Bitcoin Forum

Although I have plenty of trading experience the IBKR interface is quite intimidating - as is the margin requirements.

A few notes for those interested. Bear in mind this could be completely wrong! I'm posting here to make sure I"m not making a silly mistake!:

1) I believe the margin requirement is very high at 50%.

2) If you transfer funds in it will have to be fiat. You then open a short position via the java-like interface. Market orders are possible.  

3) I think funds have to be in USD. I believe if the funds are not in USD they will be automatically converted

4) You may need to wait a matter of days or weeks for the trade to settle.

5) Since this is a futures market you need to think about maturation date

6) Funds can't be quickly transferred in and then out again. I believe there is a holding delay.

7) You have access to the NYXBT, GXBT, BRTI and BRR through the interface. You also have access to stocks with 'bitcoin' in their name as it's a unified interface


Personally I just want to hedge a physical position into a neutrally speculated position so that if prices rise or fall I simply remain neutral. The big risk is that the tight margin means a short spike in price would mean a margin call.

As an aside, the owner of IB commented that BTC is very volatile - so volatile this could create contagion to trigger the derivatives time bomb.


edit because can't use reply. Forum bug says I've already replied:

The product code on IB is GXBT.

The margin requirements are massive. Perhaps I misunderstood what 70% means. The minimum quantity to short is 1BTC, which is currently ~$6300USD. But you need >$50,000USD free initial margin to cover the initial trade. So that's around 790%.

Personally I'm expect a slow, protracted grind down for BTC but clearly IB are still expecting price swings of 790%.

Interesting.

 

We should be have knowledge about margin trading because in the downtrend of crypto we should be short the price in the margin platform trading. Dont trade on spot trading when the market crash and move the money in to margin trading and others different asset. Metatrader platform is good platform to trade crypto and others asset with leverage and margin because this platform available alot of trading tool.

Shorting Bitcoin is good way to make profit when the price dump,  but many trader too greedy and use high number of leverage,  so we have to change this mind because the purpose of trading is to make profit with consistently although we can make profit 10%-20% a month. Choose broker that offer low of commission and spread will be better to make more profit.

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