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

[Spaceman_Spiff]

Sometimes my lendable balance will say, for example, $123.45. When I go to make a loan offer of $123.45, it will tell me I have an insufficient balance. If I make it $123.44, then it goes through.

+1 on this.
No biggie, but costs a few more clicks every other day.
The nicest way would be a "max" button which enters the whole available amount.

+1 on the "max" button

[urwhatuknow]

Hey guys.

I'm new to bitfinex, opened an account there a week ago, my money arrived, and now I'm ready to...

... read a lot.

The entire business of margin trading, shorting, etc. is still new to me, but I'm reading up on it. I have to say though, the information on the bitfinex sources themselves is pretty chaotic, and sometimes contradictory. For example, I found a statement by Raphael that lenders would never lose money, but as it turns out, the actual system is one of insured/uninsured loans. I'm sure that's all well known for those who are on bitfinex for a longer time, but for a newcomer, it's a bit frustrating.

Anyway, hope you don't mind me asking a few questions:

1) wanted to sign up on the bitfinex forum. registration asks for a "registration code". I checked my bitfinex emails, and I never got such a code. What's the deal?

2) To get started, I decided to put a portion of my money as a loan. Wasn't sure about the rate, though. The statistics say the current average rate is 130% p.a., but most loan offers are higher. Can someone fill me in what the max rate is any respectable trader would take? I'm not planning on putting out a loan at that rate, I'm just trying to get a feeling for what the maximum profit is traders expect when they trade on margin (sorry if I get the terminology wrong ...  like I said, I'm a noob )

3) I think I sort of get the exchange/meta-exchange model of bitfinex, but not entirely: right now it says "not enough USD on bitstamp". I thought most of the bitfinex volume was actually coming from trades executed on bitstamp. So how come there aren't enough funds on bitstamp? In fact, I don't get *whose* funds those are: are they funds of bitfinex traders, or is it USD bitfinex itself places on bitstamp in order to execute trades on bitstamp?

4) A more practical question: I'm usually trading on bitstamp, and got used to its quirks (relatively shallow market depth, although that's changing in the last weeks), but I don't know about the bitfinex market: do you guys trade on bitfinex itself, or do most of you execute trades on bitstamp? What's the market depth on bitfinex on average? Can you execute moderately large trades without too much spread?

That's all for now. I know, many questions. Would be really grateful if someone could take a shot at at least a few of them

Please send me on PM your username and I will email you the password in order to log on our forum

Giancarlo
Birfinex Team

[oda.krell]

Excellent answers, thanks a lot for your time, 8fold and urwhatuknow/Giancarlo.

One other question: Is there some page that has a complete summary of all the loans I gave, the duration for which they were taken, and the interest they accrued?

Under: Username --> History --> Offer History I can see when my loan offers were (partially) filled, but not when they were repaid, so I have no way of knowing if interest was calculated accurately. I'm probably missing something....

[superbit]

Major Bug
I currently have more USD lent out than I have in my account.

Bug:
I find the auto-lend button a little goofy.  Sometimes I have to click de-activate 2 or 3 times before it changes to activate regardless of how long I leave it, then sometimes it will be green and I want to activate it and it says it is already activated but it doesn't display the rate it is activated to left of button.

Wants:
Bring back the average lending rate on the new layout.
Display expected interest payment, it could be simply what your currently lent out funds would earn if out for 24 hours

[Spaceman_Spiff]

Major Bug
I currently have more USD lent out than I have in my account.

Yes, I now also have $150 more in 'USD credit total' than 'USD'. Seems to me like some loan offer got duplicated on autorenew or something like that.

[Ente]

Major Bug
I currently have more USD lent out than I have in my account.

Yes, I now also have $150 more in 'USD credit total' than 'USD'. Seems to me like some loan offer got duplicated on autorenew or something like that.

New feature: Leveraged lending!
Again Bitfinex is the first in the industry!

:-P SCNR

Ente

[urwhatuknow]

Major Bug
I currently have more USD lent out than I have in my account.

Yes, I now also have $150 more in 'USD credit total' than 'USD'. Seems to me like some loan offer got duplicated on autorenew or something like that.

