Securing your online accounts has never been more important, and with cryptocurrencies  this should be your number one priority. Cryptocurrencies make it very easy to move huge sums around digitally, and extremely quickly. If someone gains access to your accounts and moves the funds out, there is little to no chance of getting it back so you need to make sure that you are the only person who ever has access.

Thankfully, there are steps you can take to make your account as secure as possible:

Two Factor Authentication (2FA)

When you only have a username and a password, all a hacker needs to gain access to your account are these two pieces of information. As they are static, this alone does not offer very good protection, particularly if you reuse these details somewhere else! 

2FA adds an extra layer of security by requiring another piece of information that changes every 30 seconds. This code is generated using an authenticator app such as Google Authenticator App. This program is completely free to use and you can download it via the Google Play store.

To go that one step further, you could also install the Google Authenticator app itself on a separate dedicated device that is kept completely offline. A cheap phone will do, but one with a camera is useful for scanning the QR codes. It doesn’t need to be powerful at all as it wont even have a sim card in it and you will only be using it for the google authenticator app. Once you have installed the app, put the phone on flight mode and disable wifi.

Some websites offer 2FA via SMS. This is much less secure than using the app because all a hacker needs to do is clone or port your phone number over to theirs to receive the codes by text.

2FA On Your Email

An increasing number of email providers have a 2FA option for logging in. Gmail for example, have been offering this for a while now. 

If your email provider offers this, use it! If they don’t, switch to one that does.

It is also a good idea to remove your phone number from your email account so hackers can not use it to ‘recover’ the account. To prevent a technique called sim-swapping it is also a good idea to remove your phone number from your email account so hackers can not use it to ‘recover’ the account.

To put it bluntly, not using two factor authentication when it’s available; free and adds so much security to your account and funds, is just plain stupid!

Use Unique Passwords

This one should be obvious, but you should be using a different password for every account you have. If you use the same password for everything, all that needs to happen for your information to be compromised is for one of the likely hundreds of websites/services you use, to be hacked.

When hackers steal information from one website, they will try many other sites with the same information. Anyone using the exact same details will have just handed the hackers a master key to their entire online lives. By using the same details everywhere, your security is only as good as the weakest of all those accounts.

Password Managers

Keeping track of all those passwords can be a real pain, and storing them online or on your computer in an easy to access format is not a good idea at all. Thankfully though, there is software out there that will do it for you. These software programs are called password managers. They store each of your login details in an encrypted database. And some of them also now offer 2FA as well. So you just need to remember one log in to this database, and the database remembers everything else for you.

You can also consider using encrypted external hard drives to store the information. This way it’s not even connected to the outside world.

Use Unique Emails

Following on from using unique passwords, using unique emails means that even if another website gets hacked, and all the user information is compromised, this hacker will have absolutely no useful information about you to try on other websites.

When you are choosing email addresses, try to avoid using your full name. By using your full name, you are handing over free information for no reason. Also avoid using predictable variations.

If for example a website is hacked and they have your email address as Mark.Smith.HackedWebsiteName@gmail.com, it’s not exactly going to be difficult for them to guess what your Deribit or any other website email is.

It doesn’t have to be a completely random string of letters, something as simple as M.S.RandomWord@gmail.com would suffice.

Gmail also have a handy feature for using multiple emails from a single inbox. You can read more about this on the Gmail blog here:
https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from-your.html

By using this feature, you can maintain unique logins at each different website, while taking advantage of the protection 2FA on the main Gmail account provides, and manage the addresses from the same inbox.

As an added bonus using different emails for each site will also help you pin down which websites either sell your data to third parties or have poor security.

Storing Your Login Details

The following information should be treated as highly confidential information:
-Email
-Password
-Original 2FA key
-2FA backup codes
Do not store any of this information in plain text form or on any device that is always attached to the internet. It’s not going to do you much good to have all this security set up correctly if you leave all the keys a hacker needs in a handy text document on your desktop or in a google document online.

Private Messages On Telegram

There has been an increase in the number of users receiving private messages from fake support accounts on Telegram. They are often named things like ‘Deribit Support Team’. These accounts are all fake and the scammers will attempt to get you to either: send them money or hand over personal/login details. Under no circumstances should you do either of these things.

Deribit will never ask you to send us money, and we will never ask for your password/2FA codes. If you are in any doubt simply email us directly at support@deribit.com or ask in the main support chat room here: https://t.me/deribit
In the above chat room, users with ‘admin’ next to their name are Deribit employees.

Deribit – July 2019

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Approximately 10 minutes of downtime is to be expected at Tuesday 18-06-2019 11:00 UTC. There will be a short period where the exchange will remain in ‘Cancel only’ mode, allowing traders to close orders before order matching resumes.

API changes

• COD (Cancel On Disconnect) after closing websocket connection will close all orders opened using that particular connection. This has been changed from requiring all websocket connections to be closed before a user’s orders were cancelled.

• New response field added to ‘private/get_account_summary’ with extended=true parameter: The “referrer_id” field – an optional identifier of the referrer (of the affiliation program), whose link was used by this account at registration. It coincides with the suffix of the affiliation link path after `/reg-`’.

• Calling the endpoints: ‘private/cancel_all’,’ /private/cancel_all_by_currency’ and ‘/private/cancel_all_by_instrument’ will now return the total number of cancelled orders instead of “Ok”.

• New field added to the response of ‘private/get_stop_order_history’ endpoint: ‘last_update_timestamp’

• Added multiple client id/secret management with configurable scope (possibility of creating read-only keys) – More details in the documentation soon.

• New subscription channels added:
  • User.changes.{instrument_name}.{interval}
  • User.changes.{kind}.{currency}.{interval}

These channels will contain a list of the user’s changed orders together with a (possibly empty) list of trades related to those orders and a (possibly empty) list of changed positions related to the given trades.

Interface

• Multiple changes in web UI related to small bugs/inconveniences that were reported recently

• Improvements and changes to architecture should significantly reduce spikes in latency during higher loads.

Deribit – June 2019

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Hereby, we would like to provide an Official Deribit links list:

Main websites

Exchange:               https://www.deribit.com

Exchange Test-net:      https://test.deribit.com/
Knowledgebase:          https://www.deribit.com/pages/kb/index
Deribit Blog:           https://blog.deribit.com/


Mobile app links:       https://www.deribit.com/pages/docs/mobile-app 
Youtube:                https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbHKjlFogkOD0lUVeb5CsGA 


Telegram Community + support
English:                https://t.me/deribit
Spanish/Español:        https://t.me/Deribit_Spanish 
Russian/Чат:            https://t.me/ru_deribit 
Chinese/中文官方群:      https://t.me/joinchat/GjM6pko6_sL3iSXDdKebAw 
Korean/한국어:           https://t.me/ko_deribit 
Options Quotes:         https://t.me/joinchat/DkFbIEdEzxpgnLqcOlfVRg 
Deribit Notifications:  https://t.me/deribit_notifications 

Email support


General support:        support@deribit.com
Feedback:               feedback@deribit.com
Investor relations:     ir@deribit.com
Business and Press:     info@deribit.com
Technical/API support:  dev@deribit.com

Social media

Twitter:                https://twitter.com/DeribitExchange
Medium:                 https://medium.com/deribitofficial
Linkedin:               https://www.linkedin.com/company/deribit
Reddit:                 https://www.reddit.com/r/DeribitExchange 

Deribit support is available on the official Telegram channels 24/7.

Beware of social media links that are not on this list. Deribit staff will never ask you for your account password or API credentials.

