Bitcoin Forum

https://twitter.com/whalecalls/status/815598251319640064



I tried to warm my friends on IRC about the dangers of shorting, but they wouldn't listen.. they think they can time the market, when this is impossible, you can only look forward to trying to predict the fundamentals, and the fundamentals are clearly telling us to buy and hold long term. People that bought every dip instead of trying to be the smartass that tries to short has made massive gains this year.

What does 'shorting' mean?

An action of selling  or trading shares with an expectation of the price will go down over time and can rebuy at a lower price to gain profit.


Read more: Short (or Short Position) Definition | Investopedia http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/short.asp#ixzz4UcU6i1bq

he isn't someone that fud around after shorting, is he?
that's the thing about trying to be a smart ass when they can't handle when to short and when to buy. I'm not that good at it wither but i'm buying whenever the price goes down.

What I find interesting is that some people refer to shorting to not only selling and expecting to buy back cheaper, but doing so with leverage. As in shorting implies leverage (which means they are losing more money than the difference between the selling point and the new higher price after selling). You can end up in debt even.

I think most people reefer to that when they talk about shorting, which is why it's so dangerous, you can go bankrupt if you screw it up. A lot of people were aiming to short the market at 1k expecting a drop and now they are losing their shit, look at the graph.. it's 1030 already and climbing.

For the bitcoin, it is better not to short.

Why would anyone want to short when it is obvious that it is going to up from the beginning of the year? ::)
That is a no brainer because that's what it does every year then it goes down in February or mid-month here after.
Come on now, some people especially when trading volume so high should use their brains. ::)

Maybe He will die soon because there was not anything to cover back 600btc.
He must sell his cars or house to recover his bitcoins lost. Let's pray for him.

Shorters will never learn... they are money addicts, pretty much just like gamblers, they can never stop and always want more. So they make money on the way up by buying cheaper, and instead of enjoying it, they automatically start getting into shorter mentality and expect a correction, and this correction not always happens. Bitcoin is going higher and all the 1000 dollar shorters are becoming broke right now.

Anyone who can bet $300,000 to $500,000 on a short probably has enough money to cover it.
Its still probably a big loss, but I'm assuming this person probably has made millions off Bitcoin already.

Personally I would never take a short against Bitcoin right now. Things have so crazy lately. The price seems to be going up with no signs of stopping.
(Although a slight drop in price could be just as likely, I guess.)

it's very simply it's mean that you sell because you believe that the price will go down, if we talk about opening position, it's mean that you speculate on the price going down, if you go long you speculate on the price going up, then if it go down when you short you close the position and win an amout on the % or if it go up you close the position if you were long

You are right even those loses he experienced on doing short trades wont really matter to him but for me it does really hurt and 240-600 BTC is no joke already and i could able to buy a house on that amount. Its nor really ideal to to short trades on bitcoins price movement as of now and as you said its still increasing gradually it may fall down sometimes but only on a small amount only and goes back again and continue to rise.

That pattern will die as soon as enough people notice it.
People will start buying in December and sell it in January to take advantage of the price increase.
When that happens, the price will start falling in January.

I just also feel that the price can be fall in this month.. but there is no proof or reason that the price will crash soon..
Well for me i just relaying what is the movement from last year.. since bitcoin is gradually developed and many company are using bitcoin
It is hard to predict if the price can be fall..
So i think they are just wrong in prediction but they must monitor the movement and not short all of their holdings just few percentage. and buy if the price will goes down if not better to the rest and wait for timing..

I woudnt blame them for thinking in that direction and it just went the other way around now. Its a risk a versatile trader will take going the opposite direction of the masses and this could mean gold mine.


This is something I have heard over and over and its actually a possibility going through historical analysis of events surrounding Bitcoin. However, the past sometimes might not be a perfect determination of the future as several events might have happened to negate what happened in the past.

