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

[davout]

Let me guess: They used doubles instead of integers?

Yes, zhoutong did use floating point numbers everywhere. And he actually lied about that on a couple of occasions.

Ruby does have support for decimal floating point:

Nobody's arguing that.

Please get on with the program, we have 21 century now and repeating the old "floating point is inexact" memes went out of fashion.

I'm sorry what are you saying? That it doesn't matter?

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[unclescrooge]

Hi all,

I'll try to get by to you as soon as possible. Davout not sure about what you're asking, but we try to have a code with standard type (not string to float to string and the other way around), according to my developer. But there's a lot to do still and from what I see there is still different type of numbers in the code (but that's not a big problem for my developer).

Mushoz, thanks for the tips, I will get back to you to discuss the options (especially offline signing).

Finally, yes the trading engine did stalled. It's fine now and you did a good trade from what I see

My hosting service want to migrate the servers and don't let me much of a choice of the time. They should already have done it an hour ago, so if it goes down during the day you know why, we'll try to be as reactive as possible on this one :/

Thanks for trying us,
Raphael

[unclescrooge]

You should really consider using a separate offline machine for processing withdrawals. Sign the transactions on the offline machine, and then broadcast said transactions with another PC that's connected to the internet. That way you keep a vacuum between the network and your private keys. Also, the transaction signing machine shouldn't be used for anything else, since that could get it compromised.

Actually, we're thinking of two possibilities:
-the first is having a dedicated machine, connected to the network although totally behind a firewall, whose task would be sign and broadcast all transactions as they come (I described it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=92496.msg1289607#msg1289607). That would allow "instant" bitcoin withdrawal but of course wouldn't be as secure as the second proposal
-this second proposal is yours: having a dedicated machine totally offline, with manual transaction signing once a day every business day.

This will be up to you which one you prefer, when we're ready will ask all of our users what they prefer.

Is that one encrypted as well? If not, where is that one stored?

It's not encrypted (you still need the passphrase to use the wallet though), and stored with our important business paper at our house (where our current company is). There is no lock to access these papers, but it's in a room closed when visitors come.

Where is that paper stored?

In my partner's wallet (the physical one I mean), with all her others important stuff.

Sounds good! Does this backup also contain the database which holds the information how much USD and BTC each account holder has, plus open positions if any? I wouldn't want an evil hacker deleting your database like he did with Bitcoinica, with you not knowing who owns what.

Yep, it contains user balance (usd and btc), open positions, user addresses,... So we know exactly who owns what from these dumps. Also we keep 7 days of dumps history, in case a corrupted/empty db is dumped.

Do you use 2-factor authentication on Mtgox?

We have a yubikey.

And are waiting for mtgox to set up an unlink page, I wouldn't want for this key to stop working as it happened to someone else a few days ago.

Thanks for all the answers! Looking very good so far. I might just try your site out

Thanks to you. While the engines and algorithms still needs optimization and will go through lots of change during the beta phase, the security is already implemented as I feel this is the most important feature in this kind of platform.

[MPOE-PR]

This has what could possibly go wrong written all over it. In blood.

[myself]

1 satoshi on your exchange return 0 usd

[2112]

I'm sorry what are you saying? That it doesn't matter?

I'm sorry I wasn't precise enough. "floating point" doesn't always mean "binary floating point". It could mean "decimal floating point". And decimal floating point is perfect for handling the financial data. Many C compilers support it (GCC since 4.2). Unfortunately no equivalent C++ standard has been developed.

Anyway, the rounding errors wont matter for BitFinEx. It will fail as many other bucket shops failed, they aren't even pretending to hedge their leverage. Zhoutong at least made nice story while pretending to hedge.

[davout]

I'm sorry I wasn't precise enough. "floating point" doesn't always mean "binary floating point".

Well, read the source. In this case it does

Zhoutong at least made nice story while pretending to hedge.

He did, not 100%, but again, if you read the source you'll see that the hedge percentage displayed on his frontpage wasn't a fantasy.

Anyway, the rounding errors wont matter for BitFinEx. It will fail as many other bucket shops failed, they aren't even pretending to hedge their leverage.

I think the reason why this will fail is that the operators don't seem to have the slightest clue about what they're doing and what they're stepping into.

