Bitcoin Forum

Current Price BFX $1040.

Just noting, that in BFX's history there has never been more short sellers in dollar amount than longs.  

Also note, 90% are under water with the average being somewhere around $950'ish.

So, it seems they are betting on past history.  Every time Bitcoin enters $1000+ it crashes violently.  However, like the old saying goes:

"Past performance is not indicative of future results."

Another theory, is that Bitmex sentiment suggests a 30% chance of the Winklevoss ETF passing as we approach the final March 11 2017 deadline.  So after an expected ETF rejection by the SEC, lots betting that Bitcoin will crash a few hundred.

CSO of Bitfinex was on whalepool chat saying they would protect short sellers in case of cascading margin calls to the upside.

Whatever the case, this does not look to end well.  

http://images.lolstream.com/assets/media_show/1468__7b78f6a5d0b102c8b701fc3ff008c113.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/zCNKxKU.png

Very interesting.
What is the link for this chart?

https://bfxdata.com/combined/btc

It is not unlikely that the short squeeze will come much earlier than the Winklevoss decision ...
 ;D

Or they could be short because they have inside informatiom about the ETFs.

Do you know when these short contracts expire?

Bitfinex doesn't have short contracts.  They can hold them as long as they don't get margin called.

The chances are the ETF if ruled against is done so before the 11th right? I mean, if it makes it to the 11 th without a ruling, it's probably going to autopass. Is this correct?

Could be just betting on the odds given. 70% - 80% is good equity.

CSO of Bitfinex was on whalepool chat saying they would protect short sellers in case of cascading margin calls to the upside.

Why on earth would the CSO get involved in individual trades? He should do his job of running an exchange.
If short traders are foolish and get hurt, that's life.

I agree, if they made their bed then let them lie in it. Shit happens, if you gamble your lofe away financially by shorting then you must face the consequences.

That is my understanding. If it is not rejected officially by the 11th, which is a Saturday, it will pass by default.

The red line had a single rise at the 13th (which been on a friday last month btw) but the green one grows steadily. I can sense a single personality took that short bet on a single day but the market is moving against that in high numbers.
If one runs an exchange one should keep an eye onto customer numbers, refraining from insider jobs just for a quick bang.

Current Price BFX $1040.

For the past months, there's been a HUGE contract holder on OKC.

Longs were dreading he might be long, since he would have to sell at some point, however, today he finally gave a clue to his position.

Since price is rising and his position decreased slightly, he appears to be SHORT and taking a beating.

This contract ends in March 31.  When he closes his position, BTC going to explode whether it be from the depths of 700 due to ETF being rejected, or new all time highs.

https://i.imgur.com/tcvMiBh.png

55k Bitcoin in a short position ?  Holy mother.. :o

On the other hand, the future isn't completely unpredictable either. Bitcoin price has certain patterns that can give you some indication of the future.

For me, all I need to know is that the long-term trend (since mid 2015) is a steady increase in price, possibly even exponential growth. So I'm hoarding & holding.

Shorts will get raped when we go to the new ATH after they realize the ETF is irrelevant and price increase is due the overall project being more mature and naturally sitting above $1000. It would be cool to watch shorts going bankrupt and committing suicide. I can't wait to see all the short positions getting dropped as tweeted by https://twitter.com/whalecalls

We are going only up, understand this fact or die trying.

The best thing to do under these circumstances is to invest heavily in the popcorn producing industry, Huge amounts of popcorn will find their way to consumers who will be watching this epic showdown.

Pass by default for an S-1 filing has never happened before. It would be a first if COIN is approved by default. We are also down from three to only two SEC commissioners at present who make the decision. If they have any doubt I think they will protect their jobs and just say no.

