Topic: Anyone Lending Their Bitcoin To Shorters Is An Idiot (Read 1530 times)

Right on. When the shorts get scared and start covering, it can be a real catalyst for bull runs. The OP is implying that shorts can artificially depress the market at will. If it was that easy, everyone would do it.

The intricate weaving of satire contained herein should be preserved. For level of effort presented, but also for innovations that have reached a crescendo. You usually have to pay people for this stuff.

In the days of Bitcoinica I lost a lot of bitcoin which was lent out for shorting when the exchange collapsed along with my funds. For me the biggest risk is easily that the exchange holds your bitcoin. You should only lend out very small amounts and hold the majority of your stack safely on your own encrypted wallet.

In terms of shorting the market, all those bitcoins have to be bought back one day or another so for long/bullish perspective shorting only adds fuel to the fire in future.

Are you sure?

There are rumors about the liquidity of Finex and the chinese exchanges, it is not impossible that they collapse in the future, like happened with Gox.

Is whatever the low amount they give back to you as interest worth the risk of you losing everything for some undetermined amount of time, maybe even forever?

Free market is doing its free market stuff. Big surprise.

Im yet to see a single way to make BTC by simply holding your stack, and if there is, you'll require to put your BTC somewhere else that isn't your wallet and that is an insane risk for me, and the interest rate is probably shit.


How are you doing the lending and how much are you lending monthly to create a stable income? are you talking about lending BTC exclusively? do you use any platform like BTCJam or do it here on the forum? please give us more info because im interested, since im just a holder and im not doing anything with my BTC.
What are the % of getting scammed? what do you do if the person you are lending money to doesn't pay you? i see people getting scamed on a daily because people don't pay the money back, with our without the interest. What interest rates are you charging?

This is capitalism. We don't cooperate, we compete. While you may be right that most any lending is a dumb idea. Trying to get competing, self-interested participants to work together is not going to work. It's like a few years ago when the rage was trying to get people to hold their coins to drive up the price. There will always be people who will take advantage of any success and sell for a higher profit.

Well a person will be lending the money out for fixed interest and the money will be used by the shorters to essentially use as a capital to leverage their position and further pile up to short positions. It makes sense because the lender is actually losing money when they get paid with coins which are actually lower in value. But one thing we shouldn't forget is that if the short positions did not go favorably for them if let's say, bitcoin price goes up (even though the short orders are big) they will still end up losing money. Basically they are taking a risk. And if goes too low that bitcoin is seen as being undervalued, price would go up that eventually cause them to lose their position.

the title...


i was going to say it, even with a 10% interest, there is already a huge gain, without moving too much balance around

but i wouldn't deal with someone without collateral or escrow

btw there is a platform(not btjam) where you lend your bitcoin for trading?


there is collateral for a reason, if you lose your money in this stupid way, then you just sell what they have give you to cover your ass, i see no problems here

the problem is that many lend their money without any collateral, to avoid wasting time or because they are in a hurry...

No , they don't benefit more. And it shouldn't be a non-issue. They ignorantly shoot themselves in the foot again and again. This is exactly my point. They *believe* price will rise again *eventually* , so it's wrongly thought to be a non-issue for them - while allowing their coin to be used to suppress the price in the mean time for peanuts , against their own self interest.


Mostly I agree with your statement here , in that you didn't really state anything that's really incorrect. But , my point is that adding to the sell volume is counterproductive to anyone who wants the value of the coins they hold to go up. Not buying more single handedly is of course fundamentally different than deciding to not lend out the coins you already have bought to be shorted into the market. The decision to lend your coins you own would seem to not generally impact in a significant measure the decision of other people to buy - people will buy whether or not they're buying your coins directly from you or buying them from someone who borrowed them from you *but* if your intent is to hold anyway and , and this is key *want price to increase* , then you should neither sell nor lend your coins to be sold - both actions , selling or lending coins to be sold cause negative price pressure.


