i'm actually curious how kraken does it since they offer margin trading, to USA traders no less.

the CFTC fined bitfinex in 2016 for failure to deliver BTC from financed/margin transactions to the actual owners:


this is what led them to create a bitgo setup where each user account was "segregated" and held the exact amount of bitcoins owned by the account holder. so in mid 2016, if you knew an account holder's exchange/margin/lending deposit addresses, you could see exactly how much was in their account.

unfortunately, in addition to these privacy issues, the bitgo setup had serious security lapses. the entire BTC storage was basically a hot wallet, and bitfinex ended up getting hacked for 120k BTC shortly after.......

it's like robinhood---you can't actually deposit/withdraw cryptocurrency. you can only get "exposure" to the market:


https://www.sofi.com/invest/buy-cryptocurrency/


they have a huge presence in the student/personal loan space. i actually almost applied for a grad school loan with them several years ago but found better rates elsewhere. it's interesting to see the direction they've moved in.....

as a matter of fact, we used to call 1broker "1bucket" for that reason.


part of the attraction is that you can use it as a hedge, and also take your profits in BTC. i knew people who would buy and hold blue chip stocks on 1broker at 1:1---no carry cost and no risk of liquidation. not only did they cash out their profits in BTC but they collected dividends in BTC as well.

i really miss the wild west days!

after the death of 1broker in 2017, the best option for crypto-backed CFD trading became SimpleFX. they have an ANN thread here on the forum and have been operating for 4+ years: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1059253.0

they offer a bunch of stock indices like the DAX and ASX, and also a few dozen equities. if you're looking for a very specific stock---especially something low-cap or OTC---you are unlikely to find it on CFD brokers like this. they usually only offer access to the largest and most liquid markets, like high-cap stocks and indices.

different strokes for different folks, i guess. i've never looked at the 200dema direction as an indicator like that, or backtested it on other markets. i would say we need several more years data to say how informative that is for bitcoin.


you omitted the conditional. i said it's in the bag if the june 2019 highs are broken. if that happens, a massive number of sellers and shorters will be trapped and will drive a run to the ATH. compared to the rally this year, it would be a very modest target.

they would probably lose it all in short order. if they use high leverage, they could lose it all in a day.

the prevailing wisdom is that 90-95%+ of all traders lose money. most people make a few losing trades and then quit forever. this would be no different---except this trader would have zero knowledge of TA or FA, thus they would be even worse off than average.

all that says is that bitcoin is pseudonymous, which fillippone just stated. we already know that. all of bitcoin's privacy pitfalls require a link to real-life identity to be meaningful.

how about the case where one address gets dusted, then linked to a second address (or cluster of addresses) which is already linked to your identity?

i think we're all pretty curious what's really happening on the ground in china. re the ongoing government crackdown, for one thing. for weeks, stories have been emerging about crypto platforms being shut down, operators being arrested, exchanges cutting off chinese residents from service. meanwhile, the president is hyping up "blockchain, not bitcoin" and the PBOC is planning to launch a [surveillance-friendly] stablecoin.

the government is obviously on some kind of rampage. they are consolidating the domestic crypto market. it looks like things are changing very quickly. meanwhile, plebs like us can only glean what we can from people like @DoveyWan.

isn't that always the case? miners are just bitcoin investors/holders. you're basically just saying that you expect whales to dump.

the negative sentiment around here is tangible!


we actually don't know the extent to which this is true. we know that bitmain stockpiles their mining rewards for very long periods of time. poorly capitalized and/or leveraged mining operations need to sell to cover overheads, but the industry is becoming increasingly well-capitalized and industrial. so i don't know how useful these assumptions are.


i prefer free markets to collusion among exchanges.

with bakkt, absolutely. because of hidden leverage practices on wall street, bakkt is likely to inject far more paper supply into the market than actually exists in their vault---just like the comex gold market. while bakkt has low volume and paltry reserves, this isn't a major concern for spot pricing. however, that could change over time.

the CME market has no direct relationship with BTC so it can't dictate spot prices. it's basically just a CFD market that follows the spot market.

