sure, but If I ever saw a bearish market...

Makes sense. Many, if not most, users use BitFinex to do margin trading. And most of them go long only for opening a position. This, by itself, makes the BSI bullish.
And, why not? Price goes down - buy into a position to profit. Price goes up - hang onto the train and open a long position! :-)

Ente

"Bad" is relative.  You are still getting wildly high annualized interest rates compared to, say, a junk bond.

Still, there are a number of improvements to the system that could generate more income for everyone...

1.  The option for a lender to extend expiration.
2.  The option for a lender to lend at some fixed differential from the current flash rate.
3.  The option for a borrower to keep borrowed btc/usd while closing a position.
4.  The option for a borrower to partially borrowed usd/btc with a new swap.
5.  Reinstating 4:1 margin.
6.  Fixing the borrower margin limitation that is holding us to exactly tradeable balance on reduce position orders.
7.  Fixing the borrower margin limitation that is holding us to exactly tradeable balance on borrowing usd/btc to reduce positions.
8.  Minor annoyance:  When taking BTC liquidity, the tab reverts to the USD tab.
9.  Minor annoyance:  When sorting margin open orders by price, the auto-refresh re-sorts the page by open date (this one is a real pain during active trading).

In general, the lending facility needs a bit of an upgrade.  I've also noticed it to be buggy in that I've seen my positions exceed my total borrowed swaps, and I don't seem to be paying interest on positions when I reserve them, but only when I open a position with them (but who knows, because there is no swap interest accounting details, so it's impossible to reconcile fees).

I'm sure other people have other suggestions. 

You are talking about higher leverage by the way, not higher margin...

Anyways, higher leverage means higher risk if large positions need to be closed. I am not so sure why they don't increase leverage (after all, you need market depth for that and to get that, you need more attractive options than 2.5:1 imho) but it's ont my business after all.

The feature I personally need (like, seriously need!) would be to get the information in the ledger section as CSV file download.

They already implemented an estimate. Why keep complaining...

What about the other 7 suggestions?

Some are very minor changes that benefit everyone.

Got'cha,

Not exactly what I had in mind,
but it's better than nothing,
still a little backwards.

Thanks


P.S.:  Check this out, enter your tradeable balance

         XXXX.00/x

         That's balance divided by "x" into options,
         and whatever context you select (current buy or sell price) on the screen
         then right-click and it will
         divide your balance by that context which is "x" results,
         displayed in the right-click context menu thus giving you a down
         to the penny "All-In" scenario.
         Faster than guessing at what amount,
         Speed Counts !

         https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/contextcalc

         Like Qt-Trader and also like BitFinex's own "Buy All Sell All" buttons on the Exchange Page.
         For some reason they did not include it on the "Margin Trading Page"

Yes,
On Both Accounts !

Regarding feedback for platform features, what do people think about capping the lowest % for lending? I mean can we somehow come up with and put a value to the associated risks?
I am asking this because I am pretty sure people will keep placing lower bits just for the sake of outbidding, without putting much thought to the process or analyzing things, even just a little bit. I have a bad feeling that some people may not even notice when they start putting bids in negative values 

I'd like to also note that I personally do both sides, trading AND lending and I did pay a lot to lenders in my time at Bitfinex.

i think i found out, the system allows to put an order for which the margin is sufficient only after the active position is closed, but upon settlement it considers the margin not to be enough and cancels the order.