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

[eneloop]

@mjr
Please add some more performance statistics. Like "overall interests earned since beginning" and a monthly based list to have a better overview.

[Bagpipe]

Check out bfxdata, as of lately returns in BTC are about as high as in USD percentage wise.

They are actually higher. I bought BTC to lend them for that reason.

I have some BTC borrowed for LTC/BTC short; it turns out the borrowing rate is at least 0.5% a day, which translates to 600% a year...
I checked the USD rate at one brokerage and they asked for 7% a year... Bitcoin truly lives in the dark, dark ages.

Might wanna check again. BTC borrowing rates are around 0.05% usually. If yours is higher, you can change that right now.

The problem is in the display I guess, if you have USD and short LTC/BTC pair, what are your fees in? it just said 0.03 while my profit fluctuated from 0.02 to 0.08 so it looked sad. The profit was in BTC (now I know) and the fees are most likely LTC... who knows?!

[stellar1]

Are you offering a windows & android client for trading ?

What is the latency of price, volume data received by traders ?

What the required margin in trading account for buying or selling one lot of BTCUSD ?

[Bagpipe]

@mjr
Please add some more performance statistics. Like "overall interests earned since beginning" and a monthly based list to have a better overview.

Add some statistics on fees, just seeing that my 30-day volume is 500x my net value is nice, but how much did I spend on fees?
30-day total fees in trading fees and in margin fees would be nice. You see that my trading produces you a lot in fees and that I should trade less, because I'm only enriching you ;-)

@mjr

[Bagpipe]

Are you offering a windows & android client for trading ?

What is the latency of price, volume data received by traders ?

What the required margin in trading account for buying or selling one lot of BTCUSD ?

There are no "lots" !!! !!! !!!
you buy any amount higher than 0.01 btc.
the latency varies with system load, it is around 2-6 seconds normal, but can vary whem more people click their buttons...

[stellar1]

Are you offering a windows & android client for trading ?

What is the latency of price, volume data received by traders ?

What the required margin in trading account for buying or selling one lot of BTCUSD ?

There are no "lots" !!! !!! !!!
you buy any amount higher than 0.01 btc.
the latency varies with system load, it is around 2-6 seconds normal, but can vary whem more people click their buttons...

Are you offering a Windows and Android trading client software ?

[Sukrim]

They are an exchange, not a software development company. They offer an API, so people are free to integrate it in "apps" as they see fit.

[SebastianJu]

If i bought through margin trading then i have this active position. I can close it. But can i create close orders like stop loss or take profit orders? I only see the possibility to buy long or shorts with these order options.

[noggin-scratcher]

If i bought through margin trading then i have this active position. I can close it. But can i create close orders like stop loss or take profit orders? I only see the possibility to buy long or shorts with these order options.

There should be a dropdown menu for order type which will let you select between Limit, Market, Stop, Trailing Stop etc

[mjr]

Are you offering a windows & android client for trading ?

What is the latency of price, volume data received by traders ?

What the required margin in trading account for buying or selling one lot of BTCUSD ?

Currently we don not offer any mobile trading platform, but you can access bitfinex.com from any browser, including a mobile browser.

Latency would not have any real meaning in this context, because you are accessing us over the internet. The scale of latency internally is dwarfed by the variation you will experience based on where you are coming from and what route you are taking. All of our information is "real-time", in that there is no delay on any price or trade information. As far as trading engine performance, our current engine has performed remarkably well so far, but as our volume continues to rise, we are upgrading our back end systems, and that process is nearing completion. This should give us the ability to handle millions of orders per second, as well as allowing us to offer many new features.

The maximum allowed margin is 3.3 to 1, or in other words, you must have 30% of the total position size as collateral, and in order to maintain the position, you must have 15% of the position, or your position will be in danger of being liquidated. There is no lot size, necessarily, in BTC. Our minimum order size varies based on account size, and in general is only there to avoid spammy orders.

[mjr]

@mjr
Please add some more performance statistics. Like "overall interests earned since beginning" and a monthly based list to have a better overview.

Add some statistics on fees, just seeing that my 30-day volume is 500x my net value is nice, but how much did I spend on fees?
30-day total fees in trading fees and in margin fees would be nice. You see that my trading produces you a lot in fees and that I should trade less, because I'm only enriching you ;-)

@mjr

As soon as the backend upgrade is complete, I want to tackle reporting. I am hoping to make it much more customizable for all of our users, allowing them to access the information they want, in the format they want. So far, from what I have heard, this is a very widely requested feature. I haven't started on this, but I am picturing something along the lines of a report api, where you can generate the report you want, including the fields you want. I know that as more businesses and institutional clients start using bitfinex, the reporting aspect is very important.

[mjr]

They are an exchange, not a software development company. They offer an API, so people are free to integrate it in "apps" as they see fit.

Very true, we are focused on making sure that we handle our primary duty of matching trades and maintaining a fair marketplace. We do also offer an API, and I know some people have set up clients that can access our system using that API (MarginBot for one, is a great example of this).

That being said, we are always trying to offer new features and ways to make the experience of trading on Bitfinex easier. We have a lot of cool new features on the horizon, and in the coming months plan on rolling out some new ways to access the API (FIX, WebSockets) as well as some new features. Maybe eventually we may offer a mobile client, but I am not sure how much people actually would want something like that.

[SebastianJu]

If i bought through margin trading then i have this active position. I can close it. But can i create close orders like stop loss or take profit orders? I only see the possibility to buy long or shorts with these order options.

There should be a dropdown menu for order type which will let you select between Limit, Market, Stop, Trailing Stop etc

I know, but this seems to be only for buying into a short or a long position. What about when i already have bought into and want to set rules when to close my position? I mean when it would be only one product then there would be buy and sell forms. There are only buy forms and a link to close a position. Or can i use the buy forms to close my position too?

