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

[GreekGeek]

Question from a noob:

what does the "Notify" button do on the "Swaps Currently provided"  catalogue?


Also some thoughts about the FRR

It may be frustrating for some people that the FRR is pushing the swap rates down
but as mjr said yesterday
the goal is not to increase the rates of swaps

USD lenders forget that a "low" rate (~25% YEARLY is considered LOW  WTF!?! )  is safer in the long run

FRR may need some tweaking but I believe it is a good thing for bitcoin  ( and bitfinex)

[MustMan]

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.

Seems like these are the common issue of Bitfinex support.
As I said before, if you don't enough people to handle this, why not hire more people to make us feel that your are really care about your customers ??

[QwertyCore]

...~25% YEARLY is considered LOW  WTF!?!

Until the market crashes is a way that Bitfinex didn't fathom or that the swap engine cannot keep up with and you lose half your principle.  Everyone seems to forget that bit.

[mjr]

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

I think I may have figured this out...

Do you have a balance in DRK/LTC/TH1? The call to balances will only return those assets in which you have a balance.

Hope that helps

[mjr]

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.

Seems like these are the common issue of Bitfinex support.
As I said before, if you don't enough people to handle this, why not hire more people to make us feel that your are really care about your customers ??

Just so you know, we get hundreds of emails a day. Sometimes one may slip through the cracks, but it is pretty rare overall. Remember, however, that every person who emails support without first posting about it here, and then is satisfied and doesn't write a post saying that his issue was solved satisfactorily make up the vast majority of support emails.

We are looking into the two people who said that they haven't received a response.

By the way, if you post here, the more details (without posting sensitive information) the better...

[mjr]

...~25% YEARLY is considered LOW  WTF!?!

Until the market crashes is a way that Bitfinex didn't fathom or that the swap engine cannot keep up with and you lose half your principle.  Everyone seems to forget that bit.

That is the point of a free market. You get to decide at what rate you will take on a certain level of risk, which you also have to quantify. This is exactly why a fund doesn't work, but a market does. I think that our track record at protecting swap providers continues to grow stronger, and as we are growing, it makes sense that people are starting to trust us with more of their money. I think that USD swaps are a pretty great value, even at their current rates, but that is just my opinion.

[mjr]

Question from a noob:

what does the "Notify" button do on the "Swaps Currently provided"  catalogue?


Also some thoughts about the FRR

It may be frustrating for some people that the FRR is pushing the swap rates down
but as mjr said yesterday
the goal is not to increase the rates of swaps

USD lenders forget that a "low" rate (~25% YEARLY is considered LOW  WTF!?! )  is safer in the long run

FRR may need some tweaking but I believe it is a good thing for bitcoin  ( and bitfinex)

Thank you so much for understanding. We are tweaking it now, and have looked at a bunch of different suggestions.

To answer your question, if I understood it correctly, the "Notify" button will notify you if your swap is closed or reduced early.

Let me know if that clears it up.

[QwertyCore]

...~25% YEARLY is considered LOW  WTF!?!

Until the market crashes is a way that Bitfinex didn't fathom or that the swap engine cannot keep up with and you lose half your principle.  Everyone seems to forget that bit.

That is the point of a free market. You get to decide at what rate you will take on a certain level of risk, which you also have to quantify. This is exactly why a fund doesn't work, but a market does. I think that our track record at protecting swap providers continues to grow stronger, and as we are growing, it makes sense that people are starting to trust us with more of their money. I think that USD swaps are a pretty great value, even at their current rates, but that is just my opinion.

Yes, but a free market does not have de facto, system forced price point does it?  Something you have steadfastly refused to fully address.  This 'market' is controlled in the same manner that Fed exerts control; by adjusting rate of the single largest pool of money available.  The Fed has the Discount Rate and Bitfinex has the FRR.

I'm not going to debate this anymore.  You originally ask for ideas on how to improve the FRR.  The general conclusion was to best way to fix it was to remove it. It was not the answer Bitfinex wanted.  If I look at the situation from your point of view I can see the somewhat perverse logic in it.  The FRR serves Bitfinex well and hopefully soothes some guilt you have about the treatment of the leveraged traders. 

So be it, the FRR is not going to go away, but, I would ask for some intellectual honesty on Bitfinex's part and quit trying to portray the swap market as even remotely 'free'.

[Sukrim]

Well, I personally like the FRR (I'm lazy...), it was already changed from its previous iteration and surely can be tweaked even more. I wonder which factors to still use other than the current swaps in use to make it react even faster? Weighted average of the fixed price swaps of just the last 24h? 1h? 12h?

After all, the FRR was already "accelerated" significantly after traders complained that the old calculation (which was something like the last 13 days of FRR + current swap rates or so) went down too slow after a spike in demand, making their positions expensive. Since positions now can be comfortably swap their swaps, maybe a move in the opposite direction could be better? Make FRR react slower again?

