[ANN] BitMEX - Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange Official Thread

[BitMEXdotcom]

BitMEX - Bitcoin Mercantile Exchange opens for trading on 12:00 UTC Monday, November 24.

BitMEX is the world's first centrally cleared Bitcoin derivatives exchange. BitMEX stands behind all trades. BitMEX offers futures for commercial hedgers, Bitcoin miners, professional investors, and speculators. Please visit https://www.bitmex.com to sign up and begin trading.

BitMEX uses Bitcoin as the margin currency and all profit and loss is also denominated in Bitcoin. To begin trading create an account and then deposit Bitcoin to the address provided. After 1 confirmation your account will be credited, and you will be allowed to trade.

Currently BitMEX offers two outright Bitcoin / US Dollar (XBT/USD) futures contracts which settle using the Bitfinex XBT/USD exchange rate. BitMEX also offers the calendar spread between the two maturities. The contracts are quoted in USD and settled in Bitcoin. For every 1 USD move in the XBT/USD exchange rate, the contracts pay 0.00001 Bitcoin (1000 Satoshi).

• 26 December 2014 XBT/USD Futures Contract (XBTZ14)
• 30 January 2015 XBT/USD Futures Contract (XBTF15)
• 26 December 2014 - 30 January 2015 XBT/USD Calendar Spread (XBTZ14_XBTF15)

To ensure a liquid market, BitMEX has partnered with an experienced market making firm to provide continuous liquidity on the exchange. If you require additional liquidity please contact BitMEX support and we can help arrange for our market makers to provide a quote for you.

The BitMEX team has over 40 years combined experience trading, selling, structuring, and building technology for financial derivatives. Please post any questions or concerns to this thread, or contact us at support@bitmex.com.

The Team at BitMEX

[STRML]

To introduce myself: I am Samuel Reed, CTO of BitMEX. This has been a long time coming! We have been working on BitMEX for over a year now, most of us full-time. We know that solid derivatives trading has been sorely lacking from the Bitcoin ecosystem since its inception. Our aim is to provide the most available, most usable, most programmable derivatives exchange for cryptocurrencies, with a frontend built for traders so they can have the maximum amount of control and data available. We are also the only exchange that allows you to hedge your Bitcoin without any risk of haircuts or "socialized losses" that can make hedging impossible.

My central focus is the developer API and the frontend. I am happy to answer any questions you have about how to use the API, the site, to handle bugs and feature requests, and answer any other technical questions.

We have a GitHub issue tracker as well as a support site linked on the page. You can also always reach me here, on the site chat, or on my email (sam[at]bitmex.com). Our organizational profile also has a few API connectors and a market making bot that is free to use and customize.

We launch tomorrow at 12 GMT, in about 17 hours. In the meantime, if you want to see what we have in store, check our our testnet, deposit some testnet coins, and place some orders.

We will be releasing materials in the near future explaining how to use futures to hedge and speculate in interesting ways not possible on other exchanges. CoinRepublic did a great video about a month back with our CEO, Arthur Hayes, about how to use BitMEX to hedge arbitrage trading so you can cover yourself during the 3+ days it can take to move fiat between exchanges. The same is possible for mining operations, or any situation where you might need to hold Bitcoin and insure its value.

We're very excited about what the future will bring for the Bitcoin ecosystem and for BitMEX. In the coming months, we will be offering new products not available at any other exchange.

[STRML]

It is 12:00 GMT and we are live! Come join us at https://www.bitmex.com.

[STRML]

Thanks to everyone who has traded so far! We have just surpassed 100,000 contracts traded.

We have a lot more announcements on the way.

[STRML]

We have been listening to your feedback about BitMEX. The general mood has been very positive, but many questioned our trading fee of 0.5% per trade. In a landscape now dominated by Chinese exchanges, 0.5% is too much. BitMEX is a premium product and its futures not subject to the same caveats as those traded on the Chinese exchanges, but that is not enough for most to get past the sticker shock.

BitMEX has unique strengths in this market, the largest of which being our team's financial experience. That team was able to build an unrivaled trading engine with speed and features not seen on any other exchange. We want to leverage that strength.

Effective immediately, trading fees have been reduced 100x from 0.50% to 0.005%. This is one of the lowest in the business.

BitMEX will now be charging an insurance fee on open positions of 0.015% per trading session. This fee offsets the risks taken on by BitMEX by guaranteeing settlements. In the case of trader bankruptcy, BitMEX covers all losses and will not charge traders for the bankruptcy of other traders. BitMEX is the only derivatives exchange that offers this.

If you are interested in using doing automated trading on BitMEX, please see our REST and API documentation. We also offer a reference Market Making Bot written in Python that works with both Access Tokens and permanent API keys.

We are working on a unified SDK that will add tooling for most major programming languages.

Please keep your comments coming. We are excited to show the Bitcoin community what BitMEX can offer it.

