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

[freakbits]

@bitfinex,

Any updates on POODLE? I just emptied my account just in case, and checked that SSLv3 is enabled in your site:

Code:

$ openssl s_client -connect bitfinex.com:443 -ssl3
[…]
New, TLSv1/SSLv3, Cipher is ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA
Server public key is 2048 bit
Secure Renegotiation IS supported
Compression: NONE
Expansion: NONE
SSL-Session:
    Protocol  : SSLv3
[…]

Why is there no statement about this exploit anywhere? You should put something up on the homepage right after it became known.

[noggin-scratcher]

Bit of an edge-case need, but are there any pages on 'Finex that display the live-updating spot price (preferably including it in the tab title), and that remain accessible when you switch your account to 'deposit only' mode? I'm only aware of the Exchange tab as having that information but maybe I'm missing something...

[mjr]

@bitfinex,

Any updates on POODLE? I just emptied my account just in case, and checked that SSLv3 is enabled in your site:

Code:

$ openssl s_client -connect bitfinex.com:443 -ssl3
[…]
New, TLSv1/SSLv3, Cipher is ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA
Server public key is 2048 bit
Secure Renegotiation IS supported
Compression: NONE
Expansion: NONE
SSL-Session:
    Protocol  : SSLv3
[…]

Why is there no statement about this exploit anywhere? You should put something up on the homepage right after it became known.

It is not our policy to announce every bug that we fix. POODLE was fixed the day it came out. Disabling SSLv3 is not an ideal solution, because it introduces compatibility issues, that is why you are still able to see SSLv3 as shown above.

See this blog post, from google, for a more thorough explanation.
http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2014/10/this-poodle-bites-exploiting-ssl-30.html

Maybe we could introduce a bug fix section or add this information to the page about security? I feel like it will clutter up the announcements section.

[mjr]

Bit of an edge-case need, but are there any pages on 'Finex that display the live-updating spot price (preferably including it in the tab title), and that remain accessible when you switch your account to 'deposit only' mode? I'm only aware of the Exchange tab as having that information but maybe I'm missing something...

Good idea! I will look into this.

[QwertyCore]

About early swap termination:
Usually if you pay back a credit earlier than it expired you have to pay an extra fee.
This could be used for swaps too. It doesn't need to be high, just enough to discourage swap-hopping if a slightly more attractive swap appears than the one you're currently borrowing.


About FRR:
I think the "delta" stuff would make everything more complicated for lenders, but effectively change nothing about the "wall" effect of FRR and it's manipulative effect on the market. In short: It's pointless and only adds annoyance.

I like two other approaches:
Maybe make FRR only available for the shortest possible lending period, which would be 2 days. So if the wall of "easy route" lenders appears at FRR, it will still allow "real" (custom) rates for all those who need more reliable swap periods. However, I don't like this somewhat arbitrary approach that affects the short-period part of the market negatively. Instead:

I like the suggestion that has been made to change the adjustment speed of the FRR.
A couple days ago when BTC started to rise the FRR was repeatedly the lowest rate by far in the list. This should NEVER happen, it shows that the FRR adjusts not well enough. In general, since the FRR is the "most convenient" feature, it should always appear at a "premium" to make it less attractive and not drive rates down.
So, as someone suggested, FRR should adjust upwards quickly and downwards slowly, and if you make it an average of market offers, it should not be in the middle but in the upper third! Because this way it gives breathing room for a true market to form below it.

Thanks for reading^^

Why do you think a 2 day term would be less attractive to traders?  I thought that traders could just keep replacing one swap with another for as long as they wanted.  One trader posted that he could keep a position open with 2 day swaps for as long as he wanted. He said that it was annoying but that he does it all the time.  Could you tell me what I'm missing?

[dserrano5]

It is not our policy to announce every bug that we fix. POODLE was fixed the day it came out.

Agreed but this is an important security fix and people should know about it, otherwise in an ideal world (ideal but for the lack of any announcement), everyone would have preventively withdrawn their coins and the exchange would grind to a halt.

Anyway thanks for the confirmation that it's ok.

Full disclosure: I'm angry because I closed a short in order to withdraw, missing on the last downwards move .

[mjr]

It is not our policy to announce every bug that we fix. POODLE was fixed the day it came out.

Agreed but this is an important security fix and people should know about it, otherwise in an ideal world (ideal but for the lack of any announcement), everyone would have preventively withdrawn their coins and the exchange would grind to a halt.

Anyway thanks for the confirmation that it's ok.

Full disclosure: I'm angry because I closed a short in order to withdraw, missing on the last downwards move .

I like your security consciousness, but don't you have 2FA enabled? Even with your password, they wouldn't be able to withdraw anything without your OTP, and only withdrawals that use 2FA are automatic.  In general, we are constantly monitoring all the security blogs and listening for new attacks to defend against.

[QwertyCore]

I still have to agree with qwerty and his lengthy post: mjr's FRR +/- some percent would only convert the current flat line (swap rate over time) into a sine-wave slightly wobbling around the still flat FRR-"magnet". It wouldn't eliminate the occasional see-saw spike during times of high demand either. My proposal which my PR-dept. decided to call "active-to-inactive swap-ratio adjusted common bucket fund" should average rallies out smoothly because, well, no walls at all plus neither longs nor lenders get left behind during rallies (meaning no FRR-wall-frustration induced re-balancing of wallets out of the blue leading to WTF-charts), only shorts and borrowers (= the longs, yes) need to suffer if swap demand grows above swap offer but this then is the auto-regulating loop (an effective market) we seem to be looking for so badly, is it not?

With FRR +/- n the other spike we have today (the FRR on the orderbook) would also only be smoothed into a most certainly left-pulling bell shape because people still want their USD to be lent out as soon/much/often/long as possible underbidding each other in the process. It doesn't really matter if the FRR is a spike on a single point on a line or if it's a "hill" spread out over a few promille around such a point, it's still just a wall with the exact same surface area and that's why your proposal doesn't change a thing in the end. It's not as if we couldn't do exactly what you're proposing for like forever by adjusting one's offer below the FRR manually. Arguably, your proposal seems to include automation but why would that make any difference? Going below is going below.

Having 2 or more different FRR-formulas to choose from (one using a 7-day average, another using 30 days or whatever) will, over time, only flip-flop swaps. One week one group's swaps would be the cheapest and earn the most, next week it could be the other one. Boils down to "choose your moving average and if your's on top, you win". Sure one could flip-flop the flip-flopping market but with min. and max. durations and the now talked about penalties for early repayments this doesn't make much sense either.

I for one would be happy with less insane but more constant and predictable gains. Trading = badass looping pilot, swap lending = smoothly gliding autopilot, mkay? So is that just me or do you guys seriously need two intertwined cocaine'esque markets on a single platform?

I have question for you, if the swap market was converted to a fund (no individual offers allowed), what would you use to determine the interest rate?  Would you raise it as the funds available for use decrease or would you just keep it at a fixed rate?

[freakbits]

Why do you think a 2 day term would be less attractive to traders?  I thought that traders could just keep replacing one swap with another for as long as they wanted.  One trader posted that he could keep a position open with 2 day swaps for as long as he wanted. He said that it was annoying but that he does it all the time.  Could you tell me what I'm missing?

You are not missing anything, I was aiming at exactly the "convenience" factor, nothing more. If he says that it is "annoying" I assume that means it is less attractive to him. And as I wrote I don't really like this idea much anyway.

[QwertyCore]

The swaps market exists to enable margin trading. As opposed to traditional trading, we at Bitfinex allow the enabling of margin to be crowdfunded, and have created a new way to generate returns as opposed to trading. There is no guaranteed rate, nor should there be a guaranteed rate. The whole reason for a market is that the rate will be set by those who are participating in the market. It appears that the FRR has been an attractive rate, and many people are using it. We are currently looking into ways to improve the calculation of the FRR, and even discussed removing it. However, the autorenew feature is one of the more popular aspects to the swaps platform, and seems to necessitate some sort of variable rate that ideally would track the general market.

mjr
I have been thinking about the statement above and what 0x3d has proposed and I'm having a difficult time finding a flaw in the logic.  Why doesn't Bitfinex convert the Swap market into a fund?

Let's disregard the FRR for a minute and look at the swap market as it is.  Lenders can do three things, choose to offer swaps or not, set rates and set terms.  Choosing to not to offer swaps is not relevant to the discussion since at that point they are not participating in the market.  A lender sets a term to limit his exposure to the market and to meet his need for personal liquidity.  The rate is set to offset what the lender feels is the risk he is exposed to.  This is all well and good.  Now, throw in the perceived or implied lack of risk that Bitfinex has promoted.  If the lender feels that the risk is almost negligible, the rate, as long as it's greater than what he can get someplace else, has no significance (risk wise).  The term has also no longer has any risk management element to it, just the liquidity element.

