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

[barca]

Is anyone else having BTC withdrawal issues with Bitfinex? I've placed a withdrawal 7 hours ago; after three hours I sent an email to support and haven't received a response. An earlier post by Giancarlo (sp?) seems to affirm that they're replenishing the hot wallet, but thus far nothing. I received a "Completed transaction" about an hour ago, but receiving wallet still shows no deposit.

[myb87]

Is anyone else having BTC withdrawal issues with Bitfinex? I've placed a withdrawal 7 hours ago; after three hours I sent an email to support and haven't received a response. An earlier post by Giancarlo (sp?) seems to affirm that they're replenishing the hot wallet, but thus far nothing. I received a "Completed transaction" about an hour ago, but receiving wallet still shows no deposit.

i transferred 8 btc like 2 hours ago, however i made another withdraw of 5 btc that i have not received. I just sent support an email no response yet 

[TwinWinNerD]

Is anyone else having BTC withdrawal issues with Bitfinex? I've placed a withdrawal 7 hours ago; after three hours I sent an email to support and haven't received a response. An earlier post by Giancarlo (sp?) seems to affirm that they're replenishing the hot wallet, but thus far nothing. I received a "Completed transaction" about an hour ago, but receiving wallet still shows no deposit.

just look at the hash you see there and post it on blockchain.info

Maybe your BTC wallet is buggy.

[Speckle21]

......

I like that idea.
Some automatic breaker, with the rules published in advance, and a clear message on every page of BitFinex in such a condition.

Please, everybody who still complains, take it to BitFinex email, as they themselves asked for. Or open a thread in "scam accusation", whatever. I don't want to hear it again and again for pages and pages.

To everybody making suggestions here: This sounds like we really can come up with a good plan here. And, as was stated by BitFinex/Giancarlo several times, people who make good suggestions will get some goodies. They are listening to us, lets make the platform go out stronger from this!

Ente

Yeah, a clearly defined and public circuit breaker of some type i think would help ease the market a LOT. I think the half-breaker would be awesome if the details are public because as soon as its turned on buyers would RUSH in and refill the bids because from their point of view, they get to buy coins at 0-5% below bitstamp price with *near certainty* their bids will get filled as the liquidations continue in a controlled fashion.

If we all knew the cascade was about to happen, i think a lot of us with available funds would have set up bid ladders to take advantage. There are few forces more powerful than greed, a half-breaker takes advantage of that.

I sure hope this gets implemented and i get a small bonus!

[barca]

Is anyone else having BTC withdrawal issues with Bitfinex? I've placed a withdrawal 7 hours ago; after three hours I sent an email to support and haven't received a response. An earlier post by Giancarlo (sp?) seems to affirm that they're replenishing the hot wallet, but thus far nothing. I received a "Completed transaction" about an hour ago, but receiving wallet still shows no deposit.

just look at the hash you see there and post it on blockchain.info

Maybe your BTC wallet is buggy.

TwinWinNerD,

Thanks for the quick response. The receiving wallet (exchange) is Bitstamp and the Blockchain hash check shows "we could not find any blocks or transactions matching this hash." This is a non-trivial amount of BTC (~30), so I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

Thanks.

[alpha492]

I have a suggestion:

From what i understand running out of BTC on bitstamp was what lead to the cascade. How about next time this happens, and the order book moves more than 5% out of sync with bitstamp, that bfx pauses *sell orders*.

So its similar to halting trading, but *limit buy* orders are still allowed.

What will happen is the traders and bots will start to fill in the depleted order book. Eventually sell orders are restored again once the order book depth reaches some predetermined value, like say 1000 Btcs to the bitstamp price. let the sell orders trickle in and if the depth is depleted again and goes 5% out of sync with bitstamp, you once again halt *sells* and resume when the depth rebuilds enough. Meanwhile, you're also sending more BTCs to bitstamp.

This is like a circuit breaker but allows a controlled sell off. The advantage is that because its slow, forced liquidations won't cascade to zero because there will always be buyers willing to fill in with more bids when they see the bitstamp/bfx order books go out of balance. Also i think the number of forced liquidations will be reduced because they are stopped at 5% below bitstamp and only resumed when the bids fill in. eventually there will enough bids to repay lenders and stop the cascade.

The point of halting trading i think is to stop a cascade and destroying the lenders. By still allowing *buy limit orders* placed, we're still giving the lenders their money (since its coming out of the buyers).

