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Q: Will the be support for margin trading in the future?
A: How would you do margin trading on SIBEX now? Because SIBEX is a tool for trading P2P, you'd simply ask someone to lend you some Bitcoin, Ether, or USDT. After the terms of the loan are agreed upon and you receive the funds, you would start trading. This breaks down to:
- Finding someone you want to do business with
- Entering into a standard contract with that person
- Using the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains to enforce that standard contract
You already do these things when you trade one type of cryptoasset for another using SIBEX, so borrowing and lending cryptoassets is a natural next step.
Q: How do you handle the "free option" problem?
A: The "free option" problem is when the counterparty in a cross chain atomic swap has the ability to wait for some length of time before deciding whether or not to send their funds.
In SIBEX there are always only two parties to a trade: the "Initiator" and the "Participant". Who sends their funds first? In SIBEX, the parties to the trade decide this randomly. In some trades you will be the Initiator, in some you will be the Participant. When the Initiator sends their funds, the trade has started. Now, the Participant must send their funds.
It is of course impossible to force the Participant to send their funds
Nobody has access to the Participant's funds except the Participant! But it is in the best interest of both parties to send their funds as quickly as possible, in order to achieve the fastest possible settlement time and free up their available funds. That's exactly what using SIBEX software helps you to do. When both parties are operating sibexd (the SIBEX client daemon) in a professionally managed cloud environment, like AWS, the likelihood that this swap fails due to one of the parties unintentionally going offline becomes very small. That's one big reason why we've developed a simple AWS Cloudformation script for you to use.
Additionally, the SIBEX Trading Interface is designed to prevent users from entering into a trade and then bailing out. Once you've committed to a trade, you're in it until it completes. This removes access to the "free option" for 99% of users.
But what about a sophisticated user, who is operating sibexd on their own hardware, and controlling their trades using the sibexd API? Can't this person take advantage of this "free option"? Yes.
Users can always move their funds "out from under" their SIBEX client, even if they are in the middle of a trade. However, this is again where License Keys are helpful. At this embryonic stage of the SIBEX network's development this is not an issue, as most people are happy just to try trading BTC/USDT completely P2P! If this becomes a problem in the future, we can always try to find out who is doing this, and then revoke their License Key so they cannot continue to abuse the network.
Eventually, we'd like to turn the "free option problem" into a "tradeable option". But that's something for the future.
Q: Are there some jurisdictions or regions which prohibit the use of SIBEX software or access to the SIBEX P2P network?
A: There probably are, but there are many different jurisdictions and we don't know which ones might suddenly decide that people living there should not use this software.
SIBEX AG will provide a software license to anyone who is legally allowed to do business with Swiss/Hong Kong companies. If you have licensed SIBEX software, it is your responsibility to comply with whatever additional rules you need to comply with. Some products, such as our AWS CloudFormation guide, consider infrastructure provided by other companies, and these companies might have other policies and rules. Again, it's your responsibility to comply with the terms and conditions of those services. Professional users of the software will also have different record keeping and reporting rules; those users should also comply with their professional rules and standards.
Q: How do I use a trading bot (for trading automation) with SIBEX?
A: Normally, you would need to go to the trouble of setting up a server of your own where your bot can live. But because you've likely already setup a personal server for SIBEX (see https://docs.sibex.io/#/guides) you can simply install your bot on that server. This is going to save you some money on server costs and it's going to reduce your attack surface. SSH into your SIBEX server (see https://docs.sibex.io/#/guides?id=using-a-keypair) and then you can configure and operate your bot directly on your server.
When you log into your SIBEX server you will have access to your sibexd API. If you are a trader, not a developer, you will want to use an API Client to save yourself a lot of time on topics like authentication, and functions like "get all orders". There is no need to re-invent the wheel. We have just such an API Client written in Go, it's available here:
https://gitlab.com/sibex/sibex-go-api-client
For examples, see the tests: https://gitlab.com/sibex/sibex-go-api-client/-/blob/develop/api_test.go
With this API client traders can comfortably "talk" to the sibexd API. If you need help you can always send a support request to our mail list: [email protected] or join the telegram group and ask there: https://t.me/joinchat/EXmUulWxkrE-WMxD60IAkQ
Happy algo trading
Q: Who should trade using SIBEX software?
