Topic: nrd525 Market Tracker - page 27. (Read 83024 times)

This is pretty neat.  And notably they have BTC prices going back to 2010!   Best if you switch to log view.
https://finance.yahoo.com/cryptocurrencies

98 out of the top 100 alt-coins are up in the past 24 hours. Probably by an average of 15+%.

https://www.livecoinwatch.com

CME is doing negligible volume.
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-index/bitcoin.html

BFX USD swap rate at 0.5/day% for the past 60 hours.  There is a 45 million dollar wall/offer at 0.32%/day.  For the past month or two, the rate has been closer to 0.07%/day.
 Total swaps $940 million.

That's pretty crazy.  I wonder if the swap lending whale has run out of funds?

I'm working on setting up a LLC.  So I'm missing out on these rates.  Just my luck would be for the BTC price to go bear market and the rates to collapse by the time I get it setup and approved by BFX.

According to Reddit, Bitfinex sent out a warning letter to people with unverified accounts to discourage US residents who aren't meant to use the service.  They didn't threaten to confiscate your funds. They did threaten to inform the authorities about your account.  VPNs are also banned for all users (which is kind of stupid from a privacy angle).  It remains to be seen if their goal is to do their due diligence to discourage US residents, or if they are going to crack down.

So far there are only 4 brokers listed on CBoE as supporting the contract. So far I cannot find much information on who will be supporting CME but my main broker put out this on Friday:


As I said earlier when they do introduce trading they are likely to be conservative with the margin requirements until they have enough data to calculate risk parameters.
Futures margin requirements work in a different way in that the exchange sets a margin requirement that only applies to overnight trades.
Futures trade in daily sessions and for the CME Bitcoin contract the hours are:
The FCM is only required to put up margin when the market closes @5pm ET so they are free to set whatever they want for their customers to day trade. The brokers that have introduced the contracts so far are ones that typically have high day trade margins compared to the others. The CME has set the maintenance requirement at $38,485 which is approximately 40% of the contract value for 5 BTC. This is extremely high compared to for example the Emini S&P 500 currently at 3.36% and I would expect it to come down in the near future. As for the more serious brokers, we will have to wait to see what the day trade margins will be as they all seem to be taking the wait and see approach at the moment but their normal day trade margins can typically be around 10% of the maintenance margin.

19k on GDAX and 18.8k on a new ATH at BFX .

I'm thinking there might be a similar mentality that affects people holding bitcoin, re-investing in ponzis, and investing in BFX swaps - not to mention other investments.   Namely you think you have found a far above average return, that you understand the risk, and that you feel the lack of diversification is worth it for the extra return.

This could explain how some ponzis survive so long - a very loyal following with a high re-investment rate.  On my part, at various points I've had a large percent of my liquid assets in BFX swaps and Bitcoin.  This is probably not a great strategy, unless you have the capacity to earn a lot of income or have other wealth (I have half a house, but still I'm pushing the risk level compared to most people).

So while Bitcoin isn't a ponzi - we might have a dangerous ponzi mentality in how we are investing in it.

Similarly, politically we often have extreme views - notably a lot of libertarians (on the right) and personally I'm in favor of a long term movement towards anarcho-communism (aka libertarian socialism).  This is probably more true of the original Bitcoiners as both some segements of the left and right share a distrust in the government, large corporations, and banks.

I was also thinking that it probably isn't shorting that will burst the bitcoin bull market, but people selling their holdings.  Probably mostly long term holders (aka holder extremists) who haven't been following a reasonable rule like cashing out 1/2 your bitcoin each time it doubles, but who decide that we've got parabolic - that it looks like 2013 - and that it is worth starting to follow a similar rule or a more holder one (eg selling 2.5% each time it goes up 10%).

I think about this as I'm wondering whether to sell 2 BTC for around 20k before the CME launches on Sunday at 4pm EST which I fear could reckon in the bear market.  It would be the smart thing to do.  But I'm considering holding on into January to save myself 6k-7k on taxes. And if it easier to go long into a bubble as everyone says (and the margin requirements are making it easier to do so as well - though is that just for a couple brokers?  Do we really have a good idea of what the average margin requirements will be as they are set differently by broker?), the wall street money might just cause us to go up.

Interesting aspect that I didn´t think of before.

