This ain't ant pump, bitches! 

It is funny that most peeps think that eth team consists of skilled and high level programmers. In reality they are just a bunch of enthusiasts. So many hacks, forks, bugs, high fees, sidechains, testnets failures, etc. And Vitalik mocking the high fees of Bitcoin is the cherry of the cake. The only good thing is that the hash functions are relatively asic resistant, which allows mining Bitcoin with gpus. No wonder they hate the miners and since the creation of eth devs promise the switch to POS. Which someone noted here stands for proof of shit.

Perhaps the paper hands who sold twice in the last year at a loss are starting to feel again the urge to FOMO back in. "Third time is a charm" they say. As the train is leaving the station, the peeps waiting for <30K are scratching their heads. "What if this was the bottom and the thrain never returns to this station again?" - this thought is haunting their minds. (Biting nails and resisting the urge to buy higher than the sold price. Calculating the missed profits day after day. Until one day the FOMO urge is so strong that they succumb to the temptation and press the buy button. Usually this happens after several months of new ATHs. And the buy trade is made just a few hours before the next correction starts, which brings the FUD again and the next registered 30%+ sell loss is the final result.) This is the short story how some get poor by trading, because they are led by their love for fiat and lack of understanding for Bitcoin.  

And I thought 48K was boring. 

Thanks for the explanations! I found the answer for Binance:
https://www.binance.com/en/blog/margin/what-you-should-know-about-crypto-margin-trading-vs-futures-trading-421499824684902310
It seems that margin trades with leverage are like cash settled futures but they involve real bitcoins. Thus the margin trading can affect directly the spot price, even whithout delibarate manipulations. So, what happened in the last year is that many thought the bull run will continue and opened all kinds of leverage margin longs. Each time someone bought and the price rose 1-2% the highest leverage longs hurried to close the positions realizing some profit depending on the leverage. That would bring the price at the previous level, and in some cases lower. Which in turn would trigger a margin call and liquidations of the high leverage longs that weren't closed. And so on, the long squeeze happened many times with some days of ~$1bil long losses. At the peaks before the crashes longs were above $3bil. Now, the longs are at the lowest level at $1.5bil and the shorts are climbing up. Obviously many think that we are in a bear market and expect another crash. This may lead to the opposite - a short squeeze. For the Binance longs/shorts I follow the free https://blockchainwhispers.com/bitmex-position-calculator#, although it does not tell which part is margin and which is futures cash contracts.

There is something that bothers me for some time. If someone knows the answers, it would be nice to share them. It is about the derivate markets. It is clear that the cash settled futures contract divert money from acutal invesment in Bitcoin, thus creating an artificial paper liquidity. My quiestion is whether what is happening on the derivate exchanges can lead to a pump/dump of the spot exchanges? It is supposed that derivate exchanges follow the spot exchanges with their index price, not vice  versa, but is this the reality? I have the gut feeling that the spot exchange traders look at the derivate exchanges and if they see a dump there, they also sell. Which is illogical especially for the cash settled contracts. Because nobody can transfer a paper bitcoin and sell it on a spot exchange. But the daily traders have proved many times they have no clue about... anything, even basic math. Also, I wonder if Binance has a physical futures contracts like bakkt,  because a lot of derivate trade is going on there lately and it seems to has an impact on the spot price.

But what if Vegeta returns for 90K later this year? I can live with that 

We know what you are doing with your posts. This is a bitter sarcasm mocking all those weak hands who always sell/short and lose great potential profit because of their short-sightedness. It's just that after the 1000th post of that kind, it becomes boring, at least for me. Besides, there are plenty of autists/aspergers between the weak hands and they can't get the sarcasm. Reading these posts they might actually believe you said what you meant.

For the latter, the translation is this: Don't panic if the price falls from X to Y, because in a matter of days, maximum a year, it will return to X. But if you sell, you will be out of the train and miss the next 10x bull run. Chill out peeps, get a life and don't bother about it.

