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

[myself]

so close to the 100k

[myself]

also today we reached the order 20 000 order processed  

20000    EXECUTED @ 47.65(100.0)    100.0

[SlipperySlope]

Congratulations on exceeding 100K USD margin loans. I just began participating as a lender on the BTC side, so you have my strongest support.

Could you remark on the safeguards on bitcoin lenders in particular with regard to short positions closed to insufficient margin. In a strongly rising market, short positions suffer losses beyond their margin - right? I understand that Bitfinex absorbs these sorts of losses so that the BTC lender does not risk a loss. Great! But Bitfinex obviously needs a reserve, a certain amount of bitcoin, set aside to cover these losses. What might that reserve be?

[Sukrim]

Well, I guess bitfinex has a safety margin (say 10% of an order) - so unless there is a jump higher that this margin in one point of time (possible, but at current depth not too likely) closed positions won't end up at 0 but at safety_margin-epsilon.

Also now for the first time my 20 BTC have been lent out at once and a LOT of BTC lending offers were taken - seems like somone thinks the ceiling is reached.

Edit: BTC VIR still shifted from ~14% to 9% within a few hours. Either somebody dumped a big load of coins for really low percentages on the market and they were immediately gobbled up or something funny is going on there...

[myself]

@SlipperySlope i cant give you the numbers only Raphael can ....


also we had a plan to suspend opening new positions if the price move above 5 USD so in case of a crack and snap "johnny come lately" don't open a position at the very top or very bottom also on the other hand the extreme IR asked by landers did remove the incentive for the late joining on a rally/dump

[SlipperySlope]

@Sukrim

Those BTC offers were mine - I have been performing price discovery in order to find the ranges that will keep me fully invested.

[molecular]

so close to the 100k

Ben Bernanke would be SHOCKED to see this .

btw: I started using bitfinex. Once I got to know most of the stuff I feel quite comfortable.

However I'm of the opinion the lending page needs work. Here is a shot for reference:



I managed to accidentally lend $250 for a yearly interest of 2%. Why? The form is extremely confusing. Specifically I have the following issues using the thing:

• After doing anything (post new offer, switch auto-lend on/off, the lending interest rate text-field re-fills with the value "2"... why? It should stay where it is or be empty (resulting in error when submitting)
• When hitting deactivate auto-lend, nothing seems to happen (at least the button doesn't changed to "activate autolend" and doesn't turn green. A reload of the page reveals that auto-lending has been switched off (button green and switched ot "activate autolend".
• There are 2 text-fields for interest rates (one for lending and one for borrowing), but only one for the amount. why? either make two separate forms for borrowing/lending or use only one field for the interest rate, too (that's how I managed to lend for 2%: I entered 250% into the borrowing rate input box, assuming it would also (like the amount entry field) be used for lending). I didn't even notice the lending rate input field (to the RIGHT of the button, the workflow in this form goes zig-zag-paddy-whack)
• more stuff, but this was the most important

thanks for a great platform... I hope your code and security is better than your gui design

[molecular]

how long does approval of mtgoxUSD code take? Is it a manual approval process?

[Sukrim]

My guess is that they redeem the code at MtGox and then credit your account (at least that's how I'd do it) - probably it's not very easy at the moment to interact with MtGox at all.

[unclescrooge]

how long does approval of mtgoxUSD code take? Is it a manual approval process?

Hello Molecular,

We have daily withdrawal limit of 10 000 USD. This wasn't a problem until today. I made an informative thread here where you can track the status of your deposit and the remaining withdrawal queue to clear: https://community.bitfinex.com/showthread.php/163-Mtgox-Code-Withdrawal-queue?p=543#post543

The current queue will not take more than 3 days to be processed (week-end included)

I'm currently in touch with Mtgox to increase this limit. More on that later.

Best regards,
Raphael

[unclescrooge]

so close to the 100k

Ben Bernanke would be SHOCKED to see this .

btw: I started using bitfinex. Once I got to know most of the stuff I feel quite comfortable.

