Should I withdraw my coins from Bitfinex?

[Morecoin Freeman]

There are several alternatives without so many problems.

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

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.

BTCE actually has an incredibly good engine, but no liquidity.

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

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.

[1715407401]

1715407401

[TReano]

There are several alternatives without so many problems.

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

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.

BTCE actually has an incredibly good engine, but no liquidity.

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

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.

[PolarPoint]

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.

[Mickeyb]

There are several alternatives without so many problems.

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

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.

BTCE actually has an incredibly good engine, but no liquidity.

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

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.

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.

[madjules007]

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.

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).

[madjules007]

You can margin trade on BTC-e as well.

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.

[TReano]

You can margin trade on BTC-e as well.

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.

[Chalkbot]

Fishy stuff going on... any ideas?

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

[madjules007]

You can margin trade on BTC-e as well.

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.

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.

[lissandra]

Fishy stuff going on... any ideas?

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

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.

[andyatcrux]

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

[luciann]

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.

[nrd525]

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

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.

[pooya87]

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!)

[Monopoly]

Fishy stuff going on... any ideas?

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

[randy8777]

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!)

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.

[LMGTFY]

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!)

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.

[marcotheminer]

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%.

[Herbert2020]

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~~

[aztecminer]

Fishy stuff going on... any ideas?

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