Would you guys comment on bitfinex please? Seems like in a bearish state-of-mind, shorting would be a useful tool.
What do you want to be commented on?
The exchange is run by one very friendly, extremely competent engineer, and one asshat (who unfortunately is in charge of their PR).
They have lots of potential, but their biggest problem is reliability: if you plan on trading large-ish amount, I'd recommend trading on bitstamp (their "attached" exchange) directly.
Who is the asshat? Are you talking about Raphael? Because, except on one occasion, I have found him to be very helpful and responsive if not a shade clueless.
Raphael is the, allow me to quote myself, "very friendly, extremely competent engineer". I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader who the asshat is
Would you guys comment on bitfinex please...
What do you want to be commented on?
The exchange is run by one very friendly, extremely competent engineer, and one asshat (who unfortunately is in charge of their PR).
They have lots of potential, but their biggest problem is reliability: if you plan on trading large-ish amount, I'd recommend trading on bitstamp (their "attached" exchange) directly.
Who is the asshat? Are you talking about Raphael? Because, except on one occasion, I have found him to be very helpful and responsive if not a shade clueless.
Thank you guys-- yes, Oda, that helps. Mostly I was wondering about reliability, so I'm still concerned about it. However, it 'sounds' like they are the most reliable exchange that allows shorting (I didn't think Bitstamp does, idk).
And, I imagine that under a couple of hundred coins (not saying) is not large-ish. Whaddya think?
Again, thanks to both of you. :-)
Reliability issues, as I've encountered them, include the ability to use leveraged trading (which has a habit of "breaking" when things move fast, i.e. during a crash) ("breaking" meaning for example, that they have in the past turned it off entirely when they thought markets were overheating -- a huge fauxpas, IMO), and perhaps more importantly, their link to Bitstamp can be problematic: during a rally it happens regularly that they run out of USD on Bitstamp... they're aware of it, they regularly send fresh money there, I'm not accusing them of being amateurs... I just have to point that it is a fact that, regularly, trades can't be executed on Bitstamp when the market moves fast (up, usually).
My recommendation would be: if you have relatively *little* capital, trade on Bitfinex. The ability to use leveraged trading can be helpful then, if you know what you're doing (if you don't, you'll be bankrupt soon.)
If you trade amounts in the range of 100 BTC upwards, I would personally recommend Bitstamp. You lose the ability to use leverage, but then again, slippage is already bas as it is with larger trades, so unless you really *want* to see your order eating through the entire order book, you don't want to use leverage anyway.
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