Bitcoin Forum

Fishy stuff going on... any ideas?

No ideas, but I think if you need to ask the question - you should exit sharply. For what it's worth I'm almost out - more through luck than skill though. 1 BTC left on swaps, which I'll withdraw ASAP.

everything is going to be FINE

*quietly withdrawals all funds from bitfinex*

not to worry.

Better safe then sorry. 

I would.

Mark my words...

Bitfinex = Bitcoinica 2.0

they are doing the Mt. Gox style. for months now. Their engine is just bad.

They are making so much money, but instead of hiring some professionals to build a new engine they the exchange has to hold trading several times now. They still haven't fixed their freaking button bug. Somebody clicking twice on the sell button probably created the recent crash of their engine.
Lending system also shows several issues for months. Everything is super laggy at high volatility times. It's just awful.


I would highly suggest everybody to leave them. This should not be tolerated for such a long time.

Don't wait until they go over to the "We are hacked" exit plan.

There are several alternatives without so many problems.

Any suggestions? I'm becoming annoyed by finex too. Thinking about moving to OKCoin.

YES.

don't trust VIRTUAL wallet.


http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img905/6156/DTG0cs.png

Humans, they never learn ...

Two flash crashes on Bitfinex, I would trade somewhere else. Send a message with your withdrawals.

I already did. Just be careful as it's a bit of a different game over there. Of course they have a spot exchange if you don't want to do futures.

Dont repeat history of what happen to mt.gox.

If you have a funny feeling, then just withdraw until they sort their own services out or just move onto a better service and wait it out.

I would just withdraw for the time being though.

All of the exchanges are pretty bad. Okcoin is the shadiest of all, especially with all the lag and order mismatching during volatile times (sound familiar?). Stamp has a horrible engine as well, and liquidity leaves much to be desired. BTCE actually has an incredibly good engine, but no liquidity.

.....And all the exchanges are fucking you. Who are you kidding?

But comparisons to Gox? Please.....

I don't think it's a Gox in the making.

It is clear however that their platform is needlessly costing people money when they should be competent enough to provide something that just works. That's reason enough to shop elsewhere.

Withdraw for the time being until problem is settled. I've read that they are also having withdrawal issues as of this moment. Maybe they are short on funds? Idk but find a different service first until everything is fixed. You don't want to be Goxxed, do you?

The trouble is......where?

Has Kraken gotten anymore liquid / are dark pools going anywhere? Bitmex has terrible liquidity, and I don't like the idea of a crypto-only account. Coinsetter is new on the scene, but liquidity...... yeah. It's still the wild west for bitcoin exchanges. Terrible, really, how none of them seem to make any effort at improving their platforms.

it depends where you from, how you want to trade high leverage futures or just simple spot.

OKCoin.com in general is a good place for everything despite the FUD attacks we had in the community at some point.

bitmex.com is offering some really interesting hedging/Volatility products as well as 25x leverage trading. But there liquidity is still very thin but they seem to be very competent from what I have heard on the Whaleclub...

If you are from Europe Kraken.com might be a great place to take a look into.
Or the traditional BTC-e. BTC-e is no doubt the most reliable and oldest exchange for Bitcoin. Again despite what the community is always saying.



btc-e has decent liquidity... There are not many people who need much more liquidity for trading.

If one is leaving Bitfinex because of lag/engine problems, Okcoin leaves much to be desired. Funny how exchange fiascos come as flavors of the month. Last month, it was Okcoin, after the DDOS fuckery that left many, many traders unable to connect and instantly margin called. No compensation for hardly anyone. Not to mention its utter lack of professionalism (exhibited by the Star/Roger Ver episode). Ever taken a look at their corporate structure? Shady as hell. It's highly questionable that their "proof of reserves" audit was legit -- their former CTO said that it was gamed by Okcoin. Allegations of naked maker bots trading against (and stop running) their users.

No thanks.

https://twitter.com/bitfinex/status/636258874606133248

"We are experiencing data corruption issues and will be offline until corrected. Sorry for the inconvenience."


It's like Mt. Gox is tweeting again.

haha

"We are experiencing data corruption issues and will be offline until corrected. Sorry for the inconvenience."

Jesus christ. I'm hoping this isn't a gox because they're still holding my coins.

If you aren't the sole controller of your private keys, you don't have any bitcoins.

If you need to make a trade, deposit, make the trade, then withdraw. Anyone leaving coins on any site for extended periods of time risks losing everything.

Some people need to actually stick their hand into the frying pan to learn the lesson though.

Thank you for your reply.

I have a lot of trust in BTC-E too. I began trading bitcoin and litecoin on BTC-E in October 2013.

I only made the switch to Bitfinex around December 2014 because of their margin trading and liquidity.
So far my experiences on there have been mixed bag, so I will definitely look into your suggestions. :)

You can margin trade on BTC-e as well.

If any exchange is having problems, I would withdraw immediately. No question on that. Lose a few days of trading profits but you get to keep your bitcoin in your own wallet until Bitfinex is proven safe again.

