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

[psjw4450]

This is kind of bad.  Support still hasn't replied on such an urgent matter. 

[QwertyCore]

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

What's wrong with a boring fund that makes 100% a year?  I would be quite content with boredom like that.

Convert my 'essay' to a fish story?  Let's try this - A SWF would own every dock, pier, boat, net, rod as well as the ocean.  If you want to fish the SWF is the only game in town.  When you want to fish, not only do you have to rent the equipment from the SWF, you have to put the full value of the equipment down as a deposit and pay any expenses up front and out of pocket.  You might capsize and die but the SWF is sitting on the safely on shore with no way to lose.  If you survive, the SWF will let you keep any fish you catch.

How's that?

[psjw4450]

Support please respond to my urgent matter of my account being hacked. 

[mjr]

This is kind of bad.  Support still hasn't replied on such an urgent matter. 

We are looking into this, and investigating the activity on your account.

[mjr]

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?




 

Verification is required in order to use any bank services or to withdraw USD in any form. Other than that, happy trading, and swapping.

[psjw4450]

This is kind of bad.  Support still hasn't replied on such an urgent matter. 

We are looking into this, and investigating the activity on your account.

Can you please lock my account so no further coins can be withdrawn. 

[mjr]

This is kind of bad.  Support still hasn't replied on such an urgent matter. 

We are looking into this, and investigating the activity on your account.

Can you please lock my account so no further coins can be withdrawn. 

Yes, we have locked your account so that no withdrawals can be made. As soon as we have finished investigating what happened, we will send you a response.

[psjw4450]

This is kind of bad.  Support still hasn't replied on such an urgent matter. 

We are looking into this, and investigating the activity on your account.

Can you please lock my account so no further coins can be withdrawn. 

Yes, we have locked your account so that no withdrawals can be made. As soon as we have finished investigating what happened, we will send you a response.

Thanks.  Will you contact me through email.  Not sure if you can as the person has changed my email on my account to something else. 

[mjr]

Do you still have access to your email?

[psjw4450]

Do you still have access to your email?

Yes.  The original email that was on the account.  

[mjr]

OK, we will contact you using your original email.

[0x3d]

What's wrong with a boring fund that makes 100% a year?  I would be quite content with boredom like that.

Sure would work for me as well... it would just be a bit more lively, thrilling with some variance thrown in. But we're smimming around our own net now, time for others to make some bubbles about this.

Convert my 'essay' to a fish story?  Let's try this - A SWF would own every dock, pier, boat, net, rod as well as the ocean.  If you want to fish the SWF is the only game in town.  When you want to fish, not only do you have to rent the equipment from the SWF, you have to put the full value of the equipment down as a deposit and pay any expenses up front and out of pocket.  You might capsize and die but the SWF is sitting on the safely on shore with no way to lose.  If you survive, the SWF will let you keep any fish you catch.

How's that?

Hah, nice translation So basically what you're saying is that no matter what, we have to trust BFX to not abuse their swap monopoly, to not eff us up. Yeah, but what shall we do? Decentralized, realtime P2P exchanges with BFXs volume and swap-features are still inexistant and also kinda really hard to develop, unfortunately.

[bubfranks]

Hi, I want to wire USD to IFINEX, but my bank asked me for the beneficiary's phone number, which I could not find. Please advise. I hope to submit the wire today, but there are only a couple of hours left. Many thanks.

EDIT: I also emailed my issue to support@bitfinex.com...

EDIT2: ...and I received an informative response within 10 hours of my email. Many thanks!

[DoubleSwapper]

Is BFXDATA broken for anyobdy else? The USD swap graph does not seem to reload. It's stuck for me at 18th October 2:32. Maybe Björn could take a look at it.

[DoubleSwapper]

Has BFX disabled the live interface changes on swapping again? If I cancel an order I always have to reload now to see the balance update. Same goes for when orders are taken. No blue info message in the top right and no balance update of "USD swap total". It doesn't even make the order in the "unfilled offer column" disappear until you refresh. 

[DoubleSwapper]

Hm, ok third post in a row from me but it's due:

I've been following the discussion about the FRR and I have to say it's fairly obvious at this point: anybody who defends the FRR in its current form and denies its influence on price formation in the swap market is fairly uninformed not to say outright stupid.

I'd recommed everybody to watch the swap orderbook for a day or two and you shall see, it's been especially obvious in the last few days. The amount of swaps is on the rise again and already fairly large relative to the low price and so is the swap rate. In the last three days we had several events where large orders pushed the swap rate into 0.25 to 0.6 territory. This normally lasted for a fairly short time and then went back to 0.08-0.1. Why? Because the muddafuggin FRR comes in, walls the orderbook off with a stupid 6 figure (100k to 300k) offer that takes hours to get cleared and incentivizes many impatient people to offer their money for even lower rates creating a feedback loop.
Of who's benefit is this? Who in their right mind would put a 0.1% offer on the orderbook when the current lowest offer is at 0.27?? It's stupid as hell and destroys a lot of potential returns for the lenders. Even the lazy fucks using this feature lose out on a ton of potential gains.
Normally these spikes are obviously related to manipulation but it doesn't seem like it this time. The orderbook seems to get genuinely thin because intelligent lenders realize the potential rates they can receive at the moment and are hesitant to put in offers at 0.1xx when they know the only offers that get taken quickly are either those below or at the FRR rate of death. And when the FRR wall gets torn down they can potentially offfer some money in the 0.25 to 0.6 region. This is unhealthy for the market and even makes it harder for the lenders to estimate their swap costs.

The swap rates should reflect current sentiment and swap demand but there is so much dumb money in the swap market combined with the lazypants FRR that we currently have a very, very inefficient market.

[nrd525]

FRR - It might be useful to collect statistics on what rates are currently and historically in use.  For instance, when there are spikes in the rate - how long does the typical swap last?    Instead of sharing anecdotes it might be more useful to use real data.

I have lent out some money at far-above market rate for a long time, and also far-below market rate (when the FRR increases and I get stuck in a 30 day fixed position - or in one case due to a typo).  Getting stuck in below market rate positions makes sense, but the above-market ones do not.

[nrd525]

A big problem with the swap market is that supply is inflexible.  Circle and Coinbase allow you to quickly convert some money into BTC and then send it to Bitfinex and convert back to USD for lending.  Or you can do the reverse if the swap rate is falling.  However, the limits from Circle and Coinbase are probably too low for the big lenders who must rely on international wires which can take several days.  Also the Circle fee (0.5%-0.8%) and Coinbase fee (1.0%) combined with the Bitfinex exchange fee (0.1%-0.2%) are too high to make adding USD just to handle a short several spike in volatility worthwhile.

On the plus side, the restricted supply benefits lenders and partially counters the pro-borrower bias (from being able to cancel loans to get lower rates).

[Stratobitz]

If you have a decent BTC supply, is offering Swaps at 0.012 ish worthwhile? I'm a bit new to using Bitfinex, and am doing lots of reading on the subject, but would love to hear some thoughts on active/experienced users.

Thanks!

Strato

[Sukrim]

If you have a decent BTC supply, is offering Swaps at 0.012 ish worthwhile?

That's up to you to decide. Annually that's about 4.4% (before the 15% BFX fee, so in reality about 3.7%; depending on your jurisdiction you might or might not have to pay capital gains tax on that amount, likely not on BTC though) if you manage to always find someone immediately who wants to borrow your "decent supply" for that rate.

You might be able (depending on your "decent supply") to compound the interest, since it is paid daily, on the other hand sometimes it might idle on the order books.

If this is worth your risk and handing over your BTC to Bitfinex is gain up to you to decide.