I disagree that additional lended sell volume is a neutral factor in price discovery , though yes it is correct that sell volume is increased as a result of lending out coins to be sold. That was a big factor of what I was arguing in the first place while connecting that to it contributing to a lower price - though you both seem to want to ignore that , to me , seemingly obvious and basic connection. Holding , not lending , and attempting to influence market price by convincing everyone to decide on a generally higher valuation are 3 completely different things. Holding can be done without lending. Selling can be done without lending. Lending is essentially an entirely different decision than selling or holding. And trying to convince others of a generally higher valuation really is a totally different concept.


*sigh* It makes me sad that people request a tiny sentence to be made out of a more complex godforbid long paragraph. The public education system and tv culture has failed us all. But here goes:

Lending bitcoins to be sold by others causes lower price , which is directly counterproductive to those very individuals who are lending their bitcoins out and want the price to ultimately go up.


Wow , was wondering if anyone else would agree that they also wouldn't have any desire to lend their bitcoin to shorters - thanks. Also , agree that of course leaving coins on shady chinese exchange platforms (aka all the ones that allow leveraging in the first place) is a bad and dangerous idea - to add to that , whether or not they are simply left in your account there , or left there as lended coin it is equally dangerous.


Cool to meet your acquaintance , rude dumbfuck. You'd be a lot happier if the price were 275 than 245 and you had 10 coins instead of 10.5 (hint , the first one is a bigger number , even if it's multiplied by fewer bitcoin). You'd also be a lot happier if you sold and rebought them lower yourself and kept all of your profits , instead of letting someone else do that for you in exchange for a significantly smaller gain. But hey , if you think allowing other people to use your coins to consistently jam the price down for you , and keep the lions share of short profits you could have had for yourself instead , in exchange for 1/2 of 1/10th of 1% and that's ridiculously high gain for you , then god help you , I can't and won't try further to do so.


Agree to disagree I guess , but really it comes down to how severely the price is suppressed and whether or not you lose greater than 0.05% per day as a result of your lending. You may be correct with that number , or you could be way off on daily interest gained vs actualized price loss. I am pretty sure that given daily whole percent 1 , 2 , 5 whatever full % swings occur , the rational lending rate to even expect to break even should be much much higher , given the expectation that your lended coins will be handed back to you devalued after they are used to dump into the market for sake of driving the price down.

anyone who is NOT lending is missing on a stable income opportunity. i think i've collected a pretty stable income over the last months just by lending out at ridiculously high interest rates instead of holding to my stash. so take your whining ass some place else loser.

i wouldn't care to lend out my btc to others for shorting. but i would seriously avoid the risk having my btc locked up on a shady chinese exchange platform that doesn't even label as a company (a brand, lol). if you give away your private keys that easy, don't complain if you get robbed.

is there any TL;DR for those walls of text of yours?!

Excellent point, on mentioning the volume aspect.

I'll add this:

"Hodl" / "Don't lend your precious coins." / "Let's all agree not to sell before X" are all variations of the same idea: *my* valuation of  asset x is betterer and correcterer than *your* valuation (where "your" is essentially the market's aggregate valuation).

Only problem is, that's not how price discovery on markets work.

People who are going to hold anyway, benefit more (more risk too) by gaining a little interest on their holdings. They obviously believe the price will rise plenty again eventually, so it's a non-issue to them.

It is true that there is more volume with margin than without, but this works in both directions. It's not only selling/shorting, but also lack of buying that leads to a lower price. These are normal market mechanisms and nothing you or anyone else can do will ever change that. No amount of shorting can overcome a strong enough buy surge and vice versa, so until buying goes bonkers, shorters gonna short and longs gonna hold.

