A three year banking relationship cut off over night with no news, no press release, no explanation, and in the wake of sputtering bids on the major exchange for the West. Ummm, sure, nothing big going on there. Jesus.
So, to recap:
Things going well:
(1) Major retailer adoptions;
(2) Some goof buying a ton of coins for more than he needs to on Huobi;
(3) ETFs galore coming to town soon;
(4) Chinese leveraging about to get really f---ing ridiculous (which is good for at least an initial spike)
Things not going well:
(1) Bitstamp, and Coinbase by association, just got really flaky really quickly with at least (and probably only) a temporary gap in liquidity should a true crisis ensue resulting;
(2) NY and Russian FUD fest;
(3) BTC-e's insurance on shorts are run identical to the NYSE in 1987;
(4) Bitfinex... lololololololololololololol
Summary of Expectations:
(1) Probably a slow and steady upward tick; BUT
(2) The exchanges seem to be more vulnerable to an outside shock than they've been in past years.
So, you'll either make a very modest amount in the next couple of weeks (speeding up to a rocket launch by mid-September) OR you will lose everything. Ummm, back to the f---ing sidelines I go.
Yeah, times are getting interesting, yet the price hasn't quite decided yet. I've yet to see a substantial and bulletproof explanation why the credit bubble on Finex or BTC-e insurances may indeed pose are real risk to the rest of the BTC market, apart from those exchanges themselves.
Well, Bitfinex will just freeze the market and probably roll back at least some trades if things get out of hand. BTC-e will probably let it play out, though... I have a fleeting suspicion they might even have to because Plus500 is a third party. Also, their business model doesn't depend on swaps like Bitfinex so they don't care who gets burnt (whereas the longs on Bitfinex are essentially too big to (totally) fail). So, if that's the case, then BTC-e looks like the NYSE during 1987 per Michael Lewis's "Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity" chronicled on pages 26 through 28. I will be the first to admit that this is a very tenuous and borderline bull---- source to be citing. But, gotta live a little.
Note, I am also making a huge assumption on Plus500's hedging strategy. They could possibly be hedging outside of the market... the Plus500 longs are, after all, referenced to but I believe separate from the market.