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Topic: [OFFICIAL]Bitfinex.com first Bitcoin P2P lending platform for leverage trading - page 123. (Read 723903 times)

full member
Activity: 136
Merit: 100
Autorenew swaps, when executed, and in spite of proper selecting the relevant checkbox, do NOT send confirmation email.
NOR such swap, when it closes, will send the notification email.

I've noticed something similar with swaps that are partially paid back - I have the Notify option turned on throughout, and it doesn't turn itself off for the remainder after a partial pay-back, but I've had instances of someone paying a swap off in $0.30 increments over the course of a day and received only one email (for the first increment).
full member
Activity: 186
Merit: 100
I'm not getting replies to my emails to support, lately.

That makes me uncomfortable: as a matter of fact, even if those emails were about low priority issues, what if I have a high priority issue?

This is the last but one email I sent, about a bug:

Autorenew swaps, when executed, and in spite of proper selecting the relevant checkbox, do NOT send confirmation email.
NOR such swap, when it closes, will send the notification email.
These two bugs have been introduced weeks ago (before, the system behaved correctly, sending the relevant emails).

And in the last one email, as a feedback, I suggested some features to be implemented, i.e.

1. Chat support
2. Prompt reply to customer emails
3. Prompt solution to bugs
4. Accept SEPA deposits
5. Price to be shown with two digits (instead of one only) after the dot (e.g. in Exchange tab)

Hopefully someone by the company will address my concerns, here?
sr. member
Activity: 248
Merit: 251
mjr
full member
Activity: 194
Merit: 100
Hello, let's say i have 10k. I want to place a margin buy at 210 (in case of flash crash) and margin sell at let's say 300. How to do that?

For the margin buy, that is standard, you would just place a buy order at 210. If the other order is only meant to be placed if the first one is placed, you will probably need to write a bot, or simply place it when you get notified of your order getting filled.

Can you clarify the scenario? This is what i imagine...

1. You place an order to buy 10k worth of bitcoin at 210
2. The order gets filled
3. You then place a sell at 300 to flatten the position

Right now, you would have to wait to be notified of the first order being filled, then you could place another order to sell at 300
member
Activity: 65
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Bitfinex Prepares for Bitcoin Trading Growth with New Back-End

http://www.coindesk.com/bitfinex-alphapoint-integration/

sr. member
Activity: 248
Merit: 251
Hello, let's say i have 10k. I want to place a margin buy at 210 (in case of flash crash) and margin sell at let's say 300. How to do that?
full member
Activity: 148
Merit: 100
Regarding FRR. I like the delta option, provided it creates fixed rates (ie. they move only on the offer book). Computing variable frr+delta offers into frr could have funny effects.  

FRR isn't efficient because swap market is inefficient. Swap market is inefficient because it's impossible to speculate that the interest rate is going up. If I have a crystal ball that tells me rates are going up tomorrow, how can I act on that? I can't, at best I can stop lending and wait. Thus market stays inefficient. It's unrelated to the FRR, thus there's no fix to the FRR that can make it really better.

If I think rates are going down this works ok already.  

Possible solution:
Allow to reoffer borrowed (unused) swap, provided the swap time allows it (so if I got a 30 day swap I can lend it for 29 days).
In the case that the difference between rates is negative (ie. I borrowed swap for 30 days at 0.1%, I offer at 0.09% for 2 days) lock the difference for the whole maximum period. In addition to speculators who expect to make the difference later, this allows traders to reserve good (in their opinion) long term rates cheaper, at the additional cost of being locked for 2 days max (or other period they choose).  

This should decrease rates volatility, especially 1% spikes. At very high rates some traders might even close their longs to relend their swaps.  
mjr
full member
Activity: 194
Merit: 100
By the way, guys, the news was finally announced. I know that I told you we were working on something, but we can finally get your opinion. We are upgrading our backend by partnering with AlphaPoint.

Had to look up who AlphaPoint are... exciting stuff.

Does a backend upgrade mean we can finally be free of the nagging concern that some bug from the old Bitcoinica code might come to light and wreck shit?

Also, is it safe to assume that everything will still be running on Bitfinex' own servers under only their own control? Outsourcing the hosting of it to another company would seem like a mad risk to take.

Yes, that article was a little unclear on this point, but we are partnering with them to specifically handle the matching engine part of the system. Our entire accounts system will remain as it is. We still have multisig cold storage, and we will control the coins.

