Our beloved crazy bull Americanpgasus (katiecharms) has made a dire prediction.  I hope (s)he is wrong, of course.  But there is no doubt we are at a very interesting threshold in the market overall...

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/uv6f5v/crypto_has_never_existed_through_a_global/

I personally think if the world macro environment is indeed imploding, that although "crypto" stands to lose violently, I would not be surprised if Bitcoin does better than the average of assets at worst going down less than most other things.  And I think Monero could be a stand out in the rubble as well... but possibly to a lesser extent than BTC.

Fact is value will flee to places.  Gold, land, and to some extent Bitcoin.  Andaltcoin value ought to go away like a fire, I am afraid.

On the other hand Bitcoin (and therefor Monero) might see a rise because of the above...  hard to say.

I really really really really really hope the courts smash Wright into a little burnt out cinder.  He had his sugarpapa will call it the victory of the decade, but whatever.

I was just coming to say...  I have been showing charts of XMR/USD which includes Bitcoin's movements.  But I am expecting we see some of the return to an XMR/BTC price from the past.  We have a LONG way to go to ATHs in that regard, and I can see scenarios where XMR does quite well in USD terms, but never gets back to .033 was it?  But I can see scenarios where it does as well.  The latter seems extremely bullish, and a bit unlikely to me, though.

She uses the reasoning "It is worth nothing because it is based on nothing".  Tee hee.  Hubris.

An audience member said something about losing 7k on Cardano.  She said "that hurts".

I lost more than that because of inflation of currencies based on NOTHING printed by central banks over the recent past.  My "cost of living" raise was 3% while the real inflation numbers are more like 7-20%.  I had no choice.  My realized loss is more than 7k. The idiot who "invested" in Cardano had a choice at least.

Bitcoin fixes this.

You read my tone wrong.  I might have read yours wrong as well.   For that I apologize. "Calm down" is a condescending command in my vernacular.  To be said to someone who is upset beyond self control or hysterical.  Neither of which I am.  But perhaps it means something different to you.  Like I said, tone on the internet is hard.

I am not hysterical or upset beyond my ability to control.  I honestly think the social damage done over the last two years will result in the unnecessary deaths of people over the next generation as trust in science and the medical industry (which I work for) has been damaged.

I agree with Torque as well that Occam's razor leads to a fairly strong conclusion that the series of events we are seeing currently has at least to some extent been manufactured.  Yes, that is a conspiracy.  They are in Davos now.

FEES AND CHANNEL BALANCE... thoughts and questions!

Hello lightning observer!!!

OK.  It's time for a post in here, isn't it?

I have some questions that some of you galaxy brains might be able to answer.  I have been running an LND node since 2019 (not counting the one I had in 2018 that I killed), and only recently added a CLN node about 6 months ago.  My questions have to do with both, but the LND node sees much more traffic with between 200-2000 transactions routed a day generally.  

I have 4 channel state scenarios I see.  But only want to really consider the LAST one.

• Some channels seem to want to almost auto balance themselves.  In this case I assume my channel partner is a little OCD and is doing that.  I have tried some of that myself, but it does not suit my personality really.  I am more interested in using passive techniques to balance my channels more organically.
  
• A few channels seem to slosh back and forth entirely.  I have some fairly large (~0.16BTC) channels with the exchanges that have come on board, Bitfinex, Kraken. And these channels like to slosh back and forth wildly.  Makes sense.  Someone wants to deposit $3k worth of bitcoin on Kraken?  Well my channel can handle that, and then same with withdrawals.
• Some of my channels just don't do much.  I assume these are nodes with low traffic and low use.  I have begun to close these to instead open channels with folks that fall into the other three categories.  Waste of time, these.
• Then there is my fourth type I would like your help with!  There are the channekls that see great deals of action in ONE DIRECTION, then stop.  In general, I open a channel to an channel partner, and the all the liquidity rushes over to one side then just stops.  Boom.  Done.  It can go either way, but generally it goes to their side.

I see two ways to deal with these:

1.  Once the liquidity is over to their side, then just close the channel, and open a new one.  Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
2.  Coax the liquidity back over to the dry side of the channel.
(3. Well I could also just leave it alone and end up with a channel that is effectively #3 up there.  And that is pretty much what has been happening.)

So.  The easy solution is to close and reopen the channel.  I have even notice that certain commercial LSPs you open channels to, once the liquidity has all rushed over to the other side then slam the channel closed themselves.  Wham, bam, thank you mam.  And actually, I plan to start setting those channels back up with a fee structure that will make more sats than it costs to open and close the channel, and start being that kind of liquidity... In fact these sorts of things may be the most profitable of all.  

But my bias is to basically run as much liquidity as I can without losing money.  So I am glad to charge NO FERES AT ALL if I can figure out how to keep the liquidity moving back and forth...  

So that's the question.  What strategy would you guys use to, once all the liquidity has flowed to one side, coax it back over to the other?  In fact some of my channels with various bitcointalk forum users are the main ones that work this way... I honestly do not need to make any money off a channel we share.  I just want to help make the LN be a success.  I would even consider closing and reopening the channel over and over... but in that case I would probably want to make a couple thousand sats on the the life of the channel to make that worth doing...  So I am more interested in sustaining open channels without closing at all (which, frankly is the point right?)

Hope you are all well!

Any ideas?

PS.  I forgot to mention one thing.  I am biased towards ZERO FEES.  Like I said I just want the damn lightning network to actually succeed.  But I do not want to LOSE money.  So though I prefer very low fees, I do not mind tweaking them for the sake of accomplishing the ability to keep a channel open definitely... The incentives for running a lightning node are actually somewhat elegant the more I think about them!

I am glad to see there are still level heads out there in the world.  We might just REALLY need those folk as we move forward.  I hope to do my part.

I was feeling QUITE calm until I read those condescending words.  That's OK.  I am calm again now.

But I also stand by my point which is we rolled the dice with an experimental drug, and used coercive means to push it and that will do damage to the reputations of science, healthcare and government for a whole generation.  How much damage?  Well that remains to be seen.

I certainly hope we do not see people pushing for us to get down a similar path with Monkey Pox as we did with Covid.  But if we do, just watch.  The push back is going to be STRONG. And there you will see the seeds of mistrust beginning to bloom in the population.  How bad will it be?  Hard to say.  We have to wait and see.

Nice catch...  Maybe it's the preponderance of folks coming in between 2015-2017 that makes this belief popular.

On to a chart.  I have had these little lines on my monero USD chart for a while.  We are fairly decisively busting through them, looks like.  I think if we get the BTC run I am kind of expecting (just a little relief, or a start to a good little bull?  dunno) then I could see XMR breaking back into the 200s range again soon.

I think that is a good celebration too!

Do you have access to tomatoes (sauce?), cheese (preferably mozzarella, can use provolone in a pinch, or any other) and dough for bread?  If so, making a pizza is really quite fun, and easier than you might think!  And pizza, like so many of the worlds great foods is also a great way to use odds and ends of meats and vegetable leftovers you  might have.

Just to pick nits (which you cannot complain about! ) I feel your meaning... but along with pow we have to credit cryptographic primitives, blockchain, and the difficulty adjustment as being "pretty much bitcoin".  It's the combination of those things that make it work.  It MIGHT be possible to pull one out and replace it with something else... but no one has yet.

Announcer:  "But this cycle would end up being different than all before!"

(And thank you for bring it back to the corn)

20 merits.

The inability for most to think critically and with nuance is astonishing to me.

There are lots of rumors already out there about the C19 vