Bitcoin Forum

Hi folks,

What are best sites that provide BTC short facilities on margin? say 10x margin? :)

The last site to offer leverage that high went bankrupt.

bitfinex.com allows up to 2.5X

Notme it seems bitfinex also acts as market maker instead of offering access to likes of btc e?

They idea of inviting investors is cool. Its just bitcoin jumps up and down by how many % max? say bet is 1000X10 = 10,000 so it have to jump more that 10% at once to create loss for provider. Do such jumps happens often? I got one more idea :)

kraken.com ?

>10% moves happen pretty regularly.

icbit should lets you do that with options.

Avatrade http://www.avatrade.com/ (http://www.avatrade.com/) allows 5x margin and Plus500 http://www.plus500.com/ (http://www.plus500.com/) 4x margin for CFD's on BTC/USD.
Edit: US persons need not apply

I use plus500, it is far more friendly user, but they lowered the leverage from 10 to 4...

Avatrade, leverage of 1:5 with a margin of 20%
Plus500 1:4 but only ask 10%, I just hope they will increase the leverage soon.

With 10:1 margin you will be liquidated at $500!

I've survived so far with 1:10 but yes the risk is high.

IT would be insane for any site to offer that much leverage on a short unless they made you sign some sort of enforceable debt contract, which clearly isn't happening.

Wanting to short bitcoin on 10x margin reminds me of this quote by Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State: "You're either very smart or incredibly stupid." http://www.hark.com/clips/jrfwjxcklf-either-smart-or-stupid

Did you hear some insider info about what's going to happen at the Senate hearing? Maybe some senators will come out for banning bitcoin and a leveraged short will pay off big. Otherwise, you could lose everything in a matter of hours.

That has bad news written all over it, for anyone who offers such service especially.

I'd think 2-3x is the maximum margin you'd ever want (or anyone would be able to provide, until Wall Street jumps in) for anything other than extremely short-term trading.

Is plus500 legit? They seem a bit off to me

It is legit I used it for many years... but now the leverage is 1:2 So im definitely looking for another broker

many people will prove to be incredibly stupid (for our amusement)

Here is this epic thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=59969.0

It seems like it would be really easy to screw that site over by manipulating Goxs price. Sorta surprised nobody has tried yet.

Bitfinex allows x4 margin.

BTC.sx allows for larger margins but I don't remember how big.

BTC.sx is 1:10.
Anyone use it? Any comment about this one?

I've tried it, it works in general but there are some annoying things about it.

First it looks as if they have some kind of weird margin call system which means that you can never lose more than a specific amount on a trade, rather than just losing your entire account balance. Not sure what the point of that is. Interest is counted for this margin call system.

bitfinex is limited to 1:2 atm.

Not to mention they never have USD reserve to buy on bitstamp lately.

OP wants to short.  This should open up some USD. :P

Ya I thought this too. I watched their spread vs the orderbook a few times and it appeared to me they weren't even watching the depth, so you really could wait for a thin buy or sell side on gox and go short or long respectively.  You could also wait for large spreads between gox and bitstamp and go short gox price with plus500 and long bifinex or avatrade and basically  play the percentages of an eventual convergence.

They're not even watching spread, let alone depth. A person with a good 50ish coins could probably make a bundle there, by pushing the goxxian price around, and lower their gox commission as well.