Our code, to address another comment, has nothing in common with the Bitcoinica code currently, but if this finally puts that issue to bed, so much the better.

It is mainly going to address two things:
1. Scalability - We will be able to process around a million orders per second, and this will reduce lag, and allow us to keep growing
2. Features - We will finally be able to start offering a bunch of new methods to access our system, such as FIX and websockets, as well as new features. We are also exploring offering new currency pairs. Which ones would most interest you guys?

I was in New York, working with the guys from AlphaPoint, and I really like them. They build good software, and they are being used on a lot of other smaller exchanges. So, mainly if I am not here, I am working on that upgrade.

Another interesting question was about alt coins? I, personally, am very much a bitcoin only person, but what do you guys think?
member
Activity: 77
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any plans to remove Darkcoin? [...]

[...] It's even worse considering that they only make 0.1% per trade on LTC and DRK. That comes out to $3,417.73 income in the last 30 days for Litecoin, and (drum roll) $253.01 for Darkcoin. I wonder if they've broken even yet on the cost of integrating it.

That is a very interesting statistic...I will look into this, although, it really doesn't hurt anyone to keep it now that it is here.

It does increase the complexity of your internal systems a little bit, and clutters up the UI. Those are definitely just minor drawbacks though. Mainly I think dabbling in altcoins looks unprofessional. They're all doomed in the long run, so integrating them is just a (apparently failed) money grab.
full member
Activity: 136
Merit: 100
By the way, guys, the news was finally announced. I know that I told you we were working on something, but we can finally get your opinion. We are upgrading our backend by partnering with AlphaPoint.

Had to look up who AlphaPoint are... exciting stuff.

Does a backend upgrade mean we can finally be free of the nagging concern that some bug from the old Bitcoinica code might come to light and wreck shit?

Also, is it safe to assume that everything will still be running on Bitfinex' own servers under only their own control? Outsourcing the hosting of it to another company would seem like a mad risk to take.
mjr
full member
Activity: 194
Merit: 100
By the way, guys, the news was finally announced. I know that I told you we were working on something, but we can finally get your opinion. We are upgrading our backend by partnering with AlphaPoint. We are doing this in the most cautious way possible, and I am actually usually working on this project, because it is one of our biggest priorities. Just wanted to give you guys a heads up, this upgrade is going to make a lot of the requested features possible, as well as make trades dramatically faster.
mjr
full member
Activity: 194
Merit: 100
any plans to remove Darkcoin? I think that after a few months everyone can see
that this coin is nothing special and the trading volume is really, really low on bitfinex.

Get rid of this coin and concentrate on more interesting products.

Wow, it is pretty bad:

Volume on the last 30 days

  • 847490.71 BTC = $286,417,960.35 = 98.73% of total volume
  • 912369.1 LTC = $3,417,734.65 = 1.18% of total volume
  • 140645.77 DRK = $253,021.74 = 0.09% of total volume

It's even worse considering that they only make 0.1% per trade on LTC and DRK. That comes out to $3,417.73 income in the last 30 days for Litecoin, and (drum roll) $253.01 for Darkcoin. I wonder if they've broken even yet on the cost of integrating it.


That is a very interesting statistic...I will look into this, although, it really doesn't hurt anyone to keep it now that it is here.
newbie
Activity: 2
Merit: 0
Does anyone know how exactly Tradable Balance is being calculated, considering latest changes in leveraging?
full member
Activity: 124
Merit: 100
The latest price value () in the browser titlebar has disappeared.
I use http://pwmt.org/projects/jumanji/ based on libwebkit.
It used to work just fine just a few days ago.
I've had the same issue with uzbl sometime ago.
member
Activity: 77
Merit: 13
any plans to remove Darkcoin? I think that after a few months everyone can see
that this coin is nothing special and the trading volume is really, really low on bitfinex.

Get rid of this coin and concentrate on more interesting products.

Wow, it is pretty bad:

Volume on the last 30 days

  • 847490.71 BTC = $286,417,960.35 = 98.73% of total volume
  • 912369.1 LTC = $3,417,734.65 = 1.18% of total volume
  • 140645.77 DRK = $253,021.74 = 0.09% of total volume

It's even worse considering that they only make 0.1% per trade on LTC and DRK. That comes out to $3,417.73 income in the last 30 days for Litecoin, and (drum roll) $253.01 for Darkcoin. I wonder if they've broken even yet on the cost of integrating it.
full member
Activity: 154
Merit: 100
any plans to remove Darkcoin? I think that after a few months everyone can see
that this coin is nothing special and the trading volume is really, really low on bitfinex.

