Brokerages

Bitfinex supports cash and margin accounts. To set the account type in an algorithm, see the Bitfinex brokerage model documentation.

Use AccountType.Cash to connect to your Exchange wallet or AccountType.Margin to connect to your Margin wallet. You can not connect to your Funding or Capital Raise wallet. If you provide the wrong AccountType to the SetBrokerageModel method, you may connect to an empty wallet, causing Lean to throw a warning. If you have a currency in your wallet that ends with "F0", it will not load into your CashBook.

Create an Account

Follow the account creation wizard on the Bitfinex website to create a Bitfinex account.

You will need API credentials to deploy live algorithms. After you have an account, create API credentials and store them somewhere safe.

Paper Trading

Bitfinex supports paper trading with only the TESTBTCTESTUSD and TESTBTCTESTUSDT securities. Follow these steps to paper trade with Bitfinex:

1. Create a paper trading sub-account and refill the paper balance For instructions, see Paper Trading at Bitfinex on the Bitfinex website.
2. Create an API key for your sub-account. For instructions, see How to create and revoke a Bitfinex API Key on the Bitfinex website.
3. Use AccountType.Cash in your algorithms.

To paper trade securities other than TESTBTCTESTUSD and TESTBTCTESTUSDT, follow these steps to simulate paper trading with the QuantConnect Paper Trading brokerage:

1. In the Initialize method of your algorithm, add one of the preceding SetBrokerageModel method calls.
2. Deploy your algorithm with the QuantConnect Paper Trading brokerage.

Our Bitfinex integration supports trading Crypto.

AddCrypto("BTCUSDT", Resolution.Minute, Market.Bitfinex);

self.add_crypto("BTCUSDT", Resolution.MINUTE, Market.BITFINEX)

If you call the SetBrokerageModel method with the correct BrokerageName, then you don't need to pass a Market argument to the AddCrypto method because the brokerage model has a default market.

The QuantConnect data provider provides Crypto data during live trading.

We model the Bitfinex API by supporting several order types, order properties, and order updates. When you deploy live algorithms, you can place manual orders through the IDE.

Order Types

The following table describes the available order types for each asset class that our Bitfinex integration supports:

Order Type	Crypto
MarketOrder
LimitOrder
LimitIfTouchedOrder
StopMarketOrder
StopLimitOrder
MarketOnOpenOrder
MarketOnCloseOrder

Order Properties

We model custom order properties from the Bitfinex API. The following table describes the members of the BitfinexOrderProperties object that you can set to customize order execution:

Updates

We model the Bitfinex API by supporting order updates.

To view the Bitfinex trading fees, see the Fees Schedule page on the Bitfinex website. To view how we model their fees, see Fees.

To use the Bitfinex brokerage in a live algorithm, the following table shows the fee settings you need on your Account > Fees page on the Bitfinex website:

We model buying power and margin calls to ensure your algorithm stays within the margin requirements.

Orders through Bitfinex do not experience slippage in backtests. In paper trading and live trading, your orders may experience slippage.

To view how we model Bitfinex slippage, see Slippage.

We fill market orders immediately and completely in backtests. In live trading, if the quantity of your market orders exceeds the quantity available at the top of the order book, your orders are filled according to what is available in the order book.

To view how we model Bitfinex order fills, see Fills.

Trades settle immediately after the transaction

To view how we model settlement for Bitfinex trades, see Settlement.

Note the following security and stability aspects of our Bitfinex integration.

Account Credentials

When you deploy live algorithms with Bitfinex, we don't save your brokerage account credentials.

API Outages

We call the Bitfinex API to place live trades. Sometimes the API may be down. Check the Bitfinex status page to see if the API is currently working.

You can deposit and withdraw cash from your brokerage account while you run an algorithm that's connected to the account. We sync the algorithm's cash holdings with the cash holdings in your brokerage account every day at 7:45 AM Eastern Time (ET).

The following algorithm demonstrates the functionality of the Bitfinex brokerage:

All fiat and Crypto currencies are individual assets. When you buy a pair like BTCUSD, you trade USD for BTC. In this case, LEAN removes some USD from your portfolio cashbook and adds some BTC. The virtual pair BTCUSD represents your position in that trade, but the virtual pair doesn't actually exist. It simply represents an open trade. When you deploy a live algorithm, LEAN populates your cashbook with the quantity of each currency, but it can't get your position of each virtual pair.

You must have an available live trading node for each live trading algorithm you deploy.

Follow these steps to deploy a live algorithm:

1. Open the project you want to deploy.

If you are deploying a paper trading algorithm without the QuantConnect Paper Trading brokerage, include the following lines of code in the Initialize method of your algorithm:

self.set_account_currency('TESTUSD') # or 'TESTUSDT'
self.set_brokerage_model(BrokerageName.BITFINEX, AccountType.CASH)
self.set_benchmark(lambda x: 0) # or the Symbol of the TESTBTCTESTUSD/TESTBTCTESTUSDT securities

SetAccountCurrency("TESTUSD"); // or "TESTUSDT"
SetBrokerageModel(BrokerageName.Bitfinex, AccountType.Cash);
SetBenchmark(x => 0); // or the Symbol of the TESTBTCTESTUSD/TESTBTCTESTUSDT securities

2. Click the Deploy Live icon.
3. On the Deploy Live page, click the Brokerage field and then click Bitfinex Exchange from the drop-down menu.
4. Enter your API key and secret.

To generate your API credentials, see Account Types. Your account details are not saved on QuantConnect.

5. Click the Node field and then click the live trading node that you want to use from the drop-down menu.
6. (Optional) In the Data Provider section, click Show and change the data provider or add additional providers.
7. (Optional) Set up notifications.
8. Configure the Automatically restart algorithm setting.

By enabling automatic restarts, the algorithm will use best efforts to restart the algorithm if it fails due to a runtime error. This can help improve the algorithm's resilience to temporary outages such as a brokerage API disconnection.

9. Click Deploy.

The deployment process can take up to 5 minutes. When the algorithm deploys, the live results page displays. If you know your brokerage positions before you deployed, you can verify they have been loaded properly by checking your equity value in the runtime statistics, your cashbook holdings, and your position holdings.