Btc-e has the most reliable trading engine by far and they had the least problems of all of the current exchanges so far. They seem very robust altogether. Now, the problem of course for many is that the owners are not known and this leaves the people bad taste in their mouths.

Out of all of the exchanges out there, the most reliable, with the best audit, and best transparency is Kraken, but you need to be based in Europe to use all of its services.

Sure, this is something to keep in mind. But for those who prefer to hedge their BTC against devaluation (as we have seen for the past 1.5 years or so) and/or ride the volatility, cold storage is not an option. And wiring USD out (and then back in) carries a certain time-cost (sometimes quite a prohibitive one in volatile times).

Considering BTCE's liquidity, I would highly advise against that. MT4 and BTCE are notorious for flash crashes into thin books. It would be very easy to lose everything on a price spike that doesn't happen on any of the other exchanges. For this reason, I mostly use my funds on BTCE to trade unleveraged, and keep very low bids all the time to catch any flash crash.

Finex is the highest liquid market in the past and has seen flash crashes as well.

Whenever you have to ask this question.......

Not as many. But more importantly, as you admit, BFX is a much more liquid market. And even so, its traders are alarmingly over-leveraged, always, in comparison to its book. This is much more so the case with BTCE, so your risk is exacerbated there. More so, I don't believe we can do swap analysis on MT4 as we can with Bitfinex swaps. The two 10k + non-margin sells near the $250 level that preceded the recent flash crash, taken in combination with outstanding USD swaps, made it clear that holding leveraged longs at that time was extremely dangerous. No one could have known the flash crash was going to happen then, but we all should have known that it was very possible.

Probably just wants to see the overall response of people already withdrawing and feeling certain with that decision.

I personally would just be safe then sorry and withdraw if any suspicious moments arise or before that if I can pin point it out.

Definitely. You should. Everyone should. They no longer deserve anyone's business.

If they have their own faults of security or some rogue employee doing insider crap.

Thats a huge sign of indication of "gtfo" moment so its all red flags at this point.

If you don't have permanent control of 51% of the mining power (and a grid-independent electricity supply), you don't have any bitcoins.

you should never keep your funds on exchangers, especially if you think any fishy stuff is going on there, withdraw your funds as fast as possible (if you can!)

Yes ..... do it as soon as possible .......... there was two crashes in the exchange ... they are doing everything for losing you ......

at this point bitfinex offers way too much trading options for people to leave. the alternatives aren't worth leaving bitfinex for. beside that, bitfinex has huge loads of volume every day. if all people withdrew their coins from the exchanges there wouldn't be a market.

I think the answer may lie somewhere between these two views. We have to have money on exchange at various points if we're traders, or even, for many people, if we're simply buying BTC. Post-Gox (at least) we know to consider exchange risk, and to mitigate it by limiting money on exchange, and spreading money between exchanges.

But part of managing risk is adapting when things change or more data becomes available. Right now I don't really know what's going on at Bitfinex. It doesn't feel to me like the last days of MtGox, but that hopeful instinct isn't enough for me to consider it safe for me right now.

I'm not advocating withdrawing everything from every exchange, I'm not really advocating anyone do anything other than manage their own risk. However, there clearly are problems with Bitfinex's trading engine and one way to send a message to Bitfinex that this is not acceptable - is to vote with our feet and take our trading business - and our money - to another exchange.

Edit: apologies, randy8777, I didn't address your point about trading options. That's a fair point. However, I think incidents like this often act as the catalyst for alternatives developing. There are already alternatives to margin trading, though they're not well developed at this stage - I'm hopeful that that'll change.

You could try out https://Bit-X.com. They support unfunded orders which is pretty useful.

If more people use them, their liquidity will increase (pretty decent already though) and so will their volume.

At the moment they have 0% fees until September 1. From then it's only around 0.1%.

you should always trust your instincts. if you feel like there is any sort of fishy stuff is going on bitfinex you should withdraw your bitcoins and use some place else for a while until you are sure.

~~better safe than sorry~~

luckily i am not there... if i were i would be out there at first opportunity .

Just bought LTC and escaped from this shithole...

What I found astounding, and quite concerning, about Bitfinex yesterday was the flash return rate on lending bitcoins.  It paid 50%pa!  Compare this to around 4%pa at times over the past two months.  I have no comment about how this reflects on the stability of Bitfinex or otherwise, but when gamblers on the site are willing to tolerate such volatility it wouldn't take much for an 'oops, bug/error' to bring the whole thing down.

I withdrew my bitcoins a while back.

blockchain drama + bitfinex implosion = bullish ???

I vote removing bitfinex from indexes, they are causing nothing but panic. Maybe on purpose...just sayin'

The answer is YES. You should never leave coins at an exchange. Withdraw within a few min. of any purchase and move your coins to an address that you have sole control of. 

Bitfinex will be history...  soon.

They f*cked people twice with flash crashes. It's pure gambling to continue trading with them.
Finex charts should be ignored. Their recent "low" is artificial and was caused by system glitch.

You should withdraw every single coin of every single exchange and web wallet ever invented, unless you necessary need them because you are soon expecting a price change where you think you can benefit from, otherwise put all of your coins inside the core wallet or some trusted local wallet or paper wallet, because its the only way to properly store BTC long term.

