Quote from: Blitz on June 27, 2014, 03:02:42 PM

Quote from: elebit on June 27, 2014, 10:01:16 AM

Perhaps you are looking for something more sinister here, but from that graph it seems to me that the likeliest explanation of the ballooning swaps on Finex is simply that they have gained a lot of users since December. I don't know for how long they have existed but I didn't actually try trading there until last winter, as part of me moving away from MtGox, and I suspect that may be true for a lot of other users as well. I think you would find that everything from Kraken to Huobi gained a lot of users during that time period.

I disagree that USD swaps balloons more than BTC swaps in general in your graph. If you cut out June the trend is not nearly as pronounced. In fact, both swap pairs follow an upwards trajectory with two major exceptions: people were in general very bearish in February (omg! look at those slopes!), and people are very bullish in June. You can also see the formation of a bullish trend in January which later falls apart spectacularly, and I think we all know why that was.

The BTC swaps are only one piece of evidence for what I believe to be the fact that Bitfinex hasn't grown by a factor of 9 since December. Here's something much better: http://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/6m/USD?c=e&t=a&volume_unit=btc I would say it grew by a factor of 2-3, a moving average would visualize this better.

Quote from: urwhatuknow on June 27, 2014, 02:35:05 PM

Guys

Since when so called "moderators" are starting FUD threads?

Cui prodest?

Ask yourself this simple question and if your IQ is not lower than your shoe size you'll come up with the right conclusion.

Have a good day and a great weekend

Giancarlo
Bitfinex Team

I was excited when I saw you had come to post, yet you only leave an ad hominem attack without contributing to the topic, which is disappointing. Tell me, had it been the opposite ie BTC shorts piling on for months to alltime highs and me pointing it out, would you have said the same? I'm not intimately familiar with Bitfinex, so it's possible that some nuances are eluding me.

It's not an ad hominem attack, it's just a simple observation.
I see from your profile that you are the moderator of this section and this means you have to be moderate.
If you were a provocateur ( there are so many on bitcointalk) I wouldn't even have blinked.

Bitfinex is currently the no.1 platform for volume on the BTC/USD pair, taken away Chinese platforms that run on a 0% commission basis and therefore can't be trusted for their volume.

I believe our platform is financially, technologically and managerially superior and deserve to be there.
We came to this position with almost zero media exposure, we decline every interview request, conference intervention or any other type of advertisement.
It's pure word of mouth and customer service.

To take a simple parameter ( swap amount to BTC price ratio) and to extrapolate a theory to explain we are at risk was in my opinion not very "moderate" by you.

Bitfinex has been growing tremendously in the last months and the amount of swaps is only one of the various parameters that should be taken into consideration.
As usual, time will tell who is right and who is wrong.

I believe BTC is getting into a more mature phase and if our customers believe that BTC is on the verge of another big leap ahead there is not much we can do about it.

By the way, if you were more familiar with our platform ( by your own admission you are not) you would know that we recently decreased max leverage from 5 to 2.5 and we believe this is reducing risk in a considerable way.

I might not be the best PR guy in town ( this is a fact ), but I will be more than glad to reply to any specific question you might come up with.

Thanks a lot and have a great weekend.

Giancarlo
Bitfinex Team