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

[DoubleSwapper]

Over a thousand independent offers have decided to put over 2.2 million dollars at 0.0909%. Who would have thought.

[Sukrim]

The cost of swaps has a minor role in the demand for swaps.  The demand for swaps is driven almost solely by the price movement of bitcoins, it is not dependent on the swap cost.

Looking at my experience of about 1.5 years lending money at Bitfinex I have to agree here: Many (most?) traders don't really seem to care if they pay 0.1% a day or 0.9995% a day or 0.15% a day in swap if the prices move several % anyways.

Since nobody seems to have noticed it, I have suggested an alternative flexible rate that would be similar to going long on BTC while lending out USD: have a low % fixed rate while the trader's position is negative and a high % profit share (+ probably the standard FRR+x% on unused funds, to prevent abuse). This means someone who is unlucky in trading only pays e.g. 0.01% swap, but if the prices go up, they pay e.g. 20% of their earnings to the swap provider (both numbers are up to the swap market of course). People offering funds under these conditions would be betting quite hard on the market going up, but might choose not to trade themselves for example because they don't want to deal with closing positions or the risk of down swings.
Interest would be checked hourly(?) and debited/credited daily from traders to lenders, as it is done currently.

Just out of interest btw.:
Let's say there are 2 hours of 1% FRR, 20 hours of 10% FRR and then again 2 hours of 1% FRR --> how exactly is the amount due at the end of the day for FRR calculated? The FRR at a certain time of the day, an average over the FRR the whole day (sampled at which intervals?) or something else?

[nrd525]

I think rates matter more for people with longterm positions.   It'd be interesting to know how long the average position lasts.  Or how many positions are only several hours, several hours to a day, one day to a week, one week or more.  These are statistics that BFX could share.

[Sukrim]

I would have extensive stats I could share if someone writes and releases a parser for the log files. (https://www.bitfinex.com/offers)
This is something I'm also interested in, but haven't yet gotten around to try to find out. Unfortunately the log file seems to lack the critical information of when an offer was actually taken and when it was returned...

Edit:
Unused and margin swaps seem to contain that info though. Might not be too hard to parse after all?

[QwertyCore]

Over a thousand independent offers have decided to put over 2.2 million dollars at 0.0909%. Who would have thought.

With everything Bitfinex has said so far, yes this is normal and the FRR has nothing to do with it.  The only issue is that rate calculation, not the FRR, needs tweaked.  Unbelievable isn't it?

I am getting so frustrated with this that I am going to have to drop out before I say something I will regret.
 

[QwertyCore]

The cost of swaps has a minor role in the demand for swaps.  The demand for swaps is driven almost solely by the price movement of bitcoins, it is not dependent on the swap cost.

Looking at my experience of about 1.5 years lending money at Bitfinex I have to agree here: Many (most?) traders don't really seem to care if they pay 0.1% a day or 0.9995% a day or 0.15% a day in swap if the prices move several % anyways.

Since nobody seems to have noticed it, I have suggested an alternative flexible rate that would be similar to going long on BTC while lending out USD: have a low % fixed rate while the trader's position is negative and a high % profit share (+ probably the standard FRR+x% on unused funds, to prevent abuse). This means someone who is unlucky in trading only pays e.g. 0.01% swap, but if the prices go up, they pay e.g. 20% of their earnings to the swap provider (both numbers are up to the swap market of course). People offering funds under these conditions would be betting quite hard on the market going up, but might choose not to trade themselves for example because they don't want to deal with closing positions or the risk of down swings.
Interest would be checked hourly(?) and debited/credited daily from traders to lenders, as it is done currently.

Just out of interest btw.:
Let's say there are 2 hours of 1% FRR, 20 hours of 10% FRR and then again 2 hours of 1% FRR --> how exactly is the amount due at the end of the day for FRR calculated? The FRR at a certain time of the day, an average over the FRR the whole day (sampled at which intervals?) or something else?

I did comment on this earlier.  My concern would be that the lender is getting the lowest rate when the swap is most vulnerable (the trader is losing).  Of course if swaps are as risk free as Bitfinex purports them to be, I would not have any philosophical issue with this.

[noggin-scratcher]

I might take a minor philosophical issue with the idea of swap returns depending on whether the trader is profiting or not - it makes it unpredictable what rate I'd actually be getting.

 Part of the appeal of swaps for me is the part where I don't need to care too much about what the price is doing, because once the terms are agreed my return isn't dependent on it (might affect what the going rate for swaps is, but beyond that I'm price-agnostic). But then, I don't intend to use FRR either way, so... I guess do whatever you want with it.

[QwertyCore]

I might take a minor philosophical issue with the idea of swap returns depending on whether the trader is profiting or not - it makes it unpredictable what rate I'd actually be getting.

 Part of the appeal of swaps for me is the part where I don't need to care too much about what the price is doing, because once the terms are agreed my return isn't dependent on it (might affect what the going rate for swaps is, but beyond that I'm price-agnostic). But then, I don't intend to use FRR either way, so... I guess do whatever you want with it.

I don't know if I would use it.  It would be an interesting option for 'fixed rate' lenders to compete with the FRR.  Of course, if Bitfinex applies it to the FRR or only allows the option for the FRR it will be the death of fixed rate lending.

