[tpallarino]

1. Organization implements foolish policy

2. Thousands of people make trades according to foolish policy

3. Organization changes terms of foolish policy, telling nobody.

4. Organization then waits until after the fact to tell everyone that they have changed the policy, which dictate d the actions of a non trivial percentage of their customers.

If you're going to try to look like a legitimate exchange, this kind of thing looks pretty unseemly.

[harryh]

If you're going to try to look like a legitimate exchange, this kind of thing looks pretty unseemly.

Oh I agree! The whole thing has bitfinex looking a little foolish. It was step #1 that was the problem though. Steps 3 and 4 were them fixing it as best they could. Those parts weren't mistakes, it's just them keeping you from stealing Bitcoin Cash from their other customers.

[tpallarino]

I don't really see how it's stealing from their other customers when anyone with a nonzero BTC balance could have shorted BTC with BTC in their margin account.

Somehow I'm penalized for trying to maximize my profit based on the terms that were stated, even though that's what every single other person on the exchange is doing. Basically they chose to favor those who didn't understand the terms or what was going on in favor of those who did.

[harryh]

A bunch of people did what you did. That (before their correction that has you so riled up) lowered the coefficient used to distribute BCH from 0.8539 to 0.7757.

The BCH you attempted to acquire for no cost would have come from other customers in the form of that smaller coefficient.

[shlinx]

Steps 3 and 4 were not fixing it as best as they could. They are just doing another wrong thing trying to cover the earlier mistake by sacrificing another group of their customers instead of Bitfinex itself. This group of their customers are also innocent as they are just lured by the foolish policy. They could transfer their BTC to the personal wallet to get BCH if they were not lured. Everyone playing game in Bitfinex is trying to maximize profits based on its policy, robbing or being robbed. The one who breaks the policy or changes the policy without notifying is the nasty one.

[harryh]

You are ignoring the underlying sense of fairness that bitfinex was trying to achieve and overfocusing on the precise letter of what they wrote. This is a common problem among engineers. It turns out that the former is more important than the latter to the vast majority of humans.

[bduerst]

Yeah, really. At this point, I don't think anyone should be surprised that an investment involving bitcoins is high-risk.

If Bitfinex violated it's own terms with this change, then there might be a case for suing in civil court, but something tells me that Bitfinex covered this with their lawyers before making the change.

[harryh]

I certainly agree. tpallarino seems a little surprised though!