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

[F-bernanke]

The bitfinex website is a very complex piece of art, and I just wanted to show my support for you guys running this site. Keeping everybody happy is very difficult to do, especially when there are teenagers very angry that they missed a $10 trade that should not have happened in the first place.

You guys handled this well, Thanks!

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[hyphymikey]

I'd just like to point out that if we did not have stopped the trading engine, the cascading effect of liquidations would have been terrible (just look at the charts already).

So we DID make the right choice in halting the trading engine to avoid this situation.

One day the Bitcoin market will become mature enough to support this level of volume, right now it isn't;

THanks for your comprehension
Raphael

So why didn't Bitstamp go down?  It was up the entire time that you "halted" trading (without warning).

It's not the Bitcoin market that isn't "mature" enough...it is Bitfinex that is immature.

Bitstamp is not a margin trading website, they don't have liquidations /margin calls, and don't care if the price goes to 0 because they don't lose anything.

On Bitfinex on the other hand, there are leveraged positions, and liquidations triggered can and have a cascading effect on a very volatile market, and if there is not enough volume to support it, we CAN take the price to 0 and lose millions of lenders money

Halting the trading engine is maybe annoying, but it's the right thing to do (and I must say it happens on all sort of market).

Thank you
Raphael

How do lenders lose money if the people they are lending to's position automatically closes BEFORE they can no longer repay the lender?

[cw92]

Dear users,

The trading engine is currently stopped due to the recent volatility and the fact that we exhausted our funds on Bitstamp in this critical moment.

We are waiting for new deposit to hit our Bitstamp account, after which we will resume the trades.

have a good day
Raphael

You do know that this is going to happen over and over and over again when the market has some volatility?   That outtage just cost me $8000 in profits and I'm sure many lost even more...just not acceptable.  You guys need a better system with your site.

Feel free to post any suggestion.
We will pay you if they make sense.
Otherwise just stop talking nonsense.

Giancarlo
Bitfinex Team

I have what I consider to be a legitimate suggestion.  I've been trading here for a while, and have always remained loyal to the exchange and refrained from joining in the BFX bashing in this thread whenever things go wrong.  However, with that said, I've also lost very significant amounts of fiat/btc on numerous occasions due to problems that were always on Bitfinex's end.  I've put up with this because I legitimately appreciate the service you're attempting to provide, but this past week has been a little ridiculous (between the two trading halts I'm out close to 5 figures).  My suggestion is to consider refunding trading fees for a given period; this would serve both to compensate losses on our end, and to regain credibility for Bitfinex by making it clear that the exchange is not attempting to profit from our losses.  

[MAbtc]

same thing imho happened with the bistamp-fee-integration, first you anncounced it, then still 0.35% fees were deducted from trades. that seems a bit inconsistent

Yes, I was confused about this as well. I have still been seeing .35% fees on my trades.

[btcdrak]

Dear users,

The trading engine is currently stopped due to the recent volatility and the fact that we exhausted our funds on Bitstamp in this critical moment.

We are waiting for new deposit to hit our Bitstamp account, after which we will resume the trades.

have a good day
Raphael

You do know that this is going to happen over and over and over again when the market has some volatility?   That outtage just cost me $8000 in profits and I'm sure many lost even more...just not acceptable.  You guys need a better system with your site.

For those of you who have experienced this twice now, fool you if you get burned again by Bitfinex. These are the warning shots. MtGox fired them months ago. The wise will move platforms.

[blueberry]

I propose a solution to the problem in the future:

One thing that would help would be for Bitfinex to implement a circuit breaker like they have in the stockmarkets, where where trading is automatically halted for a predetermined period of time (10 to 30 minutes) when the market moves more than say 10%. By the time trading has restarted, panic would have subsided and the market would have become normalized helping to avoid a flash crash. Perhaps any traders accounts with a pending margin liquidation can be frozen for a while to prevent a liquidation domino effect.

Add this the terms and faqs so traders will be aware in advance and then cannot complain when trading halts.

[the_viper]

So if trades executed @ $100 etc etc were cancelled I would like my market sell (price was 550 at time of execution) but executed at 650 to be rolled back as well.

My tx history tells better started at 639 and ended up closing at 668.

Sure that looks like a normal trade someone in their right mind would make  

[unclescrooge]

hy, thats ok, but didnt giancarlo some days ago did say that you only will halt, if htere was a glitch/manipulation, but not if a market crash happens? same thing imho happened with the bistamp-fee-integration, first you anncounced it, then still 0.35% fees were deducted from trades. that seems a bit inconsistent

Well, in this case, there was no glitch, everything worked as intended, but this is not the point. The point is that if we did not halted the trading engine, the price would have go to almost 0 as all positions would be liquidated.

Halting the trading, like it is done on lots of other exchanges/markets on certain conditions, allows the price to stabilized and stopped the liquidations "on chain".