Deribit – June 2019

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When you first start trading options you can sometimes need reminding of some of the details. This is particularly true if you’re new to Bitcoin options as you are using the asset itself as collateral which changes some of the calculations.
We’ve put together a cheat sheet you an use as a quick reference guide to options that covers:

• The difference between puts and calls
• Profit and loss
• Maximum gain and loss
• The difference between buying and selling
• Breakeven prices

Deribit – May 2019

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If you checked the patch notes for the May 7th system upgrade you may have noticed this phrase in the list and be wondering what on earth it means. Well it’s not technically a new order type, however it is a change to how market orders react with our trading bandwidths.

The trading bandwidths

For those unfamiliar, Deribit operates with trading bandwidths in place. What this means is that there is an upper and lower price at which trades can be executed on any given instrument. For example on the Bitcoin Perpetual contract the bandwidth is currently set at mark price +/- 1.5%. So if the perpetual is trading at $5,000, the bandwidths will be $4,925 and $5,075.

What these bandwidths do is stop huge deviations away from the current price of the asset (as defined by the mark price).
There are a few reasons why large wicks like that can happen:

• A large trader trying to push the price around (a stop hunt for example)
• An accidental fat finger
• A cascade of liquidations and/or stop losses

These are usually just deviations away from the ’real’ price. If there is a genuine move in price across all exchanges, then the index will also be moving bringing the mark price and the bandwidths along with it. In this way the bandwidths are designed to only stop unnatural spikes in price.

Market orders and trading bandwidths

Market orders will attempt to fill the order at the best price possible, moving deeper and deeper into the order book until it is completely filled, not caring about the price it eventually reaches. So what happens when a market order that is attempting to fill ‘at any price’ runs into one of these bandwidths that stops orders executing outside a certain range?
The market order is saying ‘I’ve run out of good prices, I’ll take any price’, and the bandwidth is saying ‘you can’t execute at this price it’s outside the allowable range’.

Previously on Deribit the market order would continue to fill right up to the bandwidth as normal, but then any remaining quantity yet to be filled would be cancelled. While this is normal behavior with a bandwidth system, it is not what most traders expect to happen with a stop loss.

New functionality

As of this latest update any remaining quantity will no longer be cancelled, instead a limit order for the remaining quantity will be placed into the order book at the bandwidth limit waiting to be filled.
In this way it still obeys the bandwidth rules, but is also more in line with what traders want their stop loss order to do.

The system as a whole is still protected from big price spikes and traders stops are safer as they will no longer have portions cancelled for hitting the bandwidth. Win, win!

This change was partially the result of feedback from existing Deribit users.

Deribit – May 2019

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In the past two days, we have been experiencing technical issues that required unexpected maintenance and caused system downtime. Our system architecture is something we are very proud of, moreover, we continuously strive to offer the best trading experience and minimize downtimes altogether. However, there are situations that are out of our control. Our clients have always put a lot of trust in us, therefore, we believe in full transparency and would like to explain what caused these issues.

Yesterday we experienced a bug in Erlang itself, which could be described as a DOS vulnerability. This was caused by a bot, that (unintentionally) kept sending a series of requests to our platform in such a way, that triggered this vulnerability and brought all our web nodes down. Importantly, the master (matching engine) node was not affected.
Before we managed to locate and hotfix the bug, we experienced this situation twice. Thus, causing two downtimes in a very short period of time. We did, however, manage to restart our web-nodes in less than 10 minutes each time.
Although the bug is within Erlang itself, we have implemented a workaround in our code and have reported the bug to the Erlang team, which will fix the issue.

You can see this bug report here:
https://bugs.erlang.org/browse/ERL-944

In a separate incident today, our most important web node (which is also responsible for load balancing) experienced a Linux kernel panic when handling an interruption from one of its gigabit network cards.

Please note that all other web-nodes (Hermes and Mercury) and master (Matching Engine) node were not affected. This issue was not related to the Erlang vulnerability and was a technical issue. Due to this, we had to reboot the main web-node, again causing downtime.
We are planning to implement a different type of load balancing system, which will have no single point of failure, thus mitigating the risk of this happening ever again.

We take each of these incidents very seriously, and our development team does everything it can to prevent these issues from happening again. We are grateful for your understanding and hope you enjoy trading at Deribit.

