to continue trading.

reading the comments, USDT seems like an excellent solution but i am a little concerned about how good and reliable it can be. specially because i don't like having a wallet of any altcoin on my computer at all.

Is tether a JavaScript library?

Thats the website link for Tether, "blockchain based digital currency token in USD/EUR/JPY"

What other exchanges would you recommend?