I know it's annoying, but this had to be done.

Thank you
Raphael

[BitBits]

Dear users,

The trading engine is currently stopped due to the recent volatility and the fact that we exhausted our funds on Bitstamp in this critical moment.

We are waiting for new deposit to hit our Bitstamp account, after which we will resume the trades.

have a good day
Raphael

You do know that this is going to happen over and over and over again when the market has some volatility?   That outtage just cost me $8000 in profits and I'm sure many lost even more...just not acceptable.  You guys need a better system with your site.

Feel free to post any suggestion.
We will pay you if they make sense.
Otherwise just stop talking nonsense.

Giancarlo
Bitfinex Team

As I said in my post, reversing trades in the only viable option for your exchange at this point.  I think how you handle this could have serious ramifications, and I know if a reasonable conclusion can't be reached in this instance I probably won't be trading on your exchange in the future.

Thanks and good luck

Why reversing, on what basis? These were big sales, they drove the price down. Exactly the same thing happened on BTC-e at about the same time and they also dipped to 100. Look, lost ONLY those people who made wrong predictions for their positions. You are asking to reverse your own decision and that is not likely to happen.

[unclescrooge]

I propose a solution to the problem in the future:

One thing that would help would be for Bitfinex to implement a circuit breaker like they have in the stockmarkets, where where trading is automatically halted for a predetermined period of time (10 to 30 minutes) when the market moves more than say 10%. By the time trading has restarted, panic would have subsided and the market would have become normalized avoiding a flash crash.

Add this the terms and faqs so traders will be aware in advance and then cannot complain when trading halts.

This is a good idea, thank you.

I don't know what users expected, but please be aware that trading can be halted if the conditions require it.

Thanks
Raphael

[btcdrak]

Dear users,

The trading engine is currently stopped due to the recent volatility and the fact that we exhausted our funds on Bitstamp in this critical moment.

We are waiting for new deposit to hit our Bitstamp account, after which we will resume the trades.

have a good day
Raphael

This event (Mt. Gox news) was anticipated since late Friday Asia time. Did you not have time to prepare for it, or just not paying attention?

We don't have a crystal ball.
If you have one please send us your CV and we will employ you.
Prepare for what?
How many bitcoins is enough?
Are just blowing hot air out of your mouth or you forgot to switch your brain on?

Giancarlo
Bitfinex Team

Wow, the author of "how to win friends and influence people" just showed up on the forums. Can we have an autograph?

It's difficult to keep calm with idiots like you.

Giancarlo - you are being an ass.

[russokai]

What other brokers allow you to short bitcoin?  I know some people talk about using Metatrader 4 but what service is this through?

I have had some good experiences with Bitfinex but once you start to lose more and more money due to their site outages, you do have to consider other options.

[wilfried]

Dear users,

The trading engine is currently stopped due to the recent volatility and the fact that we exhausted our funds on Bitstamp in this critical moment.

We are waiting for new deposit to hit our Bitstamp account, after which we will resume the trades.

have a good day
Raphael

You do know that this is going to happen over and over and over again when the market has some volatility?   That outtage just cost me $8000 in profits and I'm sure many lost even more...just not acceptable.  You guys need a better system with your site.

Feel free to post any suggestion.
We will pay you if they make sense.
Otherwise just stop talking nonsense.

Giancarlo
Bitfinex Team

I have what I consider to be a legitimate suggestion.  I've been trading here for a while, and have always remained loyal to the exchange and refrained from joining in the BFX bashing in this thread whenever things go wrong.  However, with that said, I've also lost very significant amounts of fiat/btc on numerous occasions due to problems that were always on Bitfinex's end.  I've put up with this because I legitimately appreciate the service you're attempting to provide, but this past week has been a little ridiculous (between the two trading halts I'm out close to 5 figures).  My suggestion is to consider refunding trading fees for a given period; this would serve both to compensate losses on our end, and to regain credibility for Bitfinex by making it clear that the exchange is not attempting to profit from our losses.  

imho what we need is a clear emergency-procedure, everybody needs to know about it and has to be the same every time, something like:

-if glitch: market halted, rollback occurs
-if deep dip: market halted, no rollback occurs
(or maybe:
-if deep dip occurs: market halted, rollback but all shorts are closed at 50% of the glitch or something like this - i mean, if i know that a margin call not only is possible if my liquidation price is reached, but also, if market goes down x %, i am happy to take the risk).

[btcdrak]

I'd just like to point out that if we did not have stopped the trading engine, the cascading effect of liquidations would have been terrible (just look at the charts already).

So we DID make the right choice in halting the trading engine to avoid this situation.

One day the Bitcoin market will become mature enough to support this level of volume, right now it isn't;

THanks for your comprehension
Raphael

So why didn't Bitstamp go down?  It was up the entire time that you "halted" trading (without warning).

