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

[Ichthyo]

Is there some additional fee included, beyond the swap, or is the engine just updating with some (serious) delay?

it include mtgox fees since are the maximum fees

Ah thanks, now the numbers make sense.


Incidentally, please allow a more technical question: When calculating the P/L, do you just pick the highest Bit (or Ask), or do you take the actual market depth and the size of the position into account?  (For example, if the highest Bit seems profitable, but is just 1 BTC size, and the next lower Bid of reasonable size would actually mean a loss?)

[myself]

and while we're at those nasty little annoyances, how about that:

When I borrow funds offered for 1 day, the only way to get that loan is to enter a request for 1 day.
Now, the moment I've gotten that loan, I am unable to open a position for 1 day, since, by definition those funds are due in less than 1 day.

Same situation for 7 days. You need to get loans for 8 days if you want to open a position in the "7 days" category.


Again this is a case where the system behaves 100% logically correct, but just not the way the user expects it to behave.

For the user, "1 day" doesn't translate into precisely 86400 seconds -- the user wants to open a short-lived position in -- say -- the next two hours and it's OK for the user when this position is forcibly closed "the other day"

huh

i dont see any problem, where do you see the problem ?

[Ichthyo]

and while we're at those nasty little annoyances, how about that:

When I borrow funds offered for 1 day, the only way to get that loan is to enter a request for 1 day.
Now, the moment I've gotten that loan, I am unable to open a position for 1 day, since, by definition those funds are due in less than 1 day.

Same situation for 7 days. You need to get loans for 8 days if you want to open a position in the "7 days" category.

i dont see any problem, where do you see the problem ?

to clarify: when I open a position for "1 day", I can use loans offered for "1 day".

But when I first borrow funds for "1 day", I can't use them, say 30 minutes later to open a position for "1 day" -- effectively I can't use them at all.

[myself]

But when I first borrow funds for "1 day", I can't use them, say 30 minutes later to open a position for "1 day" -- effectively I can't use them at all.

well you can see that is working for me now i will wait 30 min to so and test this again

[myself]

@Ichthyo look is working for me, you should email support to see "why is not working for you" because this is strange, if you want include the link to this posts on your email

[unclescrooge]

Hi,

After some discussion, and because in the team we all believe in free market, we'll never cap the interests rates.

We'll take specific steps for the trader to make the best informed decision possible (and maybe introduce a novice trader level).

Raphael

just let traders select at which max rate they want to borrow! also the variable rate sucks, and i want to be able to choose not to borrow fund that way.

Also a bug:
if you close some of your borrowed funds that are used in an active position, there is a big delay where the position remains active and does not automatically reduce. reward goes to: 1t4pSEM2xyzCeGGNJMGSq3EnYoSeyR9ys

Hi Kokjo,

I'll add the option to let you set your max rate and if you want to include VIR.

This is not a bug, it can indeed take up to 10 minutes for a position to be reduced. If you prefer I can indeed change that to be immediate

example for 1 usd trail stop

So this input tells me that the trigger price is at 1 $ ?  See my point?

IMHO it should read something like "below current Bid by" or similar.
Since, if it is labelled "price" and for normal stop orders you have to enter a price, what is the most natural conclusion from a users POV?

From a programmers POV this seems like nitpicking, I know, so never mind.

Hi Ichthyo,

This is not nitpicking, I'm not doing it for programming fun but for you, so every details count.

The code will be updated today, now when you select "Trailing stop" it will read "Price distance"

Another observation: can you explain this P/L calculation.

When the position is 120 long  with base price == $20.7013
And the current highest Bid is: MTGOX     $20.75     160.1

Why then is the P/L calculated as: -$4.27   -0.171%     -$0.20

Is there some additional fee included, beyond the swap, or is the engine just updating with some (serious) delay?


A similar situation can be observerd regularily.

