How to Use Bitfinex

1.    What is Bitfinex?

Bitfinex is a cryptocurrency exchange owned and operated by iFinex Inc. Which is headquartered in Hong Kong and registered in the British Virgin Islands.

Bitfinex is made up of six core features:

1. Exchange Trading

At the heart of Bitfinex are central limit order books for the spot trade of digital tokens. Users can deposit, trade, and withdraw digital tokens.

2. Margin Trading

Bitfinex allows qualified users to trade with up to 5x leverage, receiving financing with the help of our margin funding and peer-to-peer financing platform. When opening a financing position, users can manually enter a funding order to receive the desired amount of financing, at the rate and duration of their choice. Alternatively, users can open a financed trading position and Bitfinex will automatically link them with peer-to-peer financing at the current prevailing rate.

3. Margin Funding

The P2P financing market provides users with a way to earn interest on their digital assets through lending out their funds to other users who want to trade with leverage. Margin funding allows you to earn returns on your funds without the risk associated with trading. If you prefer a low-risk investment strategy then Margin Funding is for you. To learn more, read our Introduction to Margin Funding.

4. Over The Counter Market (OTC)

Bitfinex offers a private OTC Market as an avenue for traders seeking to perform large trades directly with a counterparty, bypassing the public order books. Trades performed via the OTC Market provide access to large liquidity without affecting the exchange market price.

5. Derivatives

Bitfinex verified users can use the Derivatives Trading feature provided by iFinex Financial Technologies Limited. The maximum leverage for derivatives trading is 100x. The leverage will determine the amount of allocated collateral.

6. Paper Trading – test, learn and simulate trading strategies

You can also use the Paper Trading function to test and experiment in a simulated market. Test tokens are used therefore no real deposits will be required, the tokens do not represent any value and cannot be withdrawn. To learn more, read our Paper Trading guide.

2.    How to use Bitfinex?

1. Create a new API key

To create the key, go to bitfinex.com/api. During creation, select only the permissions you want your mobile app to have. For example, you could give the key read permission for orders but not write permission. This would allow your app to view orders, but not place new ones, increasing the safety of your account in the event of a compromised device.  

2. Scan the QR code

When the API key from step 1 has been created, a QR Code will be shown in your browser (only once). Now, using your app and your phone’s camera, you can scan this QR Code to import the API key.

Load the Bitfinex mobile app on your phone or tablet and press the LOG IN button.

You will be asked to Enter key manually or scan QR code. You can either scan the QR code or press the pen icon and type in the API key and API key secret from the previous step. If you scan the QR code from the Bitfinex website, the API key and API key secret will be automatically entered into the fields for you.

Note: To scan the QR code, you must allow the Bitfinex app to access your camera.

3. Create a PIN code

Create a PIN (4 numbers) and click Save.

After this initial setup, logging into the mobile app is performed via the PIN.

Note: If your device supports fingerprint or face recognition, they can also be used to log in.

3.    How to open an account?

• Go to the website and click on “Sign up” or “Open account”.
• Input necessary details on the sign up form and click “Open account” button.
• Click the confirmation link sent to your email. You should now be able to login using your email address and password.
• Secure your account by completing recommended security options. Go to Account>Security. The following are the options:

Email Encryption with OpenPGP

Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) is a data encryption and decryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. It uses a variation of the public key system.

4.    How to fund an account?

Making Your First Trade

You are now ready to make your first trade. To make a trade, follow the steps below –

1. Make sure your funds are on your Exchange wallet. To transfer funds to your Exchange wallet, follow the steps outlined here.
2. Find to the Trading page and select the pair you wish to trade (e.g. IOTA/USD – buying IOTA using USD)
3. In the Order Form, select the Exchange tab.
4. Specify the Order Type, Order Size, and Price. To make things simpler you can choose Market Order, resulting in your order being executed immediately at the current market price.
5. When you have specified the type of order, size and price, simply click Exchange Buy or Exchange Sell to execute.

Using the IOTA/USD example outlined above, pressing Exchange Buy would purchase IOTA using your existing USD, whereas pressing Exchange Sell would sell your existing IOTA for USD.

Your order should now appear in the Orders section, visible below the Chart. Once your order is executed, your funds will be credited to your Exchange wallet and the executed (or canceled) order will now move to the Order History tab.

5.    Advantages and disadvantages:

1. Trading volume. Bitfinex is one of the largest projects for conducting cryptocurrency trading and has an impressive turnover.
2. Presence of interface localization. The site has been translated into several languages, including Russian. This allows you to expand the geography of users and, accordingly, increase their number.
3. Safety of use. Developers have done a lot to improve the reliability of the use of their platform and users can worry less about the safety of their money.
4. Mobile app support. You can use the trading platform anywhere, because the team has developed special trading applications for smartphones based on Android and iOS.
5. No withdrawal limits. If there are large volumes of trading, users should choose Bitfinex, because there are no limits on withdrawals.
6. Support dollars. The exchange allows you to trade Fiat currencies and even has the ability to withdraw via Bank transfers. 1. The cost of replenishment in dollars. Unfortunately, the Commission for entering USD on Bitfinex is not thought out and users have to look for other ways to replenish the wallet if the transfer amount is too small.
7. A small number of currencies. The platform, of course, supports all the most basic coins and tokens, but this may not be enough for some traders.

In conclusion, it should be said that Bitfinex exchange will be an excellent choice for those who are interested only in the most popular cryptocurrencies and the highest possible trading volumes. The project is aimed at professional traders and large investors, as evidenced by the presence of serious financial instruments. On Bitfinex, you can both short and engage in long-term investment. Despite a few incidents in the past, the platform can be safely recommended for use.

At first, experts noticed that the November increase in the price of bitcoin coincided with the mass issue of “cryptodollars” Tether, which was actively promoted by the Bitfinex exchange.

Then a hacker attack was made on the exchange, as a result of which about 30 million USDT (tether tokens) were withdrawn from the accounts.

Later, there was a sensational report ” Paradise Papers”, from which the world learned that the exchange Bitfinex and the company Tether Limited run by the same people. And these people have offshore accounts in the Virgin Islands.

Many experts (including Charles Lee, who created Litecoin) have expressed the opinion that tether tokens do not have economic support. Their developers (and therefore Bitfinex) simply earn on the faith of customers in the value of “cryptodollar”.

As a result, almost all partner banks broke off their cooperation with Bitfinex. In addition, the exchange fell under penalties and lost the right to conduct operations with Fiat money.

The situation was aggravated by the frequent claims of traders. Many users could not withdraw their money from the exchange account. Most often, applications were simply lost “on the way”. But there were also cases when the application was completed on the site, but the users did not receive their money.

In December, the management of Bitfinex announced the temporary termination of registration on the exchange. Representatives of the exchange explained this by the fact that in the current state of the platform can not cope with growing loads and must find a new format.

But in January, registration was resumed. However, with an interesting innovation. Now, to create an account on Bitfinex, you need to immediately put a minimum of $ 10,000 on your exchange account.

According to the owners, this will help weed out small traders and give more opportunities to large players. Curiously, the traders themselves claim that they had enough opportunities for Bitfinex before.

Source:

https://www.bitfinex.com/