Bitcoin Forum

Im tempted to short if I sense that the price is way too high and a correction may follow. Of course we are far from that, I suspect we will have an epic rally during the halving, but then comes the question: To sell during the halving in hopes a correction happen to buy more Bitcoin, or to just hold it?

The end goal is obviously to get throught it with more Bitcoin, I don't want to stay in fiat since that's suicidal long term, anything that isn't Bitcoin long term is a waste of time, but I don't know if I should short. What if you sell at $1,000 but it keeps going up and you are left out? where do you even buy back? I can see a lot of people deeply regreting trying to short when the price starts raising fast.. it's a big gamble.

It sounds like you have no experience opening and managing short positions. No problem there, we all have to start somewhere. You should paper trade for a few months until you prove to yourself you have a chance of making a profit.

why don't you just flip a coin, just like every other person on here that pretends to know where the bitcoin price is headed.

the coin flip has exactly the same odds of picking a direction as you do.

do you have spidey senses? how exactly does one "sense" the price is too high or too low?

It's like binary options lol. Going low or going high—same odds either way. It depends OP on how you see what kind of opportunity x price will do to you. You don't sense it is too high but depends on how you see or how will you face risks in order to get some returns.

You have to have metal testicles to be able to short, and I lack a set of those.  There's no way in hell I'd go short bitcoin, even if it were to jump to $1000 tonight.  What's that old saying?  Something like "The market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent".  And it's totally true, you don't know if it can go higher and how long it can stay there.  

The downside is infinity and that's too high for me.

But OP good luck to you if you decide to go short.

I will  8)

When the market is rallying , I am: opening and closing my leverage long.

When the rally starts it's major crash and is turning around, I am: also opening and closing my base position.

Once a bear market is well established (eg feb 2014): only then do I also employ shorting into my trading.

-Never try to call the top

-A rally is the worst time to short due to the exponentially jumping upside. The bulls will hunt you down and eat your liquidated fiat for lunch

In case you hadn't noticed, we're currently at 'the moon', the price has been unable to get any higher and there's an increasing number of significant dumps happening.
Very dangerous position to hold/buy at this point.

Damn, dude! I wanted this to be the top. But now I fear you jinxed it. SMH
Well, I guess I wait for another 10% up before my chance :/

My comments reference the ATH rallies and initial 300% jumps only, not these slow moving interim corrections.It's not quite as dangerous to short here but still stupid because you're trading against a bull market at the moment.

Holding is never dangerous if you are long term bullish on fundamentals, and isn't really that dangerous to begin with. You never lose more than you invest in a hold and even get 'refunded' some of it back. Shorting is always the most dangerous type of trade to take at all. Unlike a hold, you can be liquidated and completely lose all of your investment. In addition, you can lose more than your investment and be in debt to your broker if they don't liquidate you properly.

Maximum losses on types of trades:
Hold (regular long): <100% of your investment.  (for example 50% of your investment if btc went to $230)
Leverage long: 300% of your investment (at 3:1 leverage)
Short: Infinity

-Dont forget that while shorting, you are also locking your funds up with a dubious counterparty.

Ofcourse it's a big gamble, it's trading, and the game requires that people try to get other people's money - it's that simple, but yet hard to
achieve. I wouldn't say i will definitely sell if price goes to the moon as you say, because i would be interested to see and understand why the
price went so high. Analysing reasons of that will give you estimate on how much higher it could go.

I could try to short some of my coins after Christmas but only those i have in my trading fund. I dont have guts to short them all lol. If Bitcoin goes to moon sure i will sell few and buy some cool stuff but my wallets will never be drained.

I think I'll wait to short when the start of the next rally happens in the spring prior to the halving. Then, I'll just sit back and watch the price go haywire and worldwide panic buying ensues. I'll feel really great about myself having lost the chance of a lifetime. Don't be me. :P

I'm counting on the coming crash after the next bubble. The crash will be short and violent. And then the market will slowly deflate to 200 over the following 2 years.

if by the moon you mean the last ath, yes i think i'm going to sell but only if i see if the sentiment is not strong anymore

i'm not expecting the same return to 230 this time, so one must be sure to dump at 1200, if we can break that i guess 2k, 3k would be a better target to dump for accumulation

Short term bitcoin goal is not that much ideal Because price increasing day by day. We are seeing that. In these last few years too many zigzag we saw. That because It didn’t reached to everywhere. Now Bitcoin is a global currency inside the normal business as well. We see raise for sure in upcoming years.

Which is right now.

I've never heard of the moon being anything other than above ATH. So the moon is falling now?

http://r28.imgfast.net/users/2814/18/25/28/album/pr/majora10_800x600.png

That's the risk you take. This is why when and if it shoots up to $1000 you don't sell it all. Sell some of what you own and wait a bit and see what happens.
Trust your gut and keep your eyes out on the bitcoin market.

