How to bet against the bitcoin megabubbleStephen GandelFORTUNE -- Can you bet on the likely eventual bitcoin crash?You bet.But it's an expensive trade.And even if you're right, you won't walk away with much, if anything.The traditional way you bet against something is to "short it."But in order to do a short sale you have to borrow a share of stock or bond or whatever you are looking to bet against.And borrowing bitcoins is nearly impossible.There is a company based in Hong Kong in testing phase that seems to offer bitcoin shorting, but I couldn't find out much about it.What you can buy is a derivative contract that will rise in value when bitcoins fall in price.There are a number of places that sell options and futures on bitcoins.One place -- ICBIT, a bitcoin exchange -- is run by a guy in Moscow.MPEx, a stock exchange for companies with shares traded in bitcoins -- there are four of them -- also lists bitcoin options.BitInstant, a Brooklyn-based payment processor, is planning on launching a bitcoin futures exchange early next year.All of these places require that you open an account to start trading, and none of them take dollars.

So you have to buy some bitcoins elsewhere, which in itself is no easy task, and transfer them to your ICBIT or MPEx account before you can get started.MPEx charges 30 bitcoins to open an account, which at Wednesday's closing price was $33,000.I heard good things about ICBIT, which offered accounts for free but charges a commission when you trade.But to see the prices of the contracts, you had to get your account up and running and deposit a minimum of 0.1 bitcoins.(You can buy bitcoins in fractions.)I decided to check out Coinbr, a brokerage firm that allows you to trade options on MPEx without opening an account there.You still have to deposit 0.1 bitcoin in a Coinbr account to get started.But MPEx allows anyone to see the prices of its contracts, so you know what you are getting into before you start.Here we go: If you are betting against bitcoins, what you want to do is buy a put option, which is a derivative contract that allows you to sell something at a set price.If the actual price of the thing falls below the set price, or strike price, you make money.You could also sell a call option, the right to buy at a set price, but that is riskier and requires collateral.

So I stuck to looking at put contracts.It cost 0.045 of a bitcoin, or $49.50, to buy a put contract to sell 1/10 of a bitcoin at a strike price of $1,100 per bitcoin.The contract expires at the end of the month and will expire worthless if the price of a bitcoin is above $1100 at that point.bitcoin us seizedBut the value of the contract will go up before then as long as the value of a bitcoin drops.Let's supposed bitcoins were to fall to $500 by the end of December, a 55% plunge in less than a month.If that were to happen, the price of my bitcoin put contract would jump.Here's the problem: To book my profit, I ultimately want dollars.With normal currency options you can choose to collect in whatever currency you are using to bet against another currency.intel core i7 bitcoin miningSo if you are betting the price of a euro will fall against a dollar, you can collect in dollars when the contract settles, thereby offsetting the fact that the euro just dropped in value.MORE: A decade of markets, mayhem, and investingYou can't currently do that with bitcoins.bitcoin watchdog

All of the bitcoin options and futures contracts are settled in bitcoins.This is a very bad deal.bine that with what is still in the account, and it's now 0.175 bitcoins.At a bitcoin price of $500, that's a mere $87.50.That means even if you are right, and you call the top of the bitcoin bubble, correctly predicting a whopping 55% plunge in the value of the currency and do all of this, you would lose $22.50.You can get around this by upping your bet against bitcoins.asic bitcoin usbIf instead you buy two contracts, for $99, and once again the price plunges 55%, you will end up making a whopping $15.mit bitcoin atmAnd I haven't factored in fees, which would probably run you about $4 for the whole transaction, including the dollar-to-bitcoin round trip, taking your profit down to $11.On top of all that, this isn't like trading on the New York Stock Exchange.bitcoin norway apartment

Midday Wednesday, MPEx appeared to shut down, and the prices of the contracts disappeared.I was told this happens a lot.As of early Thursday, the exchange still wasn't listing prices.What's more, after running through my math of the trade with a Coinbr broker in a chat room, with the conclusion that basically the trade doesn't make sense, he offered to sell me contracts at 0.033 bitcoins, so I could buy three contracts instead of two with my 0.1 bitcoins.litecoin with nvidiaThat led me to question just how real the prices MPEx was quoting were.All of this may explain one reason why the price of bitcoins until recently has been heading straight up.litecoin virtual miningWhy bother betting against it?bitcoin header formatThere has been a lot of forking-related questions recently.

