Topic: bitfinex questions (Read 3051 times)

Is there a way to get my current fee-% through API? I really need it for calculating minimum order in my software. All other exchanges provide fee-% from API.

You're presented with evidence. Claiming anonymously that "you can personally vouch for it" is completely ineffectual.

one more thing i dont get:

when i close a long position i have two prices displayed in the history:

Trading fees for 2.0 BTC @ 714.78 on BFX (0.1%) on wallet trading
Position #... closed @ 703.43 on wallet trading

Position was opened @ USD 711 and closed @ 714,78

Why is 703,43 displayed? I am grateful for the fee beeing calculated on a lower price than the trade happened, but does this make sense???

btw, heres a good explanation of some features of bitfinex margin trading

http://cryptorally.livejournal.com/3726.html?mode=reply#add_comment

hy!

got some thoughts on the new interface vs the old one (classic.bitfinex.com)

-all the elements that need to be clicked to slide open close again after a button is pressed and one has to constantly
re-open, i.e. options route to.. ; lending page loads, then one has to click click click just to see if funds are lent etc etc...

-interface doesnt work well on the android browser, scrolling on the page is messed up, everything is cluttered..

-you obviously use asynch jscript, so why has the page to refresh completely on so many actions?

-less information on the page, constant scrolling needed (gfx on top of the page - why?)

-whats the difference between "autolend" and "auto-renew"??

Bitfinex isn't a scam. I can personally vouch for it.

hy!
yesterday i switched my leverage options to a margin of 4:1.
Today the option has gone, only 2:1 is available.


ist the available margin dynamically altered according to some market parameters?
thx

hy unclesgrooge!

just looking at the api. the python examples posted there do not quite work:

https://community.bitfinex.com/showwiki.php?title=Sample+API+Code

also which description is right  (the one says use get, the other post):

https://www.bitfinex.com/pages/api

http://community.bitfinex.com/showwiki.php?title=Bitfinex+Documentation:Api

?

Thx

Just noticed you were in this thread. Nice to meet you

Have you noticed the discussion of the 3 wallet system? Have you ever considered changing it, or is it so deeply built into the Bitfinex software that you think changing it would be more trouble than it's worth?

I wish we could get away from the 3 wallet system though, I find it to be a pita more than useful.

A lot of the particularities of the interface stem from the "3 wallet" structure: The basic one is the exchange wallet, used for making simple buys of btc. These you own outright and can withdraw normally. The deposit wallet is for funds that you want to make available for other traders to borrow -- either USD or BTC. The margin wallet holds funds to back trades made with loans taken from other users' deposit wallets. This is the heart of the exchange, the flow of funds between deposit accounts and margin accounts stays internal to the bitfinex market. 

Yes, there's the lack of documentation / some things are not intuitive. This is not a "big" issue, but I bet it turns a lot of people off the site, which is too bad.

unclescrooge- There is too much crammed into one interface. Maybe it's good for advanced traders, but I bet it turns a lot of people off. Not sure how to completely fix it, but more thorough / clear documentation is a start.

Yes, and before I execute a trade, I want to know more clearly how much I am paying in commissions, how much will be locked for margin, etc.

Otherwise, really good site. Thank you!

Hello,

I am the founder of Bitfinex, so you may not be interested in my biased opinion

Anyway we are integrated in bitcoinity but not bitcoincharts. I can't say why.

There is historical rates for btc and USD available, but only by API at the moment: https://api.bitfinex.com/v1/lends/usd and https://api.bitfinex.com/v1/lends/btc

Wilfried, thanks for all the feedback, I stickied your post to see what I can enhance. There is a registration/licensing pending, actually a change in the organization of the platform will soon be announced. In fact, because we didn't announce anything is this regard doesn't mean we don't have any authorization (I don't decide the communication anymore )

As for charts, we have an alpha interface in progress, hope to get something released soon.

About the scam accusation, https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3409759

Thanks, let me know if you have any more questions

Raphael

Bitfinex is a scam.

I use bitfinex since months, so far it was reliable, btc/ltc withdrawals always where executed in the next hours after withdrawal requests. so far, i like it and trust it so much that 1/3 of my btc is in there. if bitfinex was more transparent in terms of clarity of the functions, i think it could be a huge platform - if you can trade leveraged, there is no sense in trading unleveraged unless youre a whale imho. in terms of registration/licensing as a financial service i have strong doubts if there is any registration pending...

