I just found out that IG Markets have added Bitcoin binaries to their trading platform. You can bet on the Bitcoin price being above / below $100, $150, $200 etc on MtGox at some point in the future.
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Coinsetter raises $500k to bring leverage, shorting to Bitcoins
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Re: Coinsetter raises $500k to bring leverage, shorting to Bitcoins
#12Are there some 0s missing? $500K doesn't sound like any amount of money to open a "mature" trading platform.
On the Bitcoin Software Maturity Scale, where hundreds of thousands of dollars routinely gets entrusted to 17 year olds coding bucket shops in Ruby on Rails and 80% of the global transaction volume is run through a company in Tokyo set up to trade Magic: The Gathering cards, a guy with financial industry and experience and enough money to pay for a single professional security audit is practically IBM.
And yet look at how the one YC-funded, quant-founded Bitcoin company is doing in terms of security and stability.
Re: Coinsetter raises $500k to bring leverage, shorting to Bitcoins
#13An unregulated leveraged options platform with essentially no assets and what will undoubtedly be super senior debt deals with their prime broker writing naked contracts on something that moves 30% based on one website lagging out for a hour or two? what could go wrong
bitcoins was babby's first forex trading platform. I guess it's time for nerds everywhere to get a crash course in options (emphasis on the word crash.)
Re: Coinsetter raises $500k to bring leverage, shorting to Bitcoins
#14This is great news if it works out. The ability to short is an important part of moderating a bubble.
You can short now: icbit.se is a well-run exchange and derivatives market.
Re: Coinsetter raises $500k to bring leverage, shorting to Bitcoins
#15This is a big deal. With leverage and shorting, the only people who will have use for BitCoins (as opposed to a long position in a margin account) will be the small set who need the specific type of liquidity that BitCoin offers... and that will prove to be a small set. (People who need regular anonymous liquidity have other means.)
I will also remark that, even when a bubble is underway, shorting is dangerous. If you don't know what margin calls are (and how much it sucks to get hit by one) then stay out.
Re: Coinsetter raises $500k to bring leverage, shorting to Bitcoins
#16This is a big deal. With leverage and shorting, the only people who will have use for BitCoins (as opposed to a long position in a margin account) will be the small set who need the specific type of liquidity that BitCoin offers... and that will prove to be a small set. (People who need regular anonymous liquidity have other means.) I will also remark that, even when a bubble is underway, shorting is dangerous. If yo…
The real value in bitcoin is that it provides settlement from anywhere in the world to anywhere in the world in at most a couple of hours. Very few other options exist for such rapid settlement.
Whatever happens with bitcoin, that pace of commerce exists in the world now.
To me, the interesting thing to be doing at this point is figuring out how to take advantage of that speed with new business models.
Re: Coinsetter raises $500k to bring leverage, shorting to Bitcoins
#17An unregulated leveraged options platform with essentially no assets and what will undoubtedly be super senior debt deals with their prime broker writing naked contracts on something that moves 30% based on one website lagging out for a hour or two? what could go wrong
bitcoins was babby's first forex trading platform. I guess it's time for nerds everywhere to get a crash course in options (emphasis on the word crash.)
god this is going to be good
Edit: Is anyone actually recording the market movements? It'd be really neat to see minute-by-minute how this goes down.
Re: Coinsetter raises $500k to bring leverage, shorting to Bitcoins
#18Congrats to Coinsetter! Hopefully this should lead to longer term price stability of bitcoins.
Under what scenario would this increase stability in bitcoins?
Re: Coinsetter raises $500k to bring leverage, shorting to Bitcoins
#19Wouldn't this, ironically, stabilize Bitcoin, if others try to take advantage of its growth and try to bring it down again?
Re: Coinsetter raises $500k to bring leverage, shorting to Bitcoins
#20The people here talking about shorting bitcoin to moderate the bubble have no idea what they're talking about. Shorting a bubble is about the stupidest thing you can do. Here's how that math works:
1) You open a margin account with $10,000.
2) You borrow 25 BTC from your broker and sell them on the market at $200. You hope that the price crashes to $0 and your net profit will be $5,000.
3) What actually happens is that the price doubles to $400. It would now cost you $10,000 to close your position (buy the 25 BTC back at market prices).
4) Your broker realizes this and decides -- without asking -- that it doesn't like this state of affairs and closes the position for you, wiping out your margin.
5) You are now $10,000 poorer.