How To Short Bitcoin
Short selling is an investment method that allows you to earn from drops in the price of a particular asset. When an investor predicts a decline in a tradable asset like Bitcoin, stocks, or other securities prices, they can gain profits using shorts. In a short sale scenario, you bet against the cost of the asset in question.
As Bitcoin continues to have price appreciation, there are unlimited reasons to short this cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are some of the most volatile markets. The rate of Bitcoin can change several times a day. As it exists, the movement at any exchange takes place using retail orders, which represent a market obligation—the volume of trading instruments bought or sold for which no offset transactions were made.
It is essential to open, close, and change orders correctly to keep a stable profit. The essence of profitable trading is simple – buy cheaply, sell expensively, and earn money on it. For this purpose, the following commercial operations are carried out at the stock exchanges: short and long.
Long And Short Position In Investment Strategy
The majority of people believe that the word “Long” means long-term opening positions and that the word “Short” is opening short-term deals. But this does not seem right. People use a long strategy when they want to buy Bitcoin, so long is always about buying assets.
In other words, long is a strategy in which the trader opens positions to buy Bitcoin, relying on the growth of its market value.
This means that when we have Bitcoin in the BTC/LTC pair, the trader or bot looks at when it is possible to enter the position itself.
Immediately it passes through, it goes into it and waits for the rate to go up and for the BTC to LTC to grow.
How To Short Cryptocurrency
To open a short position means borrowing the cryptocurrency and selling it on the stock exchange at the current price. Then, following the decrease in value, the trader buys the cryptocurrency at a lower price, repays the borrowed money, and makes a profit on the difference between the cost of buying and selling.
For instance, when you first sell Bitcoin at $10,000, and then after falling by a certain percentage—like, up to $9,500—repurchase it, you can make a profit of $500 (about 7%).
The loan is made available on the stock exchange by other market participants who receive an allowance in interest income.
rIt depends on the term of the mortgage at a fixed rate. Most popular cryptographic platforms, such as Bitfinex, Kraken, and others, provide margin trading services – borrowing capital at high-interest rates to increase their leverage.
What is longing?
The long position opens an intention of withdrawing profits when the rate rises: purchases are made at a low cost, waiting for market growth, and sold at a rising price.
But the net profit of the stockbroker is the margin between buying and selling. So when there are great deals, the trader has to risk a large volume of securities and consider the direction of the market movement on long timeframes.
But the question that needs to be asked is: why longing or shorting cryptocurrencies? If a trader is convinced that the price of a particular financial instrument will fall, he/she opens shorts.
The trader borrows securities for sale from a broker. Immediately the asset’s exchange rate drops, it redeems them and repays the debt at a reduced value. So the benefit of selling and buying is the trader’s actual income.
A longing decision is made when the securities reached the minimum price. Here, assets on the stock exchange are bought at a low price. Then the trader waits for the growth of quotations and sells the securities, thus making an income from the difference between buying and selling.
How To Sell Bitcoin Short
To sell Bitcoins short, you will need to use a platform or contact a trading agency to make a quick sell order. This intermediary will sell the Bitcoins from their supply with the expectation that you will pay them at a due date.
This implies that if you buy Bitcoin, you will have to cover for them whether the price goes up or down.
If the price goes down, you will be able to repurchase those Bitcoins at a lower price. But if it goes up, it will be more expensive, and you will lose on the trade.
When this is done, be reminded that the person or entity who loaned the asset can generally call it back at any time and is only required to give you short notice. Ensure you read all the regulations, guidelines, and rules of how you will need to cover these assets.
In general, crypto markets are highly volatile, which puts you at significant risk. Short selling can be particularly risky when lenders call back assets before they had the time to move down.
But selling short is a widespread practice with stocks, and most major platforms will allow you to do it.
Below are some of the ways that you can short Bitcoin:
Shorting Through A Crypto Exchange
It is possible to have crypto-currency exchanges that allow you to short sell Bitcoin, even with leverage—leveraging means that you can borrow more money from the business than you own to maximize profits.
For instance, you could have $1,000 on an exchange.
If you trade with a 1:5 ratio, you can now sell $5,000 worth of Bitcoin short (5 times what you have).
Using leverage is considered a risky strategy since the exchange will close your trade faster than you can click when losing since they are aware of your source of income.
So leveraging magnifies both your wins and losses.
Some of the major exchanges that allow you to sell short are Kraken, Bitmex, and Bitfinex.
Short Selling CFDs
CFD is an acronym for Contract for Difference. Here you are primarily concerned about paying the difference and not borrowing, selling, and buying back the Bitcoin to repay the lender.
With CFDs, you can make money if the price drops without going through all the trouble buying and selling Bitcoins.