[21pilot]

we must think of an incentive for Bitfinex to change anything regarding this FRR.
All arguments are of no use when we can´t manage to convince them.

[QwertyCore]

we must think of an incentive for Bitfinex to change anything regarding this FRR.
All arguments are of no use when we can´t manage to convince them.

I'm open to suggestion.  Appeals to logic certainly do not seem to be working.

[21pilot]

we must think of an incentive for Bitfinex to change anything regarding this FRR.
All arguments are of no use when we can´t manage to convince them.

I'm open to suggestion.  Appeals to logic certainly do not seem to be working.

maybe an increase in the 15 % fee they currently take?

1. they choose one of our proposed solutions regarding the FRR
2. we probably enjoy higher interest rates
3. they enjoy higher profit (if they hike the 15 % to 20 % or something similar)

However I´m still uncertain if they would do anything, because the traders would be the
ones who pay for this increase in earnings for bitfinex and the lenders 

[QwertyCore]

we must think of an incentive for Bitfinex to change anything regarding this FRR.
All arguments are of no use when we can´t manage to convince them.

I'm open to suggestion.  Appeals to logic certainly do not seem to be working.

maybe an increase in the 15 % fee they currently take?

1. they choose one of our proposed solutions regarding the FRR
2. we probably enjoy higher interest rates
3. they enjoy higher profit (if they hike the 15 % to 20 % or something similar)

However I´m still uncertain if they would do anything, because the traders would be the
ones who pay for this increase in earnings for bitfinex and the lenders  

The fee increase was suggested earlier.  There was no direct response from Bitfinex.

[mjr]

we must think of an incentive for Bitfinex to change anything regarding this FRR.
All arguments are of no use when we can´t manage to convince them.

I'm open to suggestion.  Appeals to logic certainly do not seem to be working.

maybe an increase in the 15 % fee they currently take?

1. they choose one of our proposed solutions regarding the FRR
2. we probably enjoy higher interest rates
3. they enjoy higher profit (if they hike the 15 % to 20 % or something similar)

However I´m still uncertain if they would do anything, because the traders would be the
ones who pay for this increase in earnings for bitfinex and the lenders  

The fee increase was suggested earlier.  There was no direct response from Bitfinex.

I responded quite a few times. I specifically said that what we are looking for, the purpose of this conversation, is to improve the calculation of the FRR. Yes, we could completely change the business model, start a fund that offers CD's. We could charge traders more, in order to get more money to people providing swaps, or we could do any number of other proposed suggestions. The main issue, as I've stated before, is that that doesn't actually accomplish the goal we are trying to do, which is arrive at a more meaningful FRR. As I keep pointing out, the goal is not to increase the rates of swaps.

It is a very very simple market. There is currently unused swaps being offered, so there is surplus supply. If the rate is not high enough, don't offer a swap. Once enough people stop offering swaps, because the rates are too low, the market will respond with higher rates.

As I said, just yesterday, we will be announcing the changes to the FRR soon. Thanks for all your input.

[Killerloop]

Hey MJR, care to address the issue I posted earlier about your API?

[QwertyCore]

we must think of an incentive for Bitfinex to change anything regarding this FRR.
All arguments are of no use when we can´t manage to convince them.

I'm open to suggestion.  Appeals to logic certainly do not seem to be working.

maybe an increase in the 15 % fee they currently take?

1. they choose one of our proposed solutions regarding the FRR
2. we probably enjoy higher interest rates
3. they enjoy higher profit (if they hike the 15 % to 20 % or something similar)

However I´m still uncertain if they would do anything, because the traders would be the
ones who pay for this increase in earnings for bitfinex and the lenders  

The fee increase was suggested earlier.  There was no direct response from Bitfinex.

I responded quite a few times. I specifically said that what we are looking for, the purpose of this conversation, is to improve the calculation of the FRR. Yes, we could completely change the business model, start a fund that offers CD's. We could charge traders more, in order to get more money to people providing swaps, or we could do any number of other proposed suggestions. The main issue, as I've stated before, is that that doesn't actually accomplish the goal we are trying to do, which is arrive at a more meaningful FRR. As I keep pointing out, the goal is not to increase the rates of swaps.

It is a very very simple market. There is currently unused swaps being offered, so there is surplus supply. If the rate is not high enough, don't offer a swap. Once enough people stop offering swaps, because the rates are too low, the market will respond with higher rates.

As I said, just yesterday, we will be announcing the changes to the FRR soon. Thanks for all your input.

Well that's our answer.  Game over.

[mjr]

Hello, I have a problem with the API, "POST /balances" call... it only appears to return balances in BTC and USD, no LTC/DRK/TH1.

Is there some extra fuction or parameter I am missing?

I am looking into this. I will get you a response.

[Vagnavs]

Hello,
I have an account with Bitfinex and was using Bluestacks with Google authenticator. But I had a hard drive crash and need to have the 2 FA reset. So I can log back in and make some trades. I did contact support a couple days ago. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Regards,
Brian

[DerekH]

I sent an email to support a month ago and still haven't gotten any reply. Has anyone else gotten any replies from support?

[Dalmar]

I sent an email to support a month ago and still haven't gotten any reply. Has anyone else gotten any replies from support?

Got a reply to one sent about a week ago recently. There seems to be a backlog.

[Killerloop]

Same here, email sent a week ago --> no answer yet