Topic: [BETA]Bitfinex.com first Bitcoin P2P lending platform for leverage trading - page 55. (Read 137528 times)

Obviously Bitfinex is down.

I was logged in while it became first slow, then nonresponsive.
This was after the first dump down to 24.8  Aprox. 23:44 UTC
Then the rate had just rebounded a bit to Bid = 24.98 Ask = 25.09
The last thing I saw was a Bitfinex Ask for 0.1 at 23.80

To me this looks just like a plain overload of the server
Let's hope its not a more serious problem.

Of course the situation is a bit unfortunate for us (traders) since we can not react now.

I can't access Bitfinex, does anyone know whats wrong? Isn't Bitfinex hosted with AWS? What's the problem here?

Edit:
It looks like Bitcoin price is falling sharp right now, maybe Bitfinex is being drowned out?

Right now, Bitfinex seems to have a hard time to keep up with the traffic.

At the moment someone wants to push the Mt.Gox rate way below 25; probably everyone wants to rush in and buy (or sell) 

Order Routing would indeed look like the next logical step, and might give Bitfinex a head start, since the technical ground work seems to be in place already.

That being said, I'm sure there are several non technical obstacles, like the still to be settled legal status (will Bitfinex, once incorporated, be allowed to move customer's funds in and out of -- say BTC-E?)

http://community.bitfinex.com/showthread.php/61-rooting-trough-btc-e-exchange similar discussion here the problem the same moving funds around, the solution is on paper but is not top priority atm 

I guess I'll join in as soon as at least a second 100% MtGox independent exchange (e.g. Bitstamp) is added. I really don't like the MtGox centrality in a lot of Bitcoin businesses.

As it was already said - once your connection to MtGox is cut for more than a few seconds you're in trouble.

Also I hope your backend servers are on a different network as your website - if someone DDoSed your page, can you still operate and only customers are pissed or can you get heavy losses out of that because your backend is on the same server and you miss the latest price jump?

Hi nrd525,

So to answer your concern:
-getting hacked: we have secured Bitfinex as much as possible as described here: https://bitfinex.com/pages/security This is a setup quite unique in btc world in that there is no hot wallet and no withdrawal-enabled mtgox API key on the servers (thus even in a case of someone hacking into the servers, there is no money at risks on there. And we do secure the servers, update the software,..

-shutdown by a financial authority: this is a valid concern. We will soon be incorporated in Hong-Kong, where we'll get a financial licence by the SFC (securities and futures commission of Hong-Kong). This is as much security as I will be able to provide, and I let you judge if this is enough.

-bankrupts borrowers: The idea is to close positions before a trader go bankrupt (that has already happened in the past without any problem). That's why we only allow 5x leverage maximum. We are not yet insured against losses, but this is something that will try to do, because you never now what could happen. Such a crash would have to happen in less than a few seconds for bitfinex to not be able to close positions. And if that happens, we take the losses on us. I personally think the risk is very very low considering market depth on Mtgox at any time. There has been big price swing already, and Bitfinex has always been able to follow them.
And of course you'll be informed when we have financial insurance to cover this risk.

Finally I will the FAQ to informed of the minimum amount of 0.1 BTC

If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask
Raphael

I guess the problem could arise if bitfinex wasn't able to close positions before people were bankrupt.  For instance, due to server overload (or MtGox problems).

Margin positions are automatically closed before the user is "bankrupt".  I suppose if somehow there was a situation where the market was like "best bid $20, second best bid $15" a problem could arise, but I don't imagine anything remotely like that ever arising.

Incidentally, a lender can't really take position on the value of BTC - the profit is the same rise or fall.  One can, however, use USD as a collateral to short BTC.

What is the minimum trade?

I tried to sell 0.01 BTC as a test and I got an error message.  Note: the error message ("Invalid Order: incorrect amount") could be improved to say that I didn't meet the minimum.

I was able to sell 0.1 BTC.

Having a low minimum is good for people who want to test it out before committing larger amounts.  The minimum amount should be listed in the FAQ and other places.

I'm setting up an account to test things out.

On the plus side, this looks like a solid project.

On the negative side, I'm concerned about it getting hacked, shutdown by a financial authority, or borrowers not being able to pay back their money.

I'm heavily bearish on bitcoin. I'd bet a couple thousand dollars of money that it would go down if I could do it securely. As it is (after getting burned on Bitcoinica), I might put a couple hundred into this.  However as a risk-adverse bear who is thinking about loaning money out,  I'm concerned what would happen if all of the people who are long on BTC and are paying insanely high interest rates at bitfinex were to lose all of their money.  Would bitfinex be able to handle the equivalent of a one day crash from $20 to $10?

My understanding is that bitfinex takes on responsibility for paying loans back.  But if the market crashes - will this still work?

You're welcome

This rate doesn't take into account your reserved margin yet.

Raphael

just saw the new code version, with various improvement all over the place.

Especially I liked the feature "Your indicative rate"

Hi Kokjo,

I'll add the option to let you set your max rate and if you want to include VIR.

This is not a bug, it can indeed take up to 10 minutes for a position to be reduced. If you prefer I can indeed change that to be immediate



Hi Ichthyo,

This is not nitpicking, I'm not doing it for programming fun but for you, so every details count.

The code will be updated today, now when you select "Trailing stop" it will read "Price distance"

Yes the P/L include the max fees (0.4%) you can have closing your position, but is based on best ask and bid rather than market depth (which could put some serious strain on the server while still being "indicative" since depth varies a lot. The current P/L should give you a rather good idea of your real profit, though when your position is big a look at the depth is good.

I agree for the 1 day loans, they don't make sense, but for the rest that's just the loans terms. It's kinda of unfortunate lenders tend to set period similar to position periods while they could set whatever they want.

Cheers
Raphael

@Ichthyo look is working for me, you should email support to see "why is not working for you" because this is strange, if you want include the link to this posts on your email

well you can see that is working for me now i will wait 30 min to so and test this again

to clarify: when I open a position for "1 day", I can use loans offered for "1 day".

But when I first borrow funds for "1 day", I can't use them, say 30 minutes later to open a position for "1 day" -- effectively I can't use them at all.

huh

i dont see any problem, where do you see the problem ?

Ah thanks, now the numbers make sense.


Incidentally, please allow a more technical question: When calculating the P/L, do you just pick the highest Bit (or Ask), or do you take the actual market depth and the size of the position into account?  (For example, if the highest Bit seems profitable, but is just 1 BTC size, and the next lower Bid of reasonable size would actually mean a loss?)

and while we're at those nasty little annoyances, how about that:

When I borrow funds offered for 1 day, the only way to get that loan is to enter a request for 1 day.
Now, the moment I've gotten that loan, I am unable to open a position for 1 day, since, by definition those funds are due in less than 1 day.

Same situation for 7 days. You need to get loans for 8 days if you want to open a position in the "7 days" category.


Again this is a case where the system behaves 100% logically correct, but just not the way the user expects it to behave.

For the user, "1 day" doesn't translate into precisely 86400 seconds -- the user wants to open a short-lived position in -- say -- the next two hours and it's OK for the user when this position is forcibly closed "the other day"