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

[EABEAB]

Hey,

This might be a stupid question,
but does this China's decision this morning
regarding not allowing Banks to participate in BitCoin Transactions
affect Bifinex in any way being that Bifinex Bank is in China : :

http://www.coindesk.com/price-crashes-china-outlaws-bitcoin-financial-institutions/

[sangaman]

I'm not blaming you guys or anything and I don't think you're obligated to refund anything. I just think it's wise as a business to be as clear as possible about your policies and your site's functionality. I also think it's wise to give the customer the benefit of the doubt in situations where there's any sort of valid dispute. A couple of bucks is not much to accord I'd imagine and it's certainly a drop in the bucket for you guys, but I think the reputation and perception of your business is paramount. Having a reputation as a company that goes to great lengths to keep its users informed and satisfied will only help you in the long run.

That is precisely the reason some US companies have hilarious policies in their contracts (TOSes) that specify things like "we shall not by liable for any injuries caused by the misuse of our products such as sticking body parts in various orifices". Are you suggesting Bitfinex should do the same? Perhaps they should, i'm not a lawyer, but I love to dream about living in a smarter, more responsible society, and I do my best into educating my peers and setting an example so that we head that way.

No that's not at all what I'm suggesting, just be as user-friendly as possible. Disclaimers to avoid lawsuits is unrelated, and I don't think accord has any sort of legal complaint here.

[nby]

Hey,

This might be a stupid question,
but does this China's decision this morning
regarding not allowing Banks to participate in BitCoin Transactions
affect Bifinex in any way being that Bifinex Bank is in China : :

http://www.coindesk.com/price-crashes-china-outlaws-bitcoin-financial-institutions/

I don't think this is a stupid question, I am definitely interested in a reply from the Bitfinex staff.
I also have a question for the staff. This is an excerpt from a translation of the PBOC statement, please bear with me for possible errors:

Bitcoin websites should earnestly carry out their anti-money laundering duty, confirm the identities of their users, have them register using their real names, and register their name and ID card number.

Will this affect your current policy on verification ? I don't mind being verified if need be, but it's a hassle I would rather avoid if I am not strictly required to in order to use your platform.

[accord01]

12 hours later, that missing $14 from balance has shown up in the transaction ledger as interest payment for some unused borrowed fund from who knows how long ago.  This should be instantly deducted.

[accord01]

Hey,

This might be a stupid question,
but does this China's decision this morning
regarding not allowing Banks to participate in BitCoin Transactions
affect Bifinex in any way being that Bifinex Bank is in China : :

http://www.coindesk.com/price-crashes-china-outlaws-bitcoin-financial-institutions/

I don't think this is a stupid question, I am definitely interested in a reply from the Bitfinex staff.
I also have a question for the staff. This is an excerpt from a translation of the PBOC statement, please bear with me for possible errors:

Bitcoin websites should earnestly carry out their anti-money laundering duty, confirm the identities of their users, have them register using their real names, and register their name and ID card number.

Will this affect your current policy on verification ? I don't mind being verified if need be, but it's a hassle I would rather avoid if I am not strictly required to in order to use your platform.

I'm still wondering exactly what china outlawed.  Are banks forbidden from bitcoin related transactions / businesses, the acceptance of bitcoin, or just denouncing the validity of bitcoin.

[Drabla]

Something that came up lately:

I log in to the site and am direct to https://bitfinex.com/sessions with the error "The page you are looking for does not exist"
I go back to bitfinex.com an am still logged out.
The 2nd or 3rd try will work as expected.

[vanchau]

Will bitfinex ever support trailing-limit type orders?

[traderman]

What makes a loan insured or un-insured? Is that an option that the lender chooses before he posts his lend offer?

[Spaceman_Spiff]

What makes a loan insured or un-insured? Is that an option that the lender chooses before he posts his lend offer?

Yes, but there is rarely (read: never) any money left in the insurance pool.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

question: I haven't done any margin trading or shorting on bitfinex yet, but I am considering shorting LTC/BTC at some point in the future. 
Does it matter in what form of money my margin is? (i.e. do I need USD, BTC, LTC ?)

Any peculiar things or common mistakes I should look out for when trading on margin?  (for example how do you partially close a position etc.)

[traderman]

so the lender is fully exposed to a loss if the borrower blows up?

What makes a loan insured or un-insured? Is that an option that the lender chooses before he posts his lend offer?

Yes, but there is rarely (read: never) any money left in the insurance pool.

[nrd525]

Any peculiar things or common mistakes I should look out for when trading on margin?  (for example how do you partially close a position etc.)

There is a close button, but you can often get a better deal if you post your own offer and someone fills it.  For instance if you are doing margin selling, post an offer to margin buy (I like to use limit - because anything can happen with a market order, especially during volatility) to close part or all of your position.

You cannot use the close button if you have offers out that would partially reverse your position.  Hmm, this might be a bug.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

so the lender is fully exposed to a loss if the borrower blows up?

What makes a loan insured or un-insured? Is that an option that the lender chooses before he posts his lend offer?

Yes, but there is rarely (read: never) any money left in the insurance pool.

Only if the loss is greater than the margin that the borrower has left during forced liquidation.