Regarding the impact of the end of the tax year, I think wealth tax in European countries
is a non-issue. E.g. in Norway, one of the countries with the highest tax rates, the wealth
taxes doesn´t even amount to 1 %. A Norwegian citizen has to pay 0.7 % to their local municipality
and 0.15 % to the state after a crossing certain threshold of wealth (http://www.skatteetaten.no/en/Rates/Wealth-tax/).

Capital gains tax is the more important influencing factor in my opinion.

As we near the end of the year, what is the impact of tax policy on the price?

In countries where capital gains tax is only paid upon realized capital gains (like the US), traders who are cashing out are more likely to try to sell part of their bitcoin in January so as to split the gains between two tax years and reduce their rate.  Though in practice, the large traders are already at the maximum rate so the impact might be negligible.  As a minor trader, I'm strongly considering this.

In countries where there is a wealth tax, traders are going to cash out part of their holdings to pay that tax.  Some European countries have wealth taxes (though others have recently abolished them).  When are they due? 

Who benefits from uncertainity about Tether?

-Bitfinex exchange competitors. There are a lot of them and they are making large profits.

-Market manipulators. Can use a Tether scare to crash the price (though this hasn't been that effective).

-Bitfinex swap lenders.  While they don't stand to make as much money as the exchange competitors, they are probably the first to gain from Tether uncertainity by it fueling the high swap rates (currently 0.07%/day or more).  With $700+ million in swaps, lenders are making $140+ million/year.  Now they are unlikely to sustain these high swap rates when the market cools down (or goes bearish).  I haven't heard anyone talk about this group of interested parties.

-Bitfinex enemies.   A lot of people think that "Bitfinexed" has a vendetta against BFX, and/or lost a lot of potential profit by selling out of BTC in early 2017.

-The media. They love a good news story.  Though they haven't been giving it too much play and really the story is too complex for it to make it big.



Who loses from uncertainity about Tether?

-Bitfinex traders.  For instance, on WhalePool traders think the rumors are FUD that is designed to hurt Bitfinex.  They don't lend swap (with the occasional exception).  The traders lose liquidity.  Actually I'm not sure how much they really lose if there are unproven charges. They lose big if the exchange runs off with the money.

-Bitfinex itself.

-Bitcoin holders. In theory, the Tether rumors should be putting a damper on the bull market.  This could actually be a good thing.  Or it could be one of the factors that sets off a 1-2 year bear market or a flash crash.

Poll: What is your estimate for the btc price range, 90% confidence interval, on Jan 1, 2019?  

(Also if anyone wants to use options or some betting sites to calculate their estimated range - that would be awesome).

More alt-coin pumps today.  Ripple 75%, Bitcoin Cash 17%, NEM 17%, Cardano (never even bothered to research this) 48%.    LTC and IOTA small pull backs -11%.

Bitcoin dominance down to 54% (previously it was 62%+)

The litecoin dump that recently happened was a little surprising. With all the scrypt miners that recently came out (as well as kncs litecoin miner coming in a few months) I thought scrypts might get more support (and higher price)

Ok, now your post makes more sense.

Basically my argument boils down to the trading volume rankings. If all available exchanges were operating perfectly innocuous the trading volume ranking would
be lead by GDax/Coinbase (by far the biggest user base, caters to the biggest markets in the world except China) and Bitstamp (one of the oldest operators with a nearly flawless track record (nearly, because they
also suffered a hack back in the day)).

The fact that Bitfinex and Bithumb are at the top can´t be easily explained. Keep in mind that one of them even lost banking for 7 months and just recently
added a few payment gateways and the other one caters mainly (or even exclusively) to the Korean market.

Sorry, I didn't make that clear what I meant. I wasn't accusing you of having a motive but your argument for Bitfinex wash trading is purely outlining what their motives for doing so could be. This is very common in conspiracy theories, make a case as to why someone would benefit from a fraud and imply that must mean they are doing it.

I also don´t want to derail nrd525´s thread  

However, please tell me what exactly my motive is? I have been using Bitfinex (mainly for lending USD) for nearly 3 years and only
recently stopped doing so, because of the developments surrounding Tether and BFX. Therefore I don´t really know why exactly I have a motive for posting bad things about Bitfinex.
I´m not like @Bitfinexed, who obviously has a personal vendetta against BFX. In fact I would be happy if all my claims were proven to be false,
because of the fatal impact on the whole Bitcoin ecosystem if Bitfinex is going to fail / be shut down by US law enforcement.

