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

[unclescrooge]

Yes this is true. We will work on solutions for that.

[unclescrooge]

Anyway,

Some exciting news this week!
First as we said earlier, we cleaned up our database and our code from any types that could lead to inaccurate accounting (float type for the programmers).
Then, our users probably saw that the spread is much tighter these days. We decided to separate mtgox trading fees from the spread. Hence a 0.5-0.6 average spread.

But the more important news is that I signed a GPG contract with myself (the bitcointalk user). Myself will, as a consultant, help us to improve and secure our platform still currently in beta. In the coming weeks, we will implement these changes. Amongst them will be: an order control to avoid spamming orders, a public orderbook and a sentiment index (bullish/bearish).

As always, don't be afraid to try bitfinex and if you have any questions, ask us by email.
Raphael

[davout]

We change the database schema, and the code, mostly ".to_f" > "to_d" (and sometimes the developer forced that to make sure of the type even).

Good answer

A harder one now : What do you think about the whole architecture, to be more precise, about the fact that everything runs inside resque workers leading to potential race conditions, and unexpected behaviour ? Did you make any changes to the way things run and the order in which they run ?

[myself]

But the more important news is that I signed a GPG contract with myself (the bitcointalk user). Myself will, as a consultant, help us to improve and secure our platform still currently in beta. In the coming weeks, we will implement these changes. Amongst them will be: an order control to avoid spamming orders, a public orderbook and a sentiment index (bullish/bearish).

I like to say /signed 

[naima53]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=124095.0
I'll try to bring the Russian-speaking audience. 

If this causes a good result, I would be happy to get a small donate 
16f6iWHHkVEnDReeBQPT9GwCNwUfPTXrp2

[unclescrooge]

We change the database schema, and the code, mostly ".to_f" > "to_d" (and sometimes the developer forced that to make sure of the type even).

Good answer

A harder one now : What do you think about the whole architecture, to be more precise, about the fact that everything runs inside resque workers leading to potential race conditions, and unexpected behaviour ? Did you make any changes to the way things run and the order in which they run ?

Hi,

This is the next major code change. While we changed the way hedging is made and assets balances are accounted, and move some of the database update, there is still a lot of database call/update from resque workers. So the next step is to move every database call to models, along with a major trading organisation change (that will make a lot of code obsolete) that we are working on with Myself.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=124095.0
I'll try to bring the Russian-speaking audience. 

If this causes a good result, I would be happy to get a small donate 
16f6iWHHkVEnDReeBQPT9GwCNwUfPTXrp2

It would be a pleasure, thanks Naima


Ichthyo, I realise my answer was quite short about the hedging of position. For now, what we have done to avoid potential unhedged position is to lower the spread (avg. of 0.06 these days) and to increase the base interest used to charge position. Right now a USD deposit (and short position) is remunerated at over 16% a year, while long position are charged at almost 30% a year. The idea is to encourage short term trading and discourage long term position until balances are restored. Because each time a user close and open a new position, the system check the balances and hedge accordingly.
There are options that we're working on, like deposit only accounts (for people who want to accrue interests and are not interested in trading), and the change that I talked above.

Anyway thanks for your post
Raphael

[Ichthyo]

during the start of that race I tried the "trailing stop" order type. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work as expected -- or rather it doesn't work the way we know from Bitcoinica. I would expect the execution point of this stop order to be "dragged up alongside" when the market moves up. What actually happened is that the rate displayed in that trailing stop order just stuck to the value I entered when placing the order.

This could indicate any of the following:

• the adjustments to the actual rate of an trailing stop order aren't displayed in the orders overview
• I didn't get a trailing stop order, but just a normal stop order
• trailing stop orders are really broken, can we sure they work at all?

Anyway, just wanted to bring that to your attention.
Trailing stop orders aren't terribly useful most of the time, but they might be useful exactly in such a situation. But if they don't work reliably, they should better be removed.

[Ichthyo]

Did you change antything regarding the Page CSS or Layout?

When I don't maximise the browser window, the side pane with the "Account overview" wraps below the main trading pane. Observed this with Firefox (Iceweasel, Debian stable) 3.5, but also with a newer Firefox 16. On the latter (Ubuntu) also the labels in the Account overview wrapped into the next line. E.g. "Required margin" wraps. Even larger numbers do wrap into the next line.