[guruvan]

Well. I figured.... "wtf, I'm apparently a glutton for punishment" and deposited a few coins.

Since I couldn't get any  even BTC1 of the " BTC70 guaranteed liquidity at market prices " I tried a few times. I never succeeded at opening a position.

I withdrew my coins immediately. This is going as badly or worse than bitdaytrade.

"No Reserve" - On a market order? Beta or not, you can't give the above guarantee and then not be able to fill market buy @ any prices for a single coin.

Between the apparently unchanged bitcoinica code, that code's predatory pricing bot, falsity #1 spotted in your liquidity guarantee, the fact the site is a complete disaster on my 10" screen, unclescrooge's cluelessness about how to deploy bitcoin related services & what to use for their infrastructure, and absolutely no guarantee that the funds are safe from theft (seriously, dude, go find a surety bond), no guarantee it's not the same exact bucket shop that bitcoinica was. FFS, no guarantee unclescrooge isn't Zhou Tong, or Patrick Strateman. Both are scummy enough to launch this under a new name.

For the last time, geeks should not open financial service businesses just because they can make the website and fire up some hardware Look at the financial ruin caused by this in bitcoin already (FFS WITH THIS SAME SOFTWARE!!!!)

Financial services professionals should hire geeks to execute their ideas.

EDIT: On a positive note (that most bitcoin trading shops start with, btw) my withdrawals were handled at or about the expected time, and without incident or hassle.

[myself]

i did some trade for testing any it did work for me i dint took any money out yet ..

[Ichthyo]

...from what I could observe, the behaviour is not very diffierent to Bitcoinica. The spread looks like it has been set a bit more aggressive. But Bitcoinica did the same in the last month or so (after the fact we learned from the leaked mails, that during the last month the Bitcoinica folks tried to tweak the parameters to stop burning money during that period of stability).

And yes, during the phases of strong movement in the last days, the "starfish" was quite noticeable present. Probably everyone wanted to go long the moment the manipulator pulled the Ask wall at 10.01  

What are other folk's experiences with stop orders? I had several incidents where I got the "feeling" they don't work 100% reliable. But since there is no trade history (am I missing something obvious here?) there is no way to tell what actually happened. Did they execute? Can stop orders be just rejected or "dropped" (e.g. when there are liquidity problems)?

So probably the most urgently missing feature is a kind of position or at least an orders log. Bitcoinica had this feature, why was it removed?

[Ichthyo]

So probably the most urgently missing feature is a kind of position or at least an orders log. Bitcoinica had this feature, why was it removed?

...to correct that: this page indeed exists. Just I overlooked the link. It is at the bottom of the trading pane, above the list of pending orders "Active orders | order history"

[Ichthyo]

I withdrew my coins immediately. This is going as badly or worse than bitdaytrade.

Between the apparently unchanged bitcoinica code, that code's predatory pricing bot, falsity #1 spotted in your liquidity guarantee, the fact the site is a complete disaster on my 10" screen, unclescrooge's cluelessness about how to deploy bitcoin related services & what to use for their infrastructure, and absolutely no guarantee that the funds are safe from theft (seriously, dude, go find a surety bond), no guarantee it's not the same exact bucket shop that bitcoinica was. FFS, no guarantee unclescrooge isn't Zhou Tong, or Patrick Strateman. Both are scummy enough to launch this under a new name.

This sounds like quite a bold statement for me.

Can we please be a bit more mature in our claims?


You may well be correct that several things are lacking, but it doesn't help anyone if we spread random insults all over the place.

Since we don't know unclescrooge, as a person, we should give him the benefit of the doubt. And -- mind me -- we don't have even the slightest proof that Zhou Tong or Patrick Strateman (or Tihan Seal or anyone else involved) are those evil minded scummy villains you indicate them to be. All we know for sure are about 80++ pages of forum threads filled with assumptions and wild conspiracy theory, insults and witch hunt by an enraged mob, but only very few facts.


One of the few facts we do know is the leaked source code of Bitcoinica. So we can at least put that straight: Bitcoinica was not a "bucket shop" in the sense of the term used within this community. Because Bitcoinca did hedge the average position to Mt.Gox (albeit not always 100%).