A: If you are used to trading on BitMex, Binance, Bitfinex, or similar "retail trading" platforms, and you expect the same experience on SIBEX, you will be disappointed. Why? These platforms are designed to encourage you to 1) deposit as much money as possible (it's their money then, not yours, and they can do whatever they want with it), and 2) trade as much as possible, as often as possible. These two things are never in a trader's best interest. These platforms treat Bitcoin as a currency, and therefore give you an FX currency trading experience. But Bitcoin is commodity money, and even has been legally designated as such in the US.
Professional commodities trading software, the kind that people who move trillions of $ worth of commodities each day use to make a living, looks and feels like something that was made in the 1990s. Probably because it was. But there's a reason it hasn't changed much: it works well and makes the people who use it enough money to make a good living.
SIBEX is the first professional commodities trading software which is available to anyone. Here's an example of what is different: the "Markets" view is where you interact with the global market for BTC/USDT.
Notice that individual offers are grouped together into tranches, so you can better understand the current environment (data from regtest):
When you click on a tranche, you will see individual offers that other people have made. Remember there is no way to fake these offers - the money must exist, because the SIBEX software queries your wallet balance and does not allow you to create offers unless you have sufficient funds to complete a trade. Here is an example of individual offers:
What is happening here is people are broadcasting offers through the SIBEX P2P network. It's like a "bulletin board system", where you create an offer, ad everyone can see it. If you want people to *not* see your offer, you can make it "dark", by choosing the "darkpool" option. This means the network sees the offer, but the user does not. This can be helpful if you want to sell a large amount of coins but don't want to affect the price.
A: If you are used to trading on BitMex, Binance, Bitfinex, or similar "retail trading" platforms, and you expect the same experience on SIBEX, you will be disappointed. Why? These platforms are designed to encourage you to 1) deposit as much money as possible (it's their money then, not yours, and they can do whatever they want with it), and 2) trade as much as possible, as often as possible. These two things are never in a trader's best interest. These platforms treat Bitcoin as a currency, and therefore give you an FX currency trading experience. But Bitcoin is commodity money, and even has been legally designated as such in the US.
Professional commodities trading software, the kind that people who move trillions of $ worth of commodities each day use to make a living, looks and feels like something that was made in the 1990s. Probably because it was. But there's a reason it hasn't changed much: it works well and makes the people who use it enough money to make a good living.
SIBEX is the first professional commodities trading software which is available to anyone. Here's an example of what is different: the "Markets" view is where you interact with the global market for BTC/USDT.
Notice that individual offers are grouped together into tranches, so you can better understand the current environment (data from regtest):
When you click on a tranche, you will see individual offers that other people have made. Remember there is no way to fake these offers - the money must exist, because the SIBEX software queries your wallet balance and does not allow you to create offers unless you have sufficient funds to complete a trade. Here is an example of individual offers:
What is happening here is people are broadcasting offers through the SIBEX P2P network. It's like a "bulletin board system", where you create an offer, ad everyone can see it. If you want people to *not* see your offer, you can make it "dark", by choosing the "darkpool" option. This means the network sees the offer, but the user does not. This can be helpful if you want to sell a large amount of coins but don't want to affect the price.
Q: How can I have any privacy, if you are asking for personal information to get started?
A: Imagine it is 1997, and you go to a retail electronics store to buy the new Age of Empires game for your PC. You pick up the box, take it to the sales counter, give the person some cash, and you get a receipt. Then you walk out the door, go home, and install the game on your PC.
This is basically what you are doing when you use SIBEX software. However, two things change at the sales counter. The first is you don't have to pay any money for a license of SIBEX software. The second change is this: because the software publisher (SIBEX AG) is a Swiss company, and also does business in Hong Kong (SIBEX LTD), these governments ask that companies not do business with anyone who is sanctioned. So, instead of money, you need to present some personal data which demonstrate you are not a sanctioned person. Then instead of a physical copy of the software on a disk, we give you a software License Key, and you can download and use SIBEX on any machine you like. Easy!
When you first install SIBEX on your desktop or in a cloud server, you'll be asked for your License Key. That's it- there is no other connection to your identity. Nobody knows what you are doing with the software, nobody can see your balances. The only thing SIBEX AG can do is revoke that License Key. Even then, this action would not block you from accessing your Bitcoin and Ether, because SIBEX software (sibexd) is connecting to your existing Bitcoin Core and Geth APIs in order to do operations such as get those wallets' balances and broadcast raw transactions.
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