That's the thing that makes shorts extremely dangerous

If you buy even on borrowed funds and the price goes down, you can lose only so much. The price can't hit the floor and then go into negative territory. With shorts, it is a completely different story because you always have to borrow funds when shorting (otherwise you would be just selling your own stash and get done with that), and the price can keep on rising indefinitely long potentially putting you more and more in debt

Forex is a hard thing to predict, some people has sucessfull transactions for a while, the question is for how long they will be able to keep into the gree light. I am following a thread that looks like the op has some knowledge and information to play and stay on green. But playing short at any currencie is the same to ask to loose your money, i do remember some broker i had used changes more then others brokers, and then i realized why, those broker were eating the short up and down. Even the expert traders loose, i do remember an etoro trader  that had 100 sucess trades and were stucked with one open trade at euro when it were 1.47 against dollar, those still open till today, soo if they fail to close their trading positions and do loose some money why others will only make money?

Bad period for short position. I suppose that he thought the price will fall because it's going up for a long time now but there are no actual signs for this so he made the wrong decision. This was more hazard them rational decision and that costs him but he learned something for the future.

I can understand what motivated them to short,futures is always a high risk game and with the price of bitcoin having a stable growth till $800 they should have thought that the price would stabilize after the Christmas bubble and i am sure no one predicted the price to break the resistance of $1000 by new year and now the price is running to new heights.

Short selling is ALWAYS a risk and a form of gambling. They always bet against the trend of price going up. It has a limited reward but is surrounded by unlimited risks. Sadly that guy short a stock the wrong way and ended up drilling a hole on his own hand :/

On the bright side, somebody made 240-600 BTC from taking the other side of this trade.

I think it is best to short if you are from the future and you have the printout or the copy of Bitcoin trading history :D because you know the transition point and effectively short on it and buy back at the start of the uptrend after the decline in price, else it would be very risky just what happened to the person sampled by OP.  Shorting is almost the same as gambling because you don't have any strong reference that the price will go down just your instinct.

If he is from the future and he changes the past won't he end up changing the future? He might end up getting stuck in a so called fictionally ontological paradox aka casual loop!

This evidently won't work

At least, not in the way you think. When you start using your printout, you will inadvertently change the future. You may claim that if you trade some small bitcoins (without being too greedy), the future price will not change much, but this is only an assumption since however small impacts may have however big consequences (see the Butterfly Effect). Regarding that poor guy, he may not be that poor as we might think of him. Before the Bitfinex hack (two days before, to be precise), someone had been heavily shorting Bitcoin too, so we may have just witnessed a failed attempt at hacking some major exchange (or it simply hasn't yet come to light)

I do agree but well this is just an example of how hard it is if we are trying to do short trades.  The outcome is always uncertain.  More likely a gamble in our part,  and I think it is better to do Binary option trading than shorting.  What do you think?  :)

He didn't lose the money, he just sold and got nothing from it. He lost what he could've gained, money he never had in hand.
You could say you lost as well, because a week ago you could've sold everything you had, put money in bitcoin and profit.

On the contrary I'd go long on bitcoin at any point in history.

Shorting is a kind of game not suitable for bitcoin but it could be very useful in other altcoins. Bitcoins characteristics being the prototype cryptocurrency is unlike any other alternative coins in the market. Bitcoin should be hold and dont sell in a very short span of time if you want to profit from the price inflation that happens all the time. It is also true that many have gain large profit from holding their bitcoins and I have the same view as I am saving some amounts in case a skyrocket price happens.

Tell to your friends if they wanna sell, sell at 1200$. Now Bitcoin still wandering around looking for his new head( resistance) "my 2cent".
Long live the great BITCOIN !

Ah laugh at these fools who tryin' ta short dick the whole market.  Y'all playin' wit fire over a swimmin' poo filled wit gasoline!  Don't thank the market is nowhere near as inflatimagated as some o' these people thinks.  You all can lose yo shirt, pants, an' RayBan sunglasses in this a here market.  No way I'm gon' short bitcoin right now.  Everrbody buyin' now.  There no limit ta how much y'all could lose.

Is it too late to nominate Huge Black Woman as the best account of 2016?
Every post is hilarious. Hats off to you friend. Keep up the good work!

maybe if the bitcoin price is really give true signal and then getting down, we can short but for now, while the price is increase, i think its not good for short. its hard to make decision about short or not if we don't know and don't see the chart and the sign, so its a worth lesson for us to learn and i hope we don't have this experience like that guy.

That's quite a position to take in this strong rally, there will always be that guy who tries to call the top. It is just glorified gambling with a plethora of justifications from every individual who does it.

What a terrible trade, but people like this try to play it smart, to be more intelligent than anyone and end up fooling only themselves, if instead this person just bought bitcoin he will be enjoying easy profits.