If there aren't enough buyers then no worries, the depth never refills and trading is not resumed until the extra BTCs get to bitstamp. This system won't be any worse than the current system of halting all trades until btcs get to bitstamp... at least i don't think it's worse.

This "half-breaker" works both ways, If the opposite happens somehow, you can stop buy orders in the other direction.

Anything wrong with implementing a half-breaker?

The only difficulty i can see is that extra computing power is needed to check if the above conditions are met after every trade. After a sell occurs, check if there is still enough btc in bistamp, if not, check if the last trade pushed the price to 5% below bitstamp price, if true, STOP SELLS.

For very large sells of thousands of BTC you'll also have to break up the transaction into smaller pieces and implement the checks after each piece.

Anyway, could this idea work?

I like that idea.
Some automatic breaker, with the rules published in advance, and a clear message on every page of BitFinex in such a condition.

Please, everybody who still complains, take it to BitFinex email, as they themselves asked for. Or open a thread in "scam accusation", whatever. I don't want to hear it again and again for pages and pages.

To everybody making suggestions here: This sounds like we really can come up with a good plan here. And, as was stated by BitFinex/Giancarlo several times, people who make good suggestions will get some goodies. They are listening to us, lets make the platform go out stronger from this!

Ente

I'm not sure why so many people think a volatility cap is a good idea for any exchange.  To a certain extent I guess I agree, but half of us only trade crypto because of the volatility.

Most of us coming from forex/stock markets and any trader with 'more than 3 neurons' (as the BFX devs put it) would immediately abandon BTC markets if a strict cap similar to other markets was every put in place.

Its really a risk/reward problem, even trading bitcoin comes with the inherent risk that your exchange will just run off with your money not to mention the sort of problems people have discussing here with 'halted' trading.  In addition if you have an experience with forex/stock exchanges/brokers trading bitcoin is like stepping back into the dark ages.  The fees are insane, there's no regulation, support for the trading platforms in pitiful by comparison, none of your funds are insured.  

My forex account is not only insured for 2 million but I also earn interest just on the deposit (not for lending just for having money on the exchange).  In addition most brokers offer ninjatrader, metatrader, or some other kind of support (the working version I might add), along with a number of other custom trading tools.

If the volatility is gone the traders will be too.

I also might add most of the markets mentioned as a precedent for such a policy have brokers that offer 300:1 leverage or more.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

I'm not sure why so many people think a volatility cap is a good idea for any exchange.  To a certain extent I guess I agree, but half of us only trade crypto because of the volatility.

Most of us coming from forex/stock markets and any trader with 'more than 3 neurons' (as the BFX devs put it) would immediately abandon BTC markets if a strict cap similar to other markets was every put in place.

Its really a risk/reward problem, even trading bitcoin comes with the inherent risk that your exchange will just run off with your money not to mention the sort of problems people have discussing here with 'halted' trading.  In addition if you have an experience with forex/stock exchanges/brokers trading bitcoin is like stepping back into the dark ages.  The fees are insane, there's no regulation, support for the trading platforms in pitiful by comparison, none of your funds are insured.  

My forex account is not only insured for 2 million but I also earn interest just on the deposit (not for lending just for having money on the exchange).  In addition most brokers offer ninjatrader, metatrader, or some other kind of support (the working version I might add), along with a number of other custom trading tools.

If the volatility is gone the traders will be too.

I also might add most of the markets mentioned as a precedent for such a policy have brokers that offer 300:1 leverage or more.

So something like 10% per hour would not be enough for you?

[Speckle21]

I'm not sure why so many people think a volatility cap is a good idea for any exchange.  To a certain extent I guess I agree, but half of us only trade crypto because of the volatility.

Most of us coming from forex/stock markets and any trader with 'more than 3 neurons' (as the BFX devs put it) would immediately abandon BTC markets if a strict cap similar to other markets was every put in place.

Its really a risk/reward problem, even trading bitcoin comes with the inherent risk that your exchange will just run off with your money not to mention the sort of problems people have discussing here with 'halted' trading.  In addition if you have an experience with forex/stock exchanges/brokers trading bitcoin is like stepping back into the dark ages.  The fees are insane, there's no regulation, support for the trading platforms in pitiful by comparison, none of your funds are insured.  

