Topic: [OFFICIAL]Bitfinex.com first Bitcoin P2P lending platform for leverage trading - page 111. (Read 723903 times)

"Free market". You use that word yet I don't think that you actually understand what it means. How is "welcome to the free market" supposed to counter my criticism? Are you actually implying that every participant in this market acts rationally and that the design of a market doesn't have a huge influence on its behavior and that Bitfinex as the creator of this market can't change it as they please? I'm not happy with these rates and I'm even more unhappy with the way these rates are created by the stupid FRR feature which BFX has already announced to change yet I still lend out money because this situation is a classic dilemma. What now? What does this have to do with "free market"? Realise that the "free market" is a theoretical concept which has no relevance to this discussion. The maximum swap rate is 7%. For this reason alone this is technically not a free market......

Then don't lend.  If 25M worth of people weren't happy with these rates they wouldn't lend out at it.  Welcome to the free market.

Oh cmon, it seems like BFX is really in no hurry to change anything about the fuckin FRR

we're sitting at nearly 25 m in open swaps, the great wall of low interest was sieged multiple times, almost a million taken off in the last 24 hours and now we are going back down again. It's a joke. There is no reason why this wall of doom has to sit where it's sitting now I hope some people can get that into their brain as fast as possible. The depth of the book is pathetic after the wall. Not even 100k from 0.0709 to 0.121 because nobody in their right mind puts offers above a 2,5 m offer wall.

We've climbed from 23 to 25 m in the last 5 days and the rate went from 0.0715 to 0.0709. It just deoesn't care.
BFX, fix your shit, it's getting stupid. Lots of volatility, lots volume and swap demand and the swap "price" is inelastic as fuck....

Thanks, but I actually just got this to work by using 'BTC' or 'LTC' (upper case). The reason I was confused was when you check existing offers in the lendbook, you get back 'btc' and 'ltc'.

Try btcusd or ltcusd

To answer my own question, I figured this problem out and it was that I was doing the call as a GET instead of a POST by mistake. Trying it as a POST works. However, I've encountered another issue. I can cancel existing offers just fine, but I can't create new offers. No matter what rate, amount, or direction (lend or loan) I've tried I get back the error message:

{'message': 'This currency can not be used in swaps'}

I get this with with either 'btc' or 'ltc' as the specified currency. Can't find anything about the error message anywhere online.

I'm trying to use the API, and things were going smoothly at first with authentication and retrieving my balances. But now when I try to call the offer/cancel, offer/new, or offer/status I'm getting a page not found error. Has anyone else encountered this?

For example, even if I go in my browser to https://api.bitfinex.com/v1/offers I get a JSON response saying the correct headers weren't sent. But if I go to https://api.bitfinex.com/v1/offer/new I get a page not found error.

That is the formula I used basically, except without the efficiency calculations since that is my actual average return rate after fees, and counting for efficiency, not just what I lend out at.  If you want more details on how I got this number, check here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.9607994

Edit:  oh, just realized I was double calculating the BFX fees though.  original post updated with new values. much more pronounced difference when you don't double the BFX fee  

I agree with your conclusion, but as interests are paid daily the correct formula for balance after x years would be

f = (1+RATEPERDAY/100)^(365*YEARS*EFFICIENCY)*INITALBALANCE=

with EFFICIENCY = the percentage of time you expect your offers to be taken as opposed to waiting to be taken.

So the difference is even more pronounced.
Notice the way the funcion blows up for higher rates, gotta love exponentials

I'm not saying bag holding is a good or a bad thing, but I think people sometimes don't realize how high BTC is going to have to climb to beat the other investments you can do in this space.  Based on my last years average return of 0.1026% on USD margin, lets look at some numbers:

Starting with $370 (current price as of posting this) and lending on Margin

On                          You'd Have
Dec 31st, 2014           $ 380.39
Dec 31st, 2015           $ 553.07
Dec 31st, 2016           $ 804.98
Dec 31st, 2017           $ 1,170.41
Dec 31st, 2018           $ 1,701.74
Dec 31st, 2019           $ 2,474.28
Dec 31st, 2020           $ 3,601.23


Whereas, my BTC lend average return was around 0.0018% so:

On                          You'd Have
Dec 31st, 2014           BTC1.00049
Dec 31st, 2015           BTC1.00708
Dec 31st, 2016           BTC1.01374
Dec 31st, 2017           BTC1.02042
Dec 31st, 2018           BTC1.02715
Dec 31st, 2019           BTC1.03392
Dec 31st, 2020           BTC1.04075

So, to be clear, you really have to believe that BTC is going ' To the moon!!! ┗(°0°)┛ ', if you think its going to beat converting the coins to USD and lending that way.  On Dec 31st 2020, they'd have to be worth more than $3,460.23 to actually make them a better investment (assuming interest averages hold steady for that long).



Edit:  Table formatting on this board....  ugh  

Edit2:  Screw tables, I'll just use spaces....

