Hi becoin,
Thanks for your questions.
What's wrong with their margin trading fees?
They've started their margin trading with 0.05% rollover fees per day for both long and short positions. Today they informed me there are changes effective immediately. XBT/EUR rollover fee for maintaining a position is now 0.01% per 4 hours. Aside from the fact that fees are outrageously high, it is for the first time I see charging rollover fees per hour. Is rollover fees per hour a common practice among bitcoin exchanges? What's next - rollover fees per minute?
It's actually pretty common in Forex to charge on intervals shorter than 24 hours. In the bitcoin world, Bitmex charges 0.015% per 8 hours.
We set the fees partly based on what it costs us for the funds, which are loaned to us, but also based on the risk that we take in offering margin trading, which is considerable. The current rate adds up to 0.06% per 24 hours, which is comparable to the old rate at 0.05% per 24 hours, but of course it's a bigger difference for positions held less than 24 hours. We think the rates are reasonable given our costs and the risks involved, but we always consider the feedback we get from clients. We will also monitor how the change in rates impacts the demand and adjust accordingly if demand weakens too much. Obviously if demand goes down then so does our risk, so it's a matter of finding the right balance in terms of having good demand but also covering our costs and risks.
Also, we recently lowered our trade fees by quite a lot, so for many people the increase in margin fees is more than made up for by the decrease in trade fees, especially for those who usually provide liquidity (make) rather than take liquidity.
Are BTC and EUR financing both equally available? Not at all. EUR funds are much easier to find at nearly zero interest rate while BTC funding is more difficult to secure, especially long term, resulting in considerably higher interest rate. Applying same rollover fees for both longs and shorts means you stimulate BTC/EUR shorts and punish BTC/EUR longs.
Why would a bitcoin exchange side with bitcoin enemies?
Actually, in our experience, it's much easier to find BTC loans than it is to find fiat loans. And the same has traditionally been true on Bitfinex. If you look at the 90 day average swap rates here
https://www.bitfinex.com/pages/statsyou'll see that the average rate for USD is over 3x the rate for BTC. But right now the rate for BTC is a little bit higher than the rate for USD, which is unusual. But the difference isn't very large and I don't see how we are punishing the BTC longs.
I hope that addresses your concerns. Thanks again for your feedback.