Get rid of this coin and concentrate on more interesting products.

full member
Activity: 136
Merit: 100
That "Just Not Happening™" is what mjr's "guidelines" have left us at but, and I hope I didn't/don't say too much, Raphael seems to be pushing into the direction of getting rid of the FRR which, as a coder, I can completely understand as it'd be the simplest modification technologically but with a huge impact otherwise.
Well that's (cautiously) good news. All this speculation on how to fix it is ending up feeling like trying to put a bandaid on a heart attack...

your somewhat identical) idea of SwapLoad-based rates

I think you have the wrong guy for the SwapLoad thing; my suggestion was to have the rate set itself by reference to trigger events - an hourly check of whether offers taken or offers placed is larger to decide the direction of a small adjustment, and occasional (at most daily) major adjustments if the FRR wall is exhausted or we see FRR swaps fall to a negligible share of swaps taken.
member
Activity: 83
Merit: 10
so yes, simply removing it still sounds like one of the best ideas floating around.

How did Raphael respond to the idea? Is this a possibility being seriously considered? I've been getting the impression that removing the FRR was Just Not Happening™

That "Just Not Happening™" is what mjr's "guidelines" have left us at but, and I hope I didn't/don't say too much, Raphael seems to be pushing into the direction of getting rid of the FRR which, as a coder, I can completely understand as it'd be the simplest modification technologically but with a huge impact otherwise.

Quote
A poll each user can change at will that gets averaged maybe? Traders would pick the lower rates, lenders the higher ones, like a one-sided market basically.

I see no incentive to vote honestly unless your vote controls (for lenders) whether your swaps are taken and (for traders) whether you're able to get swaps (which would seem to logically reduce back to a simple supply/demand market with no FRR present). If everyone just picks a number and then the rate is the average of those numbers and everyone gets that rate... then all the lenders will type in "1000000%" and all the traders will type in "0%" (in the same way that when sites show 'average review scores' you can maximise your impact by only ever voting for "0/10" or "10/10") and it will all just amount to "Which group contains more people?"

tl;dr : Any solution based around voting has to be robust against people trying to game the system, not to mention robust against people registering dozens (or thousands) of sock puppet accounts to vote for their side.

I was basing this on my (and your somewhat identical) idea of SwapLoad-based rates so yes, it would "logically reduce back to a simple supply/demand market" but not "with no FRR present". It would be a market with only the FRR present (calculated using the average of the votes (NominalSwapRate) times the factor between swap offer and demand (SwapLoad).

I'm under the impression people are switching from trader to lender every now and then so defining the nominal rate using a poll should still maintain some volatility, probably even raise it to the current system. It boils down to your "Which group contains more people", yes, but isn't that some sort of market as well?

And sure the poll shouldn't allow votes of 100000%, it should be limited to a range from 0 to like 5% or so, everything above would be stealing from the traders. Yes, still some magic number involved but I think here's a sensible place to use one.

Oh and the sockpuppet-problem is easily solved by only letting verified accounts vote.

Quote
simply removing the FRR-option entirely for lenders and merely leaving it as a maximum for swap takers (traders on auto-pilot) and as an indicator on the swap- and stats-page?

Now that is interesting. Am I reading this one correctly; kill the FRR as an actual lending rate, but give traders who want to go full-auto a tickbox saying "Only take swaps that are at a below-average rate"? That could be an effective way to soften (but not eliminate) the downward pressure exerted by the FRR - there would be an incentive to place offers below the calculated rate to gain access to a larger pool of traders willing to take your swap, but not so overwhelming an incentive as "There are 3 million dollars in the way, your swap will never be taken unless you put it below this rate".

That said, it doesn't really offer anything as a solution for the auto-lenders. They're still kinda stuck... but as an active lender I don't have much good will towards that group; their interests are mildly opposed to mine so of course I'm going to advocate for "Fuck those guys" as a plan.