Some points that I would like to discuss:

-I didnt yet manage to get access to the bitfinex forum (no invite code..). Mail to the site operator wasnt answered. Documentation is dismal - there are articles on the wiki, faq entries and some forum posts that you can google. every one of it contains only peaces of the whole explanation. for example the function of margin trade is not explained in a single article.

-When you go short using your tradable balance, right after the order was filled, it shows a huge positive p/l for some time until the p/l is adjusted to the market price. if you close that position during that time youre fucked.

-there sometimes is a lag between bitstamp prices shown on bitcoinwisdom and those on bitfinex. right now i.e. bitfinex shows 166,67, bitstamp just dropped to 165,15. some peaks/bottoms are not tradeable that way.

-I find it impossible to estimate costs of a trade beforehand, so my calculation before doing a trade is merely guessing..
What I do is i.e. if i go long i calculate the difference of the USD amount in the wallet to the amount before the trade, so i approximately know how much positive p/l i need to close the position at 0...

-I dont get why bitfinex-price and bitstamp-price is mixed in the order book. many times there is a good bitstamp-price, but a not so good bitfinex price in front of it, so the trade i want to make is blocked. many times one has to wait for the bitfinex orders to be filled to get the bitstamp price - i wonder if its just showing the order amount of bitfinex traders that acutally want the bitstamp price?

-I think p/l and order book is out of sync. after the order book refreshes the calculation of p/l is only done some time after that. so you get the p/l of the last order book refresh or so

-sometimes when closing an open position (button "close all") on the margin-trade-page, the site reloads into the exchange-page. beware not to press buy or sell right after that reload

-no bitfinex-price-charts - as there are no bitfinex-price charts, including bitfinex prices in the margin trade is completely senseless to me - i want to trade bitstamp only

-trailing-stop <1.5 price distance doesnt seem to work. if i enter a distance <1.5 the actual distance is anything but what i entered

-history is awful to calculate your gains/losses- there are three rows of +/- sums on USD and BTC and besides from just comparing wallets before/after a trade i cant caluculate anything with this reliably as it doesnt show WHY that position is noted (short,long etc). maybe its that i just hate book-keeping-way of doing calculations. also its useles as csv as everything is mixed up, you cant just sum up one table to know your overall gain/loss.

-the new interface (bitfinex.com) seems not to have a link to the history as on classic.bitfinex.com ?

-route order/hide order - no idea what that really means..

-on the margin trade page there is an order book. ok with that. below that there is a field "aks" with a triangle and a price and another field "Bid" with a triangle. Both showing a price. most of the time this price has nothing to do with the order book, so whats that about?

-"Your indicative rate" is shown as rate/365, on the lending page the rate is shown as rate per 365 days - not useful at all.

-what i would very much like to have is a function "trailing stop that decreases distance as long as p/l is growing". so one could enter a position with a trailing stop of i.e. 3. and as soon as the p/l grows, the distance gets decreased bit by bit, reaching zero, if a certain price is reached, though mutating the trailing stop into a stop limit. what do you think?

-if you see a price in bitstamp always wait for the next order-book refresh on bitfinex, its not really in sync, so if you make an order and if during the time until the order is placed, the order book refreshes you of course get the new price (or depending on order amount of course).

-comma is displayed as dot - ok, but would be nice to have a comma be a comma (maybe as an option: "european style values" ..) maybe its because values are calculated as float (definitely values are rounded in some tables and not rounded in others, quite annoying sometimes)

so long

Sorry, meant to say short ~.~

Concerning BOLD, looks like going rate is ~35-40% APR.  Is that standard for going long?

1) I do use Bitfinex. In my opinion it is very good, never had any problems with them in the past. Lending there probably has the best risk/reward payoff of any BTC investment, and its nice & cheap to long BTC there as well. Only word of warning is that there interest rates can be very misleading if you are borrowing directly from the leveraged trading page. What you should do is borrow money BEFORE, then trade with borrowed money, that way you can see what your rate is, rather than effectively telling Bitfinex to "get $x for me, no matter the rate" which is what you're doing if you're leveraged trading directly.

2) Its because they're pretty small/new. But they're hooked up to Bitstamp, and they're market is basically the same as bitstamp's, so just look at bitstamp's price/volume data and its basically equivalent.

3) I'd be intersted in that too, wondering if anybody has anything?

• Do you use bitfinex? What do you think?
• Why isn't their price data on sites like bitcoincharts? Is their price / volume data available? Why not?
• Are their historical interest rates for BTC and USD available? Would be very interesting to analyze.