How to Short Bitcoin in the Crash: Step by Step on Bitget and OKX

To short Bitcoin means to bet on a falling price. After a Binance hot wallet was drained of about $2.8 billion on Thursday night and Bitcoin slipped below $79,000, many traders are asking whether they can profit from the drop or hedge their holdings. They can. The most direct way for most readers outside the EU is a perpetual futures contract on Bitget, where you open a short position in a few clicks. In the EU, OKX Europe offers regulated futures with up to 10x leverage. Here is how a short works, a worked example at tonight's price and why shorting right after a crash is riskier than it looks.

What happened tonight is in our crypto crash timeline, the details of the drained wallet in our Binance hack report.

What does it mean to short Bitcoin?

When you buy a coin, you profit if the price rises. A short works the other way round: you sell first and buy back later. If the price falls in between, you keep the difference. If it rises, you pay it.

On crypto exchanges this almost always runs through futures contracts. You do not buy coins but a contract whose value tracks the price. You post collateral, called margin. With leverage you control a larger position than your margin, and that is where both the opportunity and the risk sit.

How to short Bitcoin on Bitget, step by step

1. Open an account on Bitget and complete identity verification.
2. Deposit USDT or another supported asset and transfer it to your futures account.
3. Open the BTCUSDT perpetual contract and set your leverage. For a first position, 2x or 3x is far safer than 10x or more.
4. Enter the size and choose "Open short" or "Sell".
5. Set a stop-loss before you confirm, so the position closes automatically if the market moves against you.

EU users: Bitget is not onboarding EU clients pending its MiCA application. In the EU, OKX Europe offers so-called X-Perps under a MiFID II licence from Malta, with up to 10x leverage and euro, dollar or crypto collateral, as OKX Europe CEO Erald Ghoos explained to Cointelegraph. Which exchanges hold a licence is shown in our comparison of regulated exchanges.

Worked example: what does a Bitcoin short return?

Say you post $1,000 as margin and open a 3x short worth $3,000. Your entry is Bitcoin's price on Thursday at 21:25 UTC: $79,371 according to CoinGecko. Fees and funding costs are not included.

Bitcoin moves	Price	Position result	On your margin
−10%	$71,434	+$300	+30%
−5%	$75,402	+$150	+15%
+5%	$83,340	−$150	−15%
+10%	$87,308	−$300	−30%
about +30%	about $103,000	Liquidation	margin largely lost

Leverage triples every move in both directions. At 10x the position would be gone after a rise of about 10%. Thursday night showed how fast that happens: about $628 million in positions were force-closed within one hour, according to CoinGlass data, mostly bets on rising prices. The same kind of wave can hit shorts the moment the market bounces.

Other ways to profit from a falling crypto market

• Margin trading. You borrow coins, sell them and buy them back later. Spot margin is available on many exchanges, including Bybit EU for European users.
• Put options. A put gains value when the price falls. Your maximum loss is the premium you paid, which makes it a cleaner hedge than a futures short.
• Inverse ETPs. Exchange-traded products that move opposite to Bitcoin are listed on several stock exchanges. Daily rebalancing makes them suitable for short holding periods.
• Swap into stablecoins. Not a short in the strict sense, but the simplest hedge: the part you hold in dollars does not lose value if Bitcoin keeps falling.

Why shorting right after a crash is risky

• Bounces come fast. In past exchange hacks the first drop was often the deepest. After the Bybit hack in February 2025 the market recovered once it was clear customer funds would be covered. This time Tether and Circle have already frozen around $2.4 billion in stablecoins.
• Funding costs. On perpetual contracts longs and shorts pay each other a regular fee. When most traders are short, shorts pay, and a position that only moves sideways still loses money.
• Headlines at night. Asian markets open around midnight UTC, and any statement from Binance can turn the price by several percent within minutes.

If you short, use a small part of your capital, keep leverage low and set the stop-loss before you enter. If you only want to protect your holdings, moving part of them into stablecoins is often the better choice. Where analysts see Bitcoin by year-end is collected in our Bitcoin price prediction.

Is shorting Bitcoin legal?

In most countries, yes, but the rules differ. In the EU, leveraged crypto derivatives fall under financial market rules and must be offered by licensed firms with leverage limits and risk warnings. In the United States, crypto futures are regulated by the CFTC and most offshore exchanges do not accept US residents. Check which products your exchange is allowed to offer where you live.

This article is not investment advice. Leveraged products are complex, most retail traders lose money with them, and you can lose your entire margin. The links to Bitget and OKX are partner links; they cost you nothing extra.