You got that right. Auto-lenders would somewhat die out under those conditions but they're the guys that brought us the FRR-problem in the first place so... well "Fuck those guys" fits perfectly Wink
full member
Activity: 144
Merit: 100
Any thoughts on this?
Here is another suggestion to modify the function of FRR:

- FRR is calculated based on currently taken swaps (using whatever formula you think is best) and this value is known to the system at any time.
- Users can place offers at specified by them rate. (we have this one already)
- NEW: Users can set placement of offers automatically (if/when they have funds on their deposit account) at the rate EQUAL to the value of current FRR (perhaps +/- Delta). Note that this would be still a fixed rate offer placement, so there will be no swaps having truly "floating rate" in the system at all (YET, one still will be able to set their lending on "autopilot" and stay "with the market" at the same time)

The way I see it, such proposal is kind of a compromise between complete elimination of FRR function (because the result will be - no floating rate offers in the system, therefore there should be no very thin and very tall "walls" on the order book) and at the same time the system would still HAVE this feature "in play" as it would heavily rely on the current FRR value for "automatic" offer placements.
mjr
full member
Activity: 194
Merit: 100
Had a bit of a discussion with Raphael concerning the FRR and thought I could share my parts of it here:

----
Basing it on volatility would still require some sort of magic number for a base rate, sure I see how that can't be the final or most elegant answer but it's worth considering nonetheless. I also see an apparent floor forming in the swap-market, it's been flat for almost all of 2014 but so was Bitcoin, well more or less. From that perspective there seems to be no problem left to be solved indeed. But then again: whether it's 0.0001% or 0.05%, the FRR is still the artificially fabricated valley we constantly end up in, so yes, simply removing it still sounds like one of the best ideas floating around.
 
But then again, right now the swap-market is designed as a simple "offer and demand"-market but the swap-market is used as "input to some third-party market" so this whole thing can't be as simple as offer and demand, imho it needs some feedback, a sort of synchronization to the market in which it's being used in. Now volatility is just one index one may base this on, volume-weighted volatility or some other crazy construct may be worth an Excel-sheet as well. Apart from that, not too much data to work with and no construct would solve that lingering magic number issue either so this is either a dead-end or you (and us) surrender to the fact that there needs to be some magic number in there somewhere.
 
Would that be so bad after all? Not that I want to convince you of my half-baked idea but banks also pull numbers out of their bottoms for their savings-accounts. Ok, there are some complex calculations behind these but I don't see how that would apply to the swaps as its all being paid by the traders in the first place so basically any number (or a staggered set of numbers depending on the amount) above a standard savings account would be an acceptable one, at least from my point of view. But again, nope, I don't consider this a perfect solution or a free market. If only there were a way to fix any meaningful base-rate. A poll each user can change at will that gets averaged maybe? Traders would pick the lower rates, lenders the higher ones, like a one-sided market basically.
 
Ok, zooming out a bit: the only times it gets frustrating in the swap-market is when you're stuck on FRR or some low rate when there's a rally or when your 1.5% gets closed after 10 minutes. And for traders it gets frustrating when they can't open new positions late in a rally because there are no cheap swaps left. Less of a problem for traders as they can switch swaps at will later whereas lenders won't profit a bit from larger moves in the trade-markets while stuck on FRR or other low fixed rates from a few hours ago. [yes, yes, I'm repeating myself in here]
 
Then what about a combination of two "solutions" that have already been talked about in the forum? Allow lenders to cancel provided swaps early given both parties agree to it (send the lender an email + something like the "Notify"-link for "Approve premature closing of swap") + simply removing the FRR-option entirely for lenders and merely leaving it as a maximum for swap takers (traders on auto-pilot) and as an indicator on the swap- and stats-page?
----

To conclude, like someone did in earlier days: Discuss!

This reminds me of LIBOR, and we all know how that turned out...way too easy to game.

I think the easiest way to find out the correct number is to basically have people vote with their wallets. Markets are meant to be a race to the bottom. What is the absolute minimum that you would offer a swap for? Does someone else want to settle for less? One issue is that it is somewhat one-sided, because there is a pretty high maximum over which traders can't automatically go, but up till that point, a certain portion of them won't even check the rate before opening a position. So, you have an unknown amount of demand, and a lot of people trying to get their swaps taken. It is naturally going to be a competition among people to try and offer the lowest rates.

I have one idea, and I am still thinking it through...I'll let you guys know when I'm ready to share.
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