Broker to Trading

Brokers which offer Bitcoin CFD trading may offer it in their normal trading hours of Sunday to Friday. However Bitcoin is traded on exchanges 24/7 and some CFD brokers also offer trading over the weekend. There will still normally be a short break in trading for maintenance. When trading a CFD, the trader does not own the underlying cryptocurrency asset, thus no wallet is needed, the trader can go long or short and may use leverage (increasing leverage increases risk and Bitcoin is extremely volatile).

Trading with CFD brokers lets the trader use the online trading platforms provided by the brokers to trade their range of other CFDs. Thus platform such as web traders, apps, MT4 and MT5, if they are offered, can be used to trade Bitcoin CFDs 24/7. This means the trader can use the tools provided by these platforms, such as charts and technical indicators. As can be seen from the table, some brokers offer platforms which can be used to trade Bitcoin with automated trading strategies. Traders who want to trade Bitcoin without using robots can also use these platforms or a user friendly platform designed for the trader who makes their own trades, if offered by the broker.

Bitcoin what is it ?

Bitcoin is an Internet based network used to make peer-to-peer payments in Bitcoin, a digital currency secured by cryptography known therefore as a cryptocurrency. When a payment is made from a Bitcoin wallet to another, it is processed on the Internet by miners. Miners compete using what is called a proof-of-work algorithm for the right to process a block of payment transactions.

When a block has been verified by the Bitcoin network it is added to all previous blocks, creating a linear list of linked transactions blocks called the blockchain. Miners receive a reward in the form of 'mined' Bitcoin. There is a limit on the total number of Bitcoins which can be created but this is designed so that Bitcoins can be mined for a long time, by reducing the number of Bitcoins which can be created, in stages over time.

To ensure the immutability of this ledger of all Bitcoin transactions, a cryptographic technique called hashing is used. Hashing creates a digital signature of data in the blocks, which will change if data is altered. Thus it will be clear to the network if the data is altered anywhere on the transaction record. Therefore block after block can be added, without compromising the security of any part of the block.

The Internet was built to be durable using a distributed network architecture, and Bitcoin makes use of this architecture to help create and store its ledger. It should be noted that distributed payment processing systems using the Internet face issues which centralised payment processing systems do not face when scaling up to process increased numbers of transactions. Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies which forked from the Bitcoin blockchain, and other cryptocurrencies have been working to try and overcome these issues, for example with the Lightning Network layer which aims to allow fast transaction processing for Bitcoin and other Cryptos.

Bitcoin is traded on cryptocurrency exchanges under the symbol BTC. When trading a Bitcoin CFD, the trader does not trade on an exchange, rather trades with their CFD provider. In some regions, Bitcoin CFDs may be traded with higher leverage.