New feature: Leveraged lending!
Again Bitfinex is the first in the industry!

:-P SCNR

Ente

Interesting concept.... can you please elaborate on that?
Who would provide the liquidity to the lenders to leverage?
Other lenders?
What was your idea?

Thanks

Giancarlo
Bitfinex Team

[superbit]

Major Bug
I currently have more USD lent out than I have in my account.

Yes, I now also have $150 more in 'USD credit total' than 'USD'. Seems to me like some loan offer got duplicated on autorenew or something like that.

New feature: Leveraged lending!
Again Bitfinex is the first in the industry!

:-P SCNR

Ente

Interesting concept.... can you please elaborate on that?
Who would provide the liquidity to the lenders to leverage?
Other lenders?
What was your idea?

Thanks

Giancarlo
Bitfinex Team

I'm pretty sure he is being sarcastic in regards to the bug.  It is worrisome as it happened today on more than one account.  A feature down the road should allow the borrowing of USD to be lent out at a higher rate.  IE I take the offer at 30% pay the daily interest on that and then lend it back out at 40%

[oda.krell]

Phew. Just finished reading the entire old bitfinex thread. Now I feel a) tired, and b) pretty confident that I made a good choice in starting to trade on bitfinex.

That said, after reading the old thread, the thread I'm in right now, and at least parts of the bitfinex wiki, I have two comments/feature requests about something that I perceive as less than optimal:

(1) Loan history

Okay, so I looked over the entire bitfinex website more than once, and I'm pretty sure now the following doesn't exist: a complete history of your loans, listing the time at which a loan was taken, and the time at which it was repaid (if it was repaid). If I am wrong here, please, by all means correct my mistake and point me to the well hidden tab that show such a history :)

The problem is, in my opinion, that this makes calculating (and double-checking) the interest calculations unnecessary difficult. I have to enable email notification for all loans, which I'd prefer not to, put all the data together, and then calculate the expected interest. However, the history I'm asking for obviously already exists internally on bitfinex. So why not add it to the history --> Offer history tab?


(2) Lack of statistics

I'm not all that enthusiastic about the amount of statistics that is published about the exchange, and the trading that happens on it. From what I can tell, none of the major live chart sites list bitfinex, neither price nor volume. This might be partly by design, to avoid too much exposure of bitfinex before some legal/administrative matters are resolved. Did I get this right? I think I read something to that effect in a post by Raphael.

So that leaves us with the bitfinex statistics page. Which, I'm sure you will agree, is rather terse. Here is, as a minimum, information I would like to see displayed on the statistics page:

-- Volume information (which is so far mentioned as a raw number), plus a history graph of volume, plus a representation of which share of volume comes from bitstamp trades vs. bitfinex "internal" trades.

- Fiat and btc on external exchanges (which, I guess, so far means only bitstamp). Right now, all we have is a meager "no funds available on bitstamp" sticker. That's not sufficient, in my opinion. You could put a history graph, of the past 30 days or so, of fiat (and btc) left on the bitfinex account on bitstamp.


Neither of those bits of information are a "trade secret", or obviously exploitable, right? They would however greatly add to the transparency of bitfinex -- and I have to say, my impression so far is that bitfinex is already one the most transparent bitcoin enterprises I've seen. But, obviously, there's alway room for improvement :)

[mccoyspace]

-- Volume information (which is so far mentioned as a raw number), plus a history graph of volume, plus a representation of which share of volume comes from bitstamp trades vs. bitfinex "internal" trades.

a little of this can be found at http://bitcoinity.org/markets/list and http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitfinex/USD


And here is the ultimate feature request:
Add btcchina as a linked exchange!
All of our bitfinex money is already being held in a chinese if I remember correctly.
make a deal with the bank and the exchange to cross link.
You would get mass attention if you did that I think.

[romantic1]

And here is the ultimate feature request:
Add btcchina as a linked exchange!
All of our bitfinex money is already being held in a chinese if I remember correctly.
make a deal with the bank and the exchange to cross link.
You would get mass attention if you did that I think.

Great idea ! I want it too. And please keep the classic bitfinex, it's easier to use on mobile phone.

