With Bitcoins changing digital hands for over $260 this morning, having doubled in a week (and exponentially risen in weeks), many have asked how to 'trade' or 'short' this virtual currency. Well, perhaps the answer is here. As TechCrunch notes [5], Coinsetter [6] - a NY-based startup looking to launch a trading platform for Bitcoin has raised $500,000 in seed capital. The platform will allow leverage (via margin) and the ability to short the market. We can only imagine the hour-by-hour margin changes. Furthermore, Coinsetter intends to offer accredited investors (because wealth equals smarts, right) the ability to earn interest on Bitcoins. To put his money where his mouth is, Lukasiewicz, a former JPM investment banker, has said that he will "put up at least $50,000 of his own money towards the platform's initial margin reserves." Forget NFLX; Ignore FNM; day-trading Bitcoin with leverage is the new normal. What's the opposite of catching a falling knife?
Short this...on margin...
[7]
And from Coinsetter's blog... [8]
[9]
Via TechCrunch,
Today, Coinsetter, a New York City-based startup looking to launch a new Forex trading platform for Bitcoin, announced today that it has raised $500,000 in seed capital. The round was led by Tribeca Venture Partners and SecondMarket founder and CEO Barry Silbert (through his Bitcoin Opportunity Fund), with participation from angel investors like Jimmy Furland, a London-based technology entrepreneur, Microsoft Head of Corporate Strategy, Charles Songhurst, and Facebook Product Lead, Ben Davenport.
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Coinsetter, on the other hand, is one of many that see opportunity in applying familiar market practices to the wild, wacky and virtual world of Bitcoin. With its new funding in tow, the New York City-based startup plans to launch a Forex trading platform for Bitcoin, specifically one that allows people to make leveraged trades on margin and short the market. While these practices are available in all mature markets, says co-founder Jaron Lukasiewicz, “they’re virtually absent in the Bitcoin space.”
Coinsetter wants to make Bitcoin more accessible to both mainstream and institutional users by focusing on security, transparency and by offering a simple user experience. On top of that, the startup plans to launch an ancillary arm that will offer a “scalable solution for accredited investors and institutions to earn interest on their bitcoins,” Lukasiewicz says.
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To put his money where his mouth is, Lukasiewicz, a former investment banker, has said that he will “put up at least $50,000 of his own money towards the platform’s initial margin reserves,” as reported by The Bitcoin Trader. [10] The article goes on to point out that, while promising, Coinsetter isn’t the only service looking to offer margin trading.
There’s also the steadily-growing, Hong Kong-based Bitfinex [11] as well as ICBIT.se [12], both of which have been around for some time.
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