SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
A massive wrong-way bet on Bitcoin left an unidentified futures trader unable to cover losses, burning counterparties and threatening to dent confidence in one of the world's largest cryptocurrency venues.
The long position in Bitcoin futures listed on OKEx, a Hong Kong-based exchange, had a notional value of about $416 million, according to an OKEx statement on Friday and data compiled by Bloomberg. OKEx moved to liquidate the position on Tuesday, but the exchange was unable to cover the trader's shortfall as Bitcoin's price slumped. Because OKEx has a "socialized clawback" policy for such instances, it will force futures traders with unrealized gains this week to give up about 18 percent of their profits.
While clawbacks are not unprecedented at OKEx, the size of this week's debacle has attracted lots of attention in crypto circles. The episode underscores the risks of trading on lightly regulated virtual currency venues, which often allow high levels of leverage and lack the protections investors have come to expect from traditional stock and bond markets. Crypto platforms have been dogged by everything from outages to hacks to market manipulation over the past few years, a period when spectacular swings in Bitcoin and its ilk attracted hordes of new traders from all over the world.
[...] Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value, dropped 2.2 percent to $7,383.44 at 4:56 p.m. Hong Kong time on Friday, extending its decline this week to 10 percent. It has slumped 48 percent this year.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @06:38PM (4 children)
All investments include risks, especially when you buy or sell options. Well, all investments unless you happen to be a congressman trading on inside information [reuters.com]. Will you look at that ... he got arrested.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday August 08 2018, @06:48PM (1 child)
This.
Bitcoin is risky enough. Those people that go 20-100 times margin are fucking nuts.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday August 09 2018, @12:03AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @07:08PM (1 child)
Is Collins worth an SN article all of his own? He's from my district and the local newspaper has been covering his unusual trading activity in this Aussie pharma startup for at least the last year. We cheered when we heard the news this morning that he was arrested. This is a congressman who won't hold local town meetings because he doesn't like hecklers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 08 2018, @07:25PM
He was very involved in Trump's transition team. He's making America great again ... buy using insider information to sell his Aussie stock.
BTW, Collins is a board member of the company he was trading in.