Re:An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Ex...
by bcoates on Tuesday December 05, 2017 @05:51PM
(#15856849)
It's short in the sense that you're selling before you buy and profiting off the thing bought/sold (bitcoin) going down between the two trades. Sell -> wait -> buy as opposed to the 'long' position of buy -> wait -> sell.
Since nobody-ish lets you borrow for bitcoin margin trades you have to "borrow from yourself" (already own bitcoin) and be long-bitcoin in the long run for that to make any sense.
But if you're a to-the-moon true believer that also thinks that bitcoin is in a bubble and going to make a temporary correction you could make a ton of bitcoin by being right... if you can actually make the trades and not get screwed by a counterparty.
"Shorting" means borrowing bitcoin and then selling the borrowed bitcoin. What you've described is simply selling bitcoin for USDT, unless I'm missing something.