This thread serves to provide a platform to talk about forking and what it means to you as a Bitcoin user.Just like with everything, this is a work in progress and we need the community’s input on what it should contain.The below is just a primer.If you want to add to it, please leave a comment below with what you want to add.If you have general questions about forking, feel free to post that in this thread’s comments too and others will try to answer.What is a hard fork?A hard fork is when a block is broadcast under a new and different set of protocol rules which is accepted by nodes that have upgraded to support the new protocol.In this case, Bitcoin diverges from a single blockchain to two separate blockchains (a majority chain and a minority chain).There will be two blockchains after a fork, is that right?Yes, that is correct.Some argue that having two chains is problematic, but that is only the case if you believe that the minority chain will survive and have more market value than the majority chain.

Is a hard fork bad?Hard forks are just protocol upgrades.If you want to have a better designed Bitcoin protocol, periodically you will have to upgrade (fork) to make it happen.A planned fork is nothing to panic about.In fact, just like with Bitcoin halving every four years, protocol upgrades can be celebrated too.What will happen to my bitcoin when a fork happens?Don’t worry, your bitcoin is safe!The most important thing as a user who wants to control their own money (bitcoin), is that you will want to store your bitcoin in a wallet where you have control over the private key.As long as you do that, post-fork you can spend your coins however you’d like.But if you leave your coins on an exchange for example where you may not have control over your private key, post-fork the exchange will have to determine which blockchain your coins belong to.When will the fork happen?Every fork is different, so generally speaking there isn’t one answer that can fit every scenario.Most recently the protocol upgrade that has caused the most news has been Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) and the consensus mechanism Emergent Consensus (EC is also supported by Bitcoin Classic), which removes the temporary Bitcoin block size limit like the original client and lets the free market decide what block size is best, allowing for on-chain scaling.

BU doesn’t have a set activation period.Once there is consensus among Bitcoin user nodes and mining nodes that signal an acceptable block size using BU, the blockchain will begin to diverge.For more information for miners on how to safely fork to BU, please read the ViaBTC Miner Guide.Has a hard fork ever happened before?Forks have successfully been implemented often in other cryptocurrencies.In fact there are very few instances of hard forks failing.On the Bitcoin blockchain there has already been one successful hard fork in the past.This hard fork was carried out in response to a serious bug found in Bitcoin that could be used to create billions of bitcoin.A hard fork was planned and carried out in a short amount of time to fix this big.Why is a hard fork likely to happen?A fork is likely to happen due to a fundamental disagreement between different groups of the Bitcoin community on how the Bitcoin protocol will progress in the future.A long and important debate has carried on within the community for the past several years and consensus has been unable to be found on a path forward.

A hard fork is one method for finding a way forward using using Nakamoto Consensus; read the Bitcoin whitepaper to understand the underlying architecture of how Bitcoin was built.I’ve heard about replay attacks when forking, what are they?When there is a chain split, you may end up with coins on both sides of the blockchain (two coins), for example Bitcoin Core (BTC-C) and Bitcoin Unlimited (BTC-U).A replay attack is when a user broadcasts both coins on both blockchains, taking advantage of exchanges that might not have protection against these attacks.Recently exchanges have reached out to the Bitcoin community for suggestions on the best way to handle these situations.How can I keep track of the ongoing consensus finding of the fork?There are many sites to keep track of how people are voting within the community.For example you can see how people are economically voting, how miners are signaling (also over last 1000 blocks), and how user nodes are signaling.If you're unsure, you can always submit a post and ask your peers what they think!