[BETA]Bitfinex.com first Bitcoin P2P lending platform for leverage trading

[unclescrooge]

Bitcoin
Bitcoin watchonly daemon temporary down please come back later

This is what greets me already for more than a week - any eta. on when I am able again to throw money at you? No, I don't have or want an MtGox account to get codes from there...

Hello Sukrim,

For some reason your bitcoin address was empty and caused this error thrown at you (while on the other hand the Armory daemon worked fine).

I've corrected it. Can you check again please, you should be able to send bitcoins?

Thanks
Raphael

[Sukrim]

Perfect, it works now!

Edit: It would be great if unconfirmed transactions also show up (I trust that the transaction gets in the block chain but it's nice to know that your software recognizes it as well).

[myself]

** new stuff for the exchange**

BFX now have stop order available for the exchange, if anyone wants information about how to use the stop order to buy or sell please read this => https://community.bitfinex.com/showwiki.php?title=Bitfinex+Documentation:Orders+type#Stop+buy+sell+entry


example for a stop sell order for 1 BTC if the price goes below 30





please note that this function was only available for the margin trader users and now is also available for the exchange users, so the exchange users can get out of the market if the price drop without running a mtgox trading bot (because mtgox dont offer this option)

[Ichthyo]

...and beides, I noticed there is now a toggle box "include variable rates".

This afternoon I made a test and offered loans below the current VIR rate: and -- surprise -- all were taken.
Thank you very much for all this evolution and improvements all over the place 

[myself]

a short how to/tutorial for the exchange https://community.bitfinex.com/content.php/13-How-to-use-the-exchange 

[Sukrim]

Hm, what's actually the best way to lend coins?

Since VIR seems to be preferred atm. I guess VIR it is for the rate - but how long should the period be?
Positions can be opened for 1, 7, 14, 30 and 60 days. I guess it would make sense to rather offer 60 (or more) days as lending period if you want to lend for some time (especially with VIR). On the other hand I'm not sure if the system matches a 1 day position with a up-to-60-days lending offer or if it also selects by duration or amount (if there are several VIR offers). Could you please elaborate how the system selects from several lending offers that are at the same rate, but different amounts and durations?

Another thing:
I offered 15 BTC VIR 10 days and 5 BTC VIR 2 days (both renewable I think) yesterday.
Today I have suddenly an open offer for 19.99 BTC VIR for 10 days and an "Interest Payment on wallet deposit" of 0.0009 BTC (it looks like the amounts in the UI get rounded to 2 digits, so it doesn't show up).
After playing around a bit, I found out that I can offer the same amount multiple times, which means I can inflate the order book arbitrarily. I guess my other offers become canceled/inactive once an offer is actually filled - but still you might consider a change there? I have VIR offers for 119.99 BTC open with only 20 BTC backing these... I could fake thousands of offers at really low rates probably leading to others trying to underbid that "wall" with only very few funds behind.

Another thing is that I'd like to have historic data on VIR:
I got stuff like "Executed at vir(5.0): was partially filled at vir (1.0), partially filled at vir (0.98422983), partially filled at vir (5.0), partially filled at vir (3.01577017)" and even "Executed at vir(19.96814999): was partially filled at vir (0.02185)"! This seems like quite a bit of jumping in that rate.
Also from the history I cannot see (other than looking at the newly posted lending offer, which interestingly stayed the same on the second one) how much of the BTC I offered I was actually lending out. As far as I understand, offers can be partially filled after all.


Edit:
If positions are chosen by time stamp (e.g. take all offers that are open for at least x days starting from oldest to now), it might be a good strategy to create as many small offers as possible. If I lend out 20 BTC and only 0.01 BTC is taken from that, a new offer of 19.99 BTC gets reposted as far as I understand and I loose the old time stamp. In the extreme case I should lend out atomic positions (single Satoshis) to make sure all my funds are optimally used if renewed in such a scenario. Maybe it works differently, but so far (from logs) it seems like somebody took a loan of 0.01 BTC from one of my offers and it got renewed.
Oh, and 5 minutes ago suddenly my offers vanished ("insufficient balance, was: active"), 35 minutes after being posted.

