Depending on the future Tether could turn out to be the biggest shitcoin ever based on my own definition.  (And I am not an anti-tether conspiracy theorist)

Tether may be the most centralized "crypto asset" that has ever been made.  I suppose the vomitous ripple gives it a run for it's ephemeral money.  But it might even have that beat.

It is "backed" by accounts on some island bank. ---  Boom.  Are there any more things that we need to say?

Yes, it price is *usually* pegged to the $, but that does not mean it's not traded like a shitcoin.  It is a blurry xerox of the ULTIMATE shitcoin.  It is a synthetic, dubiously backed USD which is what Bitcoin trades AGAINST.  That is why it's illusion of stability even exists.

Anyway... I think all that is worth saying... so I said it.

Tether is (in most part, at this point) ETH based.

I just think alts have too big of a connection to/impact on BITCOIN price to ignore.

If you consider my positions to be too close to positive then just mute me.

I really think every alt (but one) to be ultimately trash.  (And even the one might end up in that camp depending on developments.)

As i said... I think the development of alt prices/moves etc are a very interesting bellwether for BTC and too big to ignore.  I will talk about them.  And I am not going to take the time to write giant negative disclaimers.

There are probably dozens of people in here who think ETH is a good investment.  I think ultimately that is a mistake.  But that has no bearing on the fact that BTC (the whale) has ETC (the barnacle) coming along for the ride.

If for no other reason that Tether we are currently joined at the hip for better or worse... In the end BTC is king daddy.  I am not gonna go to the trouble to make multiple disclaimers the rest of the time... that is due diligence that belongs to the reader.

I think there is a greater than usual chance for this rally to still have legs.  Both because of how the entire sector is acting, AND how the BTC chart looks.  This stands to be more than just a little bullrun it LOOKS like a breakout.

That said i have no effing idea... and it certainly COULD be a bulltrap.  If so I'd expect us to drop hard.

One scenario for this is if we see NASDAQ, S&P etc confirm a dead cat, which they are primed to do.  If THAT happens then we either fall with them, or we confirm a decoupling.  unfortunately history favors the former.

But with the Fed using up all the zeros we might just see the markets keep brrrring up.

That is a win/win scenario for bitcoin I think.

Here is another way to say something I have been trying to say...

When you look at goofy coins like DOGE and XRP and see that they have multiple steps up preceding this move by BTC, it makes me think that the chances of the below turning into a "Bart" are lower than usual.



If i start saying "Alts are the lungs of Bitcoin" I give you all permissions to light me on fire.

I guess my basic thought there is Honey Badger does not care.  He can go into the house of bees and won't even notice if he's stung.

Some people actually believe some alts have value.  A small percentage of those actually have a good argument.  Most of the others are "blockchain: the tech behind bitcoin" DeFi type lemmings *cough* Laura Shin *cough*.

And SOME people will simply take advantage of an alt boom to harvest more BTC from fools.

it is what it is.. I do not make much value judgments here.  I do not know the future, but have placed my bets according to my own thoughts and values.

I find it weird/interesting that the current alt-boom that it seems to be the shittiest of shit-coins that are really headed north.  It looks to me currently that the more "blue-chip" sort of alts (I know some of you are bleeding from the eyes now) are not enjoying the gains that more ridiculous alts are.

I am not anti alt boom, nor do I think dominance is a very meaningful metric.  I also think some alts are going to rise with Bitcoin in this cycles bull market similar to last time.

I also think in the end bitcoin devours just about all but possibly a few of the alt-coins, and maybe even those...

But I do not think we are done with people speculating on the other blockchains.  Especially since we will have people who are 100% brand new starting to flood in.

All the "Bitcoin already is too expensive", "Bitcoin doesn't have these features", "Bitcoin is old tech", "This is the new bitcoin" arguments are going to work on the new crop of people just that they did on the previous generations, including many of us.

I don't want to get shunned out of this thread, but "alt-season" really is not a bad thing for Bitcoin.  Neither will be the eventual "altpocalypse".

With volume so far, too.

If this is not a bull trap, I think it's fairly significant.

Tee hee.

I used to just hold through the big dips...

Yeah, and BSV is so thinly traded that it does not take much at all to move the market that much.  It only took 700-800k of market buys to do that 20% move.  Dirty secret is it will take much less to drop it that much again...