Most trading platforms allow you to short sell Bitcoin through CDs, but you need to sign up and verify your account and use the BTC/USD instrument to place a trade. Also, you have to make sure that you pick the “sell” option and not the “buy.”
Put Options
Specialized exchanges like Bitmex allow you to trade Bitcoin options. Options give you the ability to buy or sell an asset at a future date and a predetermined price.
It is a good choice for the people that have had an experience with options. But it is not recommended for beginners. Options trading can be complex but offers more leverage and flexibility.
The Best Time To Sell Short
Shorting Bitcoin works with trading against a positive trend. The longer the trend continues, the riskier the trade becomes.
But the most considerable profit you can make on a short sell is limited to a Bitcoin price of $0, while there is no cap on buyers’ returns.
Taking a look at Bitcoin charts makes you realize that the adage “prices take the stairs up, but the elevator down” is valid.
Trying to time a big bull run can be difficult with Bitcoin, as you might stop out many times as Bitcoin keeps coming back like a stubborn zombie.
Similarly, if many traders took the same position, you could see a sudden price surge as scared traders compete to complete their short order. That is, they all rush to buy back the Bitcoins they sold. This process is called a “short squeeze.”
Spotting Short Selling Opportunities Using Market Analysis
It helps to understand the Bitcoin market and the basics of technical analysis.
Examples of sell-offs triggered by past and future events are:
1. Governments taking hostile action against Bitcoin
2. Events that had little to no impact on the price
3. A significant exchange failure
4. Talk of hard forks like Bitcoin Cash forking from Bitcoin
5. Discovery of code exploits that could compromise the integrity of the network and the safety of wallets
6. Darknet market failures like AlphaBay and SilkRoad
7. The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto being allegedly unmasked (Craig Wright, Dorian Nakamoto)
8. Breach on Bitcoin cryptographic primitives (secp256k1, SHA256)
9. Setbacks and delays in significant developments (Lightning Network, SegWit)
10. Hostile forecasts by politicians, bankers, economists, journalists, etc
11. Any movement in the original one million Bitcoin or so mined by founder Satoshi Nakamoto.
Shorting Bitcoin As Part Of Trading Strategy
Below are the most-used techniques on how to arrange shorting to be part of your trading strategy.
1. Diversification
By long and short, positions on diverse but similar securities fund diversity have significantly been reducing risk. Moreover, for beginners, various cryptocurrencies sometimes run about in parallel.
Long on Bitcoin and short on Ethereum will theoretically secure people’s investments against specific market forces affecting the entire crypto-ecosystem.
2. Choosing Any Direction
Shorting allows traders to continue trading whether they believe the market is up or down.
The persuasion of a trader for a fall in the rate increases his income by shorting Bitcoin instead of a holding approach.
3. Tax Management
Short positions have the potential to diminish tax bills by making a difference in overseeing capital gains. Amid bull markets, finding capital setbacks to adjust out capital pick-up can be a challenge. Shorting can serve as a way of cancelling taxable pick-up in such a situation, which is especially valuable within the case of short-term capital gains. These are charged at a better rate than long-term benefits.
Risks Associated With Shorting Bitcoin
Generally, short-selling any asset is a risky venture. The amount of money you earn as income is limited to the amount of money that is personally invested in the investment.
For instance, if you invest $10,000 in an asset and it falls to zero, It will limit your loss to the $10,000 you put in.
But on short selling, your losses can extend way beyond that point.
This is very important to consider, especially regarding an asset like Bitcoin.
In another example, assuming you sold $500 of Bitcoin short back when it was $10 per coin.
That means you sold 50 coins in total. Now imagine that you didn’t buy the coins back and still have to pay these 50 Bitcoins to the owner, with the price of Bitcoin suddenly shooting up to $3,000, which can happen with Bitcoin.
This means that those 50 Bitcoins you sold are now worth $150,000.
So trading short with Bitcoin can be very risky, as you need to be cautious of using this method.
Only sell Bitcoin short if you are confident that prices will drop with enough capital to cover for losses if the price goes up.
Conclusively, the shorting game is a very effective strategy for making money on cryptocurrency.
But it is much riskier than investing in the long term or averaging.
According to skilled traders, under favorable conditions, the profit from shorting is between 7-10% of the amount invested. Also, most of the investments are made through borrowed funds and not on their own.
Then this reduces the level of the first investment problem.
The amount of profit is also dependent on the amount available to the trader. For example, if a trader can borrow 10 Bitcoin, he can earn several thousand dollars.
If he has only one Bitcoin for use, he might not count on serious profit.
Regardless, only experienced traders are advised to short the Bitcoin and work with large amounts.
If they believe in their ability to correctly analyze the cryptocurrency market dynamics and enter the market on the strongly pronounced downtrend, their earning rates can be between 7-10% on the shorting.
So you should only short Bitcoin if you can afford to lose on your investment.
