TH1BTC Speculation Thread - Bitfinex Cloud Mining Contract

[nrd525]

Shorting is up from 62 swaps to 82.

I think there is a chance that the market could be manipulated (or just naturally act weird) again.  Small amounts of manipulation (ex. maintaining a 10-15% price premium over the mining value) probably won't cause Bitfinex to act.

I've been waiting 8 days to hear from Bitfinex regarding my support ticket for a refund.  No response.  Typically they are a lot faster.

[superbit]

Shorting is up from 62 swaps to 82.

I think there is a chance that the market could be manipulated (or just naturally act weird) again.  Small amounts of manipulation (ex. maintaining a 10-15% price premium over the mining value) probably won't cause Bitfinex to act.

I've been waiting 8 days to hear from Bitfinex regarding my support ticket for a refund.  No response.  Typically they are a lot faster.

We are only 20 days until you can lock in your swap rate until it expires.  If the prices are still this high in 20 days and average priced swaps are still available like now, expect the price to plummet.

[nrd525]

Having not heard back from Bitfinex for 9 days, I'm launching a signature campaign.  I encourage everyone else who lost money (or anyone who has enjoyed my posts) to join me in asking Bitfinex to do the right thing and fix this mess.

[lg1500]

Having not heard back from Bitfinex for 9 days, I'm launching a signature campaign.  I encourage everyone else who lost money (or anyone who has enjoyed my posts) to join me in asking Bitfinex to do the right thing and fix this mess.

me too nothing, i writed ton of mails.

[nrd525]

Currently low swap rate (0.1364%), low outstanding swaps (102), but no TH1 swap offers.  So who knows what will happen to the swap rate.

[nrd525]

Price falls to 0.73 (down from 0.82) on a 24 hour volume of only 23.  Someone must have pulled the two 100 walls (or most of them).   Swaps increase to 116.   2.2 TH1 swap available.

I was thinking about shorting last night, but there wasn't any swap available.

[lg1500]

Price falls to 0.73 (down from 0.82) on a 24 hour volume of only 23.  Someone must have pulled the two 100 walls (or most of them).   Swaps increase to 116.   2.2 TH1 swap available.

I was thinking about shorting last night, but there wasn't any swap available.

they will not refund our losses i think, they ignoring us

[nrd525]

Bitfinex has stopped listing the number of outstanding TH1 swaps on the statistics page.

[001sonkit]

Hey guys, just to let you know that I've placed a hidden order to close out by bunch of position at a "not-too-distant" price (from current's 0.635)

One thing, though, I'd like to know, is that what would happen if the BTC balance to reach negative with all the negative position "profit" (the expenses of Shorting TH1), while having a positive P/L
eg BTC balance -1, P/L 100.

The Unrealized P/L would be counted as "Net Value" thus accounting for margin or we got more rules on closing of position?

[001sonkit]

Price falls to 0.73 (down from 0.82) on a 24 hour volume of only 23.  Someone must have pulled the two 100 walls (or most of them).   Swaps increase to 116.   2.2 TH1 swap available.

I was thinking about shorting last night, but there wasn't any swap available.

they will not refund our losses i think, they ignoring us

unclescrooge, from what I've heard in Bitcoin meetups, online and my experience is a hermit guy.

Pretty much hidden and no talking.

[nrd525]

Hey guys, just to let you know that I've placed a hidden order to close out by bunch of position at a "not-too-distant" price (from current's 0.635)

One thing, though, I'd like to know, is that what would happen if the BTC balance to reach negative with all the negative position "profit" (the expenses of Shorting TH1), while having a positive P/L
eg BTC balance -1, P/L 100.

The Unrealized P/L would be counted as "Net Value" thus accounting for margin or we got more rules on closing of position?

I think it should count as net value, but I am not an expert.   I currently don't have any active margin positions.  If you do have a short position, you should be able to see whether the Unrealized P/L is included in the Net Value of your own position by doing some math.

[nrd525]

I wrote up my story of how I lost money trying to expose the manipulation of the TH1 contract.
Exposing Manipulation

[nrd525]

At 0.42 BTC, it looks like the contract might actually be trading without a premium (or the premium is down from 10-15% to only 0-2%)!  With 5% difficulty increase and a 0.2% swap rate - this is about breaking even.  Maybe people are expecting a greater than 5% difficulty increase as I've seen some rumors of new hardware in the works (though I really have no idea if any of it will arrive within the next several weeks).  

Swap is still very hard to get.

There is a very interesting 300 TH1 bid wall at 0.4 BTC. I highly doubt that it will stay up.  When will it move?  Maybe some people think it will move and then the price will collapse. But that would be ignoring fundamentals which in this case are a lot easier to measure than they are for BTC/USD.

Things will get very interesting if the 300 TH1 bid wall disappears.  After that, there is only 1-2 TH1 of bids down to 0.01 BTC! 

[meccaflare0]

I wrote up my story of how I lost money trying to expose the manipulation of the TH1 contract.
Exposing Manipulation

Manipulation is just big players making moves.

[nrd525]

In the BTC/USD market, big players can counter each other. They cannot do that in the TH1 market.

[nrd525]

At 0.34 BTC, the TH1 contract might actually be under-valued (assuming 3% difficulty increase).  Of course the difficulty could increase by more than 3% in the second increase.  And 0.34 BTC might be below market price (there isn't much trading at this price).

[nrd525]

You can finally borrow swap for the entire period of the contract. So shorting is relatively safe.  On the other hand, there isn't much left to short.

Side note: if margin sell is saying 0.3555 and margin buy is 0.3775 - and there haven't been any trades executed at either price, and it isn't a current bid or ask.  What does that mean?  Is it an indication of a hidden order?

[nrd525]

Someone has bid 0.015 for 250 contracts (and forgot to remove it?)- which is 40% over expected mining value (as there are 13-14 hours of mining time left).  However all the TH1 swap is gone.

[nrd525]

Now that the whole TH1 contract fiasco is over.

Ways in which BFX profited from the manipulation of the TH1 contract at the expense of their customers

1. The price premium that was caused by manipulation and the increased volatility due to market manipulation increased the TH1BTC swap rate to two or more times what it should have been.  This doubled the amount of swap fees.

2. The price premium increased the fees collected on trades.

3. (optional)  The price premium may have allowed Bitfinex to sell contracts to the market maker at a higher price than they cost.  The identity of the market maker is unknown and given the manipulation in the market and the way in which contracts were randomly issued this is disturbing.

[odolvlobo]

There is no evidence of manipulation beyond a short squeeze, which is circumstantial at best. The short squeeze in the last 30 days that people were warning about never materialized.

I think the problems in the TH1BTC market were mostly due to swap liquidity. There was a severe lack of swaps for the amount of shorting that was being attempted.