exactly. the same thing occurred this year. we had a golden cross (daily 50/200 cross) in april 2019. the comparison to 2015 suggests that the current death cross may be a false one.


there has been immense accumulation or distribution occurring over the 6 months since the $14k top. so if the june high is broken, retesting the ATH is in the bag IMO.

i have a friend who put it like this: "crypto has always been like this: 50% washing machine, 50% batshit retarded uptrends."

we're currently in the "washing machine" phase. up and down, up and down, squeezing shorts then squeezing longs, rinse/repeat. yes we're technically in a downtrend but the market isn't dropping with any determination either. the momentum compared to the april-june rally is nearly non-existent, which is why i'm confident we're not in a bear market like 2014 or 2018.

if i had to throw out a price range through the end of the year, it would be $6k-$9500. this entire downtrend from $14k, the market has repeatedly retraced hard into previous ranges. this is in stark contrast to the april-june rally which exhibited a much stronger trend. accordingly, i'm expecting a significant upwards move into january, perhaps to test the 200dma ~ $9400.

this is a decent approximation of where i'm looking at: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5140701.msg53228470#msg53228470


in my experience, PSAR isn't a great performer. it gives lots and lots of false/premature signals.

given bitfinex's size and the fact that exchanges dominate on-chain usage, i have to think it'll have a noticeable effect.

this seems like a pretty good incentive for customers to use it too:

in other words: "question #1, will bitcoin make me rich?"

there's a wide spectrum of opinions. nouriel roubini (famous NYU economist) says it's headed to $0: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/06/bitcoin-price-will-crash-to-zero-nouriel-roubini-says.html

some bitcoiners around here think each BTC will be worth millions someday. others believe the early fast growth area is waning and the gains will be much smaller in the future. meanwhile, the elliott wave believers are planning on a prolonged bearish cycle back to $1000 or below even if we go to the $30ks first: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5128394.msg53171045#msg53171045

there's something for everyone!

in my observation, natural born speculators have an intuitive sense about market psychology and sentiment. they are generally contrarians---they must be, since the crowd is usually wrong. i definitely improved as a trader when i learned to play against my own fearful/greedy tendencies, and against the prevailing market sentiment. (ie "buy when there is blood in the streets)

in that sense, you could certainly use other peoples' speculations to your advantage, by observing sentiment and playing the contrarian when bullish/bearish sentiment becomes extreme.

in terms of scaling, it's not particularly elegant. i'm actually a big fan of a lot of ethereum's functionality but it's total bloatware. if sharding were viable from a decentralization standpoint and implemented from the get-go in 2015, i might have a different view, but the difficulty in running an ethereum node (even today) seems like an extremely big problem.

i'd agree with you if this were a function of competition. it's not though. they are explicitly closing because of the recent government crackdown. it's a classic example of government overreach creating an uncompetitive market where small businesses can't thrive.

large and well-capitalized entities like binance benefit from this lack of competition. they are the only beneficiaries from the crackdown. it's no wonder binance has been bending over backwards to attract chinese traders: https://cointelegraph.com/news/binance-starts-accepting-fiat-currencies-through-alipay-and-wechat

i'm not convinced bakkt is what drove the rallies earlier this year. i think it had more to do with market psychology. hype is only fruitful in the context of a bull market where investors are hungry for risk. bakkt was also hyped all through 2018 but we crashed nearly to $3k instead.

our brains have a tendency to demand an explanation for events like big market moves. the truth is that we have no idea why buyers accumulated or why holders refused to sell on the way to $14k. all we know for sure is that when buyers outnumber sellers, the price rises. anything else is just speculation.

i'm seeing all manner of bear targets now, from the $2ks to the $6ks. everyone has turned bearish! it's a welcome sight actually, since the crowd is usually wrong.

i've still got some dry powder on the sidelines in case of further dipping but tbh i'm skeptical of lower lows. we're only like 5 months out from the halving and we're already deep in a correction. it's a dangerous time to keep betting on more red. my sense is that bears are getting greedy now.