Bitcoin Forum

First of all it looks unlikely that Bitfinex is insolvent. It is theoretically possible that repaying their hack debt (the BFX tokens) was just a PR trick - but it does not seem likely for me. But still the problems with banks can bankrupt Bitfinex eventually.

How long it will take is the whole question here.

But there is also a second reason why it is very important how long it will take: there are currently 16.7K in BTC longs there, but over 20K BTC shorts, there is even bigger disproportion if you look at bids and asks. The longs there are dropping - especially since yesterday - presumably people liquidate their longs, claim the BTCs and withdraw them in fear of BFX bankruptcy. Others withdraw their BTCs and yet others buy BTC with whatever left funds and withdraw - creating the big price premium on Bitfinex. There is less and less BTC left on Bitfinex and the shorts are more and more exposed. Eventually we can get a huuuuge short squeeze there.

Big exitpump confirmed.
Crash afterwards when everybody knows Bitifex Goxed the unlucky traders.
Trapped money is just gone for ever.
Make no mistake, dont use Bitfinex.
Dont let an exchange decide what to do with your money.
Gox stole it, kraken did, Bitfinex did.
Who's next?

New ATH because of the exitpump.

Exitpump is one thing - combined with this level of shorts - this looks explosive!

Bitfinex exit pump.
Nothing to see here  :)

https://s27.postimg.org/der4zm41f/bitfinex_exit_pump.jpg

Its just getting started.
It also happens with the altcoins.
This is big.

We cannot actually say when it will come to the end, we dont know what caused the whole suspension of wire transactions ( deposits/withdrawals ).
There is a massive panic ongoing on the bitfinex exchange, people are getting rid of the funds stored in there, just to buy overvalued bitcoin ( overvalued, because the price on bitfinex is much higher than on other exchanges ) and send it to the other wallet.

It is understandable, because cryptocurrency community does not want to risk and hold their funds on the exchange which is suddenly suspending wire transactions without any important reason!
It may turn out, that this incident is pretty much the end of bitfinex.

I agree. They are trying to resolve the situation but I think the news from the bank caught them off guard. The bank should first issue a warning and give them a week or two to let their customers know  they will be switching banks and start looking for a new deal. I think the bank hoped Bitfinex will go bankrupt and the situation will resolve itself, but they didn't, so banksters decided to help them go down. People are afraid of a MtGox situation and jumping ship, but there's no reason for panic yet.
How long? I think it will be clear within a week.

They haven't really provided one single detail of their hack and that was multiple months ago. If I was running a place as questionable on the surface as Bitfinex I'd make it a priority to communicate properly. That's if they're not crooked bastards of course.

And here's an interesting metric - https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/3D2oetdNuZUqQHPJmcMDDHYoqkyNVsFk9r

That's supposedly Bitfinex's cold wallet. As you can see it's dwindling rapidly.

iam never use bitfinex after bitfinex hack in month july 2016
but iam not understand if bitfinex can't withdraw fiat money to bank
i think bitfinex not under PBOC regulated so withdraw fiat money to bank is not problem, if can't withdraw iam not understand

OP, saying and thinking that Bitfinex is unlikely insolvent is a mistake especially if you have Bitcoins stored in there. I could imagine the same things were said about MtGox. There was even Roger Ver who said that everything was ok, but the truth was he was already moving out his Bitcoins. Be careful.

bitfinex has proven that their business is highly profitable, so i don't think they are going to be bankrupt that easily. and the situation doesn't look insolvent at all to me. and yeah people are withdrawing bitcoin because that is what a sane person does!

and to all those who say it is a Gox thing, i have to say if it were all the withdrawals would have been blocked not just the fiat which is tied to their banks. if they wanted to run away, they would have blocked bitcoin withdrawals to prevent exiting of thousands of bitcoin.

and additional thing i like to add is that bitfinex price is high in comparison, mostly comparing to bitstamp which is intentionally dumping the price (maybe even to increase this gap!). when bitfinex was high and every other exchange was at $1200-$1205 the price on bitstamp was still $1180 ish, that is not normal in my book.

The only possibilities are "next month" or "never".  If it doesn't happen within about a month, I'll assume that it'll never happen and everyone should take their funds out.  To be safe, I think people who don't take their funds out are stupid, but it's okay because their loss will just help more intelligent people take their money out before it's (potentially) too late.  Suspended withdrawals and deposits - that's not a functional exchange because it means that Bitcoin can't be exchanged for fiat anymore.  With even fiat deposits blocked, it's very unlikely it'll be sorted with the banks.

People thinking that Bitfinex could be bankrupt is not the issue. The issue is their bank is not allowing them from moving their money in and out. Liquidity is the main issue here, meaning your money could be trapped in the exchange. But the real concern here is what if those Taiwanese banks decide to lock Bitfinex account because of the nature of their business.

They blocked withdrawals before the bank blocked their deposits.  I don't think the dollars on the exchange right now are actually backed by real money.  It looks like everyone is just trading air and hoping this'll all blow over, but it seems unlikely.

Looks like the HKD and CHF withdrawals story was mostly false: https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/855055701697331201 - thats why it accelerated today.

I think the're only problem is HKD and CHF. Since only the banks is their problem i think they can still resolve the issue after few weeks or months..
Like other said only in and out are blocked by the banks.. i think they are just seeing suspicious that is why bitfinex bank account was blocked..
But i think if they already know the problem why banks block their deposit and withdraw this issue should be resolve in few days. .

Update:

https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/201

"""
Bitfinex, unfortunately, continues to experience temporary delays in the processing of outbound fiat wires. We are developing alternative channels to address these delays, but this takes time. We appreciate the patience and loyalty demonstrated by our customers and the community in this matter. We were advised by our banks that we would be able to process outbound wires in HKD and CHF, and while we were able to successfully process several such transactions, we are now being told that the moratorium is being extended to these currencies, as well.
"""

We should start accepting it. This could be MtGox 2.0 and it relates to the hacking of $65 million of customer funds. I do not believe the tokens they issued were effective enough to get back that loss.


That is the problem. What would happen and how low will Bitcoin go if this new scandal hits the news?

I think this is as good an explanation as any:

Tl dr; Any exchange relating to Taiwanese banks (AML standards).  Meaning; This is not a BitFinex issue, but the conventional banking system creaking and being objectionable to any challengers.

You do know that all reporting of money transfers. the US has to be informed, even if sending pesos to bolivar without wishing to use USD?  They force other countries to break their own laws to remain friends with US.  I feel bad for people of the USA, though nothing but contempt for Washington DC.

Anyhow:

https://medium.com/@whalecalls/taiwan-aml-reforms-usd-crypto-drama-15417cbcdf7b

I feel worried about this issue of this exchange. it will take so long to get a new bank for deposit or no banks joining in this situation. just go and find another exchange for my convenience.

I vote on Next Month April is ending to soon, the most scary thing is it they do a mintpal and someone swoops in trying to save the company and runs away with the coins on the transfer. In order to avoid that it's best they just hold on a bit longer and find a decent banking partner or try to establish a Bank with some venture capitalists. Seems paradoxical but in order to rely less on the bank we need a bank to do the banking function if the main banks stop working with a group.
That said playing on that exchange may seem fun but it could burn like Gox so I'd rather just observe ^^.

We must be more careful and remain alert. I'm sure some decisions in the future will be able to affect the bitcoin we have.

well according to them, they have enough assets to sell and pay all the existing customers in full. so the bankruptcy is even more unlikely to me. but if the bank doesn't solve it soon, these things won't get solved that easily or that fast. it can take months, at least 2 more months unless their bank stop messing around and solves the problem.

people should continue to withdraw and use that "one time fiat withdrawal" opportunity if bitfines allows them.

That is all "according to them", yes. How naive are you? Of course that is what they will tell everyone. They are doing everything they can to avoid a panic and they are doing a good job. But as soon as all the whales and the big traders have gotten everything they have out from Bitfinex that is when the truth starts coming out. It is happening just like Gox. I hope we also get the biggest pump in Bitcoin history with it.

I expect a dump will happen as soon as all the whales and big traders have gotten everything they have out of bitfinex if they decided to convert it into fiat. I also hope to see the biggest pump in history but there is the possibility that we will see again the repeat of 2013 and I know many of us dont want to see a dump that big again except for those who want to buy cheap bitcoin.

So do we have any worthy official information? Either from Finex, insiders or Feds?  ;D

So far, you guys are busy trying to make first class dinner out of murky water. Is Finex insolvent or not? If its forming new bank ties and if so then with who? When?

I dont see how anybody would trust their savings that company at this time. Used cars salesmen offer more information on their product, than these guys do now.

I voted we will see "even later", but I wouldnt be surprised by Karpeles 2.0 the way this is going.

To be able to remain safe, i would suggest all to withdraw in any form possible, whether in bitcoins or altcoins. I am not saying that bitfinex might hack / Scam but this is only for the safe side to avoid possible damage.

well that is why i included the words "according to them", what other source did you expect! i am not an internal informer :)
right now all the information we have is coming from what THEY say on their blog and our own speculation. and what they say can be interpreted in both ways. but facts don't change.
- people are withdrawing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
- in the past, any exchange that did an exit scam they did it with full money and bitcoin at hand. so far a couple of thousands of BTC have gone out of bitfinex. that doesn't seem like a good exit scam strategy to me!

and as i said in the last line, they are planning on offering an alternative fiat also withdrawal and everyone should take that opportunity if they had anything left.

p.s. the "bank problem" that bitfinex has, is also happening to other exchanges. follow the news about OKCoin and BTC-E

Whales are not stupid, why would they immediately dump after they bought bitcoins at a premium?

This is what panic sellers do.
And panic sellers have small purses, because they lose their money just as fast as they make their few pennies.

And you're hoping for a dump.... Problems with the stomach?

If you have some amount on bitfinex and try to flow it to another exchange site.

There is a chance for this exchange to be another criptsy (not yet) But it is possible in the future.

If the bitfinex turn into the another cryptsy in the future and it will give the previous history. A lot of dump on bitcoin because those traders have lost his trust with the exchange site.

Bitfinex on the orange area.

Agree with this. They won't dump once they've got their coins out - they'll patiently wait till bitcoin rises above their purchase price and slowly feed the coins into the market. (Those who withdrew in the form of litecoins a week ago are already in profit).

Maybe that is why during MtGox they pumped the price to more than the premium price they bought in then sold high and after the dump, they bought low again.

MT GOX was a stupid fake price rise that was done only because it had way too much power and influence. i mean there were literary no other exchanges even remotely big to have any effect on the price!
right now the volume that bitfinex has is the same percentage as those small other exchanges at the time of GOX.
and also gox pump was a one time thing that happened because of that influence that place had. and it was done by the exchange not the whales.

I don't know why anyone is buying or selling at Bitfiney at the moment.
It has been years since Gox, and I haven't got my Bitcoin back yet!  I wouldn't play around with an exchange that might be circling the drainpipe!

I hope the USDT gets back to normal or is taken over by someone else soon though. I don't crae about Bitfinex otherwise, especially if they aren't 100% legit.

Cryptsy did it

BTC-e has selectively tried it

What are you saying? That pumping the price today is not possible anymore after Gox? Gox did not have that much power and influence on the market. It was enjoying the reputation of being the first Bitcoin exchange. That is all.


Despite the $65m hack on Bitfinex last year and problem of withdrawals being locked by the exchange in fiat, you still believe the price increase is normal? It is clear the price increase and the premium price in Bitfinex is because of users are buying up Bitcoin to withdraw.

Gox is one of the slow slow slow legal system cases.
I can see why people wanted to buy the Gox shares but man it is a slow ROI on that one either way I agree with you smart move is to liquidate the Bitcoin side on the wait.

Wasn't it just a bunch of bots that ended up competing with each other (however, likely not without some outside ""influence"") and the value of Bitcoin skyrocketed off of that event? And then the exchange decided to commit Sudoku and run off with the money?
I don't know if the price pump was done because of the influence the place had specifically, but it definitely affected the market, and still does to an extent. Some of the effects can be felt, but we're mostly gone from that now. We're higher than before and relatively more stable.

well you are misinformed my friend.
Gox was mostly enjoying being the biggest exchange out there while controlling the majority of trade volume. there either were no coinbase, bitstamp, bitfinex, even btc-e or they were too small to matter. when you control the >75% of the market (ie gox) you can easily change the price.
but when you control <10% (ie bitfinex) you can push the price high as much as you want but nobody cares.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2ku1A5Ox8U

i think that was different, there was clearly a bot doiung all the manipulation, the price was artificially inflated to the $1200 peak, and was not really backed by any new investors

also it's not a good strategy to instigate a panic selling, they would take a gamble there and the value would not fall where they want, making them only losing money

usually whales manipulate the value only by making the big sell/buy walls that are there to force newbie to sell in those range they want

You are right. I looked into it and studied the history of MtGox and I was surprised to discover that they had a bot pump the price to more than $1000 from fake buy orders. They called the bot Willy according to Coindesk http://www.coindesk.com/bot-named-willy-did-mt-goxs-automated-trading-pump-bitcoin-price/

Don't hold your breath.  

Anyone who gets back any of their lost money should consider themselves very lucky.

BitFinex has a better management than Gox, so it's not likely to repeat. Remember when it was hacked some time in the past? They were able to give back their customers the stolen funds and they've quite recovered from that event and stood strong.

Finex becoming Gox is just the worst case scenario.

Well, Gox had quite good management. To the point those guys stole all the funds and almost got away with it too  ;) Karpeles is alot of things, but being incompetent is not one of them.

Finex already had trouble with withdrawal/funds in the past, it was also raided and did not refund its users 100%. Not great. In more developed market, that company would be under already.

If you can't run an exchange in a professional manner, where you take care of people's funds properly (without getting tempted to run off), then you're exactly that, incompetent. This dude didn't need to run off with people's funds as he had like 100,000BTC (fully belonging to him) in reserves already. If he kept running his exchange properly, it would still be the major exchange, which as result would have gained him a good number of coins throughout the years. People are extremely short term minded as they are willing to take any risk to achieve something, that they in potential could have reached after a certain number of years.

Poll result is depressing.

No.
Its a good thing.
Cut out the rotten exchanges.
Bitfinex needs to die, its corrupted by greed.
Greed= short term
Added value+transparency = long term
We dont need Bitfinex, let them rot.

bah, who cares about POLL results. people don't vote what they think can happen but they mostly vote what they wish would happen.


yeah, down with bitfinex :D
i am too lazy right now or i would have made a mime with that yellow drawing thingy holding up a matchstick shouting.
edit: yaay i did it anyways
https://i.imgur.com/4BBF5aH.jpg

No. If he had then MtGox should still be the no.1 exchange in Bitcoin. Bitcoin was stolen from his exchange and they deployed a bot to pump the price. Does that show you good managment?


The story is not over yet. Give it a little more time before making the mistake of judging it. I admit, I also made that mistake.

Right now only luck can help them. Regaining what they lost is something very big, because the reputation they gained as a trusted platform and in the top list won't be retained back. Possibly it won't be sought out in a short time of within a week or too, I believe it would take months to solve the issue.

Bitfinex's first plan is to look for banks that are willing to do business with them, without actually registering their activities in a proper manner. It's something they till now haven't done.

If they took the effort to do so, this problem wouldn't exist, but there surely must be a reason for not doing so. It's Bitfinex after all. Nothing happens without a reason.

If they want to continue along the same lines, they must find a bank from some sort of an island to be willing to offer their services to Bitfinex, but without them willing to register themselves properly, I even can't see this become reality.

I've picked the even later option.
 
In my opinion the sittuation might be too handy for anyone that was willing to manipulate the price and create the whole issue with the bank withdrawals. Yes I think it was a cospiracy.

So if the manipulation was involving making the bitcoin price stagnate, it will take at least the time since August. In August the price seems to be the most radically changing so the buying phase for someone imho must end by then.

Probably the buying phase for someone that had manipulate the price will come after some big dump in price. There will be some further bad news and gossips involved here.

In my opinion the pain and fear of the bitfinex users must reach some peak here, either by time or panic buy/sell.

Thats just my 2 cents.

It is only overvalued if the situation on Bitfinex gets solved somehow but I don’t think that is likely so if you need to pay a premium to get your money out of there then it is worth to do and just lose some money instead of losing it all and never see it again.

I thought that they already fix the issue about the suspension of wire transaction.. they are still updating their blog but i can not seen that they are solved the issue about wire transfer..
Well about too much price increase i think it can not affect the whole price or default price of bitcoin ..  and this is just a bubble this is just what i think..

Why isn't Bitfinex experiencing a run on its bitcoins? People could just convert their fiat which is 'stuck' into bitcoins and withdraw them.
Are people greedy because the exchange rates at Bitfinex are higher?

I suspect that some bfx proprietors or employees have Taiwanese bank accounts and are not really interested in resolving the problem quickly.

They can get their crypto back right now, but they will lose a percentage because of the premium.



Agreed. Bitfinex is the final hangover from Bitcoin's fucked up early days. It's incredible that it still managed to stay on top for so long considering what a shit hole it is. They should do an orderly shut down and leave but they won't do that. They're working themselves up to a final violation.

Bitfinex could have sorted these withdrawal issues already, but there is something that makes them not willing to take any quick actions.

It could very well be that this is being used as excuse to not let people cash out the funds that they gained back from Bitfinex very recently. It at least wouldn't surprise me.

Bitfinex has been acting very shady several times now. The longer this withdrawal issue drags on, the more people will use their fiat and convert it to whatever crypto and cash it all out.