Bitcoin - Part 2

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Almo said:
Just curious... how do you short BTC? Through one of the exchanges?
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*sigh*
This was explained to you years ago. Here are a few links to the old thread to refresh your memory:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=7288659#post7288659
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=7654377#post7654377
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=9169255#post9169255

jhunter1163 said:
Yes, although you can get the same net result by setting a small pile of cash on fire.
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:sdl: You just said that anybody who shorts bitcoin will lose their money. That can only happen if the price of bitcoin rises. :sdl:
 
psionl0 said:
*sigh*
This was explained to you years ago. Here are a few links to the old thread to refresh your memory:
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Explained to me? I was really just curious, and I don't recall having this explained to me personally. And if it was, and it was that many years ago, I don't see why you need to get nasty about it. :( It was an honest question.
 
Almo: You want some coffee, Belz... ?
Belz...: Dammit, Almo, I told you once thirty years ago, I HATE coffee. Pay attention.
Almo: Sorry. I was a long time ago and I must've forgotten.
Belz...: Yeah, obviously I don't really matter to you. <sulk>
 
psionl0 said:
*sigh*
This was explained to you years ago. Here are a few links to the old thread to refresh your memory:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=7288659#post7288659
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=7654377#post7654377
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=9169255#post9169255


:sdl: You just said that anybody who shorts bitcoin will lose their money. That can only happen if the price of bitcoin rises. :sdl:
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So does anyone loan bitcoins so that you could potentially short them? The market seems somewhat underdeveloped in complexity for that.
 
Almo said:
Explained to me? I was really just curious, and I don't recall having this explained to me personally. And if it was, and it was that many years ago, I don't see why you need to get nasty about it. :( It was an honest question.
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I didn't mean to sound mean. I just posted a couple of links (one of which was to you personally) instead of re-explaining it.

This question of shorting has recurred many times over the years and there are probably more recent posts about it. I just couldn't be bothered searching all 132 pages for them.

ponderingturtle said:
So does anyone loan bitcoins so that you could potentially short them? The market seems somewhat underdeveloped in complexity for that.
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It would have to be a personal arrangement between two individuals. There is not much of a market for shorting bitcoins since few people are game to do so.
 
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psionl0 said:
It would have to be a personal arrangement between two individuals. There is not much of a market for shorting bitcoins since few people are game to do so.
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And there isn't the structure to permit it. No one is going to let themselves be shorted either.
 
psionl0 said:
I'm not making another prediction but I wouldn't dare short them. Neither would anybody else here - in spite of their confident predictions of an imminent demise.
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Hello, pot? This is kettle. Yes. I thought you should know -- you're black.

The above is big talk (read: hot air) considering it's from someone who doesn't own any Bitcoins, despite his perpetual insistence that they're a fabulous long-term investment.

As someone else has noted: It's not possible to short them right now because the facilities aren't in place. Which isn't surprising at all since enabling that sort of thing would only detract from current speculators' confidence. Well... that, and any exchange who set up shorting would have to make regular payouts of USD/EUR/etc, as the players who are shorting aren't really interested in actually owning BTC.

...and THAT, of course, doesn't jive with the exchanges' mode of operation, as we've well seen in the past couple years when people have tried to get their money out in any reasonable timeframe. Some exchanges pay out, but only in tiny increments; some pay out with delays of a month or more; some simply go under and the BTC (and money) all vanish.
 
jhunter1163 said:
Let me put it this way. If I was inclined to deal in BTC, and if it were possible to short it, I would.
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You don't have to wait for somebody to take you on when "you can get the same net result by setting a small pile of cash on fire". So there is nothing preventing you from implementing your strategy right now. :D
 
remirol said:
As someone else has noted: It's not possible to short them right now because the facilities aren't in place.
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Somebody else who has forgotten all about the posts on shorting.

You could always google "bitcoin futures trading" if you wanted to do a short (other than against another individual). My first hit was https://orderbook.net/.

remirol said:
Which isn't surprising at all since enabling that sort of thing would only detract from current speculators' confidence. Well... that, and any exchange who set up shorting would have to make regular payouts of USD/EUR/etc, as the players who are shorting aren't really interested in actually owning BTC.
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Oops! All that made-up CT was for nothing.
 
psionl0 said:
You could always google "bitcoin futures trading" if you wanted to do a short (other than against another individual). My first hit was https://orderbook.net/.
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Good enough. How much do you plan to buy in for?

Oops! All that made-up CT was for nothing.
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Weeeellll, let's just see about that. I'm doing some reading on all of it now, and I did find something here, from Fortune, that indicates t'ain't necessarily so...

Fortune said:
The traditional way you bet against something is to “short it.” But in order to do a short sale you have to borrow a share of stock or bond or whatever you are looking to bet against. And borrowing bitcoins is nearly impossible. There is a company based in Hong Kong in testing phase that seems to offer bitcoin shorting, but I couldn’t find out much about it.

What you can buy is a derivative contract that will rise in value when bitcoins fall in price. There are a number of places that sell options and futures on bitcoins.

One place — ICBIT [orderbook], a bitcoin exchange — is run by a guy in Moscow.
MPEx, a stock exchange for companies with shares traded in bitcoins — there are four of them — also lists bitcoin options.
BitInstant, a Brooklyn-based payment processor, is planning on launching a bitcoin futures exchange early next year.