No, it wasn't a glitch at all, unless you think a) the order book is fake and/or b) the swap numbers provided by Bitfinex are fake. Because outstanding USD swaps diverged from price in the $290-310 range, so net longs were increasing steadily while price was dropping. I took note of the seller dropping 10k+ sells into the $250 level and pulled all my bids, as I feared he was trying to trigger a cascade.

So we added $6 million USD longs while price was falling. That's HUGE fuel for a selloff. This divergent trend generally held true until the $250 level broke. This was a huge stop loss level (evidenced surely by all the chartists that expected a strong reversal at the $250-255 level -- myself included). The book was thin and stops ran into stops. The rest is history. Once the $220 level was broken, anyone fully leveraged long from $290-310+ started getting margin called. Thin book, margin calls cascade into margin calls.

Not a glitch at all, and to be expected.

how does it look over there now ??

Interesting, LTC is doing ok at this point and it might shoot up soon but, then again, it might not. I played the market w/ it the last few days and gained an extra 50 of it but now the focus is on bitcoin and what it does. You could make out decent or just wish it did better at this point. Going down to the curb is a possibility at this point so stay tuned.

Never ever keep your coins on centralized exchanges.

I would withdraw

The best place is always your own computer

good luck with a currency which has 0 liquidity.

It's pretty stupid to say it's wrong to keep your coins on a exchange if you are trading them.

well there is always the middle ground.. i keep most of my coins in cold storage, and i have some on coinbase exchange where i been trading..

without active traders Bitcoin would be dead.

Including the "traders" who have shorted her into the mud? That's the kind of dead she could do without.

i'm trying to trade.. however i am not buying into this pump due to bitfinex ..

currently we may be undergoing a dump lol the pump is pretty much over unless u can make those split second trades :D

Do you think the PBOC banning the shorting of stocks brought confidence to the market? :P

Traders, leveraged or not, create the liquidity that allows one to buy or sell bitcoins. Without them, there is hardly any market to speak of. And shorts create buy-side demand...... just as longs create supply....

@OP fishiness doesn't stop at just the crap going on today. BFX has had a history of fishiness.

All the non-bitcoinica stuff was developed by a user named "myself (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=67543)"? those features alone are what made BFX as big as it is today, otherwise ppl would never have flocked there. Guess what? the guy got the boot after BFX felt there was no need for him. Had they been smart and kept him on, you wouldn't see the lag you see on their site today.

Don't panic about BFX. Run.

well if your exchange does not have technical problems then you wont have technical glitches that forces you to stop trading during margin calls cascades and stop withdrawals. that is why bitfinex is working real hard on their technical problems.

its proven that bitfinex owners/employees trade on their own platform.

why is it so hard to fathom that bitfinex is crashing the market to fulfill their own buy orders?
someone in bitfinex needs money, and now they got your cheap coins. the technical side just plays into the scam.

i dont trade on bitfinex.. i'm just saying that if you dont have technical problems then you wont have technical glitches.. bitfinex is working very hard on their technical glitches that is causing them to stop trading and halt withdrawals. that is all i really know about the situation over there. everything i read makes me think they might collapse. i dont really know though. 

CTO said yesterday they have still no clue how to fix the problem. Therefor it will not get better anytime soon.

Good luck staying there and praying to not lose money in the next volatile phase..

everything is different with bitcoin. i do not think for one moment the people asking should they stay with bitfinex would stay with their bank if it was so dodgy or just plain inept nor stay with their plumber or local fast food outlet. Its proven to have problems and is not overcoming them so leave. Would you let your plumber block your toilet and then say he cannot come back as he has more important jobs to do...........

source of the CTO statement?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=934638.msg12179591#msg12179591

I officially moved my trading funds to Kraken. :)

If anyone missed that:
https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/3l82c5/email_from_cftc_regarding_bitfinex_trading/

Kraken is a pretty awesome exchange :) Low fees for withdrawing fiat as well, which is quite amazing. Hope the volume can increase a bit more there :)

fees are lower there?

bitfinex has a bit lower fees. they are seperated in 'maker fees 0.1%' and 'taker fees 0.2%' kraken has a fixed fee of 0.26% for people who's volume is less than $10K in value. op isn't going to get cheeper fees.

But kraken is REALLY reliable. I trust them a lot more than I trust finex, ohh but the volume is lower so it might not work out very well for day traders.

Well i haven't use their service before but with the news of lost btc making headlines i would be real cautious. Just prepare for the best and always ask yourself is it worth to continue to take the risk?

Can the US prosecute Bitfinex somehow? I read a comment that said the US wanted to prosecute Gox, and got all the banks to stop processing USD withdrawals from its bank. It said before Gox went bankrupt you could only withdraw in Japanese, Polish, and some other currencies, not in USD. I know Bitfinex changed its bank a few times in the last month. Could pressure from the US force the banks to stop processing USD withdrawals from Bitfinex?

Yep that's true... I did my last SEPA withdraw in early November 2013. US withdraws were long unavailable at that time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox