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Author Topic: USD Swap demand on Bitfinex has never been so high  (Read 9332 times)
BuildTheFuture
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June 25, 2014, 04:49:18 AM
 #61

Loan demand is not bullish because in order to fill the loan, someone else has to front the USD, which means that those USD cannot be used to buy bitcoins. It all sums out to zero.

Not accurate, this assumes that all the USD lenders would otherwise buy BTC. In fact there are many lenders who are only interested in staying in USD and using Bitfinex as a way to earn a higher "risk free" return on their USD than they can find elsewhere.
trader001
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June 25, 2014, 04:58:46 AM
 #62

Loan demand is not bullish because in order to fill the loan, someone else has to front the USD, which means that those USD cannot be used to buy bitcoins. It all sums out to zero.

Not accurate, this assumes that all the USD lenders would otherwise buy BTC. In fact there are many lenders who are only interested in staying in USD and using Bitfinex as a way to earn a higher "risk free" return on their USD than they can find elsewhere.



This is also true. Not everyone has a bullish view on bitcoin and want to stay away.
nrd525
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June 25, 2014, 05:31:35 AM
 #63

Loan demand is bullish.  That said, it just disappeared and the $5-$10 million might have been related to exploiting a slight bug in bitfinex with the goal of increasing the swap rate.

Compare Bitfinex swap rates with icbit.se futures.  Both expect the price to increase.  You can make 20-30%/APR guaranteed (assuming no hacks / scams) by buying a bitcoin now, getting a contract on icbit.se and selling it in December.  Why?  Because speculators think it will increase by more than 10-15% by December and are paying a heavy premium to bet on this.

There is no evidence that bitfinex swaps will decline significantly.  The historical record is that they keep increasing (and supporting an increasing number of long positions). I start using bitfinex when the swaps were only $100k-$300k or so (back in Jan/Feb 2013).

Speculators can convert their margin position to a real position with the "claim" feature.  I know I did.

Digital Gold for Gamblers and True Believers
rhader
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July 28, 2014, 03:17:10 AM
 #64

Can someone please explain how exactly total return swaps work on bitfinex with USD. What type of risk is the offerer exposed to? Is the rate of return per day really .1469%? I dont understand how the rate of return could be so high without there being effective risk for the person offering the swap.
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July 28, 2014, 04:09:04 AM
 #65

Does it make more sense to low ball bid on Bitfinex or BTC-e? I ask because BTC-e seems to be responding more aggressively to price shocks due to a thinner order book. That said, it is my understanding that the leverage problem is on Bitfinex. Any thoughts on this matter?
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July 28, 2014, 04:10:14 AM
 #66

Can someone please explain how exactly total return swaps work on bitfinex with USD. What type of risk is the offerer exposed to? Is the rate of return per day really .1469%? I dont understand how the rate of return could be so high without there being effective risk for the person offering the swap.

It seems like something is wrong because something is wrong. There is no way that you can collect that much interest unless that is the cost of risk OR the market is really poorly functioning.
arorts
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August 30, 2014, 05:34:52 AM
 #67

It's bearish. The amount of money loaned out to take longs is now at an all time high meaning prices have been supported on fake money. Now the supply of real money to lend out has dried up which results in the supply/demand you mentioned. This is going to cause interest rates to rise. The higher interest rates will force people to dump as it is no longer profitable to hold with the way the trend currently is. This could end up turning into a cascade of stop losses and margin calls as 40,000BTC purchased with loaned money are dumped.

uh, what?

it means that people want to borrow 11 million USD, (to buy Bitcoins, what else?), but they can only get 1.1 million

isn't that extremely bullish?!
No. Loan demand is not bullish because in order to fill the loan, someone else has to front the USD, which means that those USD cannot be used to buy bitcoins. It all sums out to zero. The only thing that really causes growth is when new fiat is wired in, which actually increases the amount of USD which can be used to bid on Bitcoins at a given time. Actually I would prefer no loans were given out at all and that all USD were directly used to obtain real bitcoins. The margin state is actually more bearish than the non margin state. Here are some more reasons why:

1. The margin positions only exist on paper in the user's account. The only thing he can possibly do with his position is dump it to take the shiny green profit figure shown next it. The user cannot withdraw those bitcoins or participate in the bitcoin ecosystem.
2. The user is subject to an interest rate which means it is most likely intended only to do a short term trade, and if the trend is not rising fast enough to be worth interest rates then he will dump.
3. The above factors reveal the psychology of a margin user which is just to do short term trading, dump, and make profits rather than being a long term investor in Bitcoin.
4. The rising interest rates entice bitcoin holders to dump their bitcoins to obtain USD to fulfill the loan demand.
5. The margin user can be liquidated and forced to dump if the price drops too low.
6. If people with real USD decide to leave the exchange after the margin contract period is up, this will also force liquidate the margin users.

FYI actually the loans can also be used to buy Litecoin and Darkcoin (duh) but the points above are stronger / more relevant.

A couple of holes in this analysis.

Without the benefit of any hindsight, those conditions do not necessarily represent a zero sum game or negate a bullish trend.
You are assuming that both parties have the same risk profile and they'd necessarily use the same money to bid on bitcoin so that they always swing to either side. Otherwise, if what you are saying is true, one half of the USD swap's order book would always be empty or largely empty.
I could just as easily wire in USD to lend it without being interested at all in bidding bitcoin and absorbing larger volatility. It's precisely the order book imbalance AND different risk profile that makes it a NON-zero sum game.