Add one more element, the FRR (which is this case is a good thing).  The lender's money is being "managed" by the FRR, selecting an attractive rate and making sure it always available for use.  

So, when using the FRR, we now have a safe or relatively risk free place to park money and get above average returns.  Fundamentally, how is what I just described any different than a savings account? Your money might be unavailable for 2 days but that just makes it look more like a CD.  

If the above is true and the majority of the swap money is currently being managed by the FRR, what we have is a fund masquerading as a market. Some lenders exists outside the system, but you could almost consider them the Pay Day lenders of the swap market.

Why not just call it what it is and be done with it?  Also, managing it like a fund would provide some significant advantages:

• It is still "crowd-funded".
• Since the rate would be set by Bitfinex, traders would have a consistent and fair interest rate.
• With a constant rate, traders could more easily calculate what their position needs to be to turn a profit
• Lender's accounts are zero maintenance, just log in once a week to see your profits (the micro-managers among us can check once a day).
• Swaps could be (with some additional work) virtually term free.
• The swap interest could be distributed equally to all lenders participating in the fund.
• Any true risk would be shared by all lenders equally.
• Risk could be further managed by creating tranches.
• Returns would be relatively consistent for all lenders.
• The return rate could be protected since Bitfinex is the only lender and cannot be undercut.
• The swap market engine could be removed entirely, thus reducing the complexity on Bitfinex's side.
• The entire swap management system could be streamlined since there is only one pool of money to account for.
• Bitfinex could hire a fund manager and create a job to help the global economy.

Wouldn't the above benefits be better for both the lenders and traders than what we have now?

I know that I'm leaving out the regulatory issues which could be onerous, but if your trading engine is as good as it's been made out to be at protecting lenders during a flash crash, why not do it?  Personally, if I was getting a daily return rate of 0.1%-0.2%, I would invest in it.  Matter of fact, I would probably double what is currently in my lending wallet.

[QwertyCore]

The swaps market exists to enable margin trading. As opposed to traditional trading, we at Bitfinex allow the enabling of margin to be crowdfunded, and have created a new way to generate returns as opposed to trading. There is no guaranteed rate, nor should there be a guaranteed rate. The whole reason for a market is that the rate will be set by those who are participating in the market. It appears that the FRR has been an attractive rate, and many people are using it. We are currently looking into ways to improve the calculation of the FRR, and even discussed removing it. However, the autorenew feature is one of the more popular aspects to the swaps platform, and seems to necessitate some sort of variable rate that ideally would track the general market.

mjr
I have been thinking about the statement above and what 0x3d has proposed and I'm having a difficult time finding a flaw in the logic.  Why doesn't Bitfinex convert the Swap market into a fund?

Let's disregard the FRR for a minute and look at the swap market as it is.  Lenders can do three things, choose to offer swaps or not, set rates and set terms.  Choosing to not to offer swaps is not relevant to the discussion since at that point they are not participating in the market.  A lender sets a term to limit his exposure to the market and to meet his need for personal liquidity.  The rate is set to offset what the lender feels is the risk he is exposed to.  This is all well and good.  Now, throw in the perceived or implied lack of risk that Bitfinex has promoted.  If the lender feels that the risk is almost negligible, the rate, as long as it's greater than what he can get someplace else, has no significance (risk wise).  The term has also no longer has any risk management element to it, just the liquidity element.

Add one more element, the FRR (which is this case is a good thing).  The lender's money is being "managed" by the FRR, selecting an attractive rate and making sure it always available for use.  

So, when using the FRR, we now have a safe or relatively risk free place to park money and get above average returns.  Fundamentally, how is what I just described any different than a savings account? Your money might be unavailable for 2 days but that just makes it look more like a CD.  

If the above is true and the majority of the swap money is currently being managed by the FRR, what we have is a fund masquerading as a market. Some lenders exists outside the system, but you could almost consider them the Pay Day lenders of the swap market.