My forex account is not only insured for 2 million but I also earn interest just on the deposit (not for lending just for having money on the exchange).  In addition most brokers offer ninjatrader, metatrader, or some other kind of support (the working version I might add), along with a number of other custom trading tools.

If the volatility is gone the traders will be too.

Its not the volatility that bothers anyone, its the halting of the trades during volatility. I agree that traders love volatility but halting trading due to a cascade is much worse from a trader's perspective.

The circuit breaker is a "meet in the middle" compromise where we trade some volatility for more platform reliability. Ideally we wouldn't have any circuit breaker nor halt any trades and let the chips land where they fall, but we simply can't do that. BFX HAS to halt trades to prevent certain extreme forms of volatility causing a cascade.

If you think my rolling half-breaker is WORSE than halting all trades on both sides then let us know so we can discuss the issue.

I think MORE traders would be gone if they got their positions ruined due to halted trading.

[TwinWinNerD]

Is anyone else having BTC withdrawal issues with Bitfinex? I've placed a withdrawal 7 hours ago; after three hours I sent an email to support and haven't received a response. An earlier post by Giancarlo (sp?) seems to affirm that they're replenishing the hot wallet, but thus far nothing. I received a "Completed transaction" about an hour ago, but receiving wallet still shows no deposit.

just look at the hash you see there and post it on blockchain.info

Maybe your BTC wallet is buggy.

TwinWinNerD,

Thanks for the quick response. The receiving wallet (exchange) is Bitstamp and the Blockchain hash check shows "we could not find any blocks or transactions matching this hash." This is a non-trivial amount of BTC (~30), so I'd like to get to the bottom of it.

Thanks.

Maybe something went wrong. But you can be 100% sure that you will get those BTC. Just email them and explain your situation, it will be resolved soon(ish)!

[nrd525]

1.  Do you have a system set up to notify BFX staff in the event of a flash crash?  You could have text notification to a phone.  You might even want to carry a special phone for this.


2. Have you run simulations on this?  For instance, it'd be interesting to know what would have happened had you not ending trading.  You should be able to calculate how much money traders and lenders would have lost (and compare that to what a few would have gained).

[alpha492]

I'm not sure why so many people think a volatility cap is a good idea for any exchange.  To a certain extent I guess I agree, but half of us only trade crypto because of the volatility.

Most of us coming from forex/stock markets and any trader with 'more than 3 neurons' (as the BFX devs put it) would immediately abandon BTC markets if a strict cap similar to other markets was every put in place.

Its really a risk/reward problem, even trading bitcoin comes with the inherent risk that your exchange will just run off with your money not to mention the sort of problems people have discussing here with 'halted' trading.  In addition if you have an experience with forex/stock exchanges/brokers trading bitcoin is like stepping back into the dark ages.  The fees are insane, there's no regulation, support for the trading platforms in pitiful by comparison, none of your funds are insured.  

My forex account is not only insured for 2 million but I also earn interest just on the deposit (not for lending just for having money on the exchange).  In addition most brokers offer ninjatrader, metatrader, or some other kind of support (the working version I might add), along with a number of other custom trading tools.

If the volatility is gone the traders will be too.

I also might add most of the markets mentioned as a precedent for such a policy have brokers that offer 300:1 leverage or more.

So something like 10% per hour would not be enough for you?

I can understand halting trades when the margin calls have caused a significant difference b/w stamp and BFX, but a flat '10% per hour to decline is too much' centralized all exchange halt like a few people here are suggesting sounds ridiculous.  

What would you call such a system?  'FinCEN BTC, the first centralized authority in crypto!'

For a number of reasons the idea is nauseating.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

I can understand halting trades when the margin calls have caused a significant difference b/w stamp and BFX, but a flat '10% per hour to decline is too much' centralized all exchange halt like a few people here are suggesting sounds ridiculous.  

If Bitfinex had enough BTCs on bitstamp today, Stamp might have flashcrashed too.

[Speckle21]

I can understand halting trades when the margin calls have caused a significant difference b/w stamp and BFX, but a flat '10% per hour to decline is too much' centralized all exchange halt like a few people here are suggesting sounds ridiculous.  

What would you call such a system?  'FinCEN BTC, the first centralized authority in crypto!'

For a number of reasons the idea is nauseating.