However I'm of the opinion the lending page needs work. Here is a shot for reference:



I managed to accidentally lend $250 for a yearly interest of 2%. Why? The form is extremely confusing. Specifically I have the following issues using the thing:

• After doing anything (post new offer, switch auto-lend on/off, the lending interest rate text-field re-fills with the value "2"... why? It should stay where it is or be empty (resulting in error when submitting)
• When hitting deactivate auto-lend, nothing seems to happen (at least the button doesn't changed to "activate autolend" and doesn't turn green. A reload of the page reveals that auto-lending has been switched off (button green and switched ot "activate autolend".
• There are 2 text-fields for interest rates (one for lending and one for borrowing), but only one for the amount. why? either make two separate forms for borrowing/lending or use only one field for the interest rate, too (that's how I managed to lend for 2%: I entered 250% into the borrowing rate input box, assuming it would also (like the amount entry field) be used for lending). I didn't even notice the lending rate input field (to the RIGHT of the button, the workflow in this form goes zig-zag-paddy-whack)
• more stuff, but this was the most important

thanks for a great platform... I hope your code and security is better than your gui design

Thanks for your feedback, we really appreciate it

We'll take it into account for further update.

[molecular]

how long does approval of mtgoxUSD code take? Is it a manual approval process?

Hello Molecular,

We have daily withdrawal limit of 10 000 USD. This wasn't a problem until today. I made an informative thread here where you can track the status of your deposit and the remaining withdrawal queue to clear: https://community.bitfinex.com/showthread.php/163-Mtgox-Code-Withdrawal-queue?p=543#post543

The current queue will not take more than 3 days to be processed (week-end included)

I'm currently in touch with Mtgox to increase this limit. More on that later.

Best regards,
Raphael

ok, good to know the reason. No problem really. I'll just use your exchange instead of gox

thanks for considering my suggestions regarding the lending form.

[unclescrooge]

how long does approval of mtgoxUSD code take? Is it a manual approval process?

Hello Molecular,

We have daily withdrawal limit of 10 000 USD. This wasn't a problem until today. I made an informative thread here where you can track the status of your deposit and the remaining withdrawal queue to clear: https://community.bitfinex.com/showthread.php/163-Mtgox-Code-Withdrawal-queue?p=543#post543

The current queue will not take more than 3 days to be processed (week-end included)

I'm currently in touch with Mtgox to increase this limit. More on that later.

Best regards,
Raphael

ok, good to know the reason. No problem really. I'll just use your exchange instead of gox

thanks for considering my suggestions regarding the lending form.

Well actually the queue has been reduced a lot and your withdrawal will be processed tomorrow if you still want it.

Cheers
Raphael

[Sukrim]

Well, after 8 days of lending (I added another 35 BTC to the mix) I can only say that I'm less than thrilled about the amount one actually gets out of it...

After one day of nearly constantly lending out nearly all funds (resulting in a day payment of 0.0182 BTC or ~12.08% APR on 55 BTC) I earned still just as much (0.01813450 BTC) as with 25 shares of https://bitfunder.com/asset/JAH, which are currently worth less than 10 BTC. Had I bought mining shares instead of lending (and keep in mind that lending means 0 interest if nobody takes my offer - yesterday was the first day that my offers were mostly lent out, on the other days so far I earned only a tenth of that amount per day), I'd have earned at least 5 times as much, consistently (JAH has ~70% APR at current difficulty + prices). The downside of course is that it might be problematic to sell shares in such an illiquid market as Bitfunder and also that shares probably loose value as time progresses and dividends are paid.

Also the average loan rate of BTC is now down to 3.5% - WTF?!

Edit:
Also the use of round() for balances is not very nice, for example:
Balance according to history: ฿55.0252
฿55.02 currently lent out
Lendable balance: ฿0.01
Trying to make a ฿0.01 loan offer fails because of insufficient funds.
Trying to partially fill a ~฿178 loan demand fails.

Also why do I only get interest in bulk at the end of the day (at ~1 AM GMT+1) and not after a position has been processed?

[drawingthesun]

Well, after 8 days of lending (I added another 35 BTC to the mix) I can only say that I'm less than thrilled about the amount one actually gets out of it...

