[EM] A secure distributed election scheme based on Bitcoin's Proof-of-Work protocol

[Jameson Quinn]

2011/6/18 Mike Frank <michael.patrick.frank at gmail.com>

> Shorting essentially just means borrowing the item to short, and then
> selling the borrowed item below market price.


Why would you sell it below market price? You sell it at the market's bid
price.


>
> You could certainly borrow bitcoins from someone (if they were willing to
> loan them to you), and then sell the borrowed coins on an exchange.
>
> However, the existing exchanges don't support "naked short selling," which
> would means posting an "ask" to sell bitcoins that you don't actually have
> on deposit in your exchange account.
>
> But, there is nothing to prevent someone from making such an exchange, or
> just posting a Craigslist ad that says, "I have 1 million Bitcoins which I
> am willing to sell to anyone for $0.001 cents each," when you don't have the
> actual coins yet, just some friends who have agreed to loan you their coins.
>
> That would essentially be a retro-tech equivalent of a naked short sell.
>
>
Yes. And whoever it was would demand their bitcoins back if the value ever
went over the capital they knew I had. And then I'd be wiped out, even if I
was later proven right at the end of the two year time period. Which is the
reason I don't do this; I'm not willing to put an upper bound on people's
gullibility. I correctly called the tech crash (instead of selling out my
tech stocks, I endowed a preschool scholarship with them) and the US real
estate crash (I invested in non-US mutual funds, which turned out to be
stupid, but oh well). Neither of these took brilliance to see coming, and
the bitcoin crash doesn't either. But I couldn't short either of them
safely, and I can't short bitcoin safely.
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