It's not the Bitcoin market that isn't "mature" enough...it is Bitfinex that is immature.

Bitstamp is not a margin trading website, they don't have liquidations /margin calls, and don't care if the price goes to 0 because they don't lose anything.

On Bitfinex on the other hand, there are leveraged positions, and liquidations triggered can and have a cascading effect on a very volatile market, and if there is not enough volume to support it, we CAN take the price to 0 and lose millions of lenders money

Halting the trading engine is maybe annoying, but it's the right thing to do (and I must say it happens on all sort of market).

Thank you
Raphael

BTCe is a margin trading platform, and they did not stop trading...

[ledmaniak]

What other brokers allow you to short bitcoin?  I know some people talk about using Metatrader 4 but what service is this through?

I have had some good experiences with Bitfinex but once you start to lose more and more money due to their site outages, you do have to consider other options.

I think it was btc-e with MT4 right? BTC.sx also offers margin/short trade

[MAbtc]

The bitfinex website is a very complex piece of art, and I just wanted to show my support for you guys running this site. Keeping everybody happy is very difficult to do, especially when there are teenagers very angry that they missed a $10 trade that should not have happened in the first place.

You guys handled this well, Thanks!

Bitfinex is not the NYSE. When it halts the market, bitcoin trading does not halt. Holding short positions open while the market rallies 25% is not a laughing matter. We are not talking about the rise from $100 - $660, but $530 - $660. Traders watched for an hour as the their shorts stood open and the market rallied 25% -- that is completely unacceptable. A "trade that should not have happened" has nothing to do with it -- we need to be able to CLOSE OUR FUCKING POSITIONS.

You obviously have little respect for traders. Please understand that your money, as a liquidity provider, is not more important than ours.

[wilfried]

What other brokers allow you to short bitcoin?  I know some people talk about using Metatrader 4 but what service is this through?

I have had some good experiences with Bitfinex but once you start to lose more and more money due to their site outages, you do have to consider other options.

its btc-e, but be warned, i tried it and it was dismal. i read somewhere that metatrader - orders are badly integrated in the btc-e orderbooks and though you can only buy/sell at very few prices, whereas the web-frontend trades as hell. i got super gains while using an test account, and as soon as i switched to my usd account, i almost lost half of it until i completely got out of metatrader-btec-. and the bots engine is very complicated (C-Style language) and the ready made bots (haha, of course) are shit.

[Indamuck]

What other brokers allow you to short bitcoin?  I know some people talk about using Metatrader 4 but what service is this through?

I have had some good experiences with Bitfinex but once you start to lose more and more money due to their site outages, you do have to consider other options.

A small exchange in HK - 796 xChange - allows one to short CFDs on BTC and LTC. Their platform worked perfectly over this last event. Shorting the CFDs offers up to 10x leverage ... if you are insane, lol.

[F-bernanke]

The bitfinex website is a very complex piece of art, and I just wanted to show my support for you guys running this site. Keeping everybody happy is very difficult to do, especially when there are teenagers very angry that they missed a $10 trade that should not have happened in the first place.

You guys handled this well, Thanks!

Bitfinex is not the NYSE. When it halts the market, bitcoin trading does not halt. Holding short positions open while the market rallies 25% is not a laughing matter. We are not talking about the rise from $100 - $660, but $530 - $660. Traders watched for an hour as the their shorts stood open and the market rallied 25% -- that is completely unacceptable. A "trade that should not have happened" has nothing to do with it -- we need to be able to CLOSE OUR FUCKING POSITIONS.

You obviously have little respect for traders. Please understand that your money, as a liquidity provider, is not more important than ours.

I do have respect for traders, but when the BTC funds at bitstamp ran out, we chewed through bitfinex's orderbook like butter, then all margin calls hit, and we were heading to 0. Do you think that is an acceptable risk for a lender?

[ledmaniak]

The bitfinex website is a very complex piece of art, and I just wanted to show my support for you guys running this site. Keeping everybody happy is very difficult to do, especially when there are teenagers very angry that they missed a $10 trade that should not have happened in the first place.

You guys handled this well, Thanks!

Bitfinex is not the NYSE. When it halts the market, bitcoin trading does not halt. Holding short positions open while the market rallies 25% is not a laughing matter. We are not talking about the rise from $100 - $660, but $530 - $660. Traders watched for an hour as the their shorts stood open and the market rallied 25% -- that is completely unacceptable. A "trade that should not have happened" has nothing to do with it -- we need to be able to CLOSE OUR FUCKING POSITIONS.

You obviously have little respect for traders. Please understand that your money, as a liquidity provider, is not more important than ours.

Exactly. I still don't understand why not enough reserve in BTC could cause issues when closing a short that was profitable. The market keeps moving so you should at least allow these kind of orders to be executed.