After one day of nearly constantly lending out nearly all funds (resulting in a day payment of 0.0182 BTC or ~12.08% APR on 55 BTC) I earned still just as much (0.01813450 BTC) as with 25 shares of https://bitfunder.com/asset/JAH, which are currently worth less than 10 BTC. Had I bought mining shares instead of lending (and keep in mind that lending means 0 interest if nobody takes my offer - yesterday was the first day that my offers were mostly lent out, on the other days so far I earned only a tenth of that amount per day), I'd have earned at least 5 times as much, consistently (JAH has ~70% APR at current difficulty + prices). The downside of course is that it might be problematic to sell shares in such an illiquid market as Bitfunder and also that shares probably loose value as time progresses and dividends are paid.

Also the average loan rate of BTC is now down to 3.5% - WTF?!

Lending USD has always been the way to make a decent amount of interest. I had $3000 in Bitfinex and was pulling in $125 a month, which is fantastic. I put some money into Bitcoin and some into USD for interest as a hedge against the Bitcoin price. (Remember the paid interest can be used to buy Bitcoin too)

But if your putting Bitcoin up for loans, its only worth it if you have nothing else to do with those Bitcoins and they would otherwise be sitting in a wallet.

Edit:
Also the use of round() for balances is not very nice, for example:
Balance according to history: ฿55.0252
฿55.02 currently lent out
Lendable balance: ฿0.01
Trying to make a ฿0.01 loan offer fails because of insufficient funds.
Trying to partially fill a ~฿178 loan demand fails.

The rounding and decimal displaying is a issue that I hope gets fixed, I find it annoying too.

Also why do I only get interest in bulk at the end of the day (at ~1 AM GMT+1) and not after a position has been processed?

The interest is paid once per day. see https://www.bitfinex.com/pages/faq#q16

[Sukrim]

What's the best way of moving some EUR on a SEPA account to you guys into USD, ideally without an MtGox account in the course of next week? Sell SEPA-EUR for MtGox codes (as long as they still exist...) somewhere here? Trade on Bitstamp to BTC, transfer BTC and trade back to USD on Bitfinex (depending on delays there's quite some exchange rate risk + more fees)? Do a private one time deal with you guys (France = SEPA, Hong Kong isn't... or for example letting me redeem some BitStamp codes for USD)?

I know you want to incorporate soon, but probably not tomorrow...

[unclescrooge]

What's the best way of moving some EUR on a SEPA account to you guys into USD, ideally without an MtGox account in the course of next week? Sell SEPA-EUR for MtGox codes (as long as they still exist...) somewhere here? Trade on Bitstamp to BTC, transfer BTC and trade back to USD on Bitfinex (depending on delays there's quite some exchange rate risk + more fees)? Do a private one time deal with you guys (France = SEPA, Hong Kong isn't... or for example letting me redeem some BitStamp codes for USD)?

I know you want to incorporate soon, but probably not tomorrow...

Hello Sukrim,

You should soon have news about the incorporation, we're currently searching for a good bank to manage our deposits. More on that later.

Meanwhile, I think the best way for you will be to send me a SEPA wire on my bank account as a private deal.

If you give me the details by PM or at admin@bitfinex.com we can arrange that.

Thanks
Raphael

[myself]

Emergency chain fork dont deposit coins 12/03/2013

https://community.bitfinex.com/showthread.php/176-Emergency-chain-fork-dont-deposit-coins-12-03-2013

[Ichthyo]

...and just for the record: Bitfinex platform did behave well during the hot phase. When the Mt.Gox feed stopped, there was an alert and just now only orders against Bitfinex internal orderbook can be processed. Looks like the Bitfinex folks have learned the lession from some days ago and had implemented the discussed safeguards quickly.

[myself]

...and just for the record: Bitfinex platform did behave well during the hot phase. When the Mt.Gox feed stopped, there was an alert and just now only orders against Bitfinex internal orderbook can be processed. Looks like the Bitfinex folks have learned the lession from some days ago and had implemented the discussed safeguards quickly.

I looks like this


thx for posting I totally forgot about this