Yes the P/L include the max fees (0.4%) you can have closing your position, but is based on best ask and bid rather than market depth (which could put some serious strain on the server while still being "indicative" since depth varies a lot. The current P/L should give you a rather good idea of your real profit, though when your position is big a look at the depth is good.

and while we're at those nasty little annoyances, how about that:

When I borrow funds offered for 1 day, the only way to get that loan is to enter a request for 1 day.
Now, the moment I've gotten that loan, I am unable to open a position for 1 day, since, by definition those funds are due in less than 1 day.

Same situation for 7 days. You need to get loans for 8 days if you want to open a position in the "7 days" category.


Again this is a case where the system behaves 100% logically correct, but just not the way the user expects it to behave.

For the user, "1 day" doesn't translate into precisely 86400 seconds -- the user wants to open a short-lived position in -- say -- the next two hours and it's OK for the user when this position is forcibly closed "the other day"

I agree for the 1 day loans, they don't make sense, but for the rest that's just the loans terms. It's kinda of unfortunate lenders tend to set period similar to position periods while they could set whatever they want.

Cheers
Raphael

[Ichthyo]

just saw the new code version, with various improvement all over the place.

Especially I liked the feature "Your indicative rate"

[unclescrooge]

You're welcome

This rate doesn't take into account your reserved margin yet.

Raphael

[nrd525]

I'm setting up an account to test things out.

On the plus side, this looks like a solid project.

On the negative side, I'm concerned about it getting hacked, shutdown by a financial authority, or borrowers not being able to pay back their money.

I'm heavily bearish on bitcoin. I'd bet a couple thousand dollars of money that it would go down if I could do it securely. As it is (after getting burned on Bitcoinica), I might put a couple hundred into this.  However as a risk-adverse bear who is thinking about loaning money out,  I'm concerned what would happen if all of the people who are long on BTC and are paying insanely high interest rates at bitfinex were to lose all of their money.  Would bitfinex be able to handle the equivalent of a one day crash from $20 to $10?

My understanding is that bitfinex takes on responsibility for paying loans back.  But if the market crashes - will this still work?

[nrd525]

What is the minimum trade?

I tried to sell 0.01 BTC as a test and I got an error message.  Note: the error message ("Invalid Order: incorrect amount") could be improved to say that I didn't meet the minimum.

I was able to sell 0.1 BTC.

Having a low minimum is good for people who want to test it out before committing larger amounts.  The minimum amount should be listed in the FAQ and other places.

[ThaddeusB]

I'm setting up an account to test things out.

On the plus side, this looks like a solid project.

On the negative side, I'm concerned about it getting hacked, shutdown by a financial authority, or borrowers not being able to pay back their money.

I'm heavily bearish on bitcoin. I'd bet a couple thousand dollars of money that it would go down if I could do it securely. As it is (after getting burned on Bitcoinica), I might put a couple hundred into this.  However as a risk-adverse bear who is thinking about loaning money out,  I'm concerned what would happen if all of the people who are long on BTC and are paying insanely high interest rates at bitfinex were to lose all of their money.  Would bitfinex be able to handle the equivalent of a one day crash from $20 to $10?

My understanding is that bitfinex takes on responsibility for paying loans back.  But if the market crashes - will this still work?

Margin positions are automatically closed before the user is "bankrupt".  I suppose if somehow there was a situation where the market was like "best bid $20, second best bid $15" a problem could arise, but I don't imagine anything remotely like that ever arising.

Incidentally, a lender can't really take position on the value of BTC - the profit is the same rise or fall.  One can, however, use USD as a collateral to short BTC.

[nrd525]

I guess the problem could arise if bitfinex wasn't able to close positions before people were bankrupt.  For instance, due to server overload (or MtGox problems).

[unclescrooge]

I'm setting up an account to test things out.

On the plus side, this looks like a solid project.

On the negative side, I'm concerned about it getting hacked, shutdown by a financial authority, or borrowers not being able to pay back their money.