But we don't know to what extent the mechanics of Bitfinex were changed in relation to Bitcoinica. Maybe unclescrooge could clarify a bit, especially regarding the mechanism providing liquidity?


Also, I think we should be more specific regarding the "failure modes" of a platform providing a "Contract-for-Difference"

• for one it could be a defraud on a legal level, i.e. actually being a bucket shop and not forwarding trades to the spot market
• next, it could use an erroneous financial construction, leading to a monetary failure
• yet another thing would be to have some technical errors, security holes or general lack of software craftsmanship
• another thing would be to deploy such a site onto an unsuitable cloud service, not providing the necessary level of security
• and another thing would be to fall short on organisational necessities, like having backups and managing the hot wallet properly
• and still another thing would be to handle the business stuff improperly (legalise, regulations, accounting, partnership and financing agreements)
• and even another thing would be to pick people with the wrong personality as partners and engage into private wars destroying one another's setup by staged hacks.

Bottom line, if we think we can spot some problems, we should try to be specific and precise.
This way, problems can either be actually addressed, or at least there would be a rational foundation for risk assessment.

[MPOE-PR]

For the last time, geeks should not open financial service businesses just because they can make the website and fire up some hardware Look at the financial ruin caused by this in bitcoin already (FFS WITH THIS SAME SOFTWARE!!!!)

Financial services professionals should hire geeks to execute their ideas.

Nail, head.

Since we don't know unclescrooge, as a person, we should give him the benefit of the doubt.

You are clearly new here. This is not how it works nor how it should work. "Benefit of the doubt" belongs in fiat world, with the courts. In Bitcoin unknown = thief, plain and simple, because if he wasn't a thief, he wouldn't be unknown.

[unclescrooge]

Hi all,

OK I'll address the few issues here:

-the float bug: when Davout raised the question last week, my developper told me that this was not important. Now that I learned more about the issue, I can see that there's still use of floats instead of integer or decimal, so we'll organize a migration of the database and the code to get ride of float. I hope to have these done in the coming two weeks. Meanwhile, I don't think this is that big of a deal to use the platform but I'll leave this up to you guys to decide. (for those who don't know what this is, the is a precision issue in the calculation, floats aren't exactely precise (we're talking satoshis precision here).

-what's the difference with bitcoinica? Not much in the general behavior. We asked to move as much hard coded constant as possible to database for ease of maintenance. We adapted the calculation of interests rates to what we feeled was more pertinent to reflect the need in funds and attract depositors. Right now the deposit rates are higher that they will be in the future to attract more depositors. We are fully hedged (not partly as bitcoinica);  Our idea of bitfinex is simple: we lend you money to leverage your trade. That's why we match 1 to 1 your order against mtgox (or internal orders if possible). So we remunerate not much on the spread but more on the "swap". And we remunerate deposit because this is where the money comes from. We changed the withdrawal behavior and the deposit watch routine; we use an armory script that we adapted to monitor bitcoins deposits and prepare unsigned bitcoins transactions. The platform is hosted on dedicated servers which we fully control and are extremely secure, no use of cloud providers and the like. These are security features which we feel are strong, not like bitcoinica and not like many other platforms. I'am very positive that you're money is safe.

-the trust issue: yes, MPOE lady you are right, this is a big issue. At this point I don't see what I could do more than exposing my full name, address and photo, and being as transparent as I can. For those who feel this is not enough (and I understand you), maybe you can wait until we're a registered company.

-Before moving on Guruvan issue, here's a few stats: this week, 13 people registered on the site. Of the 13, 4 deposited a total of 36 bitcoins and 75 usd (plus our own reserve of bitcoins and usd). Of these 4, only 2 traded actively for several days, for a total volume of 419 bitcoins. This was enough to test the engine, but is still pathetically small.
So on friday, when bitcoin price hit a bottom, everyone got fully long on bitcoins until the usd reserves were exhausted. Then came Guruvan, who tried to open yet an other long position, and couldn't because there weren't any usd reserve left (beside the minimum required to process user USD balances). Guruvan then withdrew all his coins, and I processed his withdrawal like I should. What would you have prefered Guruvan, that we let you open all the positions you want, but then are unable to process your withdrawal because we don't hedge your orders and have no money left?

