B4Bit

02/26 05:04

How to Short Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies?

Want to make gains while Bitcoin price is decreasing? It’s possible. A short position on Bitcoin basically means that we believe in a coming-up drop in the price of Bitcoin. Technically, short positions work by selling the base asset first, in this case, Bitcoin, and then later buying it. You don’t have to worry; the exchanges do this process automatically for us.

The second role for shorting Bitcoin is the option to hedge a cryptocurrency portfolio. For example, if the crypto portfolio consists of 5 Bitcoin and we want to hedge against the risk of a possible Bitcoin’s decline, a 10X leveraged short position could be opened, and it would be equivalent to 40% of that Bitcoin portfolio.

To open the position, the amount required is only a tenth of it (10 times leverage). That means that we need to hold only 0.2 Bitcoin on the margin exchange in order to hedge 40% of a portfolio valued 5 Bitcoins. Another advantage is the fact that only a small amount is stored on the exchange itself. As you might notice, from security reasons, it’s better to store the least amount possible on crypto exchanges. 

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