Look at the currency setting on top -- it's set to Thai Baht (instead of USD for example), which has the same currency symbol as BTC. Take a look at the column titled "Bitcoins" and everything is fine again

It doesn't matter who finds it acceptable or not -- loan rates are determined by a market, and there's very little demand for opening new longs. Apparently there are enough people who prefer to offer their USD at these low rates over pulling the USD out of BFX.

Many people on Tradingview chat have the same problem with 2FA, just now when price seems to be breaking out Fortunately I was still logged in

For those experiencing the problem a simple sync of the 2FA time didn't help.

Agree about the tree shaking. Doing this very close to the trendlines probably supports their cause to make people more willing to sell... Bitcoin has a history of fakeouts, so in my books this isn't a clear break yet, especially as on huobi the support line still looks more or less intact.

spooderman, I just wanted to say thank you for sharing this story with us. I think it's great to see that he was showing interest at all and he had even heard of Bitcoin already! This shows how far we've come already, although there's still plenty of room for real adoption. I absolutely agree that older people often may not care about new technology, but are still lovely and in no way deserve being insulted for it.

What? I thought they offer up to 3x on MT4... at least a couple of months ago they did when I tried it...

Source for BFX: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=229438.3960

It's a bit hidden in their examples, but they're clear in their answer to my request about it.

To my surprise, the feedback about 2.5x / 1.5x in that thread is mostly positive, apparently mostly lenders who are getting increasingly worried in the current situation.

In general I agree that their changes make sense, but I don't like the reduction in leverage. In November 2013 I could still take 4x leverage on BFX!

You can't be serious! What you're implicitly saying is that the BFX team wasn't smart enough to notice this earlier!? I think they are doing a very good job and they're fully capable of understanding the consequences of previously allowing this. I assume they know why they're taking this decision now (and that they were fully aware of the previous leverage), which still doesn't mean I like it for my trading profile.


I don't want insane leverage, especially not on a platform with that large a spread. But with a proper risk management you can safely handle the bfx leverage as it currently is, and even the 4:1 they used to have (even in parts of the November bubble bull run, believe it or not!), if you tread cautiously. It isn't my fault that some traders don't practice a proper risk management and don't stop bad trades early. I understand that BFX wants/has to play safe, but I personally would prefer more leverage.

Hi Giancarlo,

Thanks for your reply. Even as a trader I agree that the safety of the lenders should be of highest concern.

It's just  disappointing for me as I've learned to be really cautious and get into leveraged positions slowly and with tight stops as to keep my potential losses very low.

I generally like your platform and I really appreciate the way you're trying to implement feature suggestions by users and show that you care... And you've improved a lot in the last year at communicating technical changes/maintenance clearly and in time. But this is the point for me to take a new look at what other exchanges have to offer...

So that means, among many changes that make sense to me, you're further reducing the effective leverage for going long by 1? So, in the "old" way of counting leverage down from 2.5:1 to 1.5:1? That sucks...

Might be useful here, too (posted this in the rpietila wall observer thread):

This version of the formula directly works on Wolfram Alpha (copy/paste):

10^(-2.869800 + 0.003012 * ((number of days since 2009 Jan 03)/days))

or just follow this link:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10%5E%28-2.869800+%2B+0.003012+*+%28%28number+of+days+since+2009+Jan+03%29%2Fdays%29%29

Thanks for the update!

This version of the formula directly works on Wolfram Alpha (copy/paste):

10^(-2.869800 + 0.003012 * ((number of days since 2009 Jan 03)/days))

or just follow this link:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10%5E%28-2.869800+%2B+0.003012+*+%28%28number+of+days+since+2009+Jan+03%29%2Fdays%29%29

Wow, spike time! My stop-loss for a short got filled 40 USD (!) above the stop-price I set. Damn. Any suggestions as to how I can make it safer? Is there really nothing that can be done on your side to make the stops work better?  I understand the mechanisms when a big market buy happens, so I guess there's little you can do about it...

Apparently also the Bitstamp USD reserve has been exhausted again. The spike would've been at least 20 lower if this hadn't happened. Which brings us back to the same issues we had in the November rally. Now that you changed the order book integration of Bitstamp we don't have any way of seeing when this happens, the order book just suddenly becomes thinner. Is there any way you could indicate to the users when this is about to happen? Please go back and consider possible solutions.

I understand that you have to minimize the risk of leaving funds on stamp, but when they go to zero, it's usually us traders who have to take the cost for it...

Take a look at tradingview.com! It's an amazing (free!) tool for charting and the Bitcoin chat community is quite active, knowledgable and helpful! Just keep in mind that it isn't obvious easily who's right or wrong, and that even the best chartist/trader does make wrong predictions regularly, so don't follow anyone blindly

As someone else said, it isn't so much about being right or wrong, but about improving your odds, finding critical points where something is bound to happen, and finally managing your trades in a way that you profit in the end.

LOL wonkytonky   He wants to invest 5k USD, not buy 5k BTC

It's definitely a bug. And without further information pretty useless. Which website is that supposed to come from? Which exchange is it showing?

If you sell when you see the price going down it's usually too late. It'll change direction sooner than you think. This "trading strategy" is one of the best guarantees that you'll lose your money.

Either buy & hold (especially now that apparently the downtrend has been broken), or educate yourself about trading. Learn to identify tops and bottoms, understand the basic indicators, identify support and resistance levels. Cut losing trades early and let winners run. Start practicing on a very small trading budget and don't add more funds before your trading profits are consistent because greed for bigger profits is what makes people lose eventually. And never forget to zoom out to see the bigger picture: Trade the larger trends, not the small fluctuations (unless you really want to go into scalping).

If this is what you want, take a look at tradingview.com . It's an amazing charting website and it offers plenty of tools for free. The community chat is also quite useful, I've learned a lot there! Many people are quite knowledgable about charting and trading BTC, some are just trolling. Just make sure you'll keep your own judgment because in the end even the most experienced trader can't predict the future, chart analysis just helps you to improve your odds above pure gambling

That's the point I was trying to make

There's one thing about this pumposaurus I don't like: it isn't even 2000 USD tall! I'd prefer a log-pumposaurus

Their prediction isn't even very bullish, at least by the standards of this forum. According to that article, Facebook is worth $150bn. For Bitcoin to reach this as a market cap, the price per BTC would have to go to about $20,000, something that many regulars here think can happen within the next 18 months.

Extremely interesting links! However, the charts illustrate very clearly why one should not use linear plots for exponential growth, but log-plots instead