[myself]

Did you change antything regarding the Page CSS or Layout?

When I don't maximise the browser window, the side pane with the "Account overview" wraps below the main trading pane. Observed this with Firefox (Iceweasel, Debian stable) 3.5, but also with a newer Firefox 16. On the latter (Ubuntu) also the labels in the Account overview wrapped into the next line. E.g. "Required margin" wraps. Even larger numbers do wrap into the next line.

the "trading  area" have a minimum size and the "side area" does not fit on your browser window

[Ichthyo]

Did you change antything regarding the Page CSS or Layout?

When I don't maximise the browser window, the side pane with the "Account overview" wraps below the main trading pane. Observed this with Firefox (Iceweasel, Debian stable) 3.5, but also with a newer Firefox 16. On the latter (Ubuntu) also the labels in the Account overview wrapped into the next line. E.g. "Required margin" wraps. Even larger numbers do wrap into the next line.

the "trading  area" have a minimum size and the "side area" does not fit on your browser window

obviously, but it did fit until yesterday.
Besides my usual window size isn't small.

(I know, this stuff is tricky, have done it long enough myself)

[myself]

why you dont use this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stylish/ ?

[XVacant]

Bug report:
When I place an buy order to liquidate my short position, the following message is shown: "Invalid order: not enough balance".

[phr33]

Yes this is true. We will work on solutions for that.

Any rough time estimate on that?

Thanks

[myself]

But the problem is: there is a promise for the account holder to be able to withdraw any time (just a short security timespan to confirm the withdrawal, but no limitation on the amount). On the other hand, there is no way to make any users close their positions. Thus, when a user withdraws, he re-calls money which is bound into a position on the market, with unlimited duration. Assuming this situation, the platform is forced to turn into a "bucket shop", even if unclescrooge never wanted to do this: Assumed there are no further reserves, the platform is forced to close some positions internally to get the money for the withdrawal request, while keeping those positions opened nominally. So effectively the platform is forced to take a counter position to these internally closed positions, i.e. bet against the user.

Some stock brokers do have to recall the stock because then owner needs them and some ppl do have to close their short position (only if you short you are forced to give back the stock) this option is set and on the contract and when the user borrow the stock to short he does agree to this, another way that some broker deal with this is to put a max time for short positions, is also true that on stocks ppl dont take position overnight to often and over weekend even less, bitcoin users do tend to keep a position for long time and In my opinion swap cost can give the incentive to take profit if the position does not make more money



another option is to put a X days delay for the withdrawal, basically you lend the money for a fixed amount of time and no withdrawal can be done until the time expire on a similar way banking was done on the gold standard

imo on the long run bitcoins needs several clearing houses that can act like lender of last resort


i am drafting now a possible solution to the above problem

[myself]

Bug report:
When I place an buy order to liquidate my short position, the following message is shown: "Invalid order: not enough balance".

so far there is no check to see if you have a position open the platform did consider your order a new order a workaround this is to use a small amount that will fit your balance 

hope it helps

[unclescrooge]

XVacant,

Sorry about that, too much control. I corrected that, you should be able to close your position.

Currently we were considering closing position as market order and controlled your balance like a normal market order. I removed this control so that position can be closed no matter what.

If it did cause you any loss hit me on admin@bitfinex.com so I can compensate for this.

While I'm at it we're working hard on a major update, this is going to be legend... wait for it... dary!

Raphael

[picobit]

Who said that the platform is stolen? Or It is not allowed to make a platform based on an existing ? ...

Not if the existing platform is copyrighted.

Bitcoinica imploded before I had even heard about it, but wasn't the code released as open source?  If so, it should be OK - at least if the guys releasing it as open source had the copyright when they did it (and I seem to remember that there is some controversy hidden here too).  If not, reusing code that someone else has copyrighted it ... well ... asking for trouble.