That's why we need depositors! Come on, deposit your USD and your bitcoins, rates are very attractive! Ad we need bears! And people willing to protect the USD value of their bitcoins! Come on people, don't be shy!

Anyway, I appreciate your feedbacks, your warning and your insults. I'm always available at support@bitfinex.com if you have urgent issues. We'll let the platform run as long as they are people using it. We'll try to improve it with your feedbacks. I think margin trading is a valuable service, but if this one doesn't interest any one, no big deal, I'll move on.
Thanks
Raphael

[MPOE-PR]

-the trust issue: yes, MPOE lady you are right, this is a big issue. At this point I don't see what I could do more than exposing my full name, address and photo, and being as transparent as I can. For those who feel this is not enough (and I understand you), maybe you can wait until we're a registered company.

The problem here is that you seem to be starting from a point of "I shall be doing this" and then consider what could bolster your position. This is completely wrong and wholly unacceptable: you should not be doing this. At all. It is a horribly bad idea to be doing this. It can't end well. It's running with scissors as a four year old with a bad knee and a broken ankle on an old stairwell made of long-rotten pinewood which has lots of ice splotches on top of it during an earthquake at sea in rough weather on a wet deck with hurricane level winds blowing portside.

Maybe one day you might find yourself in the position of being a world-renowned acrobat who can run with scissors up and down an old stairwell made out of rotten pinewood with ice splotches in rough sea etc. Maybe. Provided you are born tall and lanky and with a talent for ballet, and your parents send you to the proper schools from a fresh young age and you are muchly interested in all that's required to become thusly acrobatically accomplished and are very disciplined and get lucky enough to amass the right sort of experience then possibly, maybe, sometime, one day, you might meet this opportunity of your life and thus dance on the proverbial rotten pinewood stairwell (with ice on it).

So, practically: forget about this project. Close it down. Go read up on finance, go read up on computer programming, on security, on business management, on law. Start small, prove that you can correctly handle fifty bitcoins over the span of A FEW YEARS. Then move into larger and larger things until one day you can maybe, if you're still inclined and it's still fashionable, try this.

Nobody cares that you register a company. It makes no damned difference, in the time it took me to type out this I could have registered five. A monkey with a funny hat can register a company. It's a fifty dollar expenditure in most US states, it's the practical equivalent of organizing a dinner with your ex who happens to be visiting your town. It adds precisely zero to your overall chances to not end up in a sad, sad position a few months down the road.

Why drag a bunch of people with you?

[repentance]

Did you actually obtain permission to use Bitcoinica's source code?  Just because it was leaked and is a dodgy piece of crap doesn't make it public domain.  In fact, given that the Bitcoinica IP is one of few assets Bitcoinica has and the company is now in liquidation, I'd fully expect the liquidator to be looking to sell the source code and to demand that anyone using it without the explicit permission of the IP owners cease doing so.

[Zeeks]

Did you actually obtain permission to use Bitcoinica's source code?  Just because it was leaked and is a dodgy piece of crap doesn't make it public domain.  In fact, given that the Bitcoinica IP is one of few assets Bitcoinica has and the company is now in liquidation, I'd fully expect the liquidator to be looking to sell the source code and to demand that anyone using it without the explicit permission of the IP owners cease doing so.

Is this true? You are running a site off leaked code that someone else owns?

That's... 

[BorderBits]

So the guy who started the "Sorry and thank you, Pirate" thread is to be trusted? 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=101345.msg1108077#msg1108077

Now that Pirateat40 closed down his operatations thanks to all the fud that was going on and growing on the forum, I expect everyone that spreads this fud, accused and insulted Pirate and the people that supported him to apologize.

Not only did Pirate brought us a great opportunity for investors (once in a lifetime actually), he did help stabilise and grow steadily bitcoin price, volume exchange, and thus contributed to the success of bitcoin. For that, Pirate, I want to thank you. You've done a wonderful work, and I hope you're stay around here.

Now, apologies on.

[BorderBits]

Did everyone apologize and thank pirate as unclescrooge told you to do yet? 

[greyhawk]

I don't see the problem with this. Pirate's biggest shill being supported by Bitcoinica's biggest shill and using Bitcoinica's wonderful code can only lead to beautiful results.


Disclaimer: My interpretation of "beautiful" may or may not differ from yours.