Happy Black Friday everyone.

[STRML]

New Switchable Fee Preferences


BitMEX has been listening to your feedback, and we are pleased to be the first Bitcoin exchange to offer a two-tier trading fee schedule! This new customization enables BitMEX to meet a wider variety of traders’ needs.

The types available are:

Trader

Some traders want to make fast trades for low fees, react to market movements quickly, and predict trends. For the active trader, BitMEX offers the Trader fee schedule. This fee schedule combines extremely low individual trade fees (0.005%) with a low insurance fee charged at the end of each session to cover margin risk. This is the default choice when creating a new BitMEX account.

Flat Trading Fee: 0.005% (0.5 basis points)
Insurance Fee: 0.015% (1.5 basis points) per 8-hour trading session

Hedger

The Hedger fee schedule is more traditional for Bitcoin exchanges. It is tailored toward hedgers, arbitrageurs, and those who want to invest long-term without capital loss. This fee schedule is Maker/Taker and has higher trading fees than the Trader schedule, but has no recurring insurance costs. Contracts held under this fee schedule retain their full value until expiration.

If you are hedging Bitcoin liabilities for the duration of a contract’s lifetime, this fee schedule may be more favorable than the Trader schedule.

Maker Trading Fee: 0.25% (25 basis points)
Taker Trading Fee: 0.50% (50 basis points)

Choosing a Structure

Traders may choose which fee structure to apply to their account on the My Account page when logged in. You may only change your fee preferences when all your outstanding positions are zero.

As always, BitMEX stands behind all contracts, with absolutely no profit clawbacks.

[stellar1]

Within 4 days of opening you reduced your trading fees a hundredfold. Please let us know when it becomes possible to reduce your hedger & insurance fees (applied three times everyday 7 days a week).

Thanks

[STRML]

At this time, the Hedger and Insurance fees will remain as-is. They are set as necessary to ensure that the exchange can continue to run and pay its bills.

BitMEX already offers contracts available on no other exchange (such as BVOL), and the gap will widen in the coming months.

Not all contracts are subject to our Trader/Hedger scheme; we are investigating the addition of faster-moving contracts that fill the needs of day traders and short-term hedgers, such as those hedging blockchain confirmations.

To that end, a few days ago we launched XBU24H. This is an inverse futures contract, which means it is always worth $1 of Bitcoin. It is very similar to our other XBU contracts, but is settled daily.

Our current Trader/Hedger scheme is not appropriate for a short term contract such as XBU24H so we have moved to an even more generous scheme: 0% maker, 0.03% taker, no insurance fees. See our XBU24H Fees Reference for more details.

[STRML]

Today we've launched BVOL7D, the compliment to our recently-released BVOL24H contract.

BVOL24H settles on daily volatility calculated using 288 snaps per-day from Bitfinex (one every five minutes). It settles daily at 12:00 GMT. It can be traded on leverage and is very volatile. Settlement prices in the last two weeks have ranged from 4.13 to 0.95.

BVOL7D is similar to BVOL24H but settles on 2016 snaps (288 per day * 7 days) every Friday at 12:00 GMT. It is useful for hedging volatility and is more gentle than BVOL24H. Backfill of the last few weeks shows settlements ranging from 7.60 to 3.34.

Both of these contracts are a lot of fun to trade even in a sideways market and are a hedger-friendly alternative to binary options. With leverage, it is possible to quadruple your money if volatility takes a sudden turn intraday.

Fees on BVOL24H are our lowest-ever: 0% Maker / 0.03% Taker. BVOL7D is very reasonable at 0% Maker / 0.10% Taker.

Feel free to talk to us in chat or on the Whaleclub Teamspeak if you have questions about these contracts.

[STRML]

The feedback in the last 24hrs on the Whaleclub Teamspeak, Reddit, Twitter and other channels has been incredible.

We just launched:

0% Fees

All contracts trade with no fees until September. It's the perfect incentive to give BitMEX a try.

25x Leverage

Trade our XBT-series contracts at a whopping 25x leverage! Our industry-leading Dynamic Profit Equalisation (DPE) system ensures safe and transparent risk management.

New, simplified UI

BitMEX's interface, while always powerful, was confusing to new traders just getting started with derivatives. Our new simplified interface is designed to get you right into trading with a minimum of confusion.

https://i.imgur.com/exJsBYm.jpg

As always, contact us any time at info@bitmex.com or on the site chat itself. You can also talk to us live on the Whaleclub Teamspeak channel (ts.whaleclub.co).

[Indamuck]

Site looks really good ... I like the new UI, and that your contracts are so small ($1 per) ... so when volume picks up it should trade like butter. So discouraging to see you not have any volume right now. I guess that is my hang up here. 796 Exchange has the volume, and I'm comfortable there. I guess mostly Chinese speakers trade on 796, and English speakers don't trade futures yet? Hmmm .... that could change ...

