MobileCoin (MOB) is up more than five times in the last 48 hours after a trader was borrowing what was at one point $120k worth of the token per hour to short it, according to crypto influencer who goes by Donny Crypto on Twitter.
MOB is the MobileCoin project’s token and is intended for use as a currency for private mobile payments. The project is aimed to integrate with messaging apps and allow users to privately transact without providing information to a third party wallet.
The move has left traders guessing as to why someone would build a $150M short position against this token. Going short means borrowing an asset in order to sell it at market price, with the plan of buying and returning the asset at a lower price, pocketing the difference.
“It’s likely part of a larger strategy that makes the overall portfolio less sensitive to movements in the market, or delta neutral,” Donny Crypto told The Defiant.
Delta neutral is a portfolio strategy which typically involves both options and their underlying securities, making changes in the security’s price net out to zero. This allows a trader to make money only on the volatility of a given asset, which may be an advantage to some.
Still, other traders simply jumped along for the ride, with some speculating a short squeeze -when short sellers are forced to buy more of the token to cover their positions- could be coming.