Mate, are you serious?

If he didn't lose any money, who has profited then? Shorting means that he first had to borrow bitcoins (read pay interest on borrowed funds), then he sold the borrowed bitcoins hoping that the price will fall (it is called a short sell). When the price actually went up, he had to buy back all the bitcoins he had sold earlier, at a higher price. Doesn't it mean that to buy back the same number of bitcoins he had to pay more dollars? And that would constitute his loss (you can calculate the losses in bitcoins if you wish). If the price went down (as the dude expected), he would again buy back the bitcoins, now at a lower price with less dollars, and the difference would make up his profit (you can count the profits in bitcoins as well)

not really maybe he had those bitcoin, i mean those bitcoin were owned by him, and he was shorting(which is stupid, with a bull market) to make even more

so right now he simply can not re enter the market anymore without losing, but he can keep the funds and go away

Did you read the OP (and the twitter post linked in it)?

If he sold his own funds, it wouldn't be a short sell in the first place. It would be just a sell, as what thousands people are doing on a regular basis every day. If you read the opening post, you would get an idea that it was a futures market where you buy and sell contracts, not actual bitcoins. The only way he could sell a futures contract without going short is when he bought it before and sold it later thus closing his position either at a loss or profit. In this case, it would be profit, not loss, since the price is going up

How can short selling be safe with other alt currencies.Future trading is a big risk in this unregulated market and the price can be manipulated without any specific reasons and with this sole factor i would suggest everyone to stop doing these sort of things.

WOW that is a terrible loss but I think many have done it because they never ever would have believed that bitcoin could ever reach these kind of highs. I knew about bitcoin when it was a dollar and am forever kicking myself that I didn't buy a few hundred. if I had a few hundred bitcoin now my whole life would be sorted.  :'( :'(

In the past many traders make a good profit with shorting. It`s not connected or more useful just with other altcoins. It`s more about feeling a moment when to sell when to hold, when to buy. This three things makes one man a good trader I think.
Just a year ago when I was here, price moving was ideal for shorting. This summer we had situation when bitcoin was above 700 $ and then drop back to 500 $, that is also ideal times for shorting. I think we can see this again, just how to notice this before it happens?

It is always easier in hindsight to know the correct time to short. People might have expected a pullback from $700 to $500 levels and hence decided to short. Unfortunately, they got the direction wrong and incurred huge losses.

Forex is alot simplier actually the fact there there are indicators and economic news are sent online in seconds with the help of internet. The only thing that is hard to learn is when to exit a trade. And also a sudden news that can affect the market isn't something anyone can predict. no different to crypto but its more controlled by whales as of now.

Im yet to see someone with solid, year-after-year forex gains, or any gains at all if the person doing it is daytrading. I just don't believe in daytrading at all, I think it's pure luck. We can anticipate what's going to happen, but not exactly when, and daytrading is gambling with micromovements which is just market noise. It's not the same being in january 2015 when most smart people were telling other people to buy Bitcoin because it was super undervalued, it was predictable that we would sooner or later go to 1k+ again and hit a new ATH, but it's simply not possible to know what's going to happen in the small timelapses that daytraders play with.

I think that guy was simply greedy on one part and on the other part, he's a great risk taker. Fear such people as they can bounce back anytime.....

He should have simply tested the market with at most 5BTC.

These are mostly HFT systems which are earning through arbitrage windows opening between exchanges that trade foreign currencies. The arbitrage opportunities typically last only a few seconds if not milliseconds, and the systems that are located closest to such an exchange (e.g. across the road) or at the exchange itself (e.g. in the same building) can get relatively small but steady profits by exploiting these opportunities at every price movement, however small it might be...

That's why real estate as well as renting is very expensive around major exchanges

We trader one can predict where the market will go ,unless you are BP(WHALE) btc holder maybe you can give little Bit of impact on the flow of the market movement.
My 2cent. 😁

if you are trading shorting simple mean to buy back after selling, it does not really matter if they are your funds or not, it doesn't make sense to say that you can't short with your money

the same for going long

Stop spreading misinformation. And as far as I remember, this is not the first time you are claiming something you don't know or use your understanding which has nothing with the established terminology. Technically, if you sell something which you own, you basically close your long position in that, about which I wrote right away in my post. As I once told you, you may think up anything you please, just don't tell this as if it were an accepted convention...