Take a look at the biggest Bitcoin exchanges by volume.
The top 2 exchanges are Bitfinex and Bithumb (this has been the situation for quite a while).

One of these got hacked in a very dubious way and has a history of not delivering on
audits. Instead of entering a slow decline - the development that should occur after suffering a serious hack
and never delivering the promised analysis of the hack - it continues to be the biggest exchange by
volume. The owners have a history of fraudulent behavior and are also behind Tether. Active margin funding
continues to hit unprecedented levels after every Tether issuance.

The other one is giving out / allowing people to buy zero-fee vouchers, which enables rampant wash trading.
This is not only used for BTC, but also allows them to easily create pumps for BCH or even shitcoins like XRP.

Bitfinex and Bithumb would be nowhere near the top of the trading volume rankings if they wouldn´t engage in
this kind of behavior.

Don´t you think it is odd that the CBOE future as well as the CME future are based on exchanges like Gemini, Bitstamp
or Itbit? This is really odd and I have no idea why they don´t use Bitfinex and Bithumb, because these are the two
top exchanges by volume. Oh, wait, I have an idea...

We can continue this discussion in the other BFX-related threads instead of continuing to derail nrd525´s Market Tracker.

As with nearly all conspiracy theories, all you have is a motive and no evidence. This is just another case of repeating unsubstantiated claims. If enough people keep repeating them then some people start to believe them.

I'm not going to get into an argument and derail nrd525's thread but that needed to be said.

I think Bitfinex are themselves the entity responsible for the wash trading alongside with people affiliated with the management.
Therefore I don´t think they pay any fees at all and can wash trade with impunity.
Otherwise you would obviously be right that trading fees discourage wash trading.

The owners have a huge incentive to boost trading volume artificially, not only due to the fact that
wash trading can be used to manipulate the price of any cryptocurrency, but also because it increases
the attractivity of the exchange for genuine outside investors.
Many people, who are looking for an exchange to trade are obviously going with the exchange with the
biggest liquidity and the biggest trading volume.

1. Artificially increase trading volume
2. Genuine money flows into your exchange, because your exchange is the leading Bitcoin exchange by volume
3. Profit
4. Use wash trading strategically to manipulate cryptocurrencies in your favor to increase profits even further
...

You think people on Bitfinex are paying the trade fee to do wash trading?  It's adding up to a lot of revenue for Bitfinex.

US taxes.  I don't think Coindesk is necessarily a good reference.  I'm skeptical of the "like kind" exchange theory. It will only stand up if you are willing to defend it in court and risk getting audited (and then penalized) if you fail.  It's surprising we haven't seen an IRS ruling on it.
https://www.coindesk.com/uncle-sams-surprise-tax-reform-impact-crypto-investors/

I like seeing the proposal that everyone should use FIFO as that is what I plan to use. I guess it will be annoying if I buy back in - but right now FIFO is pretty good for long term holders.

I would be extremely surprised if we would see 100x volume at the Bitcoin futures of the CME.
Unfortunately, I think it will be another disappointment and it will not live up to the huge
expectations.

So far every launch of Bitcoin derivatives has seen rather low volumes (LedgerX, CBOE) and I expect this one
to not be different. Besides, I think the comparisons to the volume of the Bitcoin exchanges are flawed as
the Bitcoin exchanges with the biggest trading volume are known to allow/be involved in wash trading
(Bitfinex, Bithumb). Therefore I would be cautious with drawing comparisons between trading volume
of regulated Bitcoin futures and unregulated exchanges.

It's very difficult to predict. I don't think initially it will be a big bang, it will probably start off quite light and build up over time. Looking around I cannot see many brokers announcements which makes me think they are taking a cautious approach and want to see how it trades for a while to make proper risk assessments. After all, if they set the day trade margin too low then it is the FCM that is on the hook to pay the exchange if the trader's account is negative.

Having said that I'm sure it will be higher than CBoE volumes. When you look at it bear in mind that the contract is 5x larger. That is a CBoE contract is for 1 BTC and a CME contract will be for 5 BTC so even if it trades at roughly the same volume of ~5,000 contracts a day that is actually 25,000 BTC.