This looks like a double bottom to me, although technically it is several %'s lower than the last. So, just in case, I've bought the dip. And if we go lower, I will buy in the same manner, no matter how deep this bear market turns out to be. Everyone that had laser eyes on twitter now speaks of 20K, even 10K. What I see is that this massive 2 month coordinated dump achieved onlly 38K-39K bottom. It seems that it loses steam and soon there will be a rebound. Let's recall that in March 2019, we had a bottom 3.8K, and look where we are now - the mother of all crashes to 38K? Wow, that is sooo scary, I've almost panic sold ... my spare fiat.  

#Bitcoin investors have realised large losses during this sell-off, with net daily losses between $600M and $875M/day.
Whilst these are significant sums, they remain small relative to $1B+ losses realised during the May-June capitulation, and the deleveraging of 4-December.


https://twitter.com/glassnode/status/1484445927888859136

Glassnode stats. They also publish weekly analysis including this indicator. They track each address movement with the exact datestamp. So, since any purchase/sell is related to such a movement, they can tell if it is old or new coins.

https://insights.glassnode.com/the-week-onchain-week-03-2022/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=woc_03_2022

The term Short Term Hodlers (STH) combines the daily traders and new wanna-be hodlers who bought in the range 40K-60K. These were coins from Long Term Holders (LTH) who always sell on the way up, and not so much on the way down. Humans are predictable, so when a new investor sees his profit erased in the blink of an eye, he just can't help and sell on the break even in the best case. Glassnode stats clearly show that the movement of old coins itensified during the 2 bull runs in 2021 and went to 0% during the 2 dumps. All these bear wet dreams of cheap coins will soon die in ashes, because without the aid of old coins dumped on the market the crashes will be insignificant like the current one.

This is quite different from the bear market in 2018, when the old coins flooded the market during the run to 20K and the recovery to 12K. Now, if we assume that the current situation is a big bear manipulation, then these must be new players, completely ignorant regarding Bitcoin specifics. They can't bring the price down simply by selling each time there is a small pump, like with stonks. They need a help from the old coins, which could be lured only above 60K. But then they might be surprised again by the lack of such event, since the hodlers are waiting for 100K and fewer will sell at 60K than in 2021. So it is a win-win for the bulls even mid-term, not to mention long term.

It is amazing that the only coins that moved in this 2 month bear market are bought in the last 6 months, a.k.a. short term hodlers. Hence these guys alone are selling. Poor weak hands, they must be screaming like little girls while selling. I just wonder whether there is a single long term hodler to sell in panic now that we are 30K below the ATH 2 months ago? Probably none. And another thing. Is there a single daily trader, who can boast that he is in profit in the last year? Probably none. At least the stats show only liquidations and endless series of stop losses. It sucks to be a trader. 

Yes, I made a mistake, because I saw the possibility to buy mining equipment that would bring me 3x more coins in the next 2 years than with my current equipment. I owe >80% of my stash to the mining anyway, so such risks are part of my job.  I started buying the gpu's and literally on the next day all shipments from UK stopped. The price of the gpus increased 3x while I was searching for other options. Meanwhile I changed my mind about a villa that I liked and so I decided to rebuy back at least the last sold coins when the price fell to 30K. So I improved my ratio from 60% to 38% sold bitcoins. Hopefully with my current old equipment I will recover another 10% this year. I had to spend about other important stuff. Later that year 2021, I nearly lost my father and got myself very ill because of the stress. All this cost more money and nerves. I can't get proper medical treatment here, so I consider moving to another country. And if things continue to be so bad for me, well, I will expand my donations to various children related charities. But let's think positive and hope for something good to happen. Bitcoin is hope after all.

I agree completely. However, I continue mining and DCA-ing, so the sold % would be reduced even more by the end of the year. And if I have a chance of rebuying back at acceptable for me levels, I'll use it. Having said that, I hope the bull run returns as soon as possible. It is so tiresome to watch this ugly chart in the last 2 months.

I started as a small octopus in 2017, grew to medium by 2020, and shrank again to small in 2021.