Why not just call it what it is and be done with it?  Also, managing it like a fund would provide some significant advantages:

• It is still "crowd-funded".
• Since the rate would be set by Bitfinex, traders would have a consistent and fair interest rate.
• With a constant rate, traders could more easily calculate what their position needs to be to turn a profit
• Lender's accounts are zero maintenance, just log in once a week to see your profits (the micro-managers among us can check once a day).
• Swaps could be (with some additional work) virtually term free.
• The swap interest could be distributed equally to all lenders participating in the fund.
• Any true risk would be shared by all lenders equally.
• Risk could be further managed by creating tranches.
• Returns would be relatively consistent for all lenders.
• The return rate could be protected since Bitfinex is the only lender and cannot be undercut.
• The swap market engine could be removed entirely, thus reducing the complexity on Bitfinex's side.
• The entire swap management system could be streamlined since there is only one pool of money to account for.
• Bitfinex could hire a fund manager and create a job to help the global economy.

Wouldn't the above benefits be better for both the lenders and traders than what we have now?

I know that I'm leaving out the regulatory issues which could be onerous, but if your trading engine is as good as it's been made out to be at protecting lenders during a flash crash, why not do it?  Personally, if I was getting a daily return rate of 0.1%-0.2%, I would invest in it.  Matter of fact, I would probably double what is currently in my lending wallet.

One other thing I forgot, you could have a distinct targeted based funds such as Bitcoin, Lightcoin, Darkcoin, etc.

[0x3d]

[...]
My proposal which my PR-dept. decided to call "active-to-inactive swap-ratio adjusted common bucket fund" should average rallies out smoothly because, well, no walls at all plus neither longs nor lenders get left behind during rallies (meaning no FRR-wall-frustration induced re-balancing of wallets out of the blue leading to WTF-charts), only shorts and borrowers (= the longs, yes) need to suffer if swap demand grows above swap offer but this then is the auto-regulating loop (an effective market) we seem to be looking for so badly, is it not?
[...]

I have question for you, if the swap market was converted to a fund (no individual offers allowed), what would you use to determine the interest rate?  Would you raise it as the funds available for use decrease or would you just keep it at a fixed rate?

Now I've explained that several times already but it would be your A: the rate would be variable, it would rise if there were less funds available on the swap market/fund and vice-versa. It's what the "swap-load" in prior posts is all about, it's a 24h (maybe less) averaged factor between available and used swaps which, on payout, would be multiplied with each individual user's "swap-weight" (the plankton must be able to grow vs. whales shouldn't be able to play the market I mentioned earlier) multiplied with a 24h (again, maybe less) averaged base value.

That base value would be what you earn on swap deposits when the "swap-load" is exactly 100% and I guess you're asking where that value should be coming from. Well that's the tricky part indeed.

Now one idea was to simply let BFX decide (every now and then) what kind of gains they'd like to make available on their platform but yeah, a magic number for this value, no good.

Another idea was to turn that value into a market of it's own but that train didn't quite leave the station as I have no idea what one would trade that BaseSwapRate against. Dollars? Withdrawal speed? Font size? Pink elephants? Dead end?

So thinking this a bit different: What if we were to take the absolute value of all of BFX's markets volatility as the base swap rate? That way trading activity i.e. volume is the only way to push swap-rates up which would add yet another feedback loop to the system.

Short example ignoring alt markets for simplicity: yesterday at 2AM BTC was at 400$, today at 2AM it's at 404$ which gives a 24h volatility of 1%. Say the swap load is 50% the daily earning on everyone's swap deposit would be 1% * 50% = 0.5% * each individual user's swap-weight (which would scale linearly from some bigger number like 3 or 5 for the tinyest deposit and some fraction like 0.2 for the biggest whale on the swap market - we'd need some magic values here for sure).

Now imagine this going from 266 to what was it, 90? (Oh the Flashback... 2h GoxLag anyone? ) Thad would give us a SwapBaseRate of 65% or something but, as self-regulating as this would be, margin calls would've kicked the SwapLoad back to almost nothing limiting losses for traders and lenders alike.

I think this boils down to putting some real data which only BFX has into a spreadsheet and experiment around. And just in case: We have a static 3.3:1 leverage, a margin reqirement of exactly 15% and trade minima of 0.01 and 0.1 so don't even think of criticizing the remaining magic numbers, mkay? jk

[wamatt]

It only takes a dollar to place bids for 100k btc at 1/100000th of a dollar each.

You need to measure the bids in USD.

And the reason people bid that low is because for a very small investment you could make a great return if there was a flash crash that ate through all of Bitfinex's order book.