John Jansen, Founder, and CEO of Deribit

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The last few weeks Deribit has undergone some major changes as a preliminary step to our Roadmap of 2019. Here is a short summary of the biggest changes so far:

ETH perpetual and Futures (x50)

• ETH Perpetual and futures derivative contracts with leverage up to 50X

ETH Options

• The first of its kind – ETH options (European style, Cash settled)

New User Interface

• More intuitive, better looking and prepping some backend stuff for UI v3 which will come soon.
• As requested the mark price is now added to the options UI
• All positions, orders and/or stops for all futures and perpetual contracts can be shown together on one tab from now on.

New Chart settings

• User can easily swap between wide or small chart or completely hide it. Orders and stops are visible on the chart and by moving them around the orders can be visually edited.
• Drawings and indicators can be saved on the charts

Reduce-only

• As requested by many of our users we have introduced reduce-only to our orders.

Trigger Last-Price

• We have added the trigger Last Price to our repertoire of stop-order settings

All positions now entered in USD rather than contracts

• To create coherence between BTC and ETH (and any future implementation) we changed the size of the orders to the USD value of the order instead of the former contracts. BTC is traded per $10 and ETH per $1

API v2

• The new API v2 is the tool for the future. Together with the launch of our ETH products we launched a new API. The old API v1 will be supported but will not be upgraded with any future implementation on Deribit.

Media

• Launch of Deribitofficial on Medium
• Launch of r/DeribitExchange on Reddit

Deribit – April 2019

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For stops a trader needs a trigger price. Today Deribit introduces the trigger last-price. On Deribit the mark-price, index-price and last-price can be used as trigger prices. All have their specific usage and a trader can use them specifically for the according scenario. With the introduction of the trigger last-price, this trigger will be set as default. A trader needs to make sure the right trigger is selected when setting up a stop.

The trigger Last-price

The trigger last-price is a direct connection to market movements on our exchange. Just like the name says it triggers on the last traded price. Stop-limits can have the limit orders tight but when a market is moving they do not guarantee to be filled. With a stop market the order guarantees a fill however the price is not guaranteed.The trigger last-price makes sure it will be triggered by the trading events in our orderbook. The danger of the trigger last-price is that wicks caused by fat-fingers, stop-hunts or other deep executions will cause the stop to be triggered, without having the security the overall price of the asset stays on that level.

The trigger Mark-price

As the mark price is calculated with a dampener it follows the orderbook and is not at risk for wicks created by fat finger orders, deep executing stops and other orders. The mark price is calculated as (Mark Price = Deribit Index + 30 seconds EMA (Fair Price — Deribit Index)). It is the mark price that is used for the PNL calculations as well as being used to check any open position for the risk of a possible liquidation. Using this trigger to place a stop to exit before a liquidation can be executed is a safe approach if not placed too tight. However in rapid market movements the mark price will be behind the last traded price due to the dampener so a trader needs to keep in mind that the actual traded price can have a distance from the mark price when their stop is triggered.

The trigger Index-price

The index price is the average of several exchanges. As futures trade on a premium or discount this trigger price needs to be handled a bit different. By using the index as a trigger on futures, this premium or discount can be taken into account automatically. Using the index-price as a trigger for a stop to exit will always trigger relatively late and it is not recommended to use this to exit an position. Please take note that if you use the trigger Index-price while trading a future with a premium or discount the indexprice is not equal to the marketprice, keep this in mind when deciding what trigger to use for futures.

For entries in both futures and perpetual contracts the index-price as trigger is a good tool. In price movements of the asset the average of several exchanges will follow slower due to the nature of being an average. So if a stop is used for opening a position the index price as trigger can be used, for example, to wait for a confirmation of a break out as the average price of all the exchanges we use for our index-price need to be at that level. A trader needs to keep in mind that the orderbook will move before this average is reached and thus placing a limit-order tight to the trigger probably will not be filled.