[STRML]

Site looks really good ... I like the new UI, and that your contracts are so small ($1 per) ... so when volume picks up it should trade like butter. So discouraging to see you not have any volume right now. I guess that is my hang up here. 796 Exchange has the volume, and I'm comfortable there. I guess mostly Chinese speakers trade on 796, and English speakers don't trade futures yet? Hmmm .... that could change ...

Thanks - volume is improving. We've traded nearly 1k BTC in the last 24hr and momentum is increasing.

While spreads are large, there is significant money to be made market making, and at 0 fees it can be done quite profitably.

We have a reference marketmaker bot on GitHub. It's free to use and can be tested first on our Testnet.

Hope to see you on the exchange.

[Mayer Amschel]

Site looks really good ... I like the new UI, and that your contracts are so small ($1 per) ... so when volume picks up it should trade like butter. So discouraging to see you not have any volume right now. I guess that is my hang up here. 796 Exchange has the volume, and I'm comfortable there. I guess mostly Chinese speakers trade on 796, and English speakers don't trade futures yet? Hmmm .... that could change ...

OkCoin

[chriswen]

Site looks really good ... I like the new UI, and that yoontracts are so small ($1 per) ... so when volume picks up it should trade like butter. So discouraging to see you not have any volume right now. I guess that is my hang up here. 796 Exchange has the volume, and I'm comfortable there. I guess mostly Chinese speakers trade on 796, and English speakers don't trade futures yet? Hmmm .... that could change ...

OkCoin

Yeah a lot of English speakers trade futures. Okcoin has quite the volume.

Yeah small contract sizes are nice on Bitmex. They also have 25x leverage. They're also using the XBT quanto series which means you profit more when the price goes up and lose more when it goes down. And all the contracts are set for much longer time frames. 1 month, quarterly, half year.

I think it's good that Bitmex is differentiating themselves. They aren't exactly competing directly. Also they're a great alternative and place to go if people want a site that they can trust.

Also Bitmex has 0% fees for a month which is amazing. (And if you sign up with referral codes you get 10% off for a half a year). And they're not going to have crazy high fees like some other sites

Also speaking of differentiating, Bitmex will be launching a new product soon. I'm really excited for it.

[Indamuck]

I moved my entire futures trading balance from 796 Exchange to Bitmex this week. I sacrificed volume/liquidity/familiarity for better reassurance that my btc isn't going to disappear ... lol, a better designed platform, and more responsive management.

If at the end of the month commissions come back but volume remains anemic I'll prolly have to go back to 796 ... hope Bitmex takes off. Hedgers and traders should be using Bitmex' futures rather than trading coins directly. It is a great product.

[chriswen]

I moved my entire futures trading balance from 796 Exchange to Bitmex this week. I sacrificed volume/liquidity/familiarity for better reassurance that my btc isn't going to disappear ... lol, a better designed platform, and more responsive management.

If at the end of the month commissions come back but volume remains anemic I'll prolly have to go back to 796 ... hope Bitmex takes off. Hedgers and traders should be using Bitmex' futures rather than trading coins directly. It is a great product.

They also recently launched weekly XBT options and also an LTC product

[HostFat]

BitMEX Launches 50x Leveraged Daily Bitcoin Futures
https://blog.bitmex.com/bitmex-launches-50x-leveraged-daily-bitcoin-futures/

[HostFat]

BitMEX is happy to announce increased maximum leverage on daily and weekly Bitcoin / USD futures.

Maximum leverage on daily contracts has increased from 50x to 100x, and on weeklies from 25x to 50x.

Monthly contracts remain at 25x.

The higher leverage on short-term contracts is perfect for traders using range or momentum trading strategies.

.

[Andrew Vorobyov]

TLDR: You will NEVER have perfect hedge on BitMEX

I must admit that Bitmex is the best exchange from technological viewpoint out there.

However, you must understand what is https://www.bitmex.com/app/dynamicProfitEqualisation and how you will suffer from it.

When BTC jumped from 585 to 632 I was long and made some $$$ after rebalance in the afternoon exchange took away 19.97% of my profit.

Why? because somebody was using sky high leverage and exchange could not liquidate his position.

20% was the rate when price went up - imagine how big adjustment will be during price decline - my estimate 30-50%

For example, you have 5 BTC and price is 600. Your USD holdings are 3000 USD. You go and sell 3000 contracts XBTUSD.

Next morning BTC is 400 USD and you think you are hedged. But if there is 50% adjustment to profits - you have only $2500 in you account.

My question was to BitMEX - "Why do you allow such big leverage? 5x is enough". They told it attracts liquidity.

IMO it only attracts kamikaze traders who want to blow up account and pushes other traders away.

[Andrew Vorobyov]

Went to sleep, woke up - 33% profit adjustment. Exactly as I predicted.

Good bye Bitmex. Call me back when you have max 1:5 leverage.