Bitcoin Forum

It says I have a tradable balance, but it won't let me short any more. It has been doing this for the past two hours. Finally, it started to let me put in short orders at a couple dollars above the market price. However, when it gets to that market price, the order disappears. I thought maybe it was because my tradable balance decreased when the price went up so I tried to do short sell orders above market price at a smaller amount -- they still disappeared the second the market came up to it.

WATCH THE F--- OUT!!!!!

I am a bit bearish, but I don't write things like this unless something is seriously awry. NOR have I ever made a topic before. I am kinda irritated. I would love to short at this price right now.

This smells badly already.

People have asked me not to write this here, but it is also obvious looking at the board... Bitfinex is trading at 16 above China. Something ain't right at all.

I am also writing this because if you are relying on this rally on Bitfinex I think you risk getting wiped out. So I really do want to warn people. Sorry. I know this seems like the regular FUD nonsense. I am actually shaking right now because this is seriously worrisome to me.

BFX will be the next Gox for sure. Their website always has been buggy, until recently you could even put up huge fake walls without money backing it.

I don't know... I think they handled the flash crash this past time really well and I don't have any issues with them really at all. I think they mean well... at least nowadays. My hunch is that the shorts aren't going through properly because they changed their policy recently and it bugged up the technology. Still, I don't want people on here relying on a rally that is false if indeed it is false due to a bug in the technology. In the big scheme of things this is probably just growing pains.

If other people aren't having problems on their end please also post that. I hope this is limited to a few users, but I don't think it is.

Calm down... contact support and wait for their answer. You're the first I've heard having problems with this so maybe it's something related to your account or something. Anyway I think you will thank them soon because price is going to break 515 easily. ;)

Thanks Miz4r

Just because you want to short, and you have the margin to do so, that doesn't mean you can.  There must also be Bitcoin available for you to borrow before you can sell it.  Perhaps Bitfinex is having liquidity issues.  Coinbase ran out of Bitcoins to offer their buyers recently.  We may have a shortage on our hands.

This may be it. That's something I didn't even consider. That really might just be it. That makes a lot of sense.

However, there are a whole lot of swap offers for BTC so that's curious. And also, based on the demands for those being so light, it seems like short selling is out of business right now on Bitfinex.

https://www.bitfinex.com/credit/index/btc

I don't think you understand how it works.

For you to short, you need to borrow money from another user. In times of high demand, there may not be available swap offers within your specified interest range. This is the case pretty often when it is extremely clear what is going to happen in the near future. It's in no way the fault of Bitfinex and isn't even a fault - if they were to accept your order, they'd be printing money.

You may be able to find swap offers for higher interest rates. Go to Swaps and check.

What is your maximum interest rate? It doesn't matter how many swap offers there are if they all fall out of your acceptance range.

There isn't a shortage of USD or BTC swaps right now according to their book.

It may actually be something benign, and actually very thoughtful, like cutting expanding shorts with the new policy. Since, on the short side, you can now short 3.3 to 1 rather than 2.5 to 1. They may have seen a whale trying to manipulate the market, which you don't want, and they might have temporarily put the kibosh on it. Something like that wouldn't surprise me. Still, it definitely has implications for people's pricing assessments and so I post it in the speculative forum.

If he didn't think about checking the swaps situation, then he isn't placing swap demand. This tells me he is just placing an order for what ever available swaps (there are a bunch) and there is something else going on since orders are disappearing.
I was short earlier, and had no problems, but I opened it last night around $520. I'm not sure if this is a new issue today, or if there is something else going on.

Are you including variable rates and do you have a correct maximum margin rate? Troubleshooting here. I have been opening up various shorts all day and haven't had a single issue.

Everything you said. It seems to have only been in the past 2 hours.

Yes and Yes

Well this seems to be fairly disturbing! I was thinking of dropping some of my money in there! Thanks for the heads up!

I am pretty sure this is FUD, however in the event it is not there is a very reasonable explanation for this. If you want to short any kind of security, you need to be able to borrow it first, if there is none of the security to borrow then you cannot short it. In other words if there is no BTC available to borrow then you cannot short it

Go away!
Men talking here. Try reading a bit of the thread before replying ::)

There are plenty of BTC available to borrow. This has already been determined 

Because Bitfinex are pumpers.  They want more longs than shorts on the book for some reason.  They've never hidden this afaik

People have funds on the line when they trade. If something is awry, what am I supposed to do, bite my tongue. In a nutshell, piss off with the accusations. I swear, some people on here just want people to get screwed over.