I agree with you about the BFX shorts ... that looks like a recipe for disaster :/

This OKC one does too, but its a bit more complex - been watching it while and seemed pretty obvous it was a short due to the, at times, > $80 discount on the quarterly vs weekly and even more vs spot. Also, this position is roughly 50% of the open interest. Not possible to close it in an orderly fashion if it goes the wrong way. Period. And the holder knows this and knew it when he took that size position relative to the market.
However, due to it having an expiry, the owner deos not have to close it. And at any point he can just walk away and take the hit having withdrawn the max maintenance margin/profit possible. The loss from there would be max 5k BTC, possibly only 2.5k, depending on the leverage used, and nothing would actually have to be bought on market at all. The longs just get fucked and not paid out. The OKC futures market is a zero sum game.

If it then gets stopped out, the net result will likely be that there is a massive buy order sitting there unfilled in the OKC futures order book, the loss will be 'socialised' ie. anyone betting against him will not make any money. Its a truly fucked up scenario that will likely doom the exchange imo.

More than that, I would be very surprised if this is not an insider of sorts who has taken this position. Either an OKC 'associate' or a PBoC 'family member'. Only someone with access/control to policies of OKC and or PBoC would commit to such a thing imo. It is insanity otherwise.

The fact that we appear to have two 'systemic risk' sized positions in the market, in the same direction, at the same time, is very disconcerting tbh.

Maybe they know something, maybe they dont. Maybe they can influence things, maybe they can't. But both are too big for this market and are unlikley to end well unless 'shenanigans'. Watch out for a BFX  'hack' ...

Yup, buy spot popcorn, enough for 4-6 weeks!!

So ... sideways then lol

Also, yes, it is my understanding that the ETF has to be officially 'approved' by  the SEC, so 'no comment' = 'no ETF', not 'approved'. Deadline on this is 11th March. No more extensions.
From what I read, most ETF that are not going to be approved are withdrawn close to the final date to save face (ie they are given a nudge, gentlemans agreement style)
I wonder what the twins would choose in this scenario (we may never ge to find out of course!)

 

Rather shocking to see that comment. It's none of their business. To protect their customers they will attempt to manipulate the market once more? As if there isn't enough manipulation going on.
This CSO should be fired imho.

55k contracts. IE $5,5000,000 which is 5.5k BTC and he's probably using 10x leverage so 5.5k/10 = 550

550 bitcoin short

Ahahahah
Well that was for sure since the begining!
1k$ is a freaking high border, it's the real glass ceiling. It seems too hard to break

And it has always been too hard

But the moment when it'll break... oh god...
Problem is that no trader holding a short will be able to stop it now. When do you stop it? At 1050? Well it's nearly there...

Still, holy.... Imagine how much popcorn you could buy for $ 500,000,-  :o

Nope ... look again ... 55k BTC  :o

Agree, probably on a 10x. So 5.5k BTC on the line as margin ...

And the worst part is that if we cross the 1150$ he'll lose everything Oo
You imagine that? Seeing 500k$... Disappearing...
The guys must be like a crazy bitch in front of his computer!!! Refreshing the chart every 2 seconds xD

As the CSO stated, they will not let that happen, they will protect those people.

I can not believe that I agree with kwukduck on something  :o

OK Thanks. That means whoever is holding the shorts is gambling that the ETF is going to be either denied, or the decision postponed again.

It can't be postponed any longer, either rejected or officially approved or approved by default.

The largest contract holder at OKCoin has decreased the position by >20,000 BTC in the last 24 hours. (35,828 vs 55,974 BTC).  :o

They are also hoping that Bitcoin doesn't rally wildly before the decision is made.
If we see a move up by $100 or so, we are going to see a lot of margin calls being made.

The recent leg up to 1100$ seems to be a long position.

Todays bump helped by another c.2k worth of shorts throwing in the blood-soaked towel on finex.

Still 13.5k praying this is a bulltrap, with maybe 5k outstanding from the 900 ish level.

I think they think they can ride it out till March 12th. Maybe they can.

 

I just hope they can tank the margin when the price soar on the way to March 11. The short squeeze will kill them, the price is already moving up and we are still two weeks away from the decision.