As Deribit has introduced reduce-only orders a trader can always set-up a combination of stops with the different triggers. Exit stops with reduce-only enabled can be setup with three stops, one with trigger last-price, one with trigger mark-price and one with trigger index-price. Each with their own conditions, if index price reaches X then exit, if mark-price reaches… etc. The first stop that will be triggered will close the position and reduce-only makes sure the other stops won’t open a new position. Of course it is not needed to use one stop to close the complete position. A trader can divide the quantity to execute per stop and like previous example simply choose to close one third.

zqooN — March 2019

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Deribit has a firm belief in the future of cryptocurrencies, and the important role a liquid option market has in the health and growth of the market as a whole. An options market is comprised of a large number of order books and needs to be capable of handling thousands of requests per second. This is why Deribit has focused so heavily on the underlying technology and developing a platform capable of handling this load.

Product development is also very much centered on what customers will find useful, and indeed it is very common for upgrades to be based directly on customer requests. The telegram group has become an excellent way for traders to have direct access to Deribit staff 24 hours a day and give real-time feedback.

With the recent launch of Ethereum derivatives on Deribit it’s about time we had a look at what else is coming down the pipeline in 2019. So far this year has seen the launch of ETH products (perpetual swaps, futures and options), reduce only stops enabling much more convenient position/risk management and v2.0 of both the UI and API.

So what’s next?

Layout v3.0

Despite only recently launching v2.0 of the user interface to accommodate new currencies, the next version is already largely developed and should be ready for release in the next couple of months. This will bring a completely customisable layout allowing users to reposition and resize every element of the trading screen. It will also bring a depth chart to the futures and the ability to see the order books, recent trades, current positions and order form on the same page as the option chain without the need for a pop up.

Here’s a sneak peak at the type of screen you will be able to create with the v3 layout. You can create new rows or columns and drag/drop each element wherever you like. And you can even have several elements in the same area using tabs.

And the new option layout will have similar capabilities as shown below.

Mass Quote Protection

There are around 100 different strike price/expiry date combinations on Deribit at any given time, and that’s just for Bitcoin. Then consider that each one of these has both a put and a call, and a bid and ask. That is a lot of instruments that the liquidity providers need to quote on simultaneously.

Mass quote protection allows the market makers to quote larger size on each instrument without being overly exposed to the risk of having every order hit at once. As a simple example say an account is protected for anything over 500 contracts, once 500 contracts of that accounts orders have been hit in a given time period the rest of their orders will be cancelled, allowing them time to hedge or reposition the rest of their orders accordingly.

This will not only protect the liquidity providers from taking on positions too large for them in a short space of time, but will also allow for considerably better liquidity across the whole option chain which will benefit all traders.

Block Trade Functionality

A block trade helps two parties who wish to transact larger size to do so privately without exposing themselves to risk on the public order book. They both agree on a price and this is then executed in full without the need for either party to place the order on the order book. This will make the process of executing large privately arranged trades considerably easier.

Deribit Analytics

The more information available to traders the better decisions they can make. With this in mind Deribit is developing a separate analytics website that will offer a range of new tools based on live data from Deribit. This will include volume, option statistics, historical funding data, equity charts and volatility data. The analytics site will provide all traders with useful data that is relevant to their trading decisions.

Education Tracks

Educating users on how to use the platform and also how to trade the derivatives on offer is extremely important to Deribit. Derivatives can have a steep learning curve, particularly options. The goal is to create an education resource that will make Deribit accessible and easy to use for as many people as possible. Reducing any barrier to entry by providing all the resources anyone could need to get the most out of the platform.

Additional Currency Listings

While bitcoin is still king in the cryptocurrency space with a market share of around 50% at time of writing, there is serious and growing demand for additional currencies. The ETH product development brought with it several important upgrades. The new user interface and API have now moved from being a single currency system to supporting multiple currencies. This means adding more currencies in future will be a more streamlined process.