Edit 3: updated numbers because of double fee calculation error, made the difference even more pronunced.... 

yes thats true but  look at this top three offer

14.94    14.94    0.002%   2 - 30   2
15.61    0.67            0.0052%   3            1
29.82    14.21    0.0053%   2 - 30   9

and see the ask yield difference

EDIT : 0.002 to 0.0052

You are forgetting that many people don't have US$ to lend to others, but they have a unused BTC and don't want to take the risk of shorting them themselves. It's unimportant if you and other people help drive the BTC price to $200 in the short run, if in a long run you get more BTC then you initially started with. The preposition is that BTC will be one day worth tens of thousands of dollars or even more, and the only important thing is how many BTC you will have in that moment, it's unimportant if that moment will be in the year 2015, 2016, or 2020. Smart game strategy is to increase your BTC stack even if that means price goes temporarily to $10, as long as you believe that it is just temporary. IMHO it's much more logical the opposite of you are proposing, if you have BTC lend them to others so they can take the risk and short them, if you have US$ don't lend them buy new BTC stack instead.

I think this is pretty much right on, and its a shame too.  Its part of the reason the bitcoin market is so broken.  People trade it on emotion more so than anything else I've ever dealt with financially, and it seems to have attracted a huge number of tech savvy people, with little or no trading sense, but lots of disposable income that they don't mind risking trying to build up something they believe in.  While thats admirable, it also leads to a broken market that will struggle to gain mainstream acceptance.



This is without a doubt true.  Its so cheap to short on margin that I have no qualms about holding for the full 30 days if i think there's a chance the price is heading down.  Even the smallest of price moves will cover the tiny interest payments that you end up making.  By far the best short terms gains are to be had in shorting, not longing.

(Of course, I'm saying this as someone who makes most of my income by lending USD on margin, so please, keep taking long positions everyone.  Yey bitcoin! To the Moon!    )

How does that make any sense.  If I don't think mining is worth it now how is it relevant if BTC goes up to $10,000 a coin.  If not going to ROI in BTC I would be better off just buying the BTC directly and letting it go to $10,000 a coin than investing in mining and getting less BTC when it goes to $10,000 BTC.

What you're suggesting is to buy a $5 shovel that will get you $4 worth of dirt today then when dirt doubles I have $8 and made money, but why not just buy $5 worth of dirt today to start and have $10 later.

I agree that rates on BTC swaps are typically very low, and I have always found that weird, but it makes sense. Demand for shorting bitcoin is very low. I think it is mainly due to the fact that those who use bitcoin and have gone as far as to open an account to trade it are usually by that point "believers" in bitcoin. They are bullish, if they weren't, they would have just ignored bitcoin, and not started trading it. It is really weird though, because I am a "true believer" in bitcoin, and I think it will eventually be very valuable as more people see what an improvement it is on the current system, HOWEVER, thinking that its 5-10 year outlook is very bright has literally almost no bearing on where I see prices going within the next 30 days. So, since the max term of a swap is 30 days, it is very possible, and sometimes very probable that prices can go down over the short term, which is why I have always been surprised in the lack of interest in the shorting market. I think this is partly due to what I mentioned above, most people don't want to "root against bitcoin", but also, I think in general, shorting is less intuitive than going long, when in fact, a correctly timed short results in you ending up with MORE bitcoin, while going long ends up with you getting more dollars...

Anyway, one thing that I usually try to point out to people, is that people don't invest in an asset based on its price today, but rather on what they think its price WILL be. So, while I never mined (besides some early CPU mining back in the day), people who say "It is not worth it to mine" fail to realize that given the price NOW it might not be worthwhile, but if you think that in the future the price will be much higher, you can make a case for why mining is a worthwhile investment. The same can be true of offering BTC swaps. While I may not make much NOW, I am actually accruing more of a finite pool of assets. So, while receiving the tiny returns currently offered now is not very appealing given today's prices, let's imagine that bitcoin becomes worth $10,000 a coin at some point in the future. All of a sudden having 1.001 bitcoin instead of 1 bitcoin becomes actually worthwhile. When you take into account the ability to compound over long periods of time, and if you have a long term perspective, with a "buy and hold" mentality, and think that bitcoin will be worth much more in 5-10 years, BTC swaps COULD be (again, this is based on YOUR outlook, and YOUR goals) a very good idea...I think it might be one of the better ways to try and accumulate a larger position in BTC terms without as much variability as a trading strategy...

That being said, I think it also means that there is a strong case for short term shorting in that it is MUCH less costly to go short than it is to go long...if you figure the price will go up and down, you would make more by trading the downswings than by trading the upswings since the cost of your position, fees being equal, will be defined by the cost of the swaps (again, assuming that prices swing up and down, or in other words, holding the viability of your trading strategy to be equal).

So, these are just some of my thoughts, and its not meant to be advice, so feel free to comment below...

honestly 0.002% swap is nonsensical,  in a bull market i can understand that rates, but at bear market i rather keep my coin in cold storage or sold it and collect usd interest. 

BTC lending is typically only profitable in a very strong bear market. In which case the interest you are getting is a tiny fraction of what you're losing in value.

im sure there was a time where offering btc swap have better yield than 0.01% but now i see some idiot ppl offering btc swap for 0.002 % far too often these days for 30 days !!! cmon ppl if they really want ther  coin to worth so much less for that yield, why dont they sell btc and offer swap in usd and get a bonus of better yield than a bank deposit

BTC swaps have never really been worthwhile.  USD swaps are the only way to actually make money lending.  BTC and LTC are usually so low I didn't even spend the time to write them into my bot....

I just started offering BTC swaps for the past week. Seems hardly worth it with the FRR at 0.0055% daily. For those of you who have done this for a while, has there historically ever been a time when doing this has been much more profitable?