Any updates? Shorters getting killed I would imagine? Any suicide news about Bitcoiners?

Current Price BFX $1162.

Slight incline of shorts today as we had an ATH.   :o

All of them underwater.

I hope this guy hasn't killed himself yet.

Shorting is so fucking stupid unless you are George Shoros himself managing insider information, then you could be able to take big shorts, but those guys gambling in such suicidal ways is so insane.

Just buy and hold, you will make massive gains like that alone. Im all about getting rich and taking risks but cmon, shorting bitcoin? bitcoin is only going up you dickwad shorts, don't you see the potential to go up is massive compared to going down? Shorts will never learn.

shorters made insane amounts in 2014-15. holders were throwing money away by taking the safe route.

the trouble with humans is that they get married to one mindset and blow it eventually unless they can admit to themselves that the market is doing something they don't want it to.

Sure, shorting can work, but what when it doesn't? In regular forex, people can end up in debt, not sure how shorting works in poloniex. Anyway I don't like it, you never know when something will go down, you never know when to stop the short.

Buying dips and holding long term is what has worked to me so far.

Ah. Finally.

Some Non-Bulltard truth :-*

Thank you SuperMario Draghi 8)

yep. this*10.

whenever the shorts pile up, but the market keeps going up, expect a massive short squeezing spike, which will take Bitcoin to it's zenith....

......then after that, the dumping can commence.

Current Price BFX $1281.   :o

Update: At $1040, we had more Shorts > Longs positions at BFX.  We exploded.  Again, to kick off March we are now at that same ratio of more Shorts > Longs.

Shorts will buy up any dip just to escape, considering that 99% of them are under water with huge anxiety at this time.

https://i.imgur.com/JNWZE8q.gif

https://i.imgur.com/u1gSSDw.png

Shorts lost their pants, I tried to warn everyone, most didn't listen, they thought bitcoin wouldn't be $1,000+ for a long time, and we are going to see shorts being cancelled as bitcoin marches towards $1,300+

I think we are going to see a lot of people at the verge of suicide. Shorters are often gambling addicts, they can potentially end up in debt. Why can't they just buy and hold?

Lol here's a suggestion, use the correct number. The shorts right now are 13400 and longs are 28k. The chart you're using is including btc swaps used to long altcoins. Here is the correct chart: https://www.bfxdata.com/positions/btcusd

Long alts against btc is short btc.  However, thank you for pointing out the correct numbers for the btcusd market, although now it is $27.6k for longs and $13.5k for shorts.  Using the btcusd figures, the shorts did get up around 50% from around 1000 to 1040, but dropped from there until around March 1st.  They have begun to rise again, but are currently only 32.8%.

Current Price BFX:  $1,574  :o

Well it seems BTC borrowing is still WAY higher than USD borrowing.

But after the correction after Bitfinex hit 1700 & Stamp hit 1600, still way more shorts than longs BUT the rates have started to rise for USD loaning.  This makes it very costly for longs to hold their positions if Bitcoin doesn't keep rising.  Could also be because no USD is coming into Bitfinex therefore lower supply means higher demand.  

Interesting battle for until some fundamental news hits like that Bitcoin Unlimited BS in March, I think we keep rising.  

Shorts must continue buying any dip to escape this rally.

Current Price BFX: $1,972 ATH  :o

14.2k longs vs -16.1k shorts

Still more short interest and all short sellers are underwater.  There is barely enough liquidity to cover in case of a positive news event and the price skyrockets.

Still not close to ending... and it will be violent!

This is going crazy. Maybe it is time to throw the trading books out of the window for most of us and start a "buy and hold" strategy. If the price falls down "violently" then it is always an opportunity to buy more. A lot of us keep thinking it will fall and it did but it always climbs back up. Why?

Simple. Bitcoin is the real deal. The more time goes by the more people realize it.

