Topic: Suggestion for bitoption: second market for buying and selling contracts (Read 821 times)

Hi,

I would like to make some suggestion for bitoption.org. Look at some trading example:

Let's assume I own two BTC and we have a bitcoin price of 20 USD now. Further, let's say somebody is writing calls which would allow me to buy 1 BTC each at any time between now and two weeks later for a price of 30 USD and sells those calls for 1 USD each.

Now, if I'm bullish on BTC and want to have some leverage on my investment, I would do the following (I neglect fees for now):

I deposit my two BTC at bitoption.org. Then I trade one of them for 20 USD and buy twenty of those calls. Now, let's say I'm lucky and the BTC price moves up to 35 USD. So I want to execute my call options now. Then I have to do the following:

I trade my second BTC into 35 USD. I take 30 USD and execute my first call, which leaves me with 1 BTC + 5 USD. So I have to trade this BTC again for USD, which gives me all in all 40 USD now. So I can execute the next call, which leaves me with 1 BTC + 10 USD. And so on. Eventually, I will end up with 135 USD or ~3.85 BTC, depending on which currency I prefer. But the process to get there (executing one call after the other) is that tedious!

That's why I would really prefer to be able to sell my call options to somebody else instead of executing them by myself. Maybe I would even be able to sell them for more than the intrinsic value of 5 USD, because there is a lot of volatility in the market and somebody could hope for a even higher execution price in the future while he would not risk to loose more than 5 USD per contract, even if the exchange rate crashes back to 20 USD or lower.

So I think introducing a market for buying and selling already running call- or put-contracts would be a very nice addition for bitoption.org. It would make life easier for speculators who just want to have some leveraged investment without being interested in the actual execution of the contract. On the other hand, it would create some arbitrage opportunities for people who buy contracts from speculators just before they end for a little less than the intrinsic value and then take care about the execution. It would also give speculators a possibility to exit a trade if it runs against them: If - in my example - I see BTC prices dropping and start believing that 30 USD would not be reached before the end of my call option, I don't have to wait until they are terminated and I'm left with nothing. I could sell them to some other speculator for a smaller price (like maybe 0.5 USD), who still hopes for the BTC price to move upwards again.

I think this second market would improve trading a lot. And it's also like option trading at the stock markets work: Most people don't care about option execution, they just want to trade them in order to profit diproportionally high if the market moves in their direction. What do you think about this?