Rising interest rates are normally accompanied by rising bitcoin price , which can produce  vastly larger returns than the collected interest rate after selling the those coins and lending USD. In this case you are again making a similar assumption as before: that the higher-risk profile of a bitcoin speculator can just as easily be converted to the low-risk, low-return lender. Even after giving the benefit of the doubt why would they not instead lend bitcoins at a locked high rate if  they start to see price stagnation or foresee a decline?? It doesn't necessarily have to be USD lending.

It's not apples to oranges so in sum: I think the data and charts we see is so convoluted and represents different people with different interests and different investment horizons that it doesn't necessarily mean a move in any particular direction.

Better use and return of time spent in understanding the REAL fundamentals and valuation modeling  of bitcoin.

negafen
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August 30, 2014, 09:47:39 AM
 #68

Can someone please explain how exactly total return swaps work on bitfinex with USD. What type of risk is the offerer exposed to? Is the rate of return per day really .1469%? I dont understand how the rate of return could be so high without there being effective risk for the person offering the swap.

Risk is the exchange might go bankrupt.

The rate was high because the expected return of bitcoin investment is high. If investor is expecting more than the rate being taken, they will have no problem paying the lending rate.
arorts
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August 30, 2014, 09:00:10 PM
 #69

Can someone please explain how exactly total return swaps work on bitfinex with USD. What type of risk is the offerer exposed to? Is the rate of return per day really .1469%? I dont understand how the rate of return could be so high without there being effective risk for the person offering the swap.

Risk is the exchange might go bankrupt.

The rate was high because the expected return of bitcoin investment is high. If investor is expecting more than the rate being taken, they will have no problem paying the lending rate.

Where did you get the 0.1469%? Today it's 0.04% so it's not high but low and it's low because the USD lender faces virtually no risk (other than systemic exchange issues, etc).

For the offerer , there's low risk-return. It's high-risk (and potentially high return) for the USD BORROWER because if the bitcoin spent with the USD moves down too much, he might not be able to cover his debt fully.
So even if if you were referring to an old, higher lending rate, that's still low risk compared to the bitcoin holder/USD borrower's.
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August 30, 2014, 09:58:54 PM
 #70

What the heck is going on with all those swaps? I really wonder sometimes whether those credits are the reason for Bitcoin having trouble recovering at the moment. It's like the only ones who are profiting are the bears who are shorting correctly!

I should have gotten into Bitcoin back in 1992...
JerryCurlzzz
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August 30, 2014, 10:13:26 PM
 #71

Can someone please explain how exactly total return swaps work on bitfinex with USD. What type of risk is the offerer exposed to? Is the rate of return per day really .1469%? I dont understand how the rate of return could be so high without there being effective risk for the person offering the swap.

Risk is the exchange might go bankrupt.

Firstly, they don't really insure lenders' money. If all positions had to be liquidated based on the order book, USD lenders would lose dearly -- very dearly. And Bitfinex makes no legal guarantees there.

But yeah, they could certainly go bankrupt... or simply run off with the money. I'd be weary to keep too much permanently parked in USD lending there, as I've heard more than one programmer remark that their platform is not coded well, and even that they don't understand the issues around floating point arithmetic. That would, in turn, make me worry about their security protocols. We know very little about the identities of Bitfinex's operators, and if they were to lose significantly in a hack, it may be easiest for them to simply cut and run.

Just a hypothetical...
ensurance982
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August 30, 2014, 10:15:20 PM
 #72

Can someone please explain how exactly total return swaps work on bitfinex with USD. What type of risk is the offerer exposed to? Is the rate of return per day really .1469%? I dont understand how the rate of return could be so high without there being effective risk for the person offering the swap.

Risk is the exchange might go bankrupt.

Firstly, they don't really insure lenders' money. If all positions had to be liquidated based on the order book, USD lenders would lose dearly -- very dearly. And Bitfinex makes no legal guarantees there.

But yeah, they could certainly go bankrupt... or simply run off with the money. I'd be weary to keep too much permanently parked in USD lending there, as I've heard more than one programmer remark that their platform is not coded well, and even that they don't understand the issues around floating point arithmetic. That would, in turn, make me worry about their security protocols. We know very little about the identities of Bitfinex's operators, and if they were to lose significantly in a hack, it may be easiest for them to simply cut and run.

Just a hypothetical...

They've got problems with floating point arithmetics? Geez, that doesn't sound good at all. A badly programmed exchange may lose money without the operators even realizing it! I guess something similar happened in Japan until about half a year ago...

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September 09, 2014, 10:50:07 AM
 #73

Thankyou for the explanation TERA.
Technically the market was supported on a bubble that will burst if no more money is put in and this will make the price fall?

Correct ?

Duke

Hello, please never ever take advice from trolls like Tera. She is known here for her doom predictions. Basically all she does on this forum is telling people we will go down. Just like she did with you.
She will manage to turn ANY situation into something bearish. It's beyond pathetic but that's the life of bear trolls.
The only difference between tera and fonzie/falling is that tera includes charts.  She is a very good troll

so you must have lost so much $$$ Cheesy
ensurance982
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September 09, 2014, 10:53:54 AM
 #74

The crash in mid August really seems to have wiped out a lot of the long swaps. We're down quite a bit now, with no imminent recovery in sight! It's interesting, this could be a healthy sign for the economy. Unfortunately a lot of bulls may have lost their money...  Undecided Cry

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falllling
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September 09, 2014, 10:55:24 AM
 #75

The crash in mid August really seems to have wiped out a lot of the long swaps. We're down quite a bit now, with no imminent recovery in sight! It's interesting, this could be a healthy sign for the economy. Unfortunately a lot of bulls may have lost their money...  Undecided Cry

you see the downfall of bitcoin, lower and lower!
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