Since up until this point there has not existed a way to short shares, and since the larger part of the community playing around on this forum is at best unqualified to deal in securities, it seems worthwhile to take the time and explain the matter in simple terms.
All price on a free market is created by the meeting of supply and demand. This price only reflects the real value of the underlying to the degree it is in fact obtained by unimpeded negotiation between the full supply side and the full demand side.
For instance, in a circumstance where a country institutes an import duty, the price of the good in that country will not reflect the real economic value of the good, because the fake inside price is created by the meeting of the full supply of the buy side (consumers inside the country) with a portion of the sell side (those suppliers which either are not foreign or are willing to pay the duty).
Securities are not actual physical objects. Their supply and demand does not reflect constraints of the physical world in the sense a ton of coal or a new-smelling car do. Their supply and demand reflects the opinions, beliefs and convictions of economical agents as to the future prospects of the underlying.
You might have heard the expression that on the short term the market is a voting machine, but on the long term it is a weighing machine. The voting part is the sort of superficial "civility" and smarmy group-think that happens on a regular basis on this forum as a result of the simple way all social-media works (aggregating groups with mistaken but similar views). The weighing part is only now starting to show, in part because the market wasn't really old enough for anything of the sort, in part because nobody (on WS) cared up until now.
In order for share prices to reflect actual share value, there must exist a means for actual demand to meet and negotiate with actual supply. The asymmetrical situation in which only buy orders are available (as it used to be the case in the days when GLBSE dominated the btc-securities market) provides the problem that while votes of confidence can be cast (X buys some shares) votes of disconfidence can not be cast (what's X to do, buy some shares so he can slam-sell them?).
This asymmetry constantly creates and inflates bubbles, which is the primary cause for the numerous defaults that are dotting the early history of GLBSE-driven bitcoin securities, and is incidentally not lost on malicious or simply stupid parties who readily and regularly claim that as a public company they are only accountable "to their investors" whenever mismanagement and other inefficiencies rear their ugly heads in public discussion.
What were the people supposed to do in order to show that
SkepsiDyne isn't a well run, worthwhile entity? Keep their mouth shut and somehow deal with the losses, cause sure as hell there's not going to be any buyside market depth for an ill managed asset. What are people supposed to do when someone "
sounds like they're doing poor/bad business but for the second time I have managed to increase profits before production has even began"? Keep their mouth shut and hope for the best, who knows, maybe.
This isn't how a market works. A market is not built on making each other feel cosy and warm and validated and important. A market works by putting your money where your mouth is, and for that to happen there must exist avenues for both sides of any argument to put money on the line. Short selling accomplishes the other half of this requirement: with it available naysayers have a ready and efficient way to voice their concerns in the only way that matters, economically, and in a most productive way at that. In a way that ultimately benefits everyone, the longs, the issuer, the observers, people on the fencelines trying to gauge if BTC is a scam or the currency of the future and so on.
Short selling is ultimately a tool, used for a specified purpose. Learn to use it and learn to love it because it's not going away.
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