Topic: nrd525 Market Tracker - page 10. (Read 83024 times)

Reviewing some "fundamentals".

Bullish Factors
Global economy at peak of bull cycle. SP500 setting another all-time-high today.
Global (long term and also short term) interest rates at historical (50-60 year) lows
Lightning Network will allow low transaction fees
Transaction fees are around $0.20-$0.70 (room to grow)
Bitcoin market share at 67%
Bitcoin ecosystem is healthy - no talks of additional forks, no new controversial splits in the community
US / China trade war (currency part of it, not the actual impact on global economy)
Republicans are unlikely to overly-regulate crypto currency and are likely to hold a majority at least in the Senate post 2020
Use case for speculation is solid.  Bitcoin is digital gold for gamblers.
More ways to speculate on bitcoin (CME, CBOE, Bakkt, additional futures)
More ways to lend out bitcoin (also stable USD coins and altcoins) with Celsius Network, Blockfi, etc
May 2020 Halvening
ETF hasn't happenned yet, but seems likely in the next 1-5 years
At 9k now, we just spiked 40% up in a single day.  Bullish also from 3.2k bottom
China might be serious about regulating and allowing cryptocurrency usage beyond mining (president made a statement, they are working on legislation)
Volatility helps Bitcoin fulfill its "Digital Gold for Gamblers" function
US IRS allows specific lots for determining capital gains
Added: Bitcoin has a strong network effect.


Bearish Factors
Global recession is coming (ex. US unemployment rate of 3.6% hasn't been sustained since 1960 or before without a recession)
Low rates fuel bubbles (property, crypto, stock, art, etc)
Lightning's volume is insignificant
Google Search Trends are lagging price (and lower than in the 2017 bull market)
NVT signal shows signs of being over-bought (though not as bad as in August when I last posted this and we fell 35%)
IRS increased interested in collecting capital gains
We might have exited the bear market prematurely (inadequate damage to ICOs, altcoins, self-fulfilling prophecy of another bull market is too good to be true)
No major use cases for bitcoin other than speculation (transactions, remittances, the nonsense about being your own bank -- all not that useful)
Centralized stablecoins (or even just USD payment systems) are better suited for beating credit cards
Lawsuits against Tether make strong arguments
Blockchain is falsely equated to the internet as a revolution in something - not true!
Lack of premiums in non-US exchanges (ex. in the past we had China premiums in 2013 and Korea in 2017)
Added: there are an infinte number of possible crypto-currencies and the network effect can be overcome. Bitcoin is replaceable.


Indeterminate Factors (risk?)
Mt Gox bankruptcy returns some of the coins.  Wow this is taking forever!
Regulators haven't taken a strong position on ICOs
Satoshi identity(ies) is not known. Potentially owns 1 million btc.
Unresolved situation for small transactions where you are responsible for capital gains if they buy coffee
Unregulated stable coins like Tether (could be scams, regulatory crackdown -- ex. research papers on correlation between printing new Tethers and price increase in bitcoin)
Facebook Libra coin
https://alternative.me/crypto/fear-and-greed-index/  (doesn't seem so useful longterm, needs more data)
GBTC premium - https://crypto.neotechdevs.com/GBTC.jsp?chart=year#charts
Hacks, scams, ponzis

I'm a bit worried that competition might lead to unnecessary risks in this very new (new in that it looks legitimate and is at least organizationally independent of the highly variable rates offered by exchanges) industry of crypto lending.  But I'm also hopeful that we'll have some market leaders who figure out how to do this safely.

https://interest.coinmarketcap.com

Unsure if Google can get decent search traffic from China, but this search trend for "blockchain" is basically flat after the Chinese president mentions it.  Also pretty flat globally and on the one day.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%201-m&geo=CN&q=blockchain

A major chinese official will probably say something bad about the blockchain or bitcoin within the next week.

it either says they don't perform due diligence or they're cool with getting in bed with criminals out of desperation. considering how they approach banking, my bet is on the second one.

more reputable exchanges like kraken ditched crypto capital years ago---obviously for good reason.

This is very scandalous.  And even if you buy Bitfinex's story, they were "conned".  What does that say about their leadership / team?
https://www.coindesk.com/polish-police-arrest-head-of-payment-processor-tied-to-bitfinex-crypto-exchange

It all depends what value you place on their methodology:


If the transaction volume rises or money velocity falls, the "fair value" increases. They also use these metrics in their calculation called "basket shift ratio" and "discounted supply" and I can't figure out what they mean. Like, why is Bitcoin's discounted supply 20.1 million BTC?

I'm skeptical. I also disagree with the fundamental idea that "fair value" is worth pursuing. Speculation is an integral part of price discovery. What I care about is price, not what is "fair" based on a bunch of weird guesses and opaque metrics.

