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

[wonkytonky]

Hats off to Bitfinex team and Congratulations for perfect handling of the margin call liquidations !!! This was really something, I watched it all in real time.
To everybody else, it is now official, we have some 30 million worth of morons among users, who were holding onto their losing long positions till the very end.  I am trully sorry about your losses, but you did knew perfectly well, all along, about what could happen to your positions, and it did happened.

Quite a harsh statement.

But please, enlighten me, how exactly did it unfold on bitfinex?

Ente

I agree on the harsh statement.

what if price shot up? them crazy  swap longs would have made a big buck..   

 ppl are so emotional all the time in btc..

[stevec]

BitFinex down? Lots of timeouts accessing both the website & API.

/Steve

[unclescrooge]

I would say lenders benefit from this, as going forward it provides BFX with more granular control over leverage ratios - in particular, them being able to manage separate max leverage per currency is great. For traders it is probably a small negative or neutral.

It is also a slight reduction in the max effective leverage - 3.33 vs 3.5, though I doubt that this is an active constraint or BFX wouldn't have chosen that number. Going forward they may choose to reduce that number further, especially eg for LTC. That would be bad for traders that like a lot of leverage, and good for lenders. Also good for the ecosystem / reducing systemic risk.

Indeed the idea of moving toward per pair/leverage is done on purpose, and you'll soon discover why.

Other than that we tried to be neutral for traders, with a positive effect for people who are USD only and want to short (more effective leverage). Nobody short anyway so it doesnt change much.

Also today was a good test for the new trading engine to handle liquidations, and while I give you that it lagged a bit, it behaved as it should (ie no loss for lenders, or Bitfinex).

Steve, I dont see any issue on my side, if it persists could you contact us to support to see where it can come from?


Have a good day all, and good luck for your trades
Raphael
Bitfinex team

[nrd525]

Hats off to Bitfinex team and Congratulations for perfect handling of the margin call liquidations !!! This was really something, I watched it all in real time.
To everybody else, it is now official, we have some 30 million worth of morons among users, who were holding onto their losing long positions till the very end.  I am trully sorry about your losses, but you did knew perfectly well, all along, about what could happen to your positions, and it did happened.

Quite a harsh statement.

But please, enlighten me, how exactly did it unfold on bitfinex?

Ente

I agree on the harsh statement.

what if price shot up? them crazy  swap longs would have made a big buck..   

 ppl are so emotional all the time in btc..

I got to watch it too.  The BFX price fell from $510 to $460 in a couple minutes and for around 5 minutes it fluctuated between $460 and $500.  By contrast the other markets only fell several dollars.  It stabilized pretty quickly at $493-$495 and then started to slowly rise towards the price on the other markets.

It was like a mini flash crash.

[Landon4coin]

I got called by the flash crash....

And it closed right at the bottom...   It called me at less than half of the call value.

What pisses me off is that NO OTHER exchange experienced that, and I purposefully closed part of my position last night to avoid a margin call.   However, that just lowered the Call price to the point of being at the back end of orders in BFX's system thus leaving me with 1/8th of my original position instead of 1/3.

I managed things to avoid being called, and when BFX the only exchange to flash crash calls me it takes everything and then takes it twice over again...

Now I have nothing left.

I don't expect BFX will reverse orders like the $100 Flash crash, so im probably just fucked by BFX's illiquid system.   
Its a shame too because I've sent them a lot more business than just my own...     


Goodluck Crypto...  I'm done.

[Hfleer]

Looks like 85% of my USD SWAPS very not liquidated Seems I was lending to experienced traders!

[nrd525]

This situation could be partially solved by an algorithm that would detect if Bitfinex's price deviated from the other market price (and then delaying margin calls) - if you could design an algorithm that would actually be reliable.  In practice, it'd be very difficult to pull off.

In other news, I'm guessing USD swap rates may fall as low as 0.03%/day.

[BitCoinPokerBro]

Are swaps the lending portion of bitfinex? OP says the three main wallets are exchange, margin trading, and lending. Yet I find no "lending" area.

[Ente]

Are swaps the lending portion of bitfinex? OP says the three main wallets are exchange, margin trading, and lending. Yet I find no "lending" area.

You can define somewhere (when signing up?) what type of user you are. Depending on this, you might not see all three types of wallets. A sure sign is on the top right corner, that box shows all wallet types and their funds.


Micro flash crash:
(come on, a 10% difference to other exchanges is nothing more than a micro one)
Interesting, I didn't think of that one. For some time I only follow the BitFinex charts, so until now I was under the impression "today, exchange rate fell from $550 to $450". No, it was only on BitFinex, because long position liquidations created a mini avalanche.

So I better start watching some other exchange rates too, when it gets wild.
I'm relieved we didn't break the $500 support globally, then.


Also, +1 on slowing/halting liquidations when the exchange rate drops too far below all other exchanges' rates. I guess the associated risk is small enough and the gain for the users and platform makes it worthwile.

Ente

[stevec]

Are swaps the lending portion of bitfinex? OP says the three main wallets are exchange, margin trading, and lending. Yet I find no "lending" area.

The wallet is called "deposit", and trading page is "Total Return Swaps".

/Steve

[DoubleSwapper]

Hats off to Bitfinex team and Congratulations for perfect handling of the margin call liquidations !!! This was really something, I watched it all in real time.
To everybody else, it is now official, we have some 30 million worth of morons among users, who were holding onto their losing long positions till the very end.  I am trully sorry about your losses, but you did knew perfectly well, all along, about what could happen to your positions, and it did happened.

Quite a harsh statement.

But please, enlighten me, how exactly did it unfold on bitfinex?

