Ethereum being added to Bitfinex on Monday

[Za1n]

https://www.bitfinex.com/pages/announcements

Ether launch
Posted: March 12, 2016

Bitfinex is pleased to announce upcoming support for trading Ether.  While we are generally wary of adding new digital assets to the platform and believe that Ether’s future as a store of value is quite uncertain, it is, nonetheless, hard to ignore the Ether trading volumes at other exchanges and the many requests we have received from our customers to add Ether trading pairs.  As such, we will begin trading Ether against both US dollar and bitcoin on Monday, March 14th at noon UTC.  Starting immediately, however, customers will be able to deposit Ether into their exchange wallets.

It is our plan to allow shorting and margin trading on Ether as soon as we are comfortable with the book depth and availability of Ether for lending, but that will depend on the community’s support for Ether trading on our platform as Bitfinex itself is not a market participant in its own markets.  Assuming strong adoption of Ether trading on our platform, we could enable shorting and margin trading in less than a week.  We do not yet know what sort of leverage ratios we will permit on Ether, but given Ether’s substantial volatility relative to bitcoin, we may, in fact, initially allow less leverage than we do on bitcoin.

In order to encourage market making to help jumpstart our Ether markets, we will be offering introductory pricing on both Ether pairs.  Through the end of March, it will be free to add liquidity (market maker) and 20bps to remove liquidity (market taker).  Trading volumes in Ether during this time will not affect volume tiers for bitcoin and litecoin, but after March, Ether will be part of the existing aggregated volume pricing tiers.

We are also actively pursuing the addition of Euro trading pairs as well – we will naturally keep the community apprised of any further developments.  Once again, we thank you for your continued support as we strive to deliver the best in cryptocurrency trading.

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[Arrakeen]

"While we are generally wary of adding new digital assets to the platform and believe that Ether’s future as a store of value is quite uncertain, it is, nonetheless, hard to ignore the huge profits for exchanges that we've been missing out on."

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[Za1n]

"While we are generally wary of adding new digital assets to the platform and believe that Ether’s future as a store of value is quite uncertain, it is, nonetheless, hard to ignore the huge profits for exchanges that we've been missing out on."

fixed 

Very true, but I do not think it is a secret that Exchanges exist to make profit.   Still this is good news for Ethereum. Plus it gives it another direct USD trading platform, guess we will see how much interest there really is in short order.

[edmundduke]

"While we are generally wary of adding new digital assets to the platform and believe that Ether’s future as a store of value is quite uncertain, it is, nonetheless, hard to ignore the huge profits for exchanges that we've been missing out on."

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This is exactly what happened lol. They saw the massive volume on polo and wanted a piece of the pie because lets be honest the amount of volume eth has there is pretty insane. Pretty sure the price will shoot up even more once it is added there as more investors/traders join the action. Important thing to see is what happens once the dust settles because it is pretty obvious they cant sustain the current price.

[WoJJ78]

Vitalik Buterin will be holding an AMA on 8btc forums, the largest chinese cryptocurrency forum, on the 14th of March

http://8btc.com/thread-30435-1-1.html

This is going to be very interesting as well.

[Sark]

Ah snap

[mkc]

Long time ago, I traded darkcoin in bitfinex, and they took it off. Let's see how much vol ether will trade there. This is a real test.

[Bytecoiner419]

first volume numbers >> 44,473.35

https://www.bitfinex.com/pages/stats

not too bad.

[ArticMine]

Long time ago, I traded darkcoin in bitfinex, and they took it off. Let's see how much vol ether will trade there. This is a real test.

Was not Dash at or very close to its all time high when it was added to Bitfinex?

Edit: Take a look at the 3 day chart for Dash on Bitfinex to see what I mean. https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitfinex/drkbtc

[BellaBitBit]

Long time ago, I traded darkcoin in bitfinex, and they took it off. Let's see how much vol ether will trade there. This is a real test.

Was not Dash at or very close to its all time high when it was added to Bitfinex?

Edit: Take a look at the 3 day chart for Dash on Bitfinex to see what I mean. https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitfinex/drkbtc

I think so yes, as was another one and I cannot remember.  It may have no impact but this is going to be interesting to watch. 

[ArticMine]

Here is the Cryptsy Dash chart. https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/cryptsy/drkbtc take a look at the three day chart and pay close attention to the all time high. of 0.0274 XBT.  Cryptsy was the main market for Dash at the time. One possible theory is that a whale offers to be a market maker on BitFinex and uses that opportunity to unload a large amount of coin.

It also provides a direct path to fiat making it attractive for those who want out after a big run. Again Dash had a big run just before the BitFinex listing, very much like Ethereum.

Edit: Dash crashed all the way down to 0.00215 or over 92% on Cryptsy after the Bitfinex listing. Just saying there is the possibility that there is some blood mixed in with the ether here.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

"While we are generally wary of adding new digital assets to the platform and believe that Ether’s future as a store of value is quite uncertain, it is, nonetheless, hard to ignore the huge profits for exchanges that we've been missing out on."

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This exactly.  And why shouldn't they add it and make a profit?  They're not in the exchange business for charity, right?  And like it or not ETH is where the money is at right now.  Don't know if it's going to last but you can't deny that lots of people have made lots of money on it.

[ArticMine]

...
This exactly.  And why shouldn't they add it and make a profit?  They're not in the exchange business for charity, right?  And like it or not ETH is where the money is at right now.  Don't know if it's going to last but you can't deny that lots of people have made lots of money on it.

The profit opportunity could just as well in be people cashing out. There is a deja vu here if Ethereum is close to or at a top.

[Gillette]

Vitalik Buterin will be holding an AMA on 8btc forums, the largest chinese cryptocurrency forum, on the 14th of March

http://8btc.com/thread-30435-1-1.html

This is going to be very interesting as well.

Looking forward when this international scale scammer will be caught and put in jail !

Now this moron decided to dump his premined shitcoin to Chinese. 

[Za1n]

The ETH price held up better than I thought it would for its first day on Bitfinex, after a slight dip it is basically back to where it started. This coupled with the DDoS against Poloniex, I was surprised it didn't drop lower. Maybe the homestead release is offsetting any downward influences for the time being.

One interesting thing is many people were predicting Bitfinex would bring a lot more ETH/USD trading to the table, but it was surprising to see the first day volume with ETH/BTC at $ 1,889,180 and ETH/USD at only $ 441,813 in trading volume.