Bitcoin Forum

Do you guys know any reputable service where I can short sell bitcoins?
I am not bearish, I just want to hedge.
I was searching hi and low in google but did not find any service that offers that at this moment.

Thanks!
Rob

Here's how to short bitcoins:

Buy some bitcoins. Sell them and wait for the price to drop. Buy some more bitcoins with your profit and repeat the process. You'll get rich!

I'll sell you bitcoins for market price+6%.

:-) good joke. haha.

I need to be short because I want to hold say 10 bitcoins and short 10 bitcons, so I want to be delta neutral.

Any other more serious suggestions?

I could borrow bit coins for 30 days and pay an interest. Any good lending service out there?

Rob

With Bitcoin's prices rising (and sometimes falling) the way they are, who in their right mind would lend or borrow Bitcoins? Imagine if you borrowed some and then the price went from $100 to $150 over those 30 days. You'd be screwed.

yea the "currency" seems to be too volatile for anyone to even begin to think about borrowing and lending right now... also there would be little recourse if someone were to just take the coins that they "borrowed"  its not like you can put a lein on someone elses wallet.....

I'm not joking.

https://bitfinex.com/ for margin trading.  Don't lose all of your money, this market turns on a dime.

you can issue bonds

If you have any Facebook friends who want to lend Bitcoins then you can borrow from them using this app:

https://apps.facebook.com/agree-it

Its still in Beta phase but 'it does what it says on the tin'.

Mtgox you can set to auto sell/buy

Apologies if I misunderstand, but why would you own and short an equal amount of something? Wouldn't you typically aim for delta neutral through a combination of securities and options on them? Long securities, with put options, for instance, and possibly the addition of call options if you can't perfectly get to delta neutral with the available puts?

Transaction/cashing-out difficulties aside, selling your current 10 bitcoins and shorting 10 bitcoins is the same thing isn't it? In the former case, you have to buy 10 bitcoins back, but you can do it whenever you want. In the latter case, you have to buy 10 bitcoins back too.

Selling and shorting are 2 totally different things. When you sell something, you no longer own it and take whatever payment you accept for said product and you are done. When you "go short" on something you invest money to promise to buy something at a later date in hopes it will go down.

This is listed on their front page-
but I can't find what exchanges they peer with (other than Mt.Gox)...

If you could quickly move USD from mtgox to btce you could make a fortune shorting the market right now.

following this thread so in case anyone posts a good service

robertvo do you use the same strat for silver/gold?

haha it's true I was day trading yesterday, with the current volatility it's easy to keep buying when it dips and selling when it rises....rinse and repeat.

For the past few days we have been seeing prices dip down to ~$60usd and back up to ~$90 in the same day. If you keep an eye on it, you can take advantage of that pretty easily.

I think you're misunderstanding what actually happens when you short something.

When you short, you first borrow someone's shares (if you're shorting equities for instance), then you sell them, promising to buy them back later. That's the actual transaction that's happening. In both cases, you're selling 10 shares. In the one case, it's 10 shares you already own. In the other case, it's 10 shares you've borrowed.

Having 0 bitcoin is exactly as delta neutral as being long 10 btc and simultaneously short 10 btc.

Hello everyone,

with all respect to you guys, many of your replies show that you guys are new to trading and do not understanding "shorting" concept.

I really want to hold 10 bitcoins in one account and be short 10 bitcoins in the other.
So when price against USD fluctuate, one account will appreciate in value and the other will depreciate that means delta neutral.

I want to use advanced strategies which I will not reveal here.

So far I came across bxcamp, they promised I can short BTC as soon as their volume is 2000 BTC per day.

So we'll see.

Another thing: If I borrow 1000 bitcoins today and return them in 30 days, I will not be "screwed" because if bit coins goes thru the roof as someone said. How come? Because I will not sell those bitcoins. I will always hold 1000 bitcoins :-)
I'm not taking directional risk. :-) There are other ways to trade and profit :-)


Rob

 

I'm no economist, but this makes no sense.

This kind of thing is common in arbitrage strategies. It would be a very useful feature for the major exchanges to add. They all will inevitably but the question is whether there are exchanges with sufficiently high liquidity that offer it already.