[traderman]

have such things happened? have there been cases on Bitfinex where insured loans did not get payed back in full to the lenders?

so the lender is fully exposed to a loss if the borrower blows up?

What makes a loan insured or un-insured? Is that an option that the lender chooses before he posts his lend offer?

Yes, but there is rarely (read: never) any money left in the insurance pool.

Only if the loss is greater than the margin that the borrower has left during forced liquidation.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

have such things happened? have there been cases on Bitfinex where insured loans did not get payed back in full to the lenders?

so the lender is fully exposed to a loss if the borrower blows up?

What makes a loan insured or un-insured? Is that an option that the lender chooses before he posts his lend offer?

Yes, but there is rarely (read: never) any money left in the insurance pool.

Only if the loss is greater than the margin that the borrower has left during forced liquidation.

There were losses in the april crash, but bitfinex absorbed them themselves, then they introduced the insurance option.

[Pruden]

Any peculiar things or common mistakes I should look out for when trading on margin?  (for example how do you partially close a position etc.)

When you reduce (partially close) a position you close loans accordingly, which means that to enlarge your position you would have to borrow with new interest rates.

If there is a way to keep borrowed funds after reducing a position, I would love to know.

[Ichthyo]

question: I haven't done any margin trading or shorting on bitfinex yet, but I am considering shorting LTC/BTC at some point in the future.  
Does it matter in what form of money my margin is? (i.e. do I need USD, BTC, LTC ?)

Any peculiar things or common mistakes I should look out for when trading on margin?  (for example how do you partially close a position etc.)

The denomination of your margin doesn't matter, the current value is what matters. Since the current value is calculated dynamically, determined by the current rate of BTC/USD and LTC/USD (correct?), changes in the overall value of your collateral (=margin balance) are something to keep an eye upon, since any change here is leveraged: If the value of your collateral increases, your tradeable balance increases multiplied by the leverage factor, giving you more "fire power". But the contrary is also true (and a dangerous pitfall). A decrease in the value of your margin balance can drive you into forced liquidation much quicker than you'd expect.

Thus it's a good idea to keep some "headroom" on the tradeable balance. This allows you to transfer small unused portions of your margin balance temporarily to the exchange account, and change them into another kind of underlying (eg. sell BTC for USD when you expect falling BTC rates, and transfer the USD then back to the trading account.)

You reduce the size of your trading position with trades in the opposite direction. Only when you close your position completely is when your gains (or losses) are credited to or deduced from your underlying trading account. A common pitfall here is not to take all your open limit orders into account. For example, if you short, you typically set yourself limit orders at some point below to take your profits. Now, when the market drops suddenly, all your limit orders might be executed; if they sum up to more than your current position size (e.g. because you closed off some part manually), the direction of your position will be turned around, i.e. in this example situation you'll be left with a long position over the difference amount, and this might happen in a still falling market while you're sleeping.

LTC/BTC is indeed an interesting segment, but beware, the LTC market on Bitfinex (and still more the LTC/BTC segment) is lacking depth. The situation has improved significantly, but this is still largely an "illiquid" market. It can easily be controlled by some large positions, and it can happen that it doesn't follow the general trend, just because some large player doesn't like that trend. But most importantly, the depth might not be enough to get out of a losing position in case of a sudden trend change.

Of course, the general advice for any trading applies: trade the trend, not the actual levels. Never try to anticipate developments (this is gambling, not trading). Know your exit point beforehand and never argue about it. Choose the size of your position based on the maximum loss you're willing to take right away, not by considering prospective gains. As we all know, this kind advice is easy to state but hard to follow.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

Thanks for the info and advice guys !

[Peter R]

Is Bitfinex down or is it just me?

(Most bitcoin-related sites seem slow for me all of a sudden.  Coordinated DDoS attack?)

[Ente]

Well, it seems obvious that all borrowed funds cost interest. The lender is out of that money and can't lend it to someone else who would be paying in that time. Also, your local bank takes interest, and probably doesn't even know what you do with that cash to begin with?

Two feature requests:

- in the classic frontend we could sort tables for values. For example, sort the "borrowed funds" for "expiration date" or "interest". This isn't possible in the new interface yet..

- I can do a stop like "sell when the rate drops by xy". I would like to do a "buy when the rate drops by xy" too. And enter both  "37 USD" and "3.5%" maybe? At the moment I can only do fixed offers like "buy when the rate is 987 USD".

Besides that, I finally used the new GUI for some time now. I got used to it, after the first "hey, everything's looking different" "shock".

And I absolutely love the new "claim" feature! Thank you so much! :-)

Ente

..now that's funny, I can sort all tables already! Just click the row! My mousepointer doesn't change when hovering, so I didn't notice it before..

Still craving for that "buy at -5%" feature. With those dips every other day.. ;-)

Ente

wouldn't a Stop buy do that? or do you mean to set it as a calculated floating percentage? Obviously the stop buy would be set at a fixed use price.

Exactly, I would like a "Stop buy" with no fixed price, but a trailing price.

Will bitfinex ever support trailing-limit type orders?

Sounds like the thing I am describing too?


Bitfinex is up for me, btw.

Ente