That makes a lot of sense! Thanks for the explanation

[noggin-scratcher]

each individual user's "swap-weight" (the plankton must be able to grow vs. whales shouldn't be able to play the market I mentioned earlier)

[...]

each individual user's swap-weight (which would scale linearly from some bigger number like 3 or 5 for the tinyest deposit and some fraction like 0.2 for the biggest whale on the swap market

I think this is a big obvious flaw in your plan - you're relying on a 1:1 mapping between people and accounts to identify "whales". If the rewards from the swap market were 25x higher for small holders as they are for large holders, I would bet my last dollar that every 'whale' on the platform would immediately seek to open dozens of separate accounts to split up their balance and get the beneficial rate.

Besides that... what exactly was the ideological justification here? Seems rampantly unfair to treat one guy's invested dollars differently when they all serve the exact same purpose.

[0x3d]

each individual user's "swap-weight" (the plankton must be able to grow vs. whales shouldn't be able to play the market I mentioned earlier)

[...]

each individual user's swap-weight (which would scale linearly from some bigger number like 3 or 5 for the tinyest deposit and some fraction like 0.2 for the biggest whale on the swap market

I think this is a big obvious flaw in your plan - you're relying on a 1:1 mapping between people and accounts to identify "whales". If the rewards from the swap market were 25x higher for small holders as they are for large holders, I would bet my last dollar that every 'whale' on the platform would immediately seek to open dozens of separate accounts to split up their balance and get the beneficial rate.

Besides that... what exactly was the ideological justification here? Seems rampantly unfair to treat one guy's invested dollars differently when they all serve the exact same purpose.

I had that in mind and yes, it would be an obvious flaw if it weren't for the KYC-rules that BFX has to observe by law which means any new account has to be verified by ID before one can do anything meaningful with it so duplicate accounts should be really easy to spot. Sure, some guy with multiple IDs, double nationality or several adresses might be able to play the system a tiny little bit... but what are the odds and what dent would that really make?

Now we might as well leave that multiplier out of the game entirely as with a base swap rate based on volatility it doesn't make too much sense anymore. Also: the simpler, the better. That richness-multiplier was more of a bugfix against "riches getting richer" to my initial idea where the base swap rate was some fixed value. Nevertheless, it would still make the swap market a bit more attractive to smaller investors. Nobody said it had to be such a giant range. It could as well be a 1x multiplier for whales and 1.1 for plankton, hence my mention of Excel.

Another brainfart: we could make that multiplier depend on the duration the swap has been active, some kind of steadiness-bonus. The longer your swap-balance hasn't reached 0 the higher your multiplier... Although that could take the volatility out of the markets lowering swap rates in the process which seems like a self-destroying feedback loop not much unlike the current FRR. Also, the daily earnings would already act as some sort of interest compounding, a rising multiplier for steadiness would give us compounded compounding which doesn't sound right at all... Oh well, just a brainfart, doesn't seem to work out but throwing it out here anyways now that I typed it.

[Vandalay23]

I suddenly get "Access denied" to bitfinex.
Error code 16.

It used to work until now..

Anyway to bypass this blocking?

[QwertyCore]

each individual user's "swap-weight" (the plankton must be able to grow vs. whales shouldn't be able to play the market I mentioned earlier)

[...]

each individual user's swap-weight (which would scale linearly from some bigger number like 3 or 5 for the tinyest deposit and some fraction like 0.2 for the biggest whale on the swap market

I think this is a big obvious flaw in your plan - you're relying on a 1:1 mapping between people and accounts to identify "whales". If the rewards from the swap market were 25x higher for small holders as they are for large holders, I would bet my last dollar that every 'whale' on the platform would immediately seek to open dozens of separate accounts to split up their balance and get the beneficial rate.

Besides that... what exactly was the ideological justification here? Seems rampantly unfair to treat one guy's invested dollars differently when they all serve the exact same purpose.

I had that in mind and yes, it would be an obvious flaw if it weren't for the KYC-rules that BFX has to observe by law which means any new account has to be verified by ID before one can do anything meaningful with it so duplicate accounts should be really easy to spot. Sure, some guy with multiple IDs, double nationality or several adresses might be able to play the system a tiny little bit... but what are the odds and what dent would that really make?

