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

[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.

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.

The beautiful thing is: You can't manipulate the system and gain from it! Sure, you could provide a lot of funds at very low or very high rates, maybe even to yourself. But you'll lose out on real fees from real people if you would instead provide liquidity to them, andyou always pay some percentage to the platform. There won't be that much more variable rate liquidity out there than fixed rate. In fact, I guess there's more fixed than variable rate.

Finally, noone's forcing anybody. If the variable rate is too low for your taste, put up a fixed offer for a higher rate. Easy. If you're not too far from the consensus of the other providers, your offer will be taken up eventually. If everybody else believes a much lower rate is acceptable, well, then you're out of luck for now..

It's always both sides anyway - a higher variable rate, or fixed rate, doesn't mean that the takers agree to that and take the offers.

Ente

[CambioBTC]

The Exchange Wallet has the

"Buy All"
and
"Sell All"

Buttons under "Order Type",
but the Trading Wallet does not,

Can this feature not be implemented
on the Trading Wallet also ?,

Would make taking a position so much easier,
as it stands one has to actually use a calculator
to determine how large or small an order to make,
especially if going all in.

Is this "Feature Request"
too difficult, this reminds me of BtcChina
having to take a calculator to figure out how
many BTC one can buy with funds on hand,
Even QT-Trader has a "All In" / Buy All / Sell All
button, it's really needed on the Margin Trading Page,
Really slowing me down.

[ledmaniak]

I agree, it would be very helpful!

[nick32768]

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.

Better than that, they can introduce an optional spread to be added to the FRR when placing lend offers. Something like 'Lend at FRR + 0.xx%', by doing so, you can place lends that follows the market, but ask a little more than the standard FRR.

This option will also help to avoid the undercut problem.

Nick.

[CambioBTC]

The Exchange Wallet has the

"Buy All"
and
"Sell All"

Buttons under "Order Type",
but the Trading Wallet does not,

Can this feature not be implemented
on the Trading Wallet also ?,

Would make taking a position so much easier,
as it stands one has to actually use a calculator
to determine how large or small an order to make,
especially if going all in.

Is this "Feature Request"
too difficult, this reminds me of BtcChina
having to take a calculator to figure out how
many BTC one can buy with funds on hand,
Even QT-Trader has a "All In" / Buy All / Sell All
button, it's really needed on the Margin Trading Page,
Really slowing me down.

I agree, it would be very helpful!

Meanwhile,

I'm going to try and use the below for calculations, still, just another step:


https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/status-bar-scientific-calculat/?src=search

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/quick-calculator/?src=search


Lenders want more loans to be taken, well if we Traders
had a "Buy All", "Sell All", basically "All In" buttons on the
Margin Trading Page that would un-doubtingly help !

[mccoyspace]

Trade engine seems frozen. Can't close my short position even with a market order. WTF!

EDIT: started up again after 5 minutes or so. All ok now.

[nrd525]

The other reason lending rates is relatively low is that there are significant barriers to using the money for other purposes.  For instance, if I want to withdraw dollars - I need to do an international wire which has both financial and time costs.  And by the time the money has removed the interest rates might be back up again.  So a lot of money sits unused on the exchange.

[aragalie]

random question: what would you guys consider as a "large" position in LTC on BFX?

[fonzie]

random question: what would you guys consider as a "large" position in LTC on BFX?

>2000

[Palantir]

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.

There are a lot of days when two-day lending offers completely swarm everything else, and somebody looking to borrow a large amount for 30 days, can only see a few offers, not the whole picture. Having a filter would not harm anybody. The options could be e.g. "all", "2-7 days" and "8-30 days". In that way, those who like the current view, could continue using it. From Bitfinex's point of view, this would be beneficial, as it helps connecting borrowers with lenders. There would still be just one orderbook, but alternative ways to view it.

[Ente]

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.

There are a lot of days when two-day lending offers completely swarm everything else, and somebody looking to borrow a large amount for 30 days, can only see a few offers, not the whole picture. Having a filter would not harm anybody. The options could be e.g. "all", "2-7 days" and "8-30 days". In that way, those who like the current view, could continue using it. From Bitfinex's point of view, this would be beneficial, as it helps connecting borrowers with lenders. There would still be just one orderbook, but alternative ways to view it.

If that is to be implemented, I won't complain! :-)

Ente

[traderman]

I think this is very needed.

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.

