Quote from: DaRude on October 27, 2014, 11:26:36 AM

Quote from: unent on October 26, 2014, 12:34:43 AM

If BTC swaps are high right now does that mean bitcoin is likely to rise in price, or the opposite?

Well, currently there are:
22,193,192.53 USD swaps
17,599.02 BTC swaps (or about $6.1MM at current price)

Say you have $333 and very confident that the current price $1000/btc Grin

will go up. If you buy 0.333BTC and the price goes up 10% to $1100 next day, and you sell you'd have $366 ($333+$33 ) Yay but that's not good enough for you and instead you decide to leverage long. That is, you come to RyNinDaCleM and say you want to buy a full 1BTC. RyNinDaCleM, being a loan shark that s/he is, agrees but on the following terms s/he will buy and hold it for you, s/he wants to be paid 1% per day and asks for Initial Margin 3:1 (33%) and warns that Maintenance Margin is 15%. Blah blah STFU you agree and hand him $333 (33% from $1000 as Initial Margin) he puts in $666 of his own money and buys full 1BTC and says he'll keep it for safekeeping you go Whateve's. Now you prop your eyes open with tooth picks and glue yourself to a monitor looking at BTC price charts expecting it to go up. You've entered a leveraged long position.
Outcomes:
A-Day later, price goes up 10% cool!! You ecstatically run to RyNinDaCleM's place tell him to sell that 1BTC and give you your money. He hands you $427.34 ($1100 - $666money he put in - $6.66 his 1%swap interest for day). You come back home and find your girlfriend with another model looking chick having a pillow fight naked on your bed. Cool much better than $366 eh?

B-Day later market moves against you $100 so btc is at $900 now. You kick the cat, lock the dog outside, but hang in there after all you got mad trader skillz and confident that the price MUST go up so must be just a glitch in the matrix. Next day market moves against you again and BTC is at $800 now. You call up your girlfriend and say that she needs to loose few kilos/pounds, call up your mom and say you always hated her cooking. But stick with your btc. After all BTC always rebounds, right? It always does. RIGHT!?! Day three, you wake up and find puke all over your keyboard, empty bottle of vodka and a really fat "thing" passed out in your bed. You really hope it's a chick but can't tell and too afraid to check as to not wake her/him up. You check BTC and it's trading at $700. Damn must be that full moon oh well BTC is only down 30%. You look at the chart and conclude that the pterodactyl's nose points to a trend reversal tomorrow. But phone rings and it's RyNinDaCleM saying it's a margin call and he just sold your BTC and come pick your $14.02 up . WTF thought we were cool bro? Phone ring wakes up the fat dude that was passed out on your bed, he give you a compliment on you pretty mouth while he pukes all over your bed/carpet. Angry

WTF just happened!?!

Well, your equity (your money) started off at $333. 15% Maintenance Margin at price of $1000 is $150 so you're well over that with your $333
-Day one btc is at $900. Your equity is at $227.34 ($900-$666RyNinDaCleM share-$6.66one day 1% swap interest), 15% Maintenance Margin means that you need to be at least at $135 (900*15%). $227.34 > $135 so you're good.
-Day two btc is at $800. Your equity is at $120.68 ($800-$666RyNinDaCleM share-$13.32two day 1% swap interest), 15% Maintenance Margin means that you need to be at least at $120 (800*15%). $120.68 > $120 barely made it.
-Day three btc is at $700. Your equity is at $14.02 ($700-$666RyNinDaCleM share-$19.98three day 1% swap interest), 15% Maintenance Margin means that you need to be at least at $120 (800*15%). But $14.02 < $120 MARGIN CALL!

Shorts are the other way around where you borrow BTC and sell it right away for $ in hopes that it'll go down so you can repurchase it later at a lower price. Don't have time to write up an example for that today

TL;DR lots of USD swaps (longs) means a lot of people holding BTC with borrowed money in hopes that BTC will go up so they can sell and pay back the $$$. But they're paying interest daily, and if market goes down too much they might have to sell their BTC before loosing everything, or if it goes down too much the BTC might be sold automatically by exchange in a margin call. Which might cause a domino effect. Price falls, person 1 gets margin called and his coins are sold on the market, causing the price to drop even more, now person 2 gets margin called and now his coins are market sold driving the price even further down now person 3 is in trouble etc...

BTC swaps (shorts) are the other way around, people borrowed coins, sell right away and sit on fiat. Eventually they have to buy the coins to give them back (close their short). They obviously hope to rebuy at a lower price. You borrowed a coin from me at $1000, price goes up to $5000 but i don't care and want my coin back, so you're forced to buy at the market price. Forcing price up, and possible margin call on other shorts driving the price even higher...

thank you. now i understand the madness of the trolls here much better.