And Bitcoin is great and even Bitfinex is fine... but there was an issue so I said something about it.

/thread.

a bear is willing to risk using bitfinex. Bullish.

Trust me, nothing is wrong with it. OP's situation was probably unique. Putting your money on Bitfinex is no more risky than putting it on any other exchange - though it is Chinese, so you're screwed if they shutdown and take the money.

I'm not discounting what OP said. What I'm saying is that every exchange has various little complaints like this every once in awhile. Whatever this is, I doubt it's a very big deal.

If you truly have a complaint/bug, you should probably contact Bitfinex and see what they have to say.

Which China exchange is 16 dollars below bitfinex? You can buy there and sell on bitfinex to make some quick money.

Sometimes balances take a few days to settle.  You must be talking about very small amounts here.  For example, small amounts such as $16 in fees that hasn't been settled might take 10-20 hours to settle, but does not update in tradeable balances.

I would not put any stock in this until someone slightly less trollish reports the same issue.

I was talking about price... not fees. Suggesting that the price was anomalous. Cheers!!

i saw 2-3 similar reports in the tradingview chat. someone asked if it was margin or exchange, and no one answered, but my impression is that they were all shorting, so maybe that is significant. isn't that new rule supposed to have gone in effect right around the time OP posted this? (8/18) maybe something to do with that. or maybe they are doing some "circuit breaking".... IMO if this is only happening to margin traders, my money is on that. they may be trying to control the supply (by limiting leverage), which is good because a flash crash is still very possible there....

But if it turns out to be only happening to those trying to short and not a general margin thing, then it shows that they're trying to play God like Gox did in April last year. They'll allow longs only limited by USD available, but limit shorts to what they feel like allowing that day. This is wrong, imo! It shows that you can go long on max leverage, and BFX has your back against the price falling.

Generally I'd feel this way and with the screw up they've kind of ruined my day. BUT... at the same time the market is clearly being manipulated downward so maybe a countervailing force isn't the worst thing. It's f---ing me over quite nicely, but in the broader scheme if I step outside of myself then I guess I could see that. To a point.

Bitfinex has done this in the past.
Alfter closing a short and letting the price bounce, I would try to open a short again but Bitfinex wouldn't allow it.  
Suppose it is their way of limiting exposure.
So now I just let my shorts run and not worry about covering on the little price spikes up.
And yes, this is on margin.

I wish I knew you approximately one day ago. =D

Cheers man.

Please stop posting bitfinex FUD. There's nothing wrong with bitfinex. I just shorted 1 btc with a market order and it instantly filled.

Yes, Newbie1022, nothing stops you from trying to put in your short orders again and again.
It's up to the discretion of Bitfinex if they are going to fill. Like I said, it might be their way of limiting their exposure, especially in a down trend.

I am new to the platform. Do they have a tutorial on how to short bitcoin?

That is, do I need bitcoin in order to short it? Or can I move some dollars to the margin trading platform and will be able to short it?


Thank

No, you can use dollars or any currency to short any other currency.  It acts as collateral when you borrow to short.

You just move dollars into the trading wallet (not the exchange or the deposit wallets). If you had to have bitcoin to short it would counteract the effectiveness of the short.

That's about it. They do provide directions. Make sure you look up the directions on how to do a stop-loss so that if the price pops hard one way or another you don't lose more than you are willing to.

their leverage rules are changing to account for the fact that people are leveraging BTC to buy and vice versa. but yes, you can move dollars to your "trading wallet" and then margin sell to your heart's desire. your dollars act as margin collateral. good luck. :D

I wasn't lucky with bfx in the past. I don't use it at least 8 months because a lot of bugs and absolutely ununderstandable engine behavior.

Also there are possible dangerous margine engine behavior, as available margin could reactively decrease or increase during big moves which may follow to unpredictable forced position liquidation along with margin reserves.

This was warning to me, but when my margin reserves started to just mysteriously dissappear - I said enough.

I'm having major problems as well. I suspect the Margin Hunter is working with BFX because I can buy anything!

GET OUT WHILE YOU CAN!