[8fold]

And here is the ultimate feature request:
Add btcchina as a linked exchange!
All of our bitfinex money is already being held in a chinese if I remember correctly.
make a deal with the bank and the exchange to cross link.
You would get mass attention if you did that I think.

Careful here. This may not be as easy as you think and perhaps maybe not even advisable. From what I assume, BTCChina is operating in mainland China, not HongKong (BFX). And there are problems with getting yuan out of the country / exchanging yuan. I also assume they (BTCChina's banks) don't want USD currency. I know little of this matter, but this needs to be thought over and weighted carefully.

[unclescrooge]

Major Bug
I currently have more USD lent out than I have in my account.

Yes, I now also have $150 more in 'USD credit total' than 'USD'. Seems to me like some loan offer got duplicated on autorenew or something like that.

Hello guys,

I made a change yesterday that may explain it (I was aware of the risk during the transition but optimization was needed). Could you kindly give me your bitfinex username so I can check your account and confirm everything?

Thanks
Raphael

[unclescrooge]

About other questions:

-A "lend all" button will be added
-Loans history: I've begin preparing this, there will be two pages (one for used loans, another for unused loans that you lent)
-Charting: this is coming sooner than you think, we have someone working on this, an alpha version already exists.

Thanks everybody
Raphael
Bitfinex

[Ente]

New feature: Leveraged lending!
Again Bitfinex is the first in the industry!
:-P SCNR

Interesting concept.... can you please elaborate on that?

I'm pretty sure he is being sarcastic in regards to the bug.

Indeed, this was no serious suggestion. Money to be lent out must be somewhere, after all, not? :-)

A feature down the road should allow the borrowing of USD to be lent out at a higher rate.  IE I take the offer at 30% pay the daily interest on that and then lend it back out at 40%

This would be a bad idea.
It would totally distort the "free market price finding" mechanism. It would not add any benefit, it would just distribute the same money around. Rates would go up enormously and make the lending part uninteresting for most other people.
You *could* argue that it would stabilize the rates a bit, in low-rates times more is lent out, in high-rates times there is more available. But in the end, I believe it would make borrowing a worse experience.
It might work out more fair when the borrower has a minimum time he must borrow the funds. Or both the lender and borrower have to click "close prematurely" to close it. Then the borrower would have a real benefit (additional volume).
Okay, thinking of it, there could be two kinds of "borrow": "Use for yourself", like it is now. "Use for re-lending", where you can re-lend for a higher rate, but can only close the lend before exoiration when the original lender agrees. And as a lender you should be able to decide to only lend the current way, the new way, or both.

I will close a position these days. My average rate is much lower than the current rates. I did think "man, if I could re-lend it for the current rates, sweet!". But then, closing my position now, I help to lower the average rate, and give the lenders the chance to re-lend for a better rate next time. So, all-in-all, I find it difficult to have another middleman to collect money for nothing, from both sides..

Ente

[oda.krell]

a little of this can be found at http://bitcoinity.org/markets/list and http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitfinex/USD

Thanks, very useful. Didn't use bitcoinity in a while, completely missed they list bitfinex.

About other questions:

-A "lend all" button will be added
-Loans history: I've begin preparing this, there will be two pages (one for used loans, another for unused loans that you lent)
-Charting: this is coming sooner than you think, we have someone working on this, an alpha version already exists.

Thanks everybody
Raphael
Bitfinex

Quick to answer, as always. Thanks :)

[molecular]

I have pending BTC and LTC withdrawal request since 15 hours. How long will it take?

[capoeira]

so, when will you guys get more cash to Bitstamp? atm, Bitfinex is not usable for me with Bitstamp asks disapearing all the time

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

so, when will you guys get more cash to Bitstamp? atm, Bitfinex is not usable for me with Bitstamp asks disapearing all the time

So this is why routing through Bitstamp does nothing?

[oda.krell]

A small request, should be simple enough to implement if you see my point: can you slightly increase the frequency at which Autolend is run? I just noticed it took more than 30 minutes before my funds were offered again -- which is not terrible, but still a bit too long I would say. Maybe running it every 5 to 10 minutes would be possible, and not too computationally expensive?