Yep, the price movement is boring AF in the last 2 months. To stay 30K below the ATH is quite annoying. This is something the new generation of hodlers is hard to get used to. Most, if not all new commers who bought in the 40-69K range have sold on a loss, according to the on-chain analysis by glassnode. Before glassnode was a thing, we only wondered if the hodlers sell that low or there actually exist individuals that sold on a loss. Now it is almost "proven" that many sell on a loss, although it is not competely certain that the movement of bitcoins always means a trade. It is however the only indicator that gives good enough approximation. For the n00bs 2 months of bear market is the end of Bitcoin. They lack the experience and hardened character to hodl through this period. It seems that the first lesson in 2021 from 65K to 30K wasn't learned and the same mistake was made later from 69K to 40K. So, with all short term "hodlers" being completely eliminated and all actual hodlers refusing to sell, this bear run should terminate soon.

On a personal level, I must admit that I didn't do well in the last year. As a relatively new hodler with average buying price 2.5K per coin (thanks to the gpu mining mostly), I was tempted to sell 60% of my stash for average price of 28K for a beach villa, job retirement and mining equipment. However the covid restrictions and other RL accidents prevented me from realising any of these goals. I could not afford to risk and sell more at 60K, so I've missed both tops, unfortunately. So, I've decided to rebuy back the last sold coins on the same price, making the sold part 39% of my stash. The remaining fiat is equivalent to my salary until I retire after 15+ years, so I could spend some of it if the price falls to my average sold level to rebuy more coins back. All this is hard to plan and fulfil, because of emotions, RL issues, etc... Hopefully, I'll manage to handle it well and not sell too much, not to mention sell most of it. God forbid! I don't want to give the false impression that I have tons of coins. Let's say just that I have no theoretical chance of becoming a fish if I DCA until I retire. This makes me very sad, but I'm comforting myself that I have enough to cover my basic needs.  It's just that in my country the expenses and real estate is much cheaper than the rest of the world, at least for now. Another indicator is that my virtual net worth puts me in the list of 900 richest peeps in my country, according to bank deposit stats. Not bad, considering that before Bitcoin, I had no plans of investments and relied only on my salary. The problem is that the medical care is completely missing, which makes me think of moving to another country. Any suggestions - with a good infrastructure, warm climate, food delivery, internet, etc.? Spain, Greece, France, Antigua...?

Based on Phil_S's notorious chart, I've made three basic scenarios for the next 4 years. (I'm not a PS or chart expert, so if anyone can make better charts, feel free to do it.)

I tried to make a functional prediction based on previous data. The big question is will we face a deviation below the low orange line in the next 4 years. IMO, this may happen for 2 reasons: severe shorting manipulation and adoption levels worldwide above 75%. I highly doubt that the manipulations can hold the price that long and that the 75% saturation point could be reached without breaking 100K.  

So, here are the variants. The blue one is mildly bullish and I find it highly probable to happen. The green is very bullish, but a bit less probable than the blue one. And finally, the pink scenario I find extremely unlikely to happen. It just shows that even in a series of black swan events, Bitcoin will touch 100K until the end of 2025. There might be various modifications of any of the plans, including the pink one: If 100K is delayed so much, only another black swan event can prevent a top above 200K in 2025.

Something old, but still funny. A video lesson for daily trading. The kid seems to know what is doing and it all started well, but then... full proudhon/r0ach mode 

The boy vs shovel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvMd88TiOCc

IMO it doesn't matter, unless this delevops into a deeper and longer bear market. In that case, DCA investors like me will profit more. We all know 100K is a matter of when, not if, so it is better to DCA 2-3 times cheaper. I remember how bad I felt in 2018 seeing the decline from 20K to 3K. But I used the opportunity to buy as much as possible. I really doubt that this scenario will repeat this year, because of too many reasons which make the difference. One of them is that in 2018 we had several 50-100% price jumps from the local bottom. This is likely to happen this year, which means we will have "a dead cat bounce" to 80K-ish, which is a new ATH. And that will effectively mean that we are still in a bull market. This is of course, if the bottom is in the 30K-40K range, which seems to be the case, seeing how hard it is for the bears to break 40K.