[unclescrooge]

Hm, what's actually the best way to lend coins?

Since VIR seems to be preferred atm. I guess VIR it is for the rate - but how long should the period be?
Positions can be opened for 1, 7, 14, 30 and 60 days. I guess it would make sense to rather offer 60 (or more) days as lending period if you want to lend for some time (especially with VIR). On the other hand I'm not sure if the system matches a 1 day position with a up-to-60-days lending offer or if it also selects by duration or amount (if there are several VIR offers). Could you please elaborate how the system selects from several lending offers that are at the same rate, but different amounts and durations?

Now traders can ignore VIR so it's not entirely true. Offers are taken from the lowest rate to the highest, if the period is equal or above the trader chosen period.

The longer period you choose, the faster your offer is taken. When a trader opens a position, the loan expiration date depends on the lender offer. In other words even if a trader chooses to open a position for 1 day, his loan for your offer of 60 days will expire in 60 days (unless he cuts it before). He will then have a position with several loans, which will expire at least in one day.

When a loan expires, the position is simply reduced by an order at market rate.

Another thing:
I offered 15 BTC VIR 10 days and 5 BTC VIR 2 days (both renewable I think) yesterday.
Today I have suddenly an open offer for 19.99 BTC VIR for 10 days and an "Interest Payment on wallet deposit" of 0.0009 BTC (it looks like the amounts in the UI get rounded to 2 digits, so it doesn't show up).
After playing around a bit, I found out that I can offer the same amount multiple times, which means I can inflate the order book arbitrarily. I guess my other offers become canceled/inactive once an offer is actually filled - but still you might consider a change there? I have VIR offers for 119.99 BTC open with only 20 BTC backing these... I could fake thousands of offers at really low rates probably leading to others trying to underbid that "wall" with only very few funds behind.

Yes, it was a compromise between server resources and security: offers are at the moment checked only when a trader pass an order. In your case your offers would soon have been cancelled.
Now that the server has more power I'll add the check before you propose your offers to avoid this kind of spam.

Another thing is that I'd like to have historic data on VIR:
I got stuff like "Executed at vir(5.0): was partially filled at vir (1.0), partially filled at vir (0.98422983), partially filled at vir (5.0), partially filled at vir (3.01577017)" and even "Executed at vir(19.96814999): was partially filled at vir (0.02185)"! This seems like quite a bit of jumping in that rate.
Also from the history I cannot see (other than looking at the newly posted lending offer, which interestingly stayed the same on the second one) how much of the BTC I offered I was actually lending out. As far as I understand, offers can be partially filled after all.

Well, offer status needs a bit of explanation here. The amount you see in parenthesis "VIR(amount)" is the quantity of BTC or USD taken, not the rate.

And yes at the moment you don't have historical data of interests rates, that something to add on the list of dev to do.

Edit:
If positions are chosen by time stamp (e.g. take all offers that are open for at least x days starting from oldest to now), it might be a good strategy to create as many small offers as possible. If I lend out 20 BTC and only 0.01 BTC is taken from that, a new offer of 19.99 BTC gets reposted as far as I understand and I loose the old time stamp. In the extreme case I should lend out atomic positions (single Satoshis) to make sure all my funds are optimally used if renewed in such a scenario. Maybe it works differently, but so far (from logs) it seems like somebody took a loan of 0.01 BTC from one of my offers and it got renewed.
Oh, and 5 minutes ago suddenly my offers vanished ("insufficient balance, was: active"), 35 minutes after being posted.

Actually when an offer is partially taken, it is not reposter, it's the same. So the timestamps (or rather the internal offer ID) is the same and you don't lose your "place" on the offer queue.

I hope I answered to your questions. Thanks for these feedback, I really appreciate this, and we added your suggestions to the dev list.
Raphael

[Sukrim]

Thanks, I went ahead and opened ~200 0.1 BTC VIR lending offers for 120 days to see what happens. Interestingly now 0.2 and 0.1 of these are lent out after half a day, but NOT the ones with the lowest offer ID. As these offers were identical, I hoped to see a pattern emerge on how these will be selected by the engine. Weirdly enough it took them from rather towards the end (meaning the newest positions - but not really the newest, rather it selected 3 in the last 10%) and not sequentially as I suspected.