Advanced Order Types

Deribit users already have access to limit orders, market orders, stops (both limit and market), post only, hidden and reduce only order types. But more advanced order types are also planned for the future. Advanced order types such as One Cancels Other (OCO) and trailing stops will give traders even more flexibility in how they structure their trades, and more freedom to step away from the screen knowing their orders will execute exactly as they intend.

The Future On Deribit

With these upcoming features and continued development Deribit intends to remain at the forefront of the crypto derivatives market by giving traders all the tools they need.

And it’s not just the platform itself that is being improved. The Deribit team is also continuing to expand, providing support in more languages, expanding into new markets and developing strategic partnerships and integrations with other companies and software providers.

2019 has been a very successful year so far and there is plenty more to come in the very near future.

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San Francisco, March 19 – Caspian, the full-stack crypto trading, portfolio and risk management platform for professional traders and investors, today announced that it has integrated its platform with Deribit, a leading crypto options and futures exchange, to become the first institutional platform to offer both options and futures trading in these asset classes. Caspian adds Deribit to its ecosystem of over 30 major crypto exchanges and liquidity providers.

Caspian’s fully-developed trading and portfolio management system includes an OEMS, PMS, and RMS that covers the entire lifecycle of the trade. The system is the only platform for both options and futures in one interface and connects into all major crypto exchanges and OTC brokers. It is a complete suite of sophisticated trading algorithms, real-time and historical P&L and exposure tracking with industry leading professional customer service.

As crypto trading has been increasingly adopted by institutional investors, so too has the trading of crypto options and futures. Launched in 2016, Deribit provides a highly liquid marketplace for trading Bitcoin options and futures and Ethereum options, futures and Deribit Perpetual. Deribit also offers traders free deposits and withdrawals, up to 100x leverage and competitive trading fees. The Caspian platform connects to Deribit through an advanced API that supports high volumes with ultra-low latency and provides clients with access to the exchange’s full options order book.

“We are excited to be working with Deribit to make the trading of crypto options and futures possible within the institutional community,” commented Robert Dykes, CEO of Caspian. “Our goal at Caspian is to provide crypto traders and investors the same standard of tools and service that exist in the traditional markets and its great knowing that the team at Deribit is working towards the same high standards.”

“Caspian’s comprehensive trading and portfolio management platform provides institutional investors with the market-leading gateway to the crypto markets,” said John Jansen, CEO of Deribit. “We’re thrilled to be working with the team at Caspian.”

About Caspian

Caspian is a full-stack crypto asset management platform tying together the biggest crypto exchanges in a single interface. The platform also offers compliance, algorithms, portfolio management, risk and reporting tools. Led by an experienced team and leveraging the capabilities and resources of two existing, successful financial businesses, Caspian has built a crypto ecosystem that enables sophisticated traders to operate more efficiently and improve their performance.

For more information, please visit: https://caspian.tech/

About Deribit

Deribit launched in June 2016 after several years of development. John Jansen, the original founder teamed up with Marius Jansen and Sebastian Smyczýnski. Deribit started as a Bitcoin Futures and Options trading platform based out of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Deribit was created as an answer to those in search of a professional fully dedicated cryptocurrencies futures and options trading platform.

Our service enables the user to create a fully liquid marketplace to the same standards as a traditional derivatives market. The framework of the platform has been developed to assure the ability to handle very large numbers of requests with ultra low latency (<1 ms). We developed our own matching engine from scratch and all of our technology is proprietary. We believe in Bitcoin and in the future of cryptocurrencies. We expect millions of traders will be trading cryptocurrencies at any given moment in time soon, and our platform is built with the potential to eventually serve those millions of users at the same time with real time low latency data.

Deribit is the only exchange in the world offering European style cash settled options on Ethereum. We are also working on creating more advanced features such as; block trades and mass quote protection.

Source: https://caspian.tech/caspian-integrates-with-deribit-to-become-the-first-institutional-platform-to-offer-both-options-and-futures-crypto-trading/

Deribit – March 20, 2019

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