There is NO DOUBT this situation is extremely nuanced, and in my whole life I have never seen the world in such a state of hyper-politicization.  This is the BEST time to be a critical thinker who uses logic, and not emotion to come to conclusions.

It is certain that a major factor in the # of cases in the USA is we are TESTING (publicly) that much more than many other places.

Mortality also reflects this high testing rate, as the percentage of cases is going way down.

I agree hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic as well as an early treatment has been mostly ignored for political reasons.  This is insane.

The media of the US and the world has lost all credibility as they have become transparent in their divisive politicization of all things.

The government has ALSO lost a great deal of credibility for many reasons, a great example is the no-mask/mask about face.

Armchair quarterbacking has become a very busy sport.

All that said.  It is important to also face the FACT that Covid, in a small percentage of people, but in LARGE NUMBERS because of the high communicability absolutely RAVAGES the human body, and can do permanent damage to nearly all the vital organs.  Patients can be witnessed expending ALL their physical strength just struggling to breathe.  People who are otherwise healthy are taken out frequently.

I do not CARE if any government says to wear a mask, or not wear one.  I wear it myself, by my own volition.  I also am limiting my exposure to public areas.  i do not care if people think I am a sheep, or think I live in fear etc.  I just want to keep myself, and my family healthy, and the rest of the world for that matter.  It is a small price for me to pay to wear a mask when I go in public if it can even just POSSIBLY help dampen the spread of this and possibly even save lives.

People need to THINK.  And stop politicizing this as much as possible, in my humble opinion.

I know that.  BELIEVE ME, I know that!

Why are you trying to say I don't?  WHY?

I have another theory.

Think about it.  If TPTB were worried about what she was going to say she would already have been eliminated.  Poof.  Gone.  Locked in some hole, or chopped into 20000 tiny pieces and buried next to Bin Laden and and his dead pig.

So she is going to sing like a bird.

A beautiful song written by the ones that have been paying her all along.

Oh, there will be just enough juicy stuff in it to convince people that some sort of justice has been done.  Somebody... maybe Prince Andrew, is gonna take a pretty hard damn fall.  And there will be just enough other juicy tidbits in it to keep the abominable media twirling around for a while.

But i guarantee you, it will be an appetizer in place of the 4 hour 10 course dinner that really exists.

In my opinion multi-path payments are going to make channel balancing fairly unnecessary.  Combined with circular payments, and lifted channel size limits, the network is going to be much more robust, and self balancing channels, if even still necessary will become something that can be automated.

I had one of the first 200 nodes up.  I feel your pain.  I eventually closed that node just because it drove me crazy trying to keep it running well...

I got back in though... because I can't help myself.  Plus I love raspberri pis.  Here is the first page of channels on my little raspiblitz node:



As you can see channel balancing is not so difficult anymore. (It still kinda sucks... but I can play around for 10 minutes once a month and get myself looking like this mostly...)

I can even use the RTL web interface to attempt to balance channels...  I did not obscure the Bitfinex channel because I suppose having that open wont give much away about my node. :0  Those things use a LOT of liquidity too...  I have actually made a couple hundred sats (woo hoo!) routing deposits and withdrawals to finex...

This surprises me SO MUCH.

I have come to just accept that there is some giant cabal working to destroy western society at it's foundations.  And the vast majority of media outlets are in on the whole thing.

Maybe I am just paranoid?

Silly hopium?

Lol.  I wrote a JJG level ginourmo-post.  You said the same thing in under 40 words.

It is both good and bad.  But the thing is - it is no surprise.  Monero holds that crown.  And it is beginning to look like it will for the foreseeable future.  It is going to be used as private digital money more and more and more and more.

And nothing governments can do will stop it.  In fact if they come at it it will just just promote it.

I think the only risk is if it ends up being ONLY used for crime/ideologies that most of the world rejects/etc.  But how would that be?  Why wouldn;t EVERYONE want that privacy?

This is the question we have to ask ourselves, and if I am holding a significant amount of value in XMR I think I have to be willing to answer those questions.

That is the whole of the speculation at this point, in my humble opinion.

I can't say if he's right or wrong.

But I can say, without a glimmer of doubt that he's eaten plenty of acid.

I believe this situation is exactly why "replace-by-fee" was introduced.  Not sure what wallets support it aside from Electrum, I think.  Probably others.  And yeah... don't pay damned VIABTC anything.  An enemy of bitcoin.