Also thanks for the explanation what means what in the ledger.

[myself]

@unclescrooge dear god that's a long post    


a short tutorial for the lending feature https://community.bitfinex.com/content.php/14-How-to-use-the-lending-feature

[420]

I think I just borrowed 0.11 btc now how the heck do I trade with it...nowhere does it show me a balance of 0.11 except under "Unused borrowed funds" on the Lending page

[unclescrooge]

I think I just borrowed 0.11 btc now how the heck do I trade with it...nowhere does it show me a balance of 0.11 except under "Unused borrowed funds" on the Lending page

Hi 420,

You will find your borrowed btc, ie the reserved margin, on the trading page, in one of the red circled field below (the left one for borrowed USD and the right one for borrowed BTC):


When you'll open a short position, your borrowed BTC will be the first one the be used, then, if necessary, the rest will be borrowed from the open lending market.

Best regards,
Raphael

[420]

I think I just borrowed 0.11 btc now how the heck do I trade with it...nowhere does it show me a balance of 0.11 except under "Unused borrowed funds" on the Lending page

Hi 420,

You will find your borrowed btc, ie the reserved margin, on the trading page, in one of the red circled field below (the left one for borrowed USD and the right one for borrowed BTC):


When you'll open a short position, your borrowed BTC will be the first one the be used, then, if necessary, the rest will be borrowed from the open lending market.

Best regards,
Raphael

okay both sides still say Margin reserved: 0

and on the right my balance shows only what I deposited which is 1BTC.  I see Tradable Balance   $85.06. which is like 2.5x my btc deposit value I guess thats the leverage allowed for purchasing...

EDIT: Nevermind I get it. I had to reduce the maximum days to what I had the loan for

[unclescrooge]

Hi 420,

Yes I forgot to tell you that you had to select a period of less than your loan period.

Happy trading
Raphael

[PRab]

Minor suggestion:

Please increase the number of decimals displayed and/or use the floor function instead of round.

Right now sometimes the website shows that a wallet has 123.45 dollars in it, but when I try to transfer that it errors out because of insufficient funds. I actually have to transfer 123.44 dollars because the real value is something like 123.4499 dollars.


Overall great service. So far my experience has been very positive.

[drawingthesun]

If I lend out at a loan period of 120 days, this is flexible for the trader right?

So I offer $x at 120 days, can they say I want $x at 60 days instead? Or doesn't this matter because they can cancel any time anyway?

I don't want to say lend at 120 days if the traders are uncomfortable lending for a long period of time and other lenders are getting their funds used by lending for a shorter amount of time.

[unclescrooge]

Minor suggestion:

Please increase the number of decimals displayed and/or use the floor function instead of round.

Right now sometimes the website shows that a wallet has 123.45 dollars in it, but when I try to transfer that it errors out because of insufficient funds. I actually have to transfer 123.44 dollars because the real value is something like 123.4499 dollars.

Hi PRab,

Yes indeed this is quite annoying. I'll have a look at it today.

If I lend out at a loan period of 120 days, this is flexible for the trader right?

So I offer $x at 120 days, can they say I want $x at 60 days instead? Or doesn't this matter because they can cancel any time anyway?

I don't want to say lend at 120 days if the traders are uncomfortable lending for a long period of time and other lenders are getting their funds used by lending for a shorter amount of time.

Hi Drawingthesun,

if a trader doesn't use the borrowing feature but trade directly, this is not flexible: his loan will expire at your period (so 120 days in your case). But even if he chooses a 1 day period, your offer can be taken. So the longer your offer, the more chance you get to lend.
This is not a problem for traders as they can cancel their loans anytime.

Best regards, thanks for using the site
Raphael

[Sukrim]

Here is a real-life example how lending BTC on Bitfinex looks like and how profitable it is.
I'm lending out 20 BTC (Edit: at VIR) for up to 120 days. Initially I opened 200 positions for 0.1 BTC each, thinking that maybe there is an algorithm that takes early offers and re-posts them after they are used (this currently seems not to be the case - instead borrowed+returned funds seen to be silently added to the last open position, so now I have a 4.1 BTC open lending offer and 40 0.1 offers less)

I included the formulas I used, because maybe I did something wrong there and to enable others to do the same easily (e.g. in Libre Office Calc).

