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Author Topic: Hedge mining revenue?  (Read 1539 times)
gnar1ta$ (OP)
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January 02, 2012, 03:39:47 AM
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What is the correct way to protect mining revenue from another price decrease using Bitcoinica?  I'm somewhat familiar with trading but could use some help. If I'm concerned about a $1 decrease do I sell a trailing stop for the amount of BTC I'm holding $1 below market price?  Or do I buy a long position and hedge it separately with another?

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There are several different types of Bitcoin clients. The most secure are full nodes like Bitcoin Core, but full nodes are more resource-heavy, and they must do a lengthy initial syncing process. As a result, lightweight clients with somewhat less security are commonly used.
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January 02, 2012, 04:08:08 AM
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What is the correct way to protect mining revenue from another price decrease using Bitcoinica?  I'm somewhat familiar with trading but could use some help. If I'm concerned about a $1 decrease do I sell a trailing stop for the amount of BTC I'm holding $1 below market price?  Or do I buy a long position and hedge it separately with another?

You open a short position equal to the total amount you wish to hedge.  The idea is you need to have a no net position if you want to not be affected by the market swings, so if for example you are trying to protect 100 btc savings against fluctuation (thus long 100 btc) you need to short sell 100 btc, cancelling out your position..  It can be a little more tricky than that, but that's the basic idea.

gnar1ta$ (OP)
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January 02, 2012, 04:19:31 AM
Last edit: January 02, 2012, 05:10:41 AM by gnar1ta$
 #3

How do I actually short sell the 100 though?

EDIT: I see, just put a sell order up.

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January 02, 2012, 04:21:55 AM
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If there was a right way to do it, everyone would do it, and then it wouldn't work.

Trailing stops are uncertain.  None of the exchanges that I'm aware of can actually do them.  You can do it yourself with a bot, or with a meta-exchange, but you risk a fast move blowing past your price, and latency says that you can't remove that risk.  I think Bitcoinica does trailing stops, but they are the counterparty, so they have to charge you extra for their latency risk.  But, they may be your best bet, for now, because...

You can't really hedge properly, because we don't have an actual future or forward market.  And at this point, I don't think that anyone in the world even remembers how either of those used to work before leverage.  I've done a lot of work on futures before, and it isn't trivial to do it right, and it gets worse when you need to minimize trust.

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January 02, 2012, 02:58:25 PM
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You go to bitcoinica.com

Deposit some cash and do short sell

Don't overleverage yourself.
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January 02, 2012, 03:38:32 PM
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Why pay the spreads? If you want a short position to cancel out your entire mining revenue you might just as well sell your mined coins...

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gnar1ta$ (OP)
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January 02, 2012, 04:32:58 PM
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Why pay the spreads? If you want a short position to cancel out your entire mining revenue you might just as well sell your mined coins...

Why limit profits? I'd rather pay the spread than have some bonehead sell x hundred thousand BTC while I'm sleeping/working/vacationing and drive the price into the ground.  You only pay the spread if the order is executed right?

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January 02, 2012, 04:52:26 PM
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Why pay the spreads? If you want a short position to cancel out your entire mining revenue you might just as well sell your mined coins...
I think you are missing the point here.
 The idea is to hedge expected FUTURE mining revenue. Thus eliminating market risk from the mining operation income. It still leaves the risk of difficulty rise.
 One may sell short his expected mining revenue, and later deposit the mined coins to close out the position.
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January 02, 2012, 08:06:21 PM
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If there was a right way to do it, everyone would do it, and then it wouldn't work.

Actually there is a right way, it's called "futures", and all the commodities producers (farmers, metals miners, etc) do do it.  They sacrifice a small amount of expected return in exchange for a large decrease in variance.

Unfortunately we don't have futures yet in the bitcoin world.

Also keep in mind that -- unlike real-world commodities producers -- you don't know your "cost of production" beyond the end of the current difficulty window.  So you're already somewhat hedged: if the price plummets, the difficulty "ought to" drop, giving you more coins from the same equipment.  Of course it doesn't always work this way...

The printing press heralded the end of the Dark Ages and made the Enlightenment possible, but it took another three centuries before any country managed to put freedom of the press beyond the reach of legislators.  So it may take a while before cryptocurrencies are free of the AML-NSA-KYC surveillance plague.
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January 02, 2012, 08:07:08 PM
 #10

One may sell short his expected mining revenue, and later deposit the mined coins to close out the position.

... except that bitcoinica does not let you close out positions by depositing coins.  Like a casino, you have to buy the chips from the dealer...

The printing press heralded the end of the Dark Ages and made the Enlightenment possible, but it took another three centuries before any country managed to put freedom of the press beyond the reach of legislators.  So it may take a while before cryptocurrencies are free of the AML-NSA-KYC surveillance plague.
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