Now we might as well leave that multiplier out of the game entirely as with a base swap rate based on volatility it doesn't make too much sense anymore. Also: the simpler, the better. That richness-multiplier was more of a bugfix against "riches getting richer" to my initial idea where the base swap rate was some fixed value. Nevertheless, it would still make the swap market a bit more attractive to smaller investors. Nobody said it had to be such a giant range. It could as well be a 1x multiplier for whales and 1.1 for plankton, hence my mention of Excel.

Another brainfart: we could make that multiplier depend on the duration the swap has been active, some kind of steadiness-bonus. The longer your swap-balance hasn't reached 0 the higher your multiplier... Although that could take the volatility out of the markets lowering swap rates in the process which seems like a self-destroying feedback loop not much unlike the current FRR. Also, the daily earnings would already act as some sort of interest compounding, a rising multiplier for steadiness would give us compounded compounding which doesn't sound right at all... Oh well, just a brainfart, doesn't seem to work out but throwing it out here anyways now that I typed it.

Interesting.  What is your reasoning for using market volatility as an indicator other than it can be used as a way to adjust the rate?  A more fundamental question would be: why does the rate need to be adjusted?

A swap fund (SWF) would be an odd animal.  If we ignore risk, it has some very odd features.  It has no competition, it's scarcity can be artificially controlled (placing a cap on the fund), it is never consumed, and it has a captive audience.  The only thing I can think of to compare it to is the diamond market as controlled by De Beers and even that falls apart if you look at it closely.  It has does have some parallels to the Fed.

It only exists to serve margin trading and it is constructed in such a way that traders are exposed to almost, if not all, the risk.  The only thing that really gives it any value is the trader's (for lack of a better word) greed.  In the real world, if a trader's position goes south fast enough the SWF would suffer a loss, but Bitfinex's implementation has rigged the deck.  If a flash crash happens, they slow the trading down so that the SWF has a chance to pull it's money out at the expense of the traders.

Given the massive advantage that a SWF has over it's 'customers', does the SWF need to twist the knife even more by varying the rate?  Maybe the institutional advantage is reason a SWF shouldn't be created.

[GreekGeek]

Hello

I have an account on BitFinex but I am not verified yet (waiting for a "fresh" utility bill)

I have a few questions

1.Can I transfer and sell  BTC on bitfinex and then use the USD to offer (USD) Swaps?  (WITHOUT BEING VERIFIED)
    (I am planning to get verified but I want to be sure I can trade in the meantime)


2.On the verification page it says
   Bank Statement: clearly highlighting your name as the account holder (your first deposit to Bitfinex must come from this account).

   What if I deposit BTC and then withdraw it as USD (after verification of course) , does my first withdrawal from Bitfinex must go to this account?




 

[0x3d]

Interesting.  What is your reasoning for using market volatility as an indicator other than it can be used as a way to adjust the rate?

Well that's pretty much the only reason. It seemed like a perfect fit to the equation we're trying to find. An incentive to raise volatility and, in turn, trading volume.

The way you're asking: Why wouldn't we want to use it?

A more fundamental question would be: why does the rate need to be adjusted?

Traders make the biggest gains (or losses) when volatility is way up in the sky. I don't see a reason why lenders should be left behind when "surf's up". Sure, they may convert their swap-USD into exchange-BTC and "ride that wave" along the traders, but that only increases your risk. I imagine the swap-market as being the "safe harbor" on the platform... Also, the lent-out money does "work more" during these times of high volatility and like in the real world: the more fish you get out of the sea the more you can sell. Damn, I start to think we're modern day's early fishermen, every damn metaphor fits so perfectly

The current swap-(side-)market is a bit too stressfull in my opinion, constantly re-shuffling, observing and adjusting rates and whatnot. A fixed-rate on the other hand would be as boring as your dusty old savings-account, don't you think? It lacks the feedback-loop, the incentive to inject volatility in the market, hell it could even infect the BTC-market with it's boringness (because feedback-loop), BTC might get glued to 400 like, for years... not that that would be too bad for the stability-fans but come on, a 5.5 year old should move, damned! Even if it's a currency.

A volatility-based swap rate just seems to be something not too boring and not too stressfull, the sweet spot in between.

For the rest of your "essay" I'm not sure I did follow through entirely but if I understand correctly you're saying a variable rate would be pretty bad in quickly falling markets, correct? If so, I don't see exactly why that would be the case, the swap-load factor would pull the rates back to a minimum even if the base swap rate goes way up high so... try again explaining it from a fisherman's perspective, that should do today

[psjw4450]

Support please respond to my emails.