How does one take a short position in Bitcoin?
Note that this gives you a maximum gain of whatever BTC/USD is today (assuming you denominate in greenbacks), while upside risk is theoretically unlimited.
Of course the lender has to trust or be ensured (or insured) that you will repay.
There must be people using Ethereum contracts to make options on BTC, and maybe trying to minimize counterparty risk through the judicious use of open-sourced smart contracts and digital collateral? Anyone know of interesting cases?
Apparently they will list on 18 Dec on CME, and 10 Dec on CBOE.
I get the feeling that there will be a fair bit of selling pressure as a result. That's usually the case on lockup expiries and it would make sense for the initiation of a volatile instrument that wasn't previously shortable on a listed basis.
I wonder how hedging transactions will affect the mechanics of the bitcoin market.
The bitcoin market is astonishingly shallow compared to most commodities and nearly unregulated, I assume hedge funds and other smart money can and will manipulate the price up and down to their own advantage.
According to some blockchain site[0] the average transaction volume for BTC is something like $2.25m USD equivalent
For comparison, on an average day, SPY[1], which is just one security (albeit a popular one) trades something around $17,160m (e.g. $17.16b).
[0] https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-...
Sure, but there are also laws and regulations that limit what you can do with stocks on a real exchange: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcap_stock_fraud
> won't this problem go away as BTC gets more popular?
Maybe. It would have to get a lot more popular, and a lot more legitimate and regulated. At that point, it's lost all the cyberpunk appeal, and it's just another speculative asset.