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Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

bloomberg.com

61–70 of 118 posts

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#61
post #54
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It allows participants to short and therefore should allow more balanced flows. However one needs some pretty steel-made cojones to short a bubble....

More specifically, it allows one to short with limited downside. There are some exchanges that provide naked short positions in Bitcoin, but those have theoretic infinite downside and your broker will force you to liquidate at a loss at a certain point. With futures, however, you can put together positions that will provide a known limit on your downside for short positions. This provides a more appealing avenue for…

With a short position using futures you will also be forced to liquidate at a loss at a certain point. It’s not really different from shorting BTC.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#63

>"The decision to clear client trades will be made on a case-by-case basis, the person said." Could someone say what "clearing the trades" mean here?

It's where Goldman would net off trades between their own clients, effectively acting as an exchange for their clients using the prices on the official exchange. They say in the article they won't act as market-makers or hold their own positions. That means they won't perform their usual capacity for clients, where they act as middleman between the exchange and their own clients. ie they won't make a price for their…

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Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#65
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not running a separate Blockchain and equating their system with how Blockchain works is quite misleading. I work in finance and use Bloomberg's system daily. It's essentially an online data provider/analytics platform running in a terminal-like environment. I don't think they would sneak in a private Blockchain without clients knowing about it. Even if they would, what for?

I wouldn't be surprised if someone in the IT department explained to him that they are using some kind of consensus based mechanism (zookeeper, etcd, consul etc), that works just like a blockchain, to manage the bloomberg infrastructure. He then goes on tv and tells the world that bloomberg is using The Blockchain. Just wild speculation but its seems plausible to me. Edit: a quick google lead me to Bloomberg's consul…

zookeeper, etcd, and/or consul function according to something only trivially different from Nakamoto Consensus? That would be news to me. His IT dept must have misinformed him.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see shorting it outright without being wheeled out on a stretcher. Options will be the best play to safely express a bearish position with asymmetric risk/reward assuming they aren't priced to insanely due to IV. Still at least you know your risk.

Just use a stop order: https://support.gdax.com/customer/portal/articles/2426596 There will be some slippage, but it'll be relatively bound.

I assume this is getting downvoted because it won't actually work. Can someone explain why? Can you not use a stop loss like this in futures trading when you short something?

May be a silly question, but I know little about this stuff.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#67
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use a stop order: https://support.gdax.com/customer/portal/articles/2426596 There will be some slippage, but it'll be relatively bound.

I assume this is getting downvoted because it won't actually work. Can someone explain why? Can you not use a stop loss like this in futures trading when you short something? May be a silly question, but I know little about this stuff.

I’m no investor, but one reason I could think as to why it wouldn’t work is once a crash starts, demand would suddenly dry up at the prices you specified and you’d suddenly find yourself with a bunch of orders that can’t be filled.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#68
post #34
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are short term day trading you're likely to be a victim of pump and dump groups and manipulation. Going long on high market cap coins with a longer timeline is a relatively safer bet.

The rogue traders aren't looking for a safer bet.

Exactly, which is why the safer bet is going long on high market cap coins, not small volume coins where pump and dumps can cause liquidation events.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#69
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are short term day trading you're likely to be a victim of pump and dump groups and manipulation. Going long on high market cap coins with a longer timeline is a relatively safer bet.

There are fees to any position you hold so even though going long is indeed the safe bet, having a longer timeline requires deep pockets.

Buy and hold doesn't have any recurring fees. If you look at the opportunity cost between crypto and any other financial security in the market, its an easy decision.

Re: Goldman Sachs Plans to Clear Bitcoin Futures When They Go Live

#70
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just use a stop order: https://support.gdax.com/customer/portal/articles/2426596 There will be some slippage, but it'll be relatively bound.

I assume this is getting downvoted because it won't actually work. Can someone explain why? Can you not use a stop loss like this in futures trading when you short something? May be a silly question, but I know little about this stuff.

No guarantee what price your stop order will execute at; it's still unbounded risk.
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