Re:A Family Who Sold Their Belongings for Bitcoins
by joosters on Thursday November 09, 2017 @06:31AM
(#15661548)
Beware: Many exchanges are especially dodgy, and possibly insolvent. (Bitfinex in particular!) If the market price plummets, the exchange might collapse and you will struggle to get your winnings out...
Re:A Family Who Sold Their Belongings for Bitcoins
by Slartie on Thursday November 09, 2017 @07:11AM
(#15661735)
True, but unfortunately you'll need the services of an exchange if you want to short. Longing is possible by putting cryptos in a wallet you have the private keys for, but not shorting.
As I think about it, this is actually another benefit of longing over shorting - it allows you to eliminate the risk of putting value on exchanges, at least if you're okay with limiting your ability to quickly react to market action.
Re:A Family Who Sold Their Belongings for Bitcoins
by martinko on Thursday November 09, 2017 @07:02AM
(#15661686)
Care to post any proof? Bitfinex had the opportunity to close shop after being hacked, yet they chose to pay everyone back.
Re:A Family Who Sold Their Belongings for Bitcoins
by testloop on Thursday November 09, 2017 @07:38AM
(#15661869)
Not the parent, but the way in which Bitfinex paid everyone back was extremely dodgy[0].
They also decided to help themselves to 15% of everyone's BCH after the August 1 fork[1]. I don't understand why anyone would trust them.
[0]https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/bitfinex-never-repaid-their-t...
[1]https://news.bitcoin.com/bitfinex-bitcoin-cash-deposits-with...
Shorting can be quite lucrative, especially during bear phases. However, you can just as easily burn your fingers - I did quickly earn a nice 4-figure amount shorting ETH (and some BTC) in the middle of the year, during the first bear phase, but I got caught up during the bull phases afterwards, since I expected a pattern more closer to the bursting of the 2013 crypto bubble which was an overall bear, but with bull phases in between. This time it was an overall bull phase with short bear phases in between, and by the time I accepted my fail, I had lost all my nice shorting proceeds (and quite a bit more, but made up for that easily with price appreciations of cold storage cryptos, so I'm at least net positive now).
Shorting is king when the overall pattern is a bearish one, but when it's not clearly bearish, you've been better off longing at good entry points, as cryptos have historically been more likely to grow in price than to shrink. But as always...past market trends are no useful indicator for future trends.