Bitfinex uninsured lending and the recent flash crash

[zby]

Has any lender lost on the crach? The FAQ says that in the case of uninsured lending it can happen that the exchange is not quick enough to liquidate colateral and lenders can lose. Has it happen this time?

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[unclescrooge]

Hello,

I can let other lenders manifest themselves but no. No lenders lost a single cent (since the beginning of Bitfinex actually), during the Silk Road crash and the yesterday one.

For example, during Silk Road crash, 25% (only) of long positions were forced liquidated (ad a lot of users made quite some profit), but no user ended up with a negative balance. The current leverage and margin requirements make it quite safe.

The "uninsured" term is more a legal protection in case of a real "black swan" event where the price would go to 0 in a few seconds, in which case there would be no way to liquidate users. The "normal" crashes are not concerned. It's up to you to evaluate the risk of such extreme events happening.

Oh, as a disclaimer I'm the founder of Bitfinex.

best regards
Raphael
Bitfinex team

[Sukrim]

Well, there were some cases were interests were only paid for 23 or so hours for a day... it is really hard to say from the data Bitfinex provides if you made a loss or if they paid everything in full, as you only get a single entry in your ledger once per day.

[davout]

a legal protection

I chuckled a little.