Short selling (from (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_(finance)) Wikipedia)


Short selling (from (http://www.investopedia.com/university/shortselling/shortselling1.asp) Investopedia)


Though I don't think anyone would be interested in your definition since it obviously interferes with the accepted one

it doesn't make sense to me, the practice of shorting, it's selling because you think the price is going down, if it is your or other money shouldn't matter at all

it's not spreading misinformation, that was my definition of it since the beginning, i didn't even have a look at it to wikipedia, therefore i'm not in agreement with that definition

this is the problem that we see a lot in crypto currency markets, I am not specifically talking about the guy that OP is mentioning but more general thing.
there are lots of newbies who read something on the internet, learn it and then test it and since it works for them for a couple of times they think it can work forever so they go in big and take risks but they don't know everything because of being a newbie.
and there are many topics around that make this situation worse, they teach you these things without warning about things that can go wrong in trading and how to prevent them.

You are spreading misinformation because your "definition" has nothing to do with the long accepted and established one. Essentially, you are perverting the meaning of the term that had been in use long before your birth. It is no problem (as I said) if you use it to yourself, but English is not even your mother tongue, so why do you ever come down to telling this? Nevertheless, what is your definition for someone selling stocks, currency futures or whatever which he doesn't own?

What is your term for a short sell as everyone understands this?

Yeah but it still gotta hurt, but then again in the mentality of someone like that they prob just think i will get it back easy.  I would never risk the bitcoin i have, but then again thats prob why i will never be a multi millionaire either.  ;D

this is a great lesson for everyone and it even deserves to be stickied here or in trading board preferably.
so that everyone can see trading is a risky job and you can not predict what is going to happen, you have to go in with amount that you can afford to lose not all you have, because incidents like this can really ruin lives.

Wow, This guy will go to suicide. he lost too many bitcoins nearly 700,000usd. This is a big amount of money for me .
I have worked all my life , I can not have that amount like this. He was very hazardous.

Bitcoin is going to 1000+ again, looks like a lot of short positions got cleared, expect a whole new list of people that went bankrupt recently trying to short the last dip, probably whalecalls twitter will announce it... that is why I just buy and hold. I bought more bitcoin on this dip and it felt great to be able to buy sub 1000 BTC again, it's time to stack up before 1000 solidifies as the new floor. Bitcoin has shown excellent performance everytime it dips.

Between the cup and the lip a morsel may slip (or sleep)

What we just saw may be just a dead-cat bounce. When China wakes up later in the night today, the price may go down to sub-800 levels. I guess it is safe to say now that the current price gap over 1,000 dollars has been nothing more but a severe pump, and we may not yet have seen the dump phase of it. The market always fools the majority of players and wannabe traders. Now as they think they have seen the bottom and happily started to buy up

http://s14.radikal.ru/i187/1701/be/22e3d8499ea0.jpg

While the light might in fact well be a freight train coming

   In this topic I learned that even for shorting, trader need to choose right moment, in case he borrowed bitcoins lose is huge. Confusing part is that he wanted to do this now when everyone expect rise, where he got idea about drop, why he expected that?
   I feel sorry for this guy, he lost a fortune. Trading is proven to be very risky investment once again, learn from this and try to not do the same. If this is me, I dont know how would I recover from this huge lose.

as i said shorting is selling when you speculate on the price going down, selling just to take the money and go away is dumping for me

and again is not misinformation, i'm not doing it on purpose to make other belive what iw ant, it's just my view on the matter

otherwise how do you call someone who is selling his money to buy back?

In fact, it is not even for shorting, it is specifically for shorting that you need to choose the right moment with a surgical accuracy. As I explained above and others basically said the same, your losses can be virtually unlimited since you win when the price goes down, and, consequently, lose when it goes up, and there is no limit to the upper side ("to the moon"). Add to this that shorting technically is carried out on borrowed funds and you get an understanding how dangerous it is. Regarding why some took to shorting, they obviously expected the price to start massively correcting after reaching the 1,000 dollar level...

But it didn't happen, and the price went another 100 dollars up over $1,100


I'm asking what is your term for short selling as it is understood by everyone and his dog (i.e. selling something you borrowed with the intention of buying it back when the price goes down)?