I believe that once bitcoin reaches $1000 or higher, I will sell a bit of my bitcoins as well. If it keeps going up I'll sell a few more but even if bitcoin reaches higher than $1000, I believe there will be a dip. Meaning that bitcoin value will come down again and that's where you'll be able to buy again with the profits you've made.

I have never shorted because I don't have the nerves of steel required for gambling. At the top of the last pump would have been the ideal place to short, and if we get a new ATH in the thousands there will be a much bigger crash from the top. Shorting from that top would be even more lucrative than shorting from the last one, but I'll miss out because I'm no good at predicting the top, and I lack shorter's nerves.

It sounds like your end goals are broadly the same as mine. I wouldn't short.

What I would do instead is either sell call options or buy put options.

Buying puts, you spend a fixed amount of BTC and then profit when the price falls (or lose all of your initial investment if price doesn't fall). There's a saying in options trading - no one ever got rich buying options. Which leads me to...

Selling calls, you immediately make a fixed amount of BTC. However, if price rises you can suffer a theoretically infinite loss. However... you can prevent this by buying an equal number of puts, with a higher "strike price".

As an example, right now BTC/USD price is around $460. Let's assume that this is an ATH (willing suspension of disbelief required - forget about December 2013!) and we expect price to fall. The current asking price for a call with a $460 strike price (on Coinut (https://coinut.com/)) is 0.001446 BTC - that's for a contract worth 0.1 BTC. You sell 10 of these, making 0.01446 (minus a commission to the exchange). That looks like instant profit, but if the price rises that "profit" will evaporate. To prevent this, you also buy a call, this time with a higher strike price. A call with a strike price of $475 costs 0.001292 (that's the asking price - you could place a lower bid and hope a seller accepts your bid). Buying 10 of these will cost you 0.01292 - meaning you've made 0.00154 BTC. If price does rise, then your losses are limited. This is obviously just an example, and I am not saying that this is a good idea at this time! You might also want to trade more than 10 contracts - or less.

I like options because I can enter a position knowing exactly how much I could lose (or profit). I like that I can hedge like this, and holding an opening position doesn't give me sleepness nights. I couldn't say the same about shorting!

What I don't like about (BTC) options is the lack of choice with respect to exchanges. Coinut is currently the only exchange offering "vanilla" options (the kind I've discussed above). Other sites offer "binary options", which seem to me to be much closer to gambling - win a fixed amount if the price goes up, regardless of how much it goes up. There's an exchange called Quedex which is opening "soon", and has been so for several months. Coinut has been controversial on BCT recently (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=992660.1220) - they messed up their signature campaign payments, and were slow in rectifying that. I left the campaign, and withdrew my BTC from their site. I'm monitoring things, and may well trade there again - until the recent problems I'd not had any problems there.

it depends. i'm a trader, if i think the price reached the top, then i will sell if i am about to make a nice profit. at this point that's not the case. right now i am holding. but i will definitely sell if i think i can buy back lower.

It would be stupid not to short. Looking at the history of bitcoin there was never a secur period for longer then 3 months. Always it goes up or goes down again.
Just look what happend after we hit 1200 USD..

For me the moment to short is when we reach a price above 1200k.
A higher price is not sustainable looking towards the potential (the current potential). It's innovative.. yes but there's a lot of work to do yet.

I would short it big time.
With everything that goes up, you see it goes down very quickly after the high. Investors want to take profit and so the price comes in a decline. If the rise is high enough the fall back wave will be bigger too.

Currently it's way to risky to short bitcoin.

Only the real insiders now what is going to happen. But yes if we touch $1500 . I will short it for sure.
Like every price wave eventually it will go down again so a decent amount of money can be made then.

answer is simple, yes, yes i will if price will go to 800$ or more, that's pretty high for me because i hold my bitcoins just to sell them later, i'm going long but if price will rise randomly to top really really fast, then i and probably others will sell bitcoins too

I feel that price is rebounding time and time again, so yes, I would short to then buy lower. I do want to have BTC for the long term, but it is quite bouncy and I prefer to hold some and play with some in order to get some profit from ups and downs.

But I never prefer to go short with respect to bitcoin anywhere. I personally feel it would be more risky to go short with respect to bitcoin always. Because we don't know when bitcoin prices start flying.

Yeah eventually it's like what goes up, must go down. And this rule also applies for bitcoin. Altough you can never be sure as to where the top lies.
In general i would short as much as i buy.. just a little.

If we reach new ATH, i will take some profit and short some of my coins. I was doing that before and gain some extra coins (i could do better but no complaining, some profit is taken). It is pretty much gamble from my point of view though.

Even as a trader, assuming day trading it has all the risks no one wants.

Esp when you dont know the next following day the price turns against you and youre there looking at the screen price drops.

yes