When you open a leveraged margin position with Bitfinex, you borrow funds through the Bitfinex P2P funding system. When you are ready to exit your position, you either need to close or claim the position to return the funds you have been borrowing.
What is the difference between claiming and closing a position?
What is closing a margin position?
To close a position, you will be trading against it. This means that you can use any available order type to execute a trade of the opposite direction and size.
You can also select the x button in your Positions widget, and this will close the position completely by executing a market order.
Closing the position means that you buy or sell the asset and use the proceeds to settle your funding costs to the lender.
Note: The fees for closing a position could be either maker or taker, depending on the order type used to close it.
What is claiming a margin position?
To claim a position means that you use the funds in your margin wallet to settle part of or the entire position as an exchange buy or sell.
Important: Claiming some or all of a position requires that you have enough profit and/or own enough funds in your margin wallet to satisfy the cost of the purchase/sale and the outstanding funding interests for your position.
Notes:
- For a short position, you will need to own the base currency in your margin wallet in order to claim successfully.
- The only time you can claim a position when you do not own the quote currency is if you have a negative base price (i.e. when you have reduced your position at such a profit that you now have a negative base price - for long positions only);
- You cannot use the profit to claim a position. When you claim a BTC/USD long position, for example, you own the asset in BTC, and the P/L will be reflected in a change in value to your wallet. The profit (in USD) is not credited and therefore cannot be used to claim.
How to claim a margin position on Bitfinex?
As mentioned above, to claim a margin position, you need to own the funds required to settle the purchase/sale in your margin wallet. For a long position, you need to own enough of the quote currency (margin wallet + P/L) to purchase at the base price value (amount*base price). For a short position, you need to own the base currency in the exact amount.
Let’s use a long LTC/USD margin trade as an example.
1. Firstly, find the position you would like to claim in your Positions widget.
2. Check your wallets to ensure that you have the funds that will be used to claim the position within your margin wallet. In this example, to fully claim, you would need to own 0.05 * 163.75 = $8.19 in the margin wallet.
3. Click on the downwards arrow icon that reads Claim this position.
4. A pop up will appear, indicating how much of the position you can claim based on the funds in your margin wallet. You can choose to claim the position fully or to claim it partially.
Note: When there are not enough funds in your margin wallet that can be used to claim a position, the following message will appear, requesting that you add more funds in order to either fully or partially claim a position:
5. If the claim is successful, the funds in your margin wallet will be debited, and you will be credited with the proceeds from your purchase/sale at the base price.
What are the fees for claiming a position?
The fee for claiming a position is the maker fee and is based on the volume tier that you are currently on. The currency that the fees will be deducted depends on if it is a long position or a short position.
Using BTC/USD as an example:
- For a BTC/USD short, claiming the position would result in crediting the USD value to your balance, i.e., the base price multiplied by the size of the position (sell size of the position). A 0.1% fee is assessed to the amount credited to your balance.
- For a BTC/USD long, claiming the position would result in crediting the BTC to your balance. A 0.1% fee is taken in BTC, based on the amount received.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at Bitfinex Support. We are happy to help!