Bitcoin price decreased from $1130 to $946 recently.

Shorting can be profiable if done at the right time.

I was expecting that bitcoin price correction.

Now people will start massively claiming that they have foreseen this price correction

If you really expected it, why didn't you short Bitcoin after all? Those who actually expected it, poured their money into shorts. Not surprising that they mostly lost their coins. It is easy to be wise after the event. Folks had been expecting correction since the price reached 800 dollars per coin and so what? Market manipulators waited until people started to really put their money where their mouth is and then grabbed all their dough (as they always do)

http://s015.radikal.ru/i331/1701/6b/be0c706a2419.jpg

The basics of trading for kids

 jezzzzz, that's not a 2017 good start

So what up with your friends now? Did he recovers already? Maybe he make a good fortune from sorting now.
Hopefully he already recover what he lost.

me too, hacker attack me, i lost all money, Sadly in 2017

This is how whale and bagholders do play regarding on bitcoins price and there are only two things of people in the market on which there are earners and there a losser or burnt out most of their coins.Trading/investing into bitcoin is not really an easy stuff specially if we are aiming on profits and we should really think smart first and control our emotions.Seeing the candle sticks on the bitcoin chart earlier sticks signifies already a downtrend which it does happen on yesterdays.

i disagree with most of what you said specifically the chart.
because it is a correction after a bubble, and a bubble is a normal thing that happens everywhere, the difference here is that people are seeing it for the first time in their lives and never seen any other market to have bubble.

also the term dead cat bounce is mostly for a dying market when price is generally falling for a long time and when it bounces back they call that dead cat bounce. in this case bitcoin has to fall from 900 to 200 and in this period the bounce backs are what you showed in the picture. but right now these are normal spikes due to volatility.

and not to mention that this chart is only showing a tiny part of what is really happening.

"I disagree because I disagree"

But really, how do you know that a market is dying? If it is still being traded, you can't possibly know this in advance, so all your considerations are, technically speaking, meaningless and inconsequential. Conversely, you can't know how low Bitcoin is going to fall, just like the guy who is the object of this discussion hadn't expected Bitcoin to rise that high before. So what is your point actually, just popping up and saying some empty verbiage? You have the right, indeed, but never forget who is your campaign manager


Okay, let's take a look at the bigger picture:

http://s015.radikal.ru/i330/1701/a1/3509a8de26b5.jpg

The price at the top of the rebound (which is pretty pronounced here) was over 1,000 dollars per coin, right now it is a little over 900 dollars. But never mind, we still have a lot of room below to go further down, this may be only the beginning

if you don't like my opinion or disagree with my speculation you don't have to attack me, jeez man relax.


the only thing i can tell you since you apparently dislike it when people disagree with you is that lets wait a couple of weeks and see what is going to happen.

Or maybe it's the end of the correction and $900-mid $800's is the new floor/consolidated higher price after the $1139 peak... it's all about making the gamble of either holding, or shorting hoping for that $700, or even $600's dip.

What are you going to do? On one hand you have the opportunity to make extra BTC, but you can lose your position if it keeps going up and you'll buy at a loss.

On the other hand, you may lose on that current price to 700-600'ish dip but risk 0% in the long term, and we all know long term for this year means higher than the ATH. How high? Nobody knows, it could be 2000 or it could be 10000... gamble on.

Shorting is form of trading and it is as risky as taking along position. Every trade is risky. It depends of your risk taking capability on how much you can invest even after knowing that you may loose all of them.

So don't blame shorting instead blame his capability that he couldn't play it right and lost the money. I have made a lot of profit from shorting technique and also lost some. 

Never mind the current price right now or even yesterday - you have an important point to take note of. A lot of traders are using incredible leveraging to short and while this sounds attractive, it simply puts you at so much exposure to sudden spikes in opposite directions.

Learn to trade first with small or no leverage, and always with a lot of healthy room for your stop loss to activate.

Imagine his profits though if the price where to correct. I'm sure he has several new positions open as we speak.