You think it is the real deal now because the price will not stop climbing. But the moment it starts crashing and everyone starts losing money, everyone will complain in the forum and say it is not the "real deal" anymore. It is funny how we all change our minds when we start losing money.

but if it crashes back to $1100 tonight i wonder how many people will be in the red overall. probably not all that many.

there will be a fresh wave of bagholders at some point but they're not here yet.

Haha, all the trading techniques are seeming to be useless with the way bitcoin is growing. Maybe traders never thought any commodity or currency can move so fast as bitcoin is moving now. ;)

Altcoins are in a bubble, that's fore sure. Bitcoin has not even entered the vertical rise stage of a bubble cycle. But altcoins have their own dot-com bubble. Ethereum is probably going to be the pets.com analogy of the altcoin bubble  ;D

What you do here is that you will sell the overvalued altcoins and you buy into promising undervalued coins. Look at the market cap and try to see the growth potential. For example, Eth is already inflated as fuck, it is very unlikely that ETH will x10 in value, right? How about some undervalued coin with good fundamentals on the other hand? Those small market caps can easily x10 in value. What happens is that smart investors sell their overvalued shitcoin stack (ripple, eth, dash...) and they buy into coins that can still x10 in value.

This is Bitcoin, of course there will be a crash and then a rebound that will take the price higher and so on and so on...

Why? Because, Bitcoin is the one and true cryptocurrency. As more people realize this, the more the price rises.

Shitcoins on the other hand, what a mess. The US government or any government at any time and go after them and good bye shitcoins. Only a matter of time before Vitalik Buterin and his ilk are in jail being butt-fucked along with their shitcoins and investors. Satoshi was smart to disappear and hand over Bitcoin to the world, probably the smartest thing he did.

Now, do I wish I got in etherum when it was under $10, hell yeah, I'd be rich now. Do I believe in etherum, hell no, I would've just used it to get rich quick.

Let me just say this, a lot of people are going to get hurt when that etherum bubble pops. ICOs are going to get a big black eye, maybe smart contracts will too. This year and next will be REAL interesting to say the least.

Yes it's hard to be a trader right now with the price just rising constantly. Normally the price rises and falls so you can sell and rebuy but now you sell and are out as the price keeps going up.

Shorting bitcoin is for mental patients in a bull market like this.  Having come to know people on this forum, it doesn't shock me in the least.  These fool bags are going to get run over by a bulldozer, you watch.  Shorting at $950?  Good luck with that one.  Must be complete noobs doing this, and I bet they're all from the U.S., because only some stupid American would do that.

Do you have an inkling of what price it goes flip-mode?

One way to estimate if there are many bagholders if Bitcoin crashes back to $1100 is to find out how much volume there was at the higher prices. Always remember that there is a buyer for every seller. If there was a lot of activity at the break of $2000 and then we fall to $1000 tomorrow, then there are a lot of new bagholders.

This looks to be the violet ending. Price closing in on $2100.
I am sure those shorts must be leveraged. If so, you will have crazy margin calls on them.
Some people are going to get bankrupt quickly.  :)

Its seems to me that margin trading has only two possibilities.
1. Insider trading
2. Gambler's fallacy

Maybe I'm wrong, but I haven't been able to figure it out yet.

I cannot wait for OP's next post and comment. Anybody who is thinking of shorting in this bull market is crazy gambling. They are clearly trying to time the market. That is something no one can do perfectly. By the time the market becomes bearish they have lost a lot and their gains will be smaller than if they waited patiently.

Current Price BFX: $2,132  :o

16.3k longs vs -15.3k shorts

Cathartic day.  Reached an ATH in a mother of all green candles but corrected mid-range.  

Bitfinex starting to reach some equilibrium as longs are now gaining on shorts.  Funding is getting real expensive for longs as USD is in huge demand and short on supply.  Longs need prices to keep going up or they'll be paying loanshark prices for their leveraged positions.  

Fact remains, all short sellers prior to today are still under water. They'll buy any dump to close out of this nightmare short sale.

At least THOSE bears have balls to put their money where their mouth is. But nevertheless, no empathy for the shorts :P