Even though there was the famous hack i wrote about before (and actually before the hack i have made an Alarm Post suggesting everybody to withdrawal money from them).
BFX is back to their feet and is the biggest BTCUSD trade market.
Just compare top3 sites:
Keep in mind - Chinese exchanges have bigger volumes but have no trade fees so its hard to know the real amounts traded there.
On no trading fees exchange you can make 1000 BTC just by trading 1 BTC back and forward.
Bitfinex seems stable right now so i have decided to get back trading there lately.
Unfortunately - the platform is pretty complex to understand for person who is first time there, so i have prepared this guide.
They have worst UX from all exchanges ive ever been into.
So ready to learn something new? Lets start!
1. Register
No need to verify data if you will be depositing and withdrawing BTC/LTC/ETH/ZEC/XMR only. Bitfinex Homepage
2. Go to deposit page
Choose what you want to sell there. Lets stick to BTC in this example but can be any of the coins.
3. Get to Wallets Page
Now this is one of the tricky things. You need to move funds to right wallet to be able to use them for margin.
They have 3 wallets - Funding, Exchange and Margin. Whats funny that until very lately the Margin was called Trading..
So people were really going WTF?! Trading is Margin, Exchange is Trading, Funding gets Nowhere.
Now when i do this guide i see they made it more clear, but was like that for years.
So just move money to Margin.
4. Open Margin Trading
Here you change between margin and exchange (spot).
First sell your BTC for USD then move to Margin.
5. Setup First Order
Assuming the BTCUSD pair, in Exchange Mode you would be submitting an order to buy BTC with the available USD in your Exchange Wallet.
In Margin Mode, you would be submitting an order to open (or add to) a BTCUSD long position using your Tradable Balance in your Margin Wallet. Or, if you have an open BTCUSD short position, a Margin buy would close (or reduce) your BTCUSD short position.
So just choose USD amount to spend and click buy/sell [long/short].
6. Wait for position to open
You setup order but for it to be an active position somebody has to first fulfill the order. If this wont happen this type of order [Limit] will be just floating and waiting to be filled. If you want you can close the position and open new one if price moves fast and you dont want to miss the action.
Now you learned the simplest margin position. Depending on interest in this series of tutorials next time i will write about specific options like Fill or Kill or Hidden orders.