I wouldn't mind that much if it were going away, then I'd have to invest a day or so to audit, customize + deploy a bot and that's it.

[QwertyCore]

Well, I personally like the FRR (I'm lazy...), it was already changed from its previous iteration and surely can be tweaked even more. I wonder which factors to still use other than the current swaps in use to make it react even faster? Weighted average of the fixed price swaps of just the last 24h? 1h? 12h?

After all, the FRR was already "accelerated" significantly after traders complained that the old calculation (which was something like the last 13 days of FRR + current swap rates or so) went down too slow after a spike in demand, making their positions expensive. Since positions now can be comfortably swap their swaps, maybe a move in the opposite direction could be better? Make FRR react slower again?

I wouldn't mind that much if it were going away, then I'd have to invest a day or so to audit, customize + deploy a bot and that's it.

I would think a method along the lines of what 0x3d proposed.  The swap market is not controlled strictly by supply and demand as the leverage limit places a cap on individual demand.  It is controlled more by sentiment of the Bitcoin market; this is what frustrates fixed rate lenders so much.  We can look at the Bitcoin market see the price going up and know that the demand is going to be there we but cannot do anything about it since the FRR is sitting there blindly filling orders based on the mean price from thirty days ago.  Bitfinex used to have a Sentiment indicator.  It was far from accurate but using it would make more sense that using any direct historical data.

As the Sentiment goes up, the rate rises, as it falls so does the FRR.  The problem is how do you measure that?  Fixed rate lenders watch whatever they consider valid market indicators and make a decision based on that, there is some intelligence involved.  The FRR, not so much.  It has to be based on something available and measurable.  Of course, if someone could come up with a reliable method to predict the market it would make more sense to be trading than lending.

I was wondering, what if the FRR used a Delta (the math definition, not the Bitfinex)?  Bitfinex could take the last 15 min Bitcoin price range and matched it to the price change and volume of the historical Bitcoin price data.  The time frame would then be cross referenced to the historical swap data.  The historical rate change would then be used as the basis for modifying, not determining the FRR rate.  If the Bitcoin price is changing, the swap rate would change in a historically predictable way.  If done properly, the rate change could only be gamed by the traders and only to the existent that it agrees with history.

The FRR would rise and fall much more quickly than now but it would stabilize much faster.  It would be a trailing indicator but also be based on past market performance.  I think everyone knows the perils of using the past to predict the future but this method would isolate itself slightly since it is using the near instantaneous (15 minute) price change to determine the corresponding historical swap rate change from a point in time disregarding the surrounding historical market tread.  It couldn't be worse than the current FRR calculation which is based on the most simplistic (and statistically meaningless ) 'average' available.

[noggin-scratcher]

what does the "Notify" button do on the "Swaps Currently provided"  catalogue?

It'll send you an email when the swap is paid pack (completely or partially). Useful if your email client or phone has an alert attached, so it can prompt you to check on your swaps and make a new offer.

[jollybit]

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

Any update about this?

[mjr]

...~25% YEARLY is considered LOW  WTF!?!

Until the market crashes is a way that Bitfinex didn't fathom or that the swap engine cannot keep up with and you lose half your principle.  Everyone seems to forget that bit.

That is the point of a free market. You get to decide at what rate you will take on a certain level of risk, which you also have to quantify. This is exactly why a fund doesn't work, but a market does. I think that our track record at protecting swap providers continues to grow stronger, and as we are growing, it makes sense that people are starting to trust us with more of their money. I think that USD swaps are a pretty great value, even at their current rates, but that is just my opinion.

Yes, but a free market does not have de facto, system forced price point does it?  Something you have steadfastly refused to fully address.  This 'market' is controlled in the same manner that Fed exerts control; by adjusting rate of the single largest pool of money available.  The Fed has the Discount Rate and Bitfinex has the FRR.

I'm not going to debate this anymore.  You originally ask for ideas on how to improve the FRR.  The general conclusion was to best way to fix it was to remove it. It was not the answer Bitfinex wanted.  If I look at the situation from your point of view I can see the somewhat perverse logic in it.  The FRR serves Bitfinex well and hopefully soothes some guilt you have about the treatment of the leveraged traders. 

So be it, the FRR is not going to go away, but, I would ask for some intellectual honesty on Bitfinex's part and quit trying to portray the swap market as even remotely 'free'.

I'll address the rest of what you said in a later post. Can we please agree though, because this is basic, that you cannot "improve" something, by making it not exist anymore?

[mjr]

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

Any update about this?

I asked specifically if you guys could provide some more info? I don't even have the email address to search for your email. That being said, support has said they do not have any backlog.

[Vagnavs]

Hello,
I have an account with Bitfinex.com and was using Bluestacks with Google authenticator. But I have 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

okay, since there isn't

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

Any update about this?