Gee thanks for twisting and misinterpreting what I said while also making assumptions and trying to speak for me. I'm not saying everyone should work together to increase value. Not at all. And the hodl meme is fucking retarded. If you want to sell and make the price go down then friggin sell and make the price go down. I've got no problem with that whatsoever. And it's a perfectly valid thing to do to sell your coin with the intent of buying it back lower as many times as you'd like. Free market baby. For the win. The deal is - it's both financially and psychologically easier to dump a shitload of someone else's coins than your own. And to do it repeatedly. For a scant 5 or 10 % of the desired sell amount I can sell 100 % of whatever # I want to slam into the market using leverage. If people had to more often than not use their own coins to do that it's pretty simple that they'd be more careful about it , the amounts dumped at any 1 minute would likely be less severe , the frequency would be less constant , and they'd probably think twice about doing it in the first place if those coins were not borrowed in the first place , and in all likelihood prices would be higher by some amount. And I understand the basic financial reason(s) why people would want the price lower - either for obtaining more coin cheaper for your own self , or to repay your own bitcoin debt obligations after borrowing and shorting the market yourself for the sake of retaining greater individual profit. I get that. Even though I was obviously being hyperbolic with the 2000 or more valuation statement , which I probably should not have stated as I did for sake of not confusing the sarcasm impaired , and I do agree that most people myself included would probably say that's overvalued given current fundamentals and past market conditions , the market was above 1000 already albeit the result at least partially of goxfraud , and the market was above 500 for almost a year despite that and despite the shorters - so you really can't say that it definitely wouldn't be around there today if it weren't for non-stop wash repeat shorters constantly borrowing dumping buying back borrowing and dumping ad infinitum. I'm stating specifically that if you do possess bitcoin , and want the value of the coins that you have to go up , it is against your self interest to lend it to others , and indeed against the interest of everyone who possess a non-negative # of bitcoin aka those who already have open short bitcoin debt obligations. For that matter , even for the people who do want it to go down in value or expect that in the future , it *still* makes more sense to sell your own coins yourself rather than lend them out so they can be sold for you and let someone else keep your potential profits. I am actually , surprisingly , at a gain and not a loss therefore cannot blame others for losses I don't have. I am criticizing the stupid decision of others to lend out their coins against their own self interest , not blaming others for any of my decisions. I am impatient , so you got that right. 

The idea that everyone should work together by not selling to increase the value is stupid.  It is always talked about on penny stock forums too.  The HODL meme is just people who are losing money getting annoyed and blaming others for their loss.

The price wouldn't be 500 or 1000 or 2000 today, as people would sell their bitcoins before that price is reached, and no one wants to buy at that price either, otherwise the price would already be there. 

There are fundamentals at play too.  Bitcoins economy isn't that big.  The numbers of users isn't rising as fast as I would like either.  $2000 per coin is too much right now. I would sell before $2000, as I would say it was overvalued at that price.

Either be patient and hope the Bitcoin economy grows so that the price rises, or sell and be done with the stress!  Don't blame others for your decisions.

WTS Bitcoins for cheap. Pm for details.

Seriously ! If it wasn't for you numbnuts lending out 1000s of bitcoin all the time for 1/2 of a 1/2 of a percent interest we'd be at 500 or 1000 or 2000 or more *today* ! It's just fucking stupid ! And yes , I comprehend that there exists logical and less than entirely logical motivations to lend out bitcoin - 1: you want the price of bitcoin to go down , presumably for either the purpose of obtaining more of it for less money or because you're maliciously against the success of bitcoin for whatever reason 2: you think it'll be worth a buttload more than it is today and it must not even matter how badly or constantly it gets hammered lower for the time being so long as you can get a couple extra fractional percent of bitcoin and don't understand basic math it's all good. But if I had more than even 100 bitcoin hell even if I had less than 100 or even 10 bitcoin , and I wanted the price of my bitcoins to go up , there is NO WAY I'd be lending out any of it to people who *exclusively* use it to drive down and suppress the price. Seriously. If you want the price of the bitcoin you have to go up it makes a hell of a lot more sense really any sense at all to lend out dollars or yen or euros or whatever fiat you use - you get interest on your fiat *and* the borrowers have to use that money to buy low drive price up and sell higher than they bought thus increasing the price of the bitcoin you hold in the process - win win win. But if you're one of the people lending bitcoin on a regular basis pull your head out of your ass and think at all even a little bit about what you're actually doing. You are handing over your bitcoin to someone else , for the *sole purpose* of them dumping it into the market , buying it back at a lower price , and handing it back to you - devalued. When you get 0.02% or 0.05% or whatever interest on your lended coin , but they get handed back to you devalued by anywhere from 1-10% *you fucking lose* in fact *everyone loses* except for the person you willingly let screw over you and the entire bitcoin market ! FUCK ! If you have bitcoin , and you want it to go UP in value , don't fucking lend it to other people ! DUH ! Sorry I just had to say it. I can't be the only person thinking it.