Date	Days passed	Started with	Interest	Closed with	APR that day	APR since start
{{DD.MM.YYYY}}	{{[current_day - first_day]+1}}	{{last_day_close}}	{{user input}}	{{interest + open_balance}}	{{interest / open_balance*36500}}	{{(close_balance-initial_balance)/initial_balance*100*365/days_passed}}
28.02.2013	1	20	0,0009	20,0009	1,6425	1,6425
01.03.2013	2	20,0009	0,001	20,0019	1,824917879	1,73375
02.03.2013	3	20,0019	0,0002	20,0021	0,364965328	1,2775
03.03.2013	4	20,0021	0,0001	20,0022	0,18248084	1,00375
04.03.2013	5	20,0022	0	20,0022	0	0,803
05.03.2013	6	20,0022	0,0012	20,0034	2,189759126	1,034166667
06.03.2013	7	20,0034	0,0032	20,0066	5,839007369	1,720714286

Unfortunately I cannot (without an MtGox account - something that I prefer to keep that way after being included in the MtGox leak list) deposit USD or trade some of these BTC to USD (as that requires a trading account on Bitfinex and I'm fine with a lending one), so that side of the puzzle still needs to be explored by someone else.

Edit: Added new data.

[romantic1]

What's the problem ? I can't log in bitfinex !

[unclescrooge]

Here is a real-life example how lending BTC on Bitfinex looks like and how profitable it is.
I'm lending out 20 BTC (Edit: at VIR) for up to 120 days. Initially I opened 200 positions for 0.1 BTC each, thinking that maybe there is an algorithm that takes early offers and re-posts them after they are used (this currently seems not to be the case - instead borrowed+returned funds seen to be silently added to the last open position, so now I have a 4.1 BTC open lending offer and 40 0.1 offers less)

I included the formulas I used, because maybe I did something wrong there and to enable others to do the same easily (e.g. in Libre Office Calc).

Date	Days passed	Started with	Interest	Closed with	APR that day	APR since start
{{DD.MM.YYYY}}	{{[current_day - first_day]+1}}	{{last_day_close}}	{{user input}}	{{interest + open_balance}}	{{interest / open_balance*36500}}	{{(close_balance-initial_balance)/initial_balance*100*365/days_passed}}
28.02.2013	1	20	0,0009	20,0009	1,6425	1,6425
01.03.2013	2	20,0009	0,001	20,0019	1,824917879	1,73375
02.03.2013	3	20,0019	0,0002	20,0021	0,364965328	1,2775
03.03.2013	4	20,0021	0,0001	20,0022	0,18248084	1,00375

Unfortunately I cannot (without an MtGox account - something that I prefer to keep that way after being included in the MtGox leak list) deposit USD or trade some of these BTC to USD (as that requires a trading account on Bitfinex and I'm fine with a lending one), so that side of the puzzle still needs to be explored by someone else.

Hi Sukrim,

Thanks for these example, yes lending in BTC is profitable.

To answer the few remarks:
-Yes when offers are renewed, Bitfinex try to merge them if they have the same rate and period, to spare resources
-Wire deposits are coming soon, very soon. I had to stop accepting wire deposit on my personal account for reasons you can easily imagine, when Bitfinex started getting traction.
-You can change your account type to "exchange", without losing your lending abilities and current loans.

Anyway thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate it. Hope you will earn a lot here

What's the problem ? I can't log in bitfinex !

Hello Romantic,

Nobody can change password, username or email without asking us by email, so no worries here. Please contact my by email at support@bitfinex.com without your bitfinex email so I can reset your password and check your account.

Best regards,
Raphael

[romantic1]

That's ok now ! May be your server was overload ! Actually I got problem with one time token. It said "wrong one time token".
By the way, you wrote " In February 2013, Bitfinex will get incorporated as a limited liability in Hong-Kong." How about that ?