I'd just like to point out that if we did not have stopped the trading engine, the cascading effect of liquidations would have been terrible (just look at the charts already).
So we DID make the right choice in halting the trading engine to avoid this situation.
One day the Bitcoin market will become mature enough to support this level of volume, right now it isn't;
THanks for your comprehension
Raphael
So why didn't Bitstamp go down? It was up the entire time that you "halted" trading (without warning).
It's not the Bitcoin market that isn't "mature" enough...it is Bitfinex that is immature.
Bitstamp is not a margin trading website, they don't have liquidations /margin calls, and don't care if the price goes to 0 because they don't lose anything.
On Bitfinex on the other hand, there are leveraged positions, and liquidations triggered can and have a cascading effect on a very volatile market, and if there is not enough volume to support it, we CAN take the price to 0 and lose millions of lenders money
Halting the trading engine is maybe annoying, but it's the right thing to do (and I must say it happens on all sort of market).
Thank you
Raphael
How do lenders lose money if the people they are lending to's position automatically closes BEFORE they can no longer repay the lender?