I'm heavily bearish on bitcoin. I'd bet a couple thousand dollars of money that it would go down if I could do it securely. As it is (after getting burned on Bitcoinica), I might put a couple hundred into this.  However as a risk-adverse bear who is thinking about loaning money out,  I'm concerned what would happen if all of the people who are long on BTC and are paying insanely high interest rates at bitfinex were to lose all of their money.  Would bitfinex be able to handle the equivalent of a one day crash from $20 to $10?

My understanding is that bitfinex takes on responsibility for paying loans back.  But if the market crashes - will this still work?

Hi nrd525,

So to answer your concern:
-getting hacked: we have secured Bitfinex as much as possible as described here: https://bitfinex.com/pages/security This is a setup quite unique in btc world in that there is no hot wallet and no withdrawal-enabled mtgox API key on the servers (thus even in a case of someone hacking into the servers, there is no money at risks on there. And we do secure the servers, update the software,..

-shutdown by a financial authority: this is a valid concern. We will soon be incorporated in Hong-Kong, where we'll get a financial licence by the SFC (securities and futures commission of Hong-Kong). This is as much security as I will be able to provide, and I let you judge if this is enough.

-bankrupts borrowers: The idea is to close positions before a trader go bankrupt (that has already happened in the past without any problem). That's why we only allow 5x leverage maximum. We are not yet insured against losses, but this is something that will try to do, because you never now what could happen. Such a crash would have to happen in less than a few seconds for bitfinex to not be able to close positions. And if that happens, we take the losses on us. I personally think the risk is very very low considering market depth on Mtgox at any time. There has been big price swing already, and Bitfinex has always been able to follow them.
And of course you'll be informed when we have financial insurance to cover this risk.

Finally I will the FAQ to informed of the minimum amount of 0.1 BTC

If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask
Raphael

[Sukrim]

I guess I'll join in as soon as at least a second 100% MtGox independent exchange (e.g. Bitstamp) is added. I really don't like the MtGox centrality in a lot of Bitcoin businesses.

As it was already said - once your connection to MtGox is cut for more than a few seconds you're in trouble.

Also I hope your backend servers are on a different network as your website - if someone DDoSed your page, can you still operate and only customers are pissed or can you get heavy losses out of that because your backend is on the same server and you miss the latest price jump?

[myself]

I guess I'll join in as soon as at least a second 100% MtGox independent exchange (e.g. Bitstamp) is added. I really don't like the MtGox centrality in a lot of Bitcoin businesses.

http://community.bitfinex.com/showthread.php/61-rooting-trough-btc-e-exchange similar discussion here the problem the same moving funds around, the solution is on paper but is not top priority atm 

[Ichthyo]

Order Routing would indeed look like the next logical step, and might give Bitfinex a head start, since the technical ground work seems to be in place already.

That being said, I'm sure there are several non technical obstacles, like the still to be settled legal status (will Bitfinex, once incorporated, be allowed to move customer's funds in and out of -- say BTC-E?)

[Ichthyo]

Right now, Bitfinex seems to have a hard time to keep up with the traffic.

At the moment someone wants to push the Mt.Gox rate way below 25; probably everyone wants to rush in and buy (or sell) 

[drawingthesun]

I can't access Bitfinex, does anyone know whats wrong? Isn't Bitfinex hosted with AWS? What's the problem here?

Edit:
It looks like Bitcoin price is falling sharp right now, maybe Bitfinex is being drowned out?

[Ichthyo]

Obviously Bitfinex is down.

I was logged in while it became first slow, then nonresponsive.
This was after the first dump down to 24.8  Aprox. 23:44 UTC
Then the rate had just rebounded a bit to Bid = 24.98 Ask = 25.09
The last thing I saw was a Bitfinex Ask for 0.1 at 23.80

To me this looks just like a plain overload of the server
Let's hope its not a more serious problem.

Of course the situation is a bit unfortunate for us (traders) since we can not react now.

[myself]

the concerns about hack and stuff like that addressed here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=143869.msg1525774#msg1525774

also a thread to keep you updated with this here https://community.bitfinex.com/showthread.php/92-And-the-server-went-down-14-02-2013