What does it mean to "short a coin"?

[hienyimba]

I keep on seeing this terminlogy thrown around here. Pls could anyone explain to me what it means? or better still, How to go about it? I heard you could make a decent profit though it is risky

[DarkStar_]

When you "short a coin", you are basically borrowing that coin, selling it, and than expecting the price to go down to make a profit.
If I short LTC, if the price goes up, I lose money and if the price goes down, I get more and more profit the lower it goes.

Some exchanges (not sure which ones) let you short coins. You can make a decent/good profit if you know what you are doing, but it can be quite risky.

[hienyimba]

Thanks for your enlightening response. But this means you can only short on margin trading right?