Well how does one short anything if they don't have anything to begin with? Example you have 10000 dollars. You think btc will drop in price pretty soon. So how could you short if you have btc on you at the moment? Because wouldn't shorting require you to either have btc already? Because say you think btc will drop soon. Well you certainly arent going to buy any btc anytime soon right? Because i thought shorting means you can bet on it dropping in price from now?
From what I understand, shorting requires you to lend from the broker/exchange/trading platform in order to sell high and buy back in low, the difference in your sell and buy price is your profit - once you've paid back the initial entry position or your margin.
For example, say that back in Nov-2018, you'd predicted that the news of the imminent BCH hard fork would have a negative affect in the BTC market, and entered in a position with 0.005 BTC ($32 USD) and 100x leverage in order to short sell BTC at $6400 USD.
As you expected the market crashed and you bought back in at the market low of $3900. The difference was $6400 - $3900 = $2500. With the $2500 decrease in market times your 0.005 BTC stake = $12.50 profit. Then multiply your profit of $12.50 by 100x leverage, and you come away with = $1,250 profit. Finally, minus your initial investment of $32 USD (0.005 BTC) + the platform's leverage fee.
If the market turned upwards in the opposite direction than you predicted, you could very quickly lose your original investment (before leverage was added) ... which is why stop-loss and limit orders are crucial so that you can pre-dictate at what point you wish to liquidate and cut your losses. For this reason bigger margins/smaller leverage is typically recommended for beginner traders as a stop loss could be triggered more easily with a smaller margin, thus losing your position prematurely. Prime XBT (
https://PrimeXBT.com) is a new crypto trading platform that offers all of these advanced strategies and risk management techniques simultaneously, so you can benefit from an increased profit potential with up to 100x leverage on long and short positions, and with the parachute of stop-loss order.