Questions about shorting

[random]

Thank you for the reply.
That was my read of it but it does not say it anywhere either way, that I have read so is why I was wondering.
I like the idea of BTS how it is, as I say if I had any kind of coding skillset i would help, but trade and provide liquidity is all I can do.
So now I know, I will long BTS where appropriate and stand aside the ebbs. or just sell out down days/weeks
Thank you and regards to all.

[pc]

Shorting BTS is not possible.

You can only short bitassets, i. e. those that are made to be shorted.

[random]

I have a question that pertains to this.
Long BTS / short any bit asset is straight forward.
Borrow asset into existence, sell it get BTS, sell BTS higher price, keep difference. = profit in base BTS
How do we short BTS?/ long bit asset?
I cannot see anywhere it is possible.
If for instance i borrow into existence bitUSD and sit on it and BTS goes down, I pay off the loan not with BTS but with bitUSD negating any profit.
I cant see anywhere where I can borrow BTS to short it.
I've only been on the DEX a month but I cannot see this anywhere. ( i keep searching).
It may not be possible but I thought I would ask.
I have just been selling my BTS stack and buying it back lower.
Thank you for any reply.

[mf-tzo]

@nmywn I promise you won't regret it for buying the CONSTRUCTION token. Thank you very much for the vote of confidence.

A noob understands the true value of the Construction token more than the people who are supporting BTS from the beginning..

[nmywn]

I'm not an expert,  actually I'm a noob,  but i know that margin trading is very risky game. Shorter must be sure that he can open or  close his position at any time with fair price.  What he need is fat orderbook (on both side) and tight spread, otherwise he can lose even if  was right.
This leads to question who could provide that?

Isn't Smartcoins answer for lack of stability in  crypto world, so why almost nobody wants make use of it?
ANTSHARE did by selling their UIA primarily with bitCNY
CONSTRUCTION did by selling his UIA only for bitUSD ( actually I'm the only sucker(?) who bought a bit just because this.)

Would be very awesome if BLOCKPAY,  PEERPLAYS and so on did the same - but it's to late for that and probably not in their best interest.
Any decent project doing/done the same? I'm quite new here.

[karnal]

Because at the end you have more BTS... if lucky.
What you do while shorting is playing with borrowed money. Borrow => sell high => buy low => pay your debt = difference is yours.

I'm just wondering why historically (and up to the present) the amount of shorting has always been incredibly low.

Does something not make sense, are we missing some feature (stop-loss comes to mind..), or there's just not enough good-quality documentation clearly explaining the process?

I could I couldn't find it myself ..

[nmywn]

Because at the end you have more BTS... if lucky.
What you do while shorting is playing with borrowed money. Borrow => sell high => buy low => pay your debt = difference is yours.

[karnal]

So I took it once more to look at shorting in Bitshares today.

I must say I'm slightly confused 

Let's take NZD as an example.

Feed price: 138.082 BTS/bitNZD
Margin Call Price: 151.8902 BTS/bitNZD

Ok. So, from the beginning, we have to lock up some BTS as collateral (>= 1.95x) in case the BTS loses value against NZD.

The higher the collateral ratio, the higher the margin call price.


So far so good.

I then tried to sell my newly minted smartcoins to another account of mine, naively thinking that would settle the original debt (by getting rid of the smartcoins, I wondered if some automatic action would be taken).

It didn't - which, if I understand correctly, means that someone, somewhere, must be perpetually in debt in order for any smartcoin to be in circulation?


Fine, I then tried to close the position: no luck, I needed the 10 smartcoins I'd just sold to the other account.

Transferred them back, clicked "Close position", the smartcoins disappeared, I got all of my BTS back.

The total supply of CHF and NZD (where I ran the tests) shrinked back to what it was originally.



So even if I wanted to offer some limited liquidity, that would always mean making a bet that BTS would appreciate against the smartcoin, perpetually.

And here's the mind-boggling part: let's say I shorted 1000 NZD into existence, and by the grace of .. doge, BTS did move favorably against NZD.

I now have (let's say) 200 NZD in my pocket! Wow! So I close position and that's that, I have 200 NZD in my wallet, debt-free.


.... why not simply hold the BTS, avoid locking up 1.95x the amount, go into debt, and change the BTS for BTC or something less volatile ?


ELI5 please.