[unclescrooge]

 Hi everyone,

I'm sorry to not answering more often here but it's some busy times. I'm always here on admin@bitfinex.com

Anyway, we are pleased to inform you that we will proceed to a major upgrade of Bitfinex tomorrow on 11:00 AM GMT. The code have been going through a lot of changes, as well as the features that we offer. Bitfinex is now much more powerful and robust, thanks to the advice of Myself.
Here is what is going to change:

-You may have seen a link to our internal order book. Now, You will have access to the "Level 2 Order book". This is a global order book displaying all the orders from all the exchanges we trade with it has a column indicating the platform from which it comes. Why this? Because of the change of how your orders are executed:

-Order execution and ticker price
-The ticker price now returns the best offers between bitfinex and mtgox orders.
-The exchange and the trading page now has the same interface. trading orders and exchange one are executed the same, the only difference is that trading orders open a position (margin trading), while exchange orders update your balances, like any regular exchanges. This interface has been improved, as you can see here with the exchange interface:

-You can place a LIMIT order on exchange order, like you would do on others exchanges (no longer do you exchange at our "market" price).
-You can route your orders. What does it means? Say you want to sell your bitcoins at a limit price of 12 USD, and want to pay the lower fees possible. You will place an order routed on BITFINEX. That means that your limit order will be executed only if and when there are others bitfinex orders at 12+ USD/BTC. Mtgox orders will be ignored. Thus you will pay only 0.1% fee instead of 0.4% (see below). Same goes if you route on mtgox. If you don't route, your order will be executed against the best offers of all platforms.
-Your bitfinex order is no longer executed at ticker price, but is matched against others orders of the global orderbook. As a result:
             -The execution price will reflect true liquidity on the market. A big order (even leveraged) will have a bigger (or lower if sell) execution price.
             -Your order can be partially filled. This will reflect in your order history like this:

             -We no longer take an obscure cut/fee on the spread: your order is executed at the price of the matched orders. We add an additional fee, which depends on the platform your order is matched against. In your History page, you will see the fees entries, displaying the amount traded, the execution price, and the fee. The fees is taken in your default currency:

            -These fees include others exchanges fees
            -The fees for order execution are as follow (subject to change with a 7 day alert:  0.1% for order matched on bitfinex, 0.4% for order matched against mtgox (others exchanges to come soon). We can offer better fees on mtgox than their regular fee because of our volume.
- Let me repeat this: You can now buy and sell bitcoins with the best liquidity possible, even better than mtgox, and with a lower fee than Mtgox! How awesome is that?

That's the first step of the big changes Bitfinex is going through. You will see on your account overview that you now have 3 different wallet. Only the first one (trading wallet) is active for now, but that's a glimpse of another big change coming in the next weeks, to answer the solvency problem that some of you have talked about. Let me describe the new system that's coming:
     -There will be 3 different types of account on Bitfinex: the deposit account will have only a deposit wallet. The exchange account will have a deposit and an exchange wallet. The trader one will have all three wallets.
     -The deposit wallet contains funds used to leverage trading of users. The money on it will be locked for specific amount of time, during which you won't be able to withdraw this money. You will get dynamic interest rates on this wallet, based on the positions opened. You won't be able to trade nor exchange bitcoins with it.
     -The exchange wallet contains funds that WILL NOT be used to leverage trading. The money on it is not remunerated, however you can withdraw it any time you want. With it, you will only be able to access the exchange feature of Bitfinex
     -The trading wallet, as you can guess, contains funds used to leverage trades. They are remunerated at the same interest rates than deposit one. With it, you can do margin trading. Note that you will probably not be able to exchange bitcoins with money on this wallet (that's to be discussed), but you will have an exchange wallet specifically dedicated to this use.
That's all for now. I hope you're as excited as we are about these coming change. While we spent a fair amount of time testing these new features, remember that this is still a beta platform. You don't have to close your positions during this migration, however if you want to do so you have until tomorrow 11:00 AM GMT to do so.
If you have any question I will be here to answer them! Come and signup on https://www.bitfinex.com/signup
Best regards,

Raphael
Bitfinex team
https://www.bitfinex.com

[XVacant]

Congratulations! It works fine!

Bug: the old issue comes back, I have to use small buy orders to liquidate the short position.

[XVacant]

Once an order is partially filled, it cannot be canceled as the "Cancel" link is disappeared. It seems a bug too.