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

[BitApparel]

dont worry about, see for yourself!

[Sukrim]

He believes he can look at his stats and then send half of the money to the ppl. he got it from.
It's easily possible to extract that data from the ledger by the way too...

Anyways, interesting that people even on Bitfinex are afraid to go long now - even though coins are cheap.

[nick32768]

The strangeness of lending rate.

In these days the volatility has rose wildly but the lending rates are tanking. Can anyone explain me why ?

Nick.

[8fold]

The strangeness of lending rate.

In these days the volatility has rose wildly but the lending rates are tanking. Can anyone explain me why ?

Nick.

Sure. It's because volatility in itself is not enough to expect high swap-rates.
If there is high volatility in the market, but no general trend (this is called a sideways trend) traders keep their position open for a little time - just enough for a swing. Then trade the other way. As soon as a liquidity provider notices his funds unused, he puts them again on the market, which leads to a high offering of swaps which in turn leads to low swap rates.

You'll see high swap-rates when there is a long term bullish trend in the market.

[ghibly79]

I'm constantly amazed at some lender's stupidity: liquidity being taken with high interests at some point (e.g. 0.5%) then someone come and offer a huge amount at flash return for like 0.15%, which is stupid already, and then some other idiot come and undercuts even that xD Flash return is not even taken automatically so you can offer higher and still be taken even if there is $ 1 mil offered at flash return.
Just saying.

[wilfried]

I'm constantly amazed at some lender's stupidity: liquidity being taken with high interests at some point (e.g. 0.5%) then someone come and offer a huge amount at flash return for like 0.15%, which is stupid already, and then some other idiot come and undercuts even that xD Flash return is not even taken automatically so you can offer higher and still be taken even if there is $ 1 mil offered at flash return.
Just saying.

interesting, but i dont ever see any demand at the rates you quote that 1) is not huge 2) has a very long timespan.
people like to lend 2-4 days not more. people who borrow for long times are people taking longtime short or long positions, thats high risk.

[ghibly79]

Just don't lend for long periods. Your offers will be taken anyway and you can adjust rates better. Much better than scamflash rate

Explanatory screenshots (currently lending in btc, but same situation with usd usually, personal experience):

[BitApparel]

Yep right on.  You can see data but bitfinex is messing this up.  They literally want to fail.  They don't want new customers that i bring in.  FIX the STATS!!!!

[arbitrage001]

The strangeness of lending rate.

In these days the volatility has rose wildly but the lending rates are tanking. Can anyone explain me why ?

Nick.

There seem to be a huge outflow of fund. If I have to guess, some whales are taking their money elsewhere.

[traderman]

What amount is considered "large" for a withdrawal?

Are BTC withdrawals not being processed right now? My withdrawal request has been pending for over 2 hours.

Do you have 2 factor authentication enabled?  If not (you should), did you click the link in their email confirmation?  I think they may have changed their BTC withdraw policy within the last two weeks:

"For security reasons, withdrawals will be automatically processed only if you have enabled OTP authentication (Account Security menu). Otherwise, you will receive an email with a confirmation link to approve the withdrawal. Large withdrawals will be processed manually."

[Speckle21]

I know I suggested this before.. but: Shouldn't we all petition BFX to finally add DOGE?

IT'S SUCH CURRENCY!

And it's got the Volume in China:

http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/v2/coins/show/doge

Just sayin': WOW

Some kpop while you consider this seriously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3RXVco5mDg

NO

All the shit with glitched trading that happened a couple of weeks ago in the LTC markets shows that BFX is very far from ready to push even more currencies. Let them work out the bugs in the current system before risking piling more bugs with more currencies.

[alpha492]

I know I suggested this before.. but: Shouldn't we all petition BFX to finally add DOGE?

IT'S SUCH CURRENCY!

And it's got the Volume in China:

http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/v2/coins/show/doge

Just sayin': WOW

Some kpop while you consider this seriously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3RXVco5mDg

NO

All the shit with glitched trading that happened a couple of weeks ago in the LTC markets shows that BFX is very far from ready to push even more currencies. Let them work out the bugs in the current system before risking piling more bugs with more currencies.

Yeah, I have to agree.

We don't need another cryptsy repeat we need a working exchange.

Fix the system before you add to it.

[Palantir]

If I have to guess, some whales are taking their money elsewhere.

My guess is, margin traders got burned badly on Feb. 10th. Almost all of them were forced out of their positions, some traders wiped out completely. Now the swap market is damaged, because of lack of borrowers. No borrowers -> some lenders, including me, will find greener pastures. Today's 0.09% swap rate is about 30% annualized. Faced with that, I think I'll try my hand with stock picking instead.

A similar crash took place in another margin trading platform, BTC-E. IMO, the point was to force margin traders out of their positions, and buy back at cheaper prices. Bitfinex should protect their clients and their business against this kind of 'predatory trading', and prevent the biggest flash crashes. Many stock exchanges and futures markets automatically freeze trading, when the prices fall a certain amount. A five minute automatic freeze if the market falls e.g. 20% in five minutes, could prevent these manipulated crashes from happening.

Another problem with the swaps is, there is an imbalance between time frames. Borrowers want 30 days, lenders offer 2 days. This is not a problem in itself, but when they're placed on the same orderbook, the supply and demand do not meet. Two-day lenders are happy with whatever return, while those willing to commit capital for 30 days, naturally want more. Therefore, Bitfinex should enable filtering swap offers, e.g. 'less than a week' and 'longer than a week'. In this way the borrowers would get more realistic picture as to what kind of rates they need to pay. I made a sample of what it could look like. By clicking '8 -30 days', it would only show those offers.

https://i.imgur.com/1LyYJpw.png

[traderman]

That is a good idea. Filtering would be much better as everyone can see the time frames for borrowing and lending.

If I have to guess, some whales are taking their money elsewhere.

My guess is, margin traders got burned badly on Feb. 10th. Almost all of them were forced out of their positions, some traders wiped out completely. Now the swap market is damaged, because of lack of borrowers. No borrowers -> some lenders, including me, will find greener pastures. Today's 0.09% swap rate is about 30% annualized. Faced with that, I think I'll try my hand with stock picking instead.

A similar crash took place in another margin trading platform, BTC-E. IMO, the point was to force margin traders out of their positions, and buy back at cheaper prices. Bitfinex should protect their clients and their business against this kind of 'predatory trading', and prevent the biggest flash crashes. Many stock exchanges and futures markets automatically freeze trading, when the prices fall a certain amount. A five minute automatic freeze if the market falls e.g. 20% in five minutes, could prevent these manipulated crashes from happening.

Another problem with the swaps is, there is an imbalance between time frames. Borrowers want 30 days, lenders offer 2 days. This is not a problem in itself, but when they're placed on the same orderbook, the supply and demand do not meet. Two-day lenders are happy with whatever return, while those willing to commit capital for 30 days, naturally want more. Therefore, Bitfinex should enable filtering swap offers, e.g. 'less than a week' and 'longer than a week'. In this way the borrowers would get more realistic picture as to what kind of rates they need to pay. I made a sample of what it could look like. By clicking '8 -30 days', it would only show those offers.

[skovbitcoin]

I have a question about the BTC swaps. I have some used in positions and I have just taken some further BTC swaps at a cheaper rate. The amount of BTC is the same. If I close my swaps used in a margin position, will this close my positions too or will the positions automatically switch to use the unused swaps to cover themselves?

Edit: In addition, why is the amount of my borrowed BTC, not equal to the size of my BTC postion?

Thanks

Mark

[gog1]

Just don't lend for long periods. Your offers will be taken anyway and you can adjust rates better. Much better than scamflash rate

Explanatory screenshots (currently lending in btc, but same situation with usd usually, personal experience):

I once again advocate for removing the flash return rate option, it is the main driver for depressed lending rate, and used for manipulation, this is not good for bitfinex itself (which I wrote about before).  High lending rate both drives fees from the lending itself and trading, you can't hold a position at 100%.  With lending rate below 30%, it's not enough to compensate the risk for lenders.

[Palantir]

I once again advocate for removing the flash return rate option, it is the main driver for depressed lending rate, and used for manipulation, this is not good for bitfinex itself (which I wrote about before).

I agree this would be good. I'm sure flash return rate is convenient for those who can't log in often. However, lately the flash return rate pool has been close to 1 million USD, and that completely clogs the market. Your only way is to undercut the FRR, which drives the rate even lower.

Removing the FRR (even temporarily) + my suggestion about the rate filter, would hopefully bring the market back to balance. I don't think the rates we had during Christmas (>1%) are healthy, but this 0.09% is another extreme. The P2P lending idea itself is brilliant, it just needs some fine tuning.

[skovbitcoin]

It's basic economics guys, the rate is dictated by the market. It will always find it's level where it is both low enough for traders and high enough for lenders. That level will constantly be shifting.

[gog1]

It's basic economics guys, the rate is dictated by the market. It will always find it's level where it is both low enough for traders and high enough for lenders. That level will constantly be shifting.

The flash return rate option is anything but market, and how much money is currently at the flash return rate?  If it's a lot, then that means the interest rate is determined by the few who lend / borrow at fixed rate.  Here are my proposals once again for changing flash return rate option.

Treat it like a market order, it'll hit everything on the "liquidity request" until there's nothing left with unfilled amount returned.
Completely cancel that option, one must lend at at fixed rate (my preferred approach).
A limited version of above, flash return rate is only available as long as it compose less than 10% of the lending market. (you want 90% turn out rate in the 'vote' for interest rate)
Re-do the FRR calculation, instead of calculating base on all fixed rate loan, the top 10% and the bottom 10% of fixed rate loans are ignored for calculation purposes to avoid manipulation, and borrower at FRR needs to pay some markup base on BTC / USD volatility and lending duration.

[Ente]

It's basic economics guys, the rate is dictated by the market. It will always find it's level where it is both low enough for traders and high enough for lenders. That level will constantly be shifting.

Exactly that.
Sure, from your side, as a liquidity provider, it's bad rates.
I, as a liquidity taker, like the rates.

It's whatever 'the market' decides. I see no need for manipulating this anywhere.

If the rates were higher, in these bearish times, I would stop taking liquidity altogether and close my position. This would free a lot of liquidity, lowering the average rate.

Besides: 30% p.a. was the regular rate back then too, when the market was calm. Now, the market is pretty awful for going long. 30% isn't that bad, for having virtually no exchangerate risk.

Also, I don't see any need to add filters or different views. All info is there: rate, fixed/variable, time. It's even sorted by rate. I see with one look what the current rates are, and naturally the lowest rates are for the lowest runtime. Heck, when entering a too high offer, I automatically take the lowest offers until I have all funds! With the right runtime too.
What's there that would need fixing? It's all working well!

Ente