Silk Road forums
Discussion => Silk Road discussion => Topic started by: jsmith on July 07, 2011, 01:56 am
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is the solution for the fluctuating exchange rate. This is exactly what existing futures markets are used for.
If you sell item X for 1 BTC, then when you make the sale, sell a futures contract for 1 BTC with a delivery date D (approximately your out-of-escrow date). You get the cash exchange rate *now*, and come time D, you deliver the 1 BTC you get from escrow.
The only real issue is one of margin/collateral. But SR could handle that.
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You are correct and that's a hell of an idea. I would love to be involved with something like that.
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Great idea, but it suffers from a fatal flaw. In order to "sell a futures contract for 1 BTC" you must of course sell the contract in USD (dollars), for this to be useful. Unfortunately, there is no anonymous way to receive the money. So implementing a futures market, which must out of necessity be tied into the Silk Road escrow to avoid FTDs ("failure to deliver"), would create a link to the seller's identity via whatever mechanism is used to transfer dollars.
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A futures market for Bitcoin has been discussed in the broader Bitcoin community for quite some time. So far, nothing has materialized.
Ant futures market that is only based on SR would have much less liquidity than a Bitcoin-wide market.
People are selling pre-paid CC's, cash, and WU wire transfers for Bitcoin here on SR. That would be one way to lock-in an exchange rate at the time of sale.
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"People are selling pre-paid CC's, cash ... for Bitcoin here on SR."
Oh! That solves the problem of anonymity but the shipping cost could be an issue.