You need to try margin trading at other exchanges to see how screwed is bitshares shorting. I tried shorting at poloniex last night, and now very regret that I did not try this earlier, because it makes so much more sense than shorting in BTS. At poloniex, you deposit 1 BTC, and this allows you to short 2.5 BTC worth of any assets by simply placing sell orders. When your order is filled, BTC which you got from short selling, is added to your initial deposit to back up the debt which you just created. You settle your debt by simply placing a buy order. When it is filled, your collateral is transferred to other party and your debt is settled. This is how margin trading is actually supposed to work. You deposit only 40% collateral upfront, but your position is 140% collateralized.
The guys who coded shorting in BTS clearly had no clue what are they doing. To issue bitAsset, we need to deposit a double collateral upfront, and to settle the debt we need to deposit 100% on top of double collateral. This is ridiculous and defeats the whole purpose of margin trading, which is to trade large amount with small funds. MPA is a very nice concept, which is buried under flawed implementation. Shorting is a central piece of BTS monetary system, but it is totally screwed. This has to be fixed ASAP. BTS shareholders should hire somebody who has expertise in developing trading software, pay them well through worker and let them fix shorting and all other flaws. Before this is done, don't dream about mass adoption, because other exchanges offer much cleaner products.
Topic: Bitshares shorting is flawed and needs to be fixed ASAP (Read 14890 times)