Short means going down. And long means going up. They pick the wrong way thats why they pay for it. That would be a huge money if they choose to go long.

at this point i wouldn't call it a gamble, just buy around the $820-$850 range and hold, the chances of going lower than this is very slim and you can place some stop losses if you are that afraid. but the chances of staying here and going up compared to going down is a lot more.
i am not saying $2000, $10000 because it is getting ahead of myself but i am saying this stupid volatile time will end soon and we can see another slow rise like last years.

240-600 BTC isn't really a big amount when you compare it anything to the big leaves. I have had personal family and friends who have lost as much by trading and investing in options.

Too bad for him though. A rise was totally unexpected, and I feel the 1100 price was the best time to short.

Whats IRC?

How do you know that?

That the chances of going up (or just trading sideways) are higher than going down? I guess it is no more than your feelings. Note that we are not yet reached the early December highs. The price trading in a certain range during the last two days is obviously has more to do with accumulating more liquidity in the market which evaporated (read changed hands) in the recent crash. If most people turn out to be buying now, you can expect the price to go lower eventually (market will fool them again)


Internet Relay Chat - something like SMS messaging for browsers

Great story. I have little sympathy for the guy. He got greedy. Shorting equities is risky enough, and he dared to short something which is even more volatile. Hopefully, topics such as this one will discourage the noob spammers from posting "trading is a legitimate way to earn Bitcoin" and "gambling and trading are the best ways to earn Bitcoin" around here non-stop.

It was a bet, but people have sympathy because they picture themselves in this situation.
This is a big amount (enough to buy a house in most developped countries): it's a shame he lost it, but I guess he would not complain if he had won.

You should not forget that these bitcoins that he sold at a lower price were obviously bought by some trader or a group of traders and likely sold at a higher price. In this manner, why should we sympathize him and not the guys who bought these bitcoins from him and thus profited. What if the price plunged as he had expected and at the right time, whom would we feel sorry for then?

This is a tough game, someone wins, someone lives under the bridge

it is painfull to see someone loose so many btc's, trading is always risky and shorting is too.

Yup. Engage yourself in margin trading only if you can afford to lose big. It is just like online gambling. Either you lose all your money, or you win big. In my opinion, noobs must refrain from it, before it becomes an addiction.

Yes, it is real shame to see so much money going down the drain like that, trading has been never an easy job and like any quick way to make money on the internet it has a lot of risks involved in it, so if you want to get into trading you need to be careful and know what you are risking.

sorting in this environment is very bad move because we are going to the permanen 2k bull market before we 10k quick rick everybody pofit +

It will be painful if it was my money, when I see someone else losing that amount of money in such a silly trade the only thing I can think is why you took such a decision? When it was very obvious the market did not agree with that vision, you tried to outsmart the markets and now you are paying the consequences.

Well. That is how trading works I lost again some bitcoin in my past trade yesterday but I will take as a lesson and a experience. But for the guy that losses that very large amount of bitcoin I think it's alarming if something like that happen to me my God I will cry overnight. But I don't have that large amount of bitcoin so that's impossible. The lesson there is invest inlegit coin only don't trust new coins.

Yeah I know and it is nice to see that you are learning the difficult art of trading, but losing that amount of bitcoin just to learn a lesson? I don’t know if will ever recover from such a loss, not only in economic terms but in psychological terms.

BTC240-BTC600?! I can't even imagine how much that all cost! I'm not yet familiar with trading, so how did he lose it? He sold all his BTC in hopes of buying it again for a lower price? I've been looking through the price change, it seems that plunges usually don't last long, it would be really risky to try this approach.

If I have that much bitcoin, how could I grow it other than shorting? I hear about buying cryptos and I somehow understand the concept but do people earn profits there or at least, is the risk smaller?

It doesn't matter how short they are

That dude most likely had buy orders already in place, so if the price dropped only for a few seconds with just one big-time, wall-crushing sell order (as it often happens), he would have booked enough profits to cover his shorts. But he obviously made a devastatingly typical mistake, i.e. he thought he knew it better. But market always fools such types (and most other types as well, just in case)

I should have shorted last night but I am way too lazy and always end up HODLing. If you aren't an idiot shorting and buying back can just give you exponentially more profit than HODLing alone can.

That is one of the risk of shorting because it is too risky because we can see that the price is very volatile and playing the bitcoin market while bitcoin price is on the top is almost a stupid thing and if you don't know how to minimize your risk then you are an idiot for risking your bitcoins or money to a very risky market like this.