OP gives a bunch of reasons, but no reason why any of that will play out in his particular time frame. So he's not trading. Time will tell if he is gambling or throwing his money away.
Also if you look at trading volume, here on coinbase but it's the same for other exchanges, it also seems to have had a peak in may and be going down which also in the past has lead to falls in btc https://nomics.com/exchanges/gdax-coinbase-exchange
I suspect the catalyst will be some kind of regulatory action against Tether. But yeah it's really anyone's guess at this stage and as you point out it's knowing the timeframe that is the problem with shorting.
He's already pretty deep underwater.
On options being underwater: "Underwater stock options have an exercise price which is greater than the market price of the underlying stock." Is that his situation?
Those three are all 'bearish' strategies, but "going short" is selling something you don't have. Buying put options isn't short selling, although both are anticipating a decrease in the value of something.
Underwater is the term for a contract or asset that is worth less than its notional value.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/092613/differe...
Speculating on options based only on irrational pricing is a risky game. You could be waiting years for the correction to occur and it might never occur if the fundamentals change to make the price more rational.
You can increase your safety level with a known catalyst. In this case, it might be something like an SEC investigation into tether, but you'd have to decide on the timing, the probability that occurs, and how much it could ultimately decrease the related stock prices.
By buying puts on bitcoin (derivatives), they’re not only betting that they’re correct, but also that something will happen in the next 5-6 months that will catalyze the market to correct that valuation. They don’t have any thesis at all for what’s going to catalyze this correction over the next 5-6 months. Their entire investment thesis is that “[they’d] be astonished if we get through 2021 without an explosion”. The investment described in this blog post is just a crypto-bear yolo play, with less thought put into it than your average r/WSB post.
Edit: looking at the options chain for the BTC ETF they’re shorting, NTM puts are trading at $2, so the underlying has to lose about 1/3rd of its value for that trade to break even. If it goes to $0, their maximum profit is ~$400 per ~$200 contract. That’s certainly not a cheap contract.
What you say does not make much sense. When Jesus came to Nazareth as a grown man, this is what His neighbours said about Him:
“Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?" (NIV Matthew 13:54).
And a few verses later: "And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.”" (NIV Matthew 13:57)
So clearly, Mary – Jesus's mother – was not kept from being stoned because her neighbours believed Jesus was the Son of God, see Luke 1:26-38 for what Mary was foretold by the angel about her birth of Jesus as the Son of God.
Before Jesus was born, Joseph married Mary: "When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife" (NIV Luke 1:24).
Jesus became known as our Saviour because of His words, acts, death and resurrection, not because the neighbours thought He was so spectacular when He was born.
There is no evidence for this except what is told in the Bible. Which is the whole point, you are one of those irrational people who are holding onto an irrational asset (Religion). That asset has value to you since others are holding the same asset, if there were no others in the world who believed in the Bible then you wouldn't believe either. So shorting Bible belief could seem rational, it is bound to die sooner or later, but likely it wont die in the next 10 years.
And just to illustrate, a rational belief is belief in something like newtons laws of physics. Although they aren't 100% correct they are still useful for solving many problems so they will likely survive as long as humanity exists. The main difference is that the laws of physics has value even if you are the only person believing in them. Similarly Amazon stock has value even if nobody else wants to buy them. But bitcoins just like the Bible has no value if others doesn't believe in them.
As to "rational belief", isn't that an oxymoron? There is 'rational knowledge'. Belief is precisely regarding matters where reason remains mute. Your beliefs and your knowledge are the full content of your world reality.
And if it's akin to religion or a well known brand, it could be easily cloneable but not easily adoptable. I can make a leather handbag or carbonated beverage right now, but unless I slap a Chanel or Coca Cola logo on it, it's not likely to be in demand.
We have the tendency to approach this from a rational perspective - "it's not a currency or store of value", "what about Tether", etc. But I can think of plenty of examples where the name itself is powerful enough. I'm not willing to bet that Christianity (or any major religion) will collapse in the near future. Slow decline, maybe.
Of course, maybe there's only like a tiny minority of true believers, a couple price manipulating whales, some smoke and mirror organizations, and everyone else is a Robin Hood speculator. I don't have the numbers on that.
Together, they practically control the market.
Even Bitcoin maxis agree that Tether's collateral is very risky. It's a house of cards waiting to collapse.
The author's options expire around Christmas. A pretty clear deadline for the trade to be profitable.
Best big short quote.
So yeah it is the same thing.
And Michael Burry was a lucky mother effer that he managed to keep his put on all the way until it finally happened.
It is rare to have both the conviction to bet everything and also be right at the same time.
A company/idea/market can remain irrational a lot longer than you can remain solvent.
With shorting stock, and even worse with long options, not only do you have to have the right premise, but also the right timing.
> My best guess is that pretty soon the supply of greater fools runs out.
The timing of the trade mostly author's gut feel that bitcoin will soon transition to a seller market as everyone who wants to buy bitcoin will already have one.
Puts being cheap is also a subjective measure. Author might be looking at past prices and making the bet. He isn't looking at greeks at all.
Crypto investing seems a lot more like straight up gambling, where there isn’t a ton to go on. Even less to go on than investing in a regular currency, which isn’t very mainstream.
Why now? This is a general investing issue. Trading costs money, holding a put costs money, so why will the market do what you think in this time frame?
Why are the puts cheap? This could be substantiated with some numbers, esp implied volatility. Are they cheap vs history? I don't know, but the reasoning should show why you think so. Note I'm not looking for breakevens. That can be worked out from the price, but it doesn't tell you whether that is more or less likely than the market's opinion.
Totally reasonable points otherwise.