I asked specifically if you guys could provide some more info? I don't even have the email address to search for your email. That being said, support has said they do not have any backlog.

okay, I provided a pretty good summary above and since there doesn't sound like a backlog.
My email was titled "lost Google authenticator key". I'll be glad to provide any details in regards to my account and trading activity.
Thanks for your time,
Brian

[nrd525]

I'm waiting for a response from support about my request for a refund due to TH1 market manipulation.  Original email was sent on Oct 15 (Subject: "Money lost due to TH1 contract design").

[2586]

Can we please agree though, because this is basic, that you cannot "improve" something, by making it not exist anymore?

That really depends what your criteria for improvement are. If your goal is to enable efficient price discovery, and if FRR swaps are an active hindrance to efficient price discovery (compared to fixed-rate only), then removing the ability to offer FRR swaps would be an improvement to the situation. Whether that counts as an "improvement to the FRR" or not isn't really relevant.

[MustMan]

Seems like these are the common issue of Bitfinex support.
As I said before, if you don't enough people to handle this, why not hire more people to make us feel that your are really care about your customers ??

Just so you know, we get hundreds of emails a day. Sometimes one may slip through the cracks, but it is pretty rare overall. Remember, however, that every person who emails support without first posting about it here, and then is satisfied and doesn't write a post saying that his issue was solved satisfactorily make up the vast majority of support emails.

We are looking into the two people who said that they haven't received a response.

By the way, if you post here, the more details (without posting sensitive information) the better...

Seems there are many emails "slip through the cracks".

Hello,
I have an account with Bitfinex.com and was using Bluestacks with Google authenticator. But I have 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

I'm waiting for a response from support about my request for a refund due to TH1 market manipulation.  Original email was sent on Oct 15 (Subject: "Money lost due to TH1 contract design").

I encourage people who didn't get soon response from Bitfinex support send your email again and again in case your email "slip through the cracks".

Ok, why I thought support services of a company like Bitfinex become so important for all of us as their customers?

That is because it is the only way we can contact them in case of any issues/emergency, especially when we put lots of our money into Bitfinex.

p.s. To be fair, anyway, mjr (josh?) is the best PR so far even as I can recollect he is the second one....

[Killerloop]

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

I think I may have figured this out...

Do you have a balance in DRK/LTC/TH1? The call to balances will only return those assets in which you have a balance.

Hope that helps

Thank you for your prompt response,

I do not have any balance yet: 0 BTC, 0 USD, 0 DRK ecc.. so that is not the issue and, if I may, it is wrong and resource-wasteful to not send balance if "there is no balance".

This is the answer I am getting right now:
[{"type":"deposit","currency":"btc","amount":"0.0","available":"0.0"},
 {"type":"deposit","currency":"usd","amount":"0.0","available":"0.0"},
 {"type":"trading","currency":"btc","amount":"0.0","available":"0.0"},
 {"type":"trading","currency":"usd","amount":"0.0","available":"0.0"},
 {"type":"exchange","currency":"btc","amount":"0.0","available":"0.0"},
 {"type":"exchange","currency":"usd","amount":"0.0","available":"0.0"}]

IMHO you only need to add the appropriate queries to your database for DRK, LBC, TH1 and add the results to the JSON accordingly.

[Sukrim]

I was wondering, what if the FRR used a Delta (the math definition, not the Bitfinex)?  Bitfinex could take the last 15 min Bitcoin price range and matched it to the price change and volume of the historical Bitcoin price data.  The time frame would then be cross referenced to the historical swap data.  The historical rate change would then be used as the basis for modifying, not determining the FRR rate.  If the Bitcoin price is changing, the swap rate would change in a historically predictable way.  If done properly, the rate change could only be gamed by the traders and only to the existent that it agrees with history.

The FRR would rise and fall much more quickly than now but it would stabilize much faster.  It would be a trailing indicator but also be based on past market performance.  I think everyone knows the perils of using the past to predict the future but this method would isolate itself slightly since it is using the near instantaneous (15 minute) price change to determine the corresponding historical swap rate change from a point in time disregarding the surrounding historical market tread.  It couldn't be worse than the current FRR calculation which is based on the most simplistic (and statistically meaningless ) 'average' available.

USD swap demand goes up if the price goes down ("BTC are getting cheaper, let's buy more, TO DA MOON!") and it goes up if the price goes up ("It's_happening.gif"), it only seems to go down if the price doesn't change a lot over several days. Basing a rate on the price delta of the last 15 minutes is not going to model demand easily I'm afraid.

I'm still more in favour of keeping FRR as is and rather changing defaults or introducing more strict rules (e.g. FRR can only be set for 3 day durations max. so fixed rate swaps have more space to discover prices?). Also it might be interesting to know how FRR would look like if 30 day FRR is based on 30 day fixed rate swaps, 10 day FRR on 10 day fixed rate etc.