What can we learn from this?  They've got some of the alt-coins like XRP and ETH as under-valued!
https://www.coinfairvalue.com/

Your argument is strong =)


Search trends: blockchain is holding up better than bitcoin.  So this is bullish. Though blockchain is far behind bitcoin in searches.  We need to see some use cases for the blockchain, otherwise that might die a slow death.
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=blockchain

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=bitcoin

As we crash through the 7700 floor and hit a new local low of 7300, currently 7500, I've still got bids from 3000 to 6000.

...

If you are in the US and think Clinton isn't running for president, you can make some relatively low-risk money on PredictIt.org where the odds of her running for the Democratic presidential nomination are 15%-20% (I'd estimate 0.1% to 1%).  Maximum bet is $850.  5% withdrawal fee, and 10% fee on any profit.  So maybe a 10% return.  Might take up to a year to get resolved, but hopefully would resolve at least by the 2020 DNC.

There are some weird spikes on PredictIt. For instance in the recent Canadian election market, the Green Party went to 20 cents (for prime minister) and the People's Party (which won zero seats and 1.5% of the vote) went up to 50 cents!   

There are more shenanigans going on with the US election markets, where Yang is very overpriced.

as far as "buy the rumor and sell the news" goes, i'm sure the effect was significant. bubbles are built on hype---futures hype was a major part of 2017. CBOE announced their plan to list bitcoin futures in early august 2017, shortly before BTC/USD went parabolic.

once the CME market went live in december, there was nothing left to hype. the path of least resistance was down. did it pop the bubble? maybe, but if it wasn't the launch of futures, it would have been something else. blow-off tops don't typically last very long.

i disagree with giancarlo's suggestion that shorters in these cash-settled derivatives pushed the market down though. it was more about bubble psychology.

This is a very interesting claim.  It probably was due to multiple causes.  The larger the bubble, the easier it is to pop it (or on second thought, maybe this isn't true as people who would short it get wrecked and you can run out of people who are feel they know enough to try to short?).  At least the larger the bubble the more likely it is to pop, as you have increased incentive to do so (and there are some rational people who take profit).

https://www.coindesk.com/trump-administration-popped-2017-bitcoin-bubble-ex-cftc-chair-says

SIM card swapping fraud is a problem.  Don't rely upon your phone number to secure anything.  Use Google Authenticator or other more secure 2FA methods.

https://www.coindesk.com/michael-terpin-urges-fcc-to-curb-crypto-fraud-that-cost-him-24-million

i'm not surprised. i can hardly stomach stocks and forex trading because they are so bloody boring, and bitcoin was the first asset i ever traded. i guess we have real live proof now that us crypto traders are after the roller coaster more than anything else!

It's Digital Gold for Gamblers!
https://www.coindesk.com/thrill-seeking-drives-investors-to-trade-crypto-study-finds

Ooh.  Trump appointees at work!

I lean towards this being my favorite indicator for bitcoin. And it's currently looking like we might bottom around $4300 (so perhaps 3100 - 5500).
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=bitcoin

There is a case for institutional money replacing some of the retail money (so then search trend is less important), but the institutional money probably isn't stupid enough to believe that bitcoin is always going to have another 10x-100x bull cycle.  I think the retail hardcore bitcoin enthusiasts are the base and the type of people to hold if we go down to $1000.

the bigger story is further down in the article. the SEC just settled with the creators of EOS, who raised $4.1 billion in an ICO. they got a slap on the wrist---only $24 million in fines and no requirement to register with the SEC.

it sure doesn't sound like anyone's going to jail for this stuff.

Now they need to start fining and jailing people.
https://www.coindesk.com/sec-halts-telegrams-1-7-billion-unlawful-token-issuance

Was the near 14k top really correlated with the collapse of the Chinese token crypto ponzi?  Richard Heart is a crazy guy, but sometimes insightful and a great alternative to groupthink.
https://offthechain.substack.com/p/2-billion-ponzi-scheme-uncovered

Vanatu (tiny island) arrests on June 27, China arrests on July 1.  Topped on June 25.
https://offthechain.substack.com/p/2-billion-ponzi-scheme-uncovered

Sounds like the power of a rumour vs news, there isnt enough to move the market from what its already speculating within the price and if they get exactly what they expected then likely we reverse from then on; a relief rally maybe.    I'd be surprised if they shut down the exchange for being fraudulent which is the correct magnitude of action for a shock, some minor rebuke is more like it.   I guess the market could be surprised so we'd get proper movement but another negative report wasnt enough.   Maybe we already fell because of that and now its rebounding.
  I was considering a short but honestly it doesnt seem likely to react in that way, friday tomorrow then weekend and I think its better to wait till Monday to speculate a negative.   I dont want to watch it especially till then and it seems like we can drift upwards even if its just to fall later and my observation is that the weekend is a perfect fit for that behaviour.

Oops I meant LIFO =)

I've always used specific lot identification. That's what my accountants have always recommended for crypto. FIFO seems like an absolute nightmare for tax optimization like long term gains rates.