[noggin-scratcher]

I know, but this seems to be only for buying into a short or a long position. What about when i already have bought into and want to set rules when to close my position? I mean when it would be only one product then there would be buy and sell forms. There are only buy forms and a link to close a position. Or can i use the buy forms to close my position too?

You open a long by buying, and close it by selling the same quantity. Vice versa for a short. Going each way closes the other one... think of it as "increase/decrease my exposure to the price of bitcoin" rather than "buy/sell" and maybe that'll help.

So after you've opened a long position you can set a limit sell above the current price (at your hopeful price-target) and a stop sell below the current price (at your "Oh shit, bail" point), or set a trailing stop to follow the market and adjust its trigger price as the going rate moves up. Or all three.

[stellar1]

Are you offering a windows & android client for trading ?

What is the latency of price, volume data received by traders ?

What the required margin in trading account for buying or selling one lot of BTCUSD ?

Currently we don not offer any mobile trading platform, but you can access bitfinex.com from any browser, including a mobile browser.

Latency would not have any real meaning in this context, because you are accessing us over the internet. The scale of latency internally is dwarfed by the variation you will experience based on where you are coming from and what route you are taking. All of our information is "real-time", in that there is no delay on any price or trade information. As far as trading engine performance, our current engine has performed remarkably well so far, but as our volume continues to rise, we are upgrading our back end systems, and that process is nearing completion. This should give us the ability to handle millions of orders per second, as well as allowing us to offer many new features.

The maximum allowed margin is 3.3 to 1, or in other words, you must have 30% of the total position size as collateral, and in order to maintain the position, you must have 15% of the position, or your position will be in danger of being liquidated. There is no lot size, necessarily, in BTC. Our minimum order size varies based on account size, and in general is only there to avoid spammy orders.

I think a windows and/or mac/linux trading client is essential for short term trading. Someone from the company earlier said latency is 6-7 seconds not sure which answer to take as final. If latency indeed is 6-7 seconds again not a friendly platform to short term trading.

and this one is obviously a newbie question : what are your trading hours & weekdays/holidays ? or is it 24x7x365

Thanks

[Sukrim]

I think a windows and/or mac/linux trading client is essential for short term trading. Someone from the company earlier said latency is 6-7 seconds not sure which answer to take as final. If latency indeed is 6-7 seconds again not a friendly platform to short term trading.

and this one is obviously a newbie question : what are your trading hours & weekdays/holidays ? or is it 24x7x365

Thanks

Again, you can use your own client or pay someone to extend an existing client to implement their API. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=201062.0 for example (who is NOT affiliated with Bitfinex!) does so.

I don't know where you get 6-7 seconds(!?!) of latency from, maybe that was a worst case scenario? Typically the latency when trading is much lower.

Like most Bitcoin exchanges they very rarely go offline for maintenance, in practice they usually plan to run 24/7.

[whatthesith]

Seems that there is some problem with the trading engine just now...

The order are NOT matched, and the bid price is greater ask price.

[stellar1]

I think a windows and/or mac/linux trading client is essential for short term trading. Someone from the company earlier said latency is 6-7 seconds not sure which answer to take as final. If latency indeed is 6-7 seconds again not a friendly platform to short term trading.

and this one is obviously a newbie question : what are your trading hours & weekdays/holidays ? or is it 24x7x365

Thanks

Again, you can use your own client or pay someone to extend an existing client to implement their API. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=201062.0 for example (who is NOT affiliated with Bitfinex!) does so.

I don't know where you get 6-7 seconds(!?!) of latency from, maybe that was a worst case scenario? Typically the latency when trading is much lower.

Like most Bitcoin exchanges they very rarely go offline for maintenance, in practice they usually plan to run 24/7.

Thanks for your reply. Bagpipe mentioned a few messages earlier to my question that the latency varies with system load, it is around 2-6 seconds normal, but can vary whem more people click their buttons...

sorry I quoted it 6-7 seconds from my memory but if this is true with large number of users pressing their buttons at the same time this could very well be 6-7 seconds.

I get the API message clear..in fact most exchanges in the fiat world too don't provide clients to traders, its the exchange members that do..but in altcoin world we don't have members & brokers so I was kinda comparing with what BTC China provides.

Excuse my asking this question again but do the BTC exchanges run 24x7x365 except for maintenance downtime ? The longest running exchanges are forex but they shut down for the weekend. The reason I ask is because my trading system works better on finite trading sessions like 6 hours a day or 23 hours a day or even 5 days a week but to make it work on a trading session that began 5 years earlier and is going to end God knows when is beyond the scope of my trading system.

Thanks again

[SebastianJu]

I know, but this seems to be only for buying into a short or a long position. What about when i already have bought into and want to set rules when to close my position? I mean when it would be only one product then there would be buy and sell forms. There are only buy forms and a link to close a position. Or can i use the buy forms to close my position too?

You open a long by buying, and close it by selling the same quantity. Vice versa for a short. Going each way closes the other one... think of it as "increase/decrease my exposure to the price of bitcoin" rather than "buy/sell" and maybe that'll help.

So after you've opened a long position you can set a limit sell above the current price (at your hopeful price-target) and a stop sell below the current price (at your "Oh shit, bail" point), or set a trailing stop to follow the market and adjust its trigger price as the going rate moves up. Or all three.

Thanks a lot!

[nomadiam]

sorry if this has been answered but

is there a trick to getting reply for support ?
I sent an email 12 hours ago and didnt even get an automated reply or ticket.

please advise.