Bitcoin difficulty "futures" are added as an instrument on our
https://icbit.se trading platform.
Now you can try to guess the difficulty and get your exact profit or loss instead of just using the discrete bets on bitcoin betting sites :)
Ticker: DFU3, measured in thousands of difficulty, so 77 000 price means bitcoin difficulty 77 000 000
One contract moves 0.00001 BTC per one thousand of difficulty change.
How to use: if you think that bitcoin difficulty at 16 Sep 2013 will be higher than some specific value (77 000 000, for example), then you BUY
DIFF-9.13 contracts at this price. If you think that it will be lower than some value then you SELL contracts at that price.
Let's imagine that you bought 100 contracts at 77 000. You would need to have ~16 BTC on your account for this.
If the difficulty at 16 Sep 2013 will be 87 mln, then the difference between your position and reality will be 10 000 units of one thousand each.
10 000 (difference) * 0.00001 (lot size) * 100 (contracts quantity) = 10 BTC of profit
Fees will consist of 0.0001 BTC * 100 (contracts quantity) * 2 (number of operations: 1 buy and 1 settlement) = 0.02 BTC, or 0.2% in this case.
Buy and sell operation fees have volume discounts so it can be up to 50% cheaper.
If your guess was wrong and difficulty turned out to be less, then P/L is the opposite. Or you should have been selling, not buying contracts.