Umm.. I wasn't the one that made that suggestion, i just suggested a rolling half-breaker, it operates under very different set of conditions and is specific only to BFX. I'm not sure why you're associating me with the suggestion to halt all exchanges.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

I can understand halting trades when the margin calls have caused a significant difference b/w stamp and BFX, but a flat '10% per hour to decline is too much' centralized all exchange halt like a few people here are suggesting sounds ridiculous.  

What would you call such a system?  'FinCEN BTC, the first centralized authority in crypto!'

For a number of reasons the idea is nauseating.

I really haven't thought that proposal through, but if it was a good idea, and all/most exchange owners would agree on it voluntarily, then whats so nauseating about it?  So long as nobody gets forced to implement these things at gunpoint, and people with a different opinion have the opportunity to start up or use another exchange, what would be the big deal?
However, I doubt a uniform rule like that over multiple exchanges will ever be used in practice.

[Hfertig]

The most proven system is a volatility interruption. Xetra for example does this. The interruption is directly followed by an auction to find a fair market price. Guess this would take some time to implement

[alpha492]

I can understand halting trades when the margin calls have caused a significant difference b/w stamp and BFX, but a flat '10% per hour to decline is too much' centralized all exchange halt like a few people here are suggesting sounds ridiculous.  

What would you call such a system?  'FinCEN BTC, the first centralized authority in crypto!'

For a number of reasons the idea is nauseating.

I really haven't thought that proposal through, but if it was a good idea, and all/most exchange owners would agree on it voluntarily, then whats so nauseating about it?  So long as nobody gets forced to implement these things at gunpoint, and people with a different opinion have the opportunity to start up or use another exchange, what would be the big deal?
However, I doubt a uniform rule like that over multiple exchanges will ever be used in practice.

Well first, if Bitcoin needed a central regulatory authority to decide its 'fair value' why not just hand it over to the Federal Reserve?  They have a hell of a lot more experience than the current exchanges.  

The market may very well decline at a rate of 10% per hour, as long as its the free market causing the decline and not some flaw in the exchange your trading on this is the inherent risk of a truly free market.  Which is why I agree to some extent a 'halt' may be reasonable in some instances.

'So long as nobody gets forced to implement these things at gunpoint, and people with a different opinion have the opportunity to start up or use another exchange, what would be the big deal?'

Maybe, but I'm not so sure starting a 'club' like that is a good idea, it reeks of potential exploitation/corruption to me.

The problem here was clearly the BFX system, they tried their best but the response was still lacking.  I think this issue can be resolved w/o extensive inter-exchange regulation.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

Well first, if Bitcoin needed a central regulatory authority to decide its 'fair value' why not just hand it over to the Federal Reserve?  They have a hell of a lot more experience than the current exchanges.  

Don't think anybody is suggesting something like that.

Maybe, but I'm not so sure starting a 'club' like that is a good idea, it reeks of potential exploitation/corruption to me.
 I think this issue can be resolved w/o extensive inter-exchange regulation.

agreed

[CambioBTC]

I'm not sure why so many people think a volatility cap is a good idea for any exchange.  To a certain extent I guess I agree, but half of us only trade crypto because of the volatility.

Most of us coming from forex/stock markets and any trader with 'more than 3 neurons' (as the BFX devs put it) would immediately abandon BTC markets if a strict cap similar to other markets was every put in place.

Its really a risk/reward problem, even trading bitcoin comes with the inherent risk that your exchange will just run off with your money not to mention the sort of problems people have discussing here with 'halted' trading.  In addition if you have an experience with forex/stock exchanges/brokers trading bitcoin is like stepping back into the dark ages.  The fees are insane, there's no regulation, support for the trading platforms in pitiful by comparison, none of your funds are insured.  

My forex account is not only insured for 2 million but I also earn interest just on the deposit (not for lending just for having money on the exchange).  In addition most brokers offer ninjatrader, metatrader, or some other kind of support (the working version I might add), along with a number of other custom trading tools.

If the volatility is gone the traders will be too.

I also might add most of the markets mentioned as a precedent for such a policy have brokers that offer 300:1 leverage or more.

+1

[CambioBTC]

After all that,

Now we are back to "SideWays",

Got to tell you,

"This Is Not The Reason I Got Into BitCoin Trading"


Definitely a Keynesian approach, Monetarists believe in leaving

Things alone and letting the Market Work Itself out, that's why it's call a Market.

[windjc]

If you guys don't like the way Bitfinex handled the situation, go trade at MtGox.

(keep doing what you do Raphael  )