just now
February 9, 2021 - Digital token trading platform Bitfinex today confirmed that it successfully managed 400,000 ‘trading events’ per second yesterday (February 8) amid a spike of trading volume on Bitcoin after Elon Musk's Tesla confirmed that the company had bought US$1.5 billion of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency.
Coindesk reported that multiple other exchanges were having technical issues, with Binance at one point suspending withdrawals.
Bitfinex cemented its preeminent position, delivering a high-performance trading experience while rival exchanges suffered downtime amid soaring website traffic as the bitcoin price spiked to US$48,000.
Bitfinex handled approximately 400,000 events, or connections, per second from a global customer base between 1pm and 5pm UTC on February 8th. These connections were composed of crypto investors seeking to trade or obtain a price for digital tokens.
“The high-level performance of the Bitfinex platform is a reflection of both the dedication of our technology team and the integrity of the exchange,” said Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Bitfinex. “We always strive to deliver an optimal trading performance regardless of market conditions. It is imperative for all exchanges to stay on top of their game and their tech. Let’s show just how far crypto has come.”
The nascent cryptocurrency space has yet to replicate the robust scalable trading architecture of the mainstream financial markets. Still, Bitfinex, which is serving a growing client base of hedge funds and institutional investors, consistently delivers a service upon which professional traders can rely.
“We are obsessed with technical improvement,” said Ardoino. “This is the reason why traders who want a professional experience are with us. Our focus on technology and performance while being the smoothest platform to trade makes us a natural fit for high-level traders who are concerned about latency. These traders appreciate not only the technical aspects but also the platform’s design.”
In collaboration with Market Synergy, a Zug-based market infrastructure provider, Bitfinex offers high-speed, co-location and proximity hosting services. These connectivity solutions are deployed by investors and funds using algorithmic trading programs to deploy High-Frequency Trading (HFT) strategies such as statistical arbitrage and volatility arbitrage. These traders are also exchanging ideas and strategies on Bitfinex Pulse, a social network tailored to meet the needs of professional crypto traders.
Traders are deploying algorithms on the exchange’s Honey Framework to exploit rapid price fluctuations in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other leading cryptocurrencies. The Honey Framework functions as a powerful tool that spans the programming languages NodeJS and Python, enabling users to create custom order types and event-driven automated trading strategies. The framework, which integrates natively into the Bitfinex trading platform, also enables traders to back-test market data in order to better inform algorithmic trading strategies.
Bitfinex has the most liquidity in bitcoin and Ethereum, according to research by The Block. Bitfinex’s underlying strength and depth of liquidity was most evident over a 24-hour period on March 12/13, 2020 when the price of Bitcoin plummeted by 50 per cent. According to CryptoCompare’s March Exchange Review, Bitfinex represented the majority of top-tier exchange trading volume across Bitcoin/US Dollar (BTC/USD) and Bitcoin/Tether (BTC/USDT) markets during the period of Bitcoin’s precipitate price drop.