Ente

Harsh statement indeed yet it is fully correct.
I've always assumed the clientele on BFX would behave similar to regular forex sites: Using 2% to 5% of their funds for single trades, setting tight stop losses and avoiding margin calls under every possible cirumstance. From what I've read in BFX statements in the last weeks and what has happened now I can only assume that BFX clients are not usual forex traders but delusional maniacs.
According to BFX:
most people hold Bitcoin not Dollar on BFX for long positions -> less traders, more believers
a lot of them go long on maximum margin -> 100 % funds in trade, crazy, maxing out their full leverage, no room to breath left
waiting for the margin call -> an attitude you will go broke with 100 % of the time on a large enough scale.

I'm very glad BFX has managed this cascade so well but this is absolutely not over yet. Just think about it: The total sum of active swaps dropped over 16 %. The rest are probably not disciplined traders but just people who went retard-long at a lower price. If I think about who had my money in his hands I'm shivering. It's only thanks to the competence of BFX so far that this train is still running.

In other news, I'm guessing USD swap rates may fall as low as 0.03%/day.

Very, very easily possible. We went from 30.9 m in the last week to 23.5. Although yesterday I've seen over 4 m taken out in less than an hour we are still lower than directly after the flash crash and the sentiment is not exactly bullish at the moment. Over 2m swaps BEFORE THE FFR which is over 3m itself have piled up and I'm sure not all the money that has been returned during the flash crash is back on the offer book. Estimating from the current stats we would need a new all time high in swaps to get back over 0.1 %.
Lenders are in for a rough time and I hope some casuals will take their money off BFX because that safe, ultra high interest savings account has popped along with the credit bubble and will not be too attractive for quite some time.

[gog1]

total USD swapped drop to 21 mil.  More margin calls and could be headed for total wipe out for longs if we head down to 350.

[superbit]

total USD swapped drop to 21 mil.  More margin calls and could be headed for total wipe out for longs if we head down to 350.

At least only 5% of my USD is left lent out

[nrd525]

If Darkcoin continues to fall, you might want to stop supporting it. It is less than 1/400th of the market cap of Bitcoin.  As such, it isn't worth the space that it takes up in the user interface or the additional software development.

Or at least seriously think about whether it is a good idea before adding any more alt-coins.

[DoubleSwapper]

http://www.coindesk.com/margin-trading-crash-price-bitcoin/

Just read this article. There are two alleged statements of Bitfinex in it. Where did BFX write that? Giancarlo said before that BFX has so far denied any interview requests, have you changed your policy?

The rest of the article is pretty retarded though. Of course margin trading played a role in this crash as it was the main driver behind the jump from 450 to 680. 

[Speckle21]

During the recent limited flash crash, did BFX use the half-breaker idea i proposed back in february to blunt it? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=229438.msg5060308#msg5060308

The behaviour of the BFX during this time seems to suggest it has. Price goes wildly out of sync due to cascade liquidation, trading is halted for a minute to allow bids to rebuild, trading is resumed when depth is better, liquidation is trickled in the process repeats until the price is back in sync with bitstamp.

Good work on BFX for blunting the crash. I'm very happy that i wasn't liquidated (at least not yet, who knows how low we go in the future .


... do i get a small reward for the winning idea?

[MustMan]

During the recent limited flash crash, did BFX use the half-breaker idea i proposed back in february to blunt it? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=229438.msg5060308#msg5060308

The behaviour of the BFX during this time seems to suggest it has. Price goes wildly out of sync due to cascade liquidation, trading is halted for a minute to allow bids to rebuild, trading is resumed when depth is better, liquidation is trickled in the process repeats until the price is back in sync with bitstamp.

Good work on BFX for blunting the crash. I'm very happy that i wasn't liquidated (at least not yet, who knows how low we go in the future .


... do i get a small reward for the winning idea?

BFX definitely use breaker as you suggested to deal with recent flash crash.

reddit article:
Bitfinex Margin Call Cascade Algorithm Explained & How to Avoid It With Market Wide Circuit Breaker Systems Used by NASDAQ
http://www.matlabtrading.net/main/2014/08/14/bitfinex-margin-call-cascade-algorithm-explained/

[S3052]

total USD swapped drop to 21 mil.  More margin calls and could be headed for total wipe out for longs if we head down to 350.

Don't assume that big players exiting big positions are getting margin called, those play with huge sums of money tend to sell voluntarily when they are in danger of getting a red position.

http://www.coindesk.com/margin-trading-crash-price-bitcoin/

Just read this article. There are two alleged statements of Bitfinex in it. Where did BFX write that? Giancarlo said before that BFX has so far denied any interview requests, have you changed your policy?

The rest of the article is pretty retarded though. Of course margin trading played a role in this crash as it was the main driver behind the jump from 450 to 680.  

That article, like many, call it "market manipulation" and "insider trading" when big players enter or exit big positions. It's called "trading". Yes, you have "insider knowledge" when you know that you are about to enter a huge short which will move the "market" but it is hardly fair to call that "manipulation"...

Agree with you.
This was nothing special. Price followed the parallel trendchannel we covered at www.bitcoinbullbear.com perfectly and the margin calls did not lead to unusual trading.

As you said, this is part of trading. That's why its called trading and not long jump.

[kb24mvp]

Not sure if this was addressed before, but why is the max LTC order size 2000 now!? It's a pretty annoying feature that was implemented. Can we go back to at least 5000 please?

[wamatt]

I'm struggling to understand some numbers appearing in the Bitfinex order book.

https://www.bitfinex.com/pages/ll_order_book

Upon scrolling to the bottom, one finds this.



The bid side looks particularly odd/unnatural.  

Let me be more specific: 80% of the total orderbook is under $0.1

Are those bids really backed by real collateral funds held on the exchange(s)?

anyone have a good explanation?