Orderly administration of markets, OK whatever, I can understand that. But from a price discovery perspective my rationale for participation is that I have a strong belief that zero is the correct price.
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In the event that reality decides to converge catastrophically to Bitcoin's true value, I do not want institutional counterparties to get away with a haircut. Upside risk is uncapped; shorts (necessarily!) want to play for scalps.
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If this is a little unclear: the structure of these contracts is that, conceptually, there are two people: one promises to pay the other
$FOO Bitcoins in USD in a year. That person is now short Bitcoin. The other is willing to pay for the Bitcoin; they're long.1 reply 0 retweets 7 likesShow this thread -
Why pay the BTC in USD? Because this a) this is a cash settled futures contract and b) it is cash settled because there exists substantial complexity to actually paying someone in BTC in status quo and future stats of world. (Yay, payment network of future.)
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So every day the CME marks these positions to market, saying "OK, those BTC that you're short are worth a total of $100 more than yesterday; settle up by paying your counterparty $100 today." (The actual money movement is more complicated.)
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And the contracts are settled daily in this fashion, until one final cash settlement. Now here's the rub:
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In the event BTC goes to nothing, the true settlement the short party should get is the entire cash value of the contract. "Well OK it looks like the 10 BTC you owe him are worth zero and we last assigned them a notional value of $75k, OK, fair's fair, here's your $75k."
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But what the CME is saying is "Look look look we know the value isn't actually zero even if the spot price is, well, technically speaking, a very zero looking sort of number if you squint at it. So we'll say the true price is e.g. $2.5k a piece and close the contracts."
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"Wait a minute... so I get $50k, not $75k." "Yep good math." "And who gets the $25k?" "Your counterparty." "WHY?" "Well we didn't want to wipe them out." "YOU WIPE PEOPLE OUT EVERY DAY. THAT IS A MAJOR PART OF YOUR JOB. THE ORDERLY WIPING OUT OF PEOPLE."
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Replying to @patio11
That the CME prefers some participants to others is not remotely surprising to anyone who has ever traded there.
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Is there any entry point into that topic you'd recommend for an interested non-professional? (Not terribly relevant for me careerwise at the moment but would love some bedtime reading.)
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