All of these places require that you open an account to start trading, and none of them take dollars. So you have to buy some bitcoins elsewhere, which in itself is no easy task, and transfer them to your ICBIT or MPEx account before you can get started.

MPEx charges 30 bitcoins to open an account...
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Several very important parts here.

1. You have to buy bitcoins in order to create an account at all these places. That isn't short-selling. The whole point of shorting is that you don't have to actually buy any of the thing in the first place.

2. All of these places appear to resolve the trades in Bitcoins, not USD -- meaning that shorting is a loser _even if you are correct_, because the price is going down while you're trying to get your BTC off the site (see problems with exchanges paying out, etc). If I short BTC, I'm going to wait for a bubble, watch the pop, and then dump out somewhere on the downcurve. That dumpout needs to be giving me USD right then, not BTC.

Now, for each of the sites. First, BitInstant is toast (see prior message); Charlie Shrem was arrested for basically running off with all the money.

Orderbook/ICBIT fails at #1 as well:

Orderbook said:
2. Funds

2.3 At this moment there is no way to add funds in any other currency than bitcoins.
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And finally, MPEx's terms for opening an account are hilarious to begin with, but even if they weren't, MPEx doesn't offer short sales (see #1):

MPEx FAQ said:
SPLIT|{MPSIC}|{btc}, which allows you to split a number of whole BTCs into CALL-PUT pairs for a given strike. Say you want to sell short CALLS and PUTS all struck at 5.0 expiring this month. Provided you have 100 BTC in your account ...
MKOPT|{MPSIC}|{qty}, which allows you to create a number of the quoted contracts, provided you have the BTC to put up as collateral. ...

MKFUT|{MPSIC}|{qty}, which allows you to create a number of the quoted contracts, provided you have the BTC to put up as collateral...
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So much for MPEx.

There is one called Bitfinex that appears to understand liquidity and margin trading; I'm reading up on the site right now. However, I can't seem to find whether it resolves in BTC or USD; again, see above. But I'm mildly hopeful since it does mention at least being able to deposit USD.
 
remirol said:
Weeeellll, let's just see about that. I'm doing some reading on all of it now, and I did find something here, from Fortune, that indicates t'ain't necessarily so...
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It's all very well to point out that it is not as simple as making a call to your bitcoin broker (duh!) but in doing so you have already given lie to your "not possible" claim.

Of course, your theory that there is some sort of conspiracy to not "enable" short selling because "that sort of thing would only detract from current speculators' confidence" is just pure drivel. No such collusion could possibly exist. It is just what I said before, lack of demand.

remirol said:
Good enough. How much do you plan to buy in for?
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Although I find the technology interesting, I have no particular need or interest to trade in bitcoins (other than in a very modest capacity) - especially if I have to go through hoops to buy or sell them.

It's just that of all the threads in all the sections of this entire forum, the bitcoin thread is the absolute worst when it comes to woo, conspiracy theories, non-sequiturs, made up "facts", logical fallacies and sheer nonsense. People who can make a coherent argument elsewhere suddenly become incapable of a single critical thought in this thread. Many posting here are willing to reverse their arguments at the drop of a hat as long as it maintains their opposition to bitcoin and they don't even realize they are doing so. "Past performance is no indicator of future performance" may be true when the price is rising but when it is falling it suddenly becomes "proof positive".

That in a skeptics forum like this, so few people in this thread are willing to call BS when they see it is an absolute disgrace!
 
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psionl0 said:
It's just that of all the threads in all the sections of this entire forum, the bitcoin thread is the absolute worst when it comes to woo, conspiracy theories, non-sequiturs, made up "facts", logical fallacies and sheer nonsense.!
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My sense is that this has much more to do with bitcoin itself than with most of the posters in the thread. Though you do need to give a lot of credit to the poster who started the whole thing.
 
psionl0 said:
Although I find the technology interesting, I have no particular need or interest to trade in bitcoins (other than in a very modest capacity) - especially if I have to go through hoops to buy or sell them.
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Uh huh, that's what I thought. All chirp and no bird.

It's absolutely remarkable that the person who is the most insistent about Bitcoin's viability as a long-term investment has "no particular ... interest to trade in bitcoins". Imagine that.

If I knew of a long-term investment in USD that reliably produced the returns you're claiming BTC will, I'd have $10k into it in the blink of an eye. But mysteriously, everything that promises that sort of ROI always seems to come to me by third-class post, or in an email with a bunch of misspelled words and no viable return address. For SOME reason, I just can't convince myself to give them a chance either.

It's just that of all the threads in all the sections of this entire forum, the bitcoin thread is the absolute worst when it comes to woo, conspiracy theories, non-sequiturs, made up "facts", logical fallacies and sheer nonsense. People who can make a coherent argument elsewhere suddenly become incapable of a single critical thought in this thread.
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And that's just from the Bitcoin side!

That in a skeptics forum like this, so few people in this thread are willing to call BS when they see it is an absolute disgrace!
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I dunno, I see a lot of people calling BS on the bitbugs' predictions that Bitcoin will ever amount to anything other than a way to buy drugs, CP, and botnet time.
 
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