"Between the 01-04-2013 and 26-07-2014 the average daily swap rate is: 0.24363676973540734048 % per day (I used Volume Weighted Average Rate) for the period 01-01-2014 till today 12.00 UTC"
So which is what? :-) ^^
For between the 01-04-2013 and 26-07-2014 the average daily swap rate is: 0.24363676973540734048 % per day
and for 01-01-2014 till today 12.00 UTC ? I started in January so that is what would come in handy for me.
I'm assuming the latter has to be far lower as the 1 % swaps from 2013 stopped nearly entirely and we had a long period (feb till May or something) for abysmal rates.

How did you calculate it? Is there an easy way to calculate that for myself so I don't have to bother you in the future? Unfortunately BFX doesn't offer this data themselves. It's probably the most important metric for new "investors" to estimate whether lending on bfx is worth it or not.

BFX, you have to change something about the way swaps are taken. Since some time my "Swaps currently provided" list is cluttered up with dozens upon dozens of absolutely miniscule offers which guarranteedly nobody took out on their own but are part of some faulty matching algorithm. An offer of approx 6000 led to 3 swaps in the range of 2500, 1000, 1500 and then over thirty swaps at a dollar or even cents. The highlight is single swap undistinguishably from a single cent. Something like $0.01XXX3 Why is this happening? This is not only cluttering up the "swaps currently provided" list but also and much more importantly the "swap history" pages which get more and more inflated by the day.

We should always be aware that Bitfinex is not the only site for margin trading, there is also icbit.se, although their futures-based system takes some effort to understand.  It is always worth it to compare the swap rate at Bitfinex with the contango at icbit.  Right now their contango is equivalent to 0.13 %/day.  You need to factor in that icbit has low volume and no stop-loss mechanism, you risk to get caught in an unfavourable position.  On the other hand, the price spikes are smaller (and on purpose limited within a trading period), so they do not have the problem of sudden spikes that can trigger stop-losses in a way you regret later.

I think a bit more competition between the two sites would benefit us all.

We should always be aware that Bitfinex is not the only site for margin trading, there is also icbit.se, although their futures-based system takes some effort to understand.  It is always worth it to compare the swap rate at Bitfinex with the contango at icbit.  Right now their contango is equivalent to 0.13 %/day.  You need to factor in that icbit has low volume and no stop-loss mechanism, you risk to get caught in an unfavourable position.  On the other hand, the price spikes are smaller (and on purpose limited within a trading period), so they do not have the problem of sudden spikes that can trigger stop-losses in a way you regret later.

I think a bit more competition between the two sites would benefit us all.

Question to Bitfinex technical team about "hidden orders":
It used to be that hidden orders would be executed with the price not originally set, but with the one offered by counter-party. What was happening is that if let's say a hidden order was a sell for $600, but there is a bid for $600.5, seller (owner of hidden order) would get offered $600.5. In this case the "hidden order" indeed remained hidden. To compensate for such advantage, hidden orders were also having lower than regular priority in terms of their execution (meaning that hidden orders are executed after the regular ones, or per some fractional algorithm, you guys came up with).

Right now, hidden orders can be VERY easily discovered. Thus, if you don't see the last execution price matching current bid/ask, you found the "hidden order", so it instantly becomes no longer "hidden". Execution priority right now is also the same as for regular orders, so you know that until hidden order for that particular price "runs out", price is not going to move. The only thing which remains "hidden" right now is the size of such order. For this reason, people may even not want to place their orders, but wait until situation becomes more clear. Moreover, since the use of hidden orders is a rather heavily used feature at Bitfinex (I know this for a fact from personal experience), traders may be discouraged from more active trading and this in turn may be one of the reasons which makes our current trading so incredibly "thin". We have some $30 mln in active swaps, yet at times just a few BTCs can move the price several points.

I really liked the old model a lot better, mainly because such orders (even if they are big) did not interfere with natural price movements that much. I also have a strong feeling that the old model made trade patterns look a lot "smoother" (so to speak). Besides, and as I am sure you know, there are also a lot of concerns out there about order book being very "thin", so the observers out there are comparing our (comparatively speaking) "thin" order book with that huge borrowed swaps volume and naturally concluding that the flash-crash is imminent. If only our hidden orders would be truly hidden as in earlier days, I am pretty sure that there will be a lot more of them on the order book on both sides and we will have curves instead of current rectangles in the trading patterns. Right now even the 10 - 15 BTC orders look (and often behave) like "walls".

Were there any significant reasons for the change in structure of hidden orders?

Thanks.

It is pretty puzzling that the USD swap rate is falling so slow.  With the current bid/asks - I'd expect it to be around 0.08%/day, and to fall by at least 0.01%/day.