There are a lot of days when two-day lending offers completely swarm everything else, and somebody looking to borrow a large amount for 30 days, can only see a few offers, not the whole picture. Having a filter would not harm anybody. The options could be e.g. "all", "2-7 days" and "8-30 days". In that way, those who like the current view, could continue using it. From Bitfinex's point of view, this would be beneficial, as it helps connecting borrowers with lenders. There would still be just one orderbook, but alternative ways to view it.

[Indamuck]

Raphael,

What is the plan for Monday?? At what levels are you guys going to 'pull the plug' again? (You really want to be doing this every week? Perhaps some circuit breaks would come in handy ...)

So again Monday Mt. Sux is going to throw a hand grenade into the Bitcoin market place. It has been pre-announced in their last press release. No crystal balls required:

"but we will be doing extensive testing before bitcoin withdrawals are reactivated. We will publish an update on the situation on Monday."

We could be up or down 20%, depending. Easily BTC-e will show another spike to sub $1 for LTC.

***At what levels will you need to take the BFX platform offline, and for how long??? Who gets stopped out, and who gets a nod and a wink? Come to think of it, that was never really made clear last week ...

[ghibly79]

No guys, in this case rate is not decided by "the market", it's dictated by stupidity and faulty understanding of how bfx lending system and particularly orderbook works.

Let me state it again: you DON'T HAVE TO MATCH BIDS in lending orderbook for your offers to be taken xD

That's for manual lending only!

The system automatically takes your offers when someone opens a leveraged position (he doesn't have to take liquidity manually to open it, vast majority don't do it in fact).

I'm opening an official Idiotic Lenders Contest xD

Let's go with round 2

[nmersulypnem]

I just realized that if I borrow against the flash return rate (automatic when opening a position), then it doesn't even lock the rate - it varies it according to the market while my position is open.  That must be the most counter-intuitive "feature" I've ever encountered!

[Ente]

I just realized that if I borrow against the flash return rate (automatic when opening a position), then it doesn't even lock the rate - it varies it according to the market while my position is open.  That must be the most counter-intuitive "feature" I've ever encountered!

When you open a position and have no liquidity reserved before, you will automatically take the best rates available. If the current variable rate is lower than the best fixed rate offer, you take that one.
Of course, the variable rate is adjusted all the time. For the last weeks, it actually went down.

You can, at any time, take additional liquidity manually, and close used funds to swap them. For example to use better rates or replace variable rates with fixed rates.
If you just close some contracts (aka loans) without having liquidity reserved before, you will simply take the best available offer to replace the closed funds.

Once you get the hang of it, it all works pretty well.
Learn with smaller playmoney to reduce risks of unforseen effects in the beginning.

Ente

[ghibly79]

It's not much a trader's problem Ente. It's lenders that mostly don't know what they are doing, ending up lending for 1/100th of the interest they can ask for for no reason (beside being complete noobs and not spending 5 minutes learning stuff).

[nmersulypnem]

I just realized that if I borrow against the flash return rate (automatic when opening a position), then it doesn't even lock the rate - it varies it according to the market while my position is open.  That must be the most counter-intuitive "feature" I've ever encountered!

When you open a position and have no liquidity reserved before, you will automatically take the best rates available. If the current variable rate is lower than the best fixed rate offer, you take that one.
Of course, the variable rate is adjusted all the time. For the last weeks, it actually went down.

You can, at any time, take additional liquidity manually, and close used funds to swap them. For example to use better rates or replace variable rates with fixed rates.
If you just close some contracts (aka loans) without having liquidity reserved before, you will simply take the best available offer to replace the closed funds.

Once you get the hang of it, it all works pretty well.
Learn with smaller playmoney to reduce risks of unforseen effects in the beginning.

Ente

I understand how I can manually handle this, but the point is that the default behavior is crazy counter-intuitive and labor intensive.  For example, if I open a position, then I will likely get a mix of fixed and variable rate loans (assuming there is something below the FR).  The intuitive behavior is that whatever I borrow (whether from the flash rate pool or the individual loans) remain fixed for the duration of the loan.  I mean, what's even the point of having an expiry on a variable rate loan anyway?

[wilfried]

It's not much a trader's problem Ente. It's lenders that mostly don't know what they are doing, ending up lending for 1/100th of the interest they can ask for for no reason (beside being complete noobs and not spending 5 minutes learning stuff).

i still dont see how that should work, as long as there is more offers @ the variable-rate, how should higher offers be taken? have tried your suggestions and nothings taken of my offers.

[ghibly79]

I was probably wrong on the "flash rate offers not being taken automatically" part. I'm still right when I say putting offers at variable rate when it ends up being 1/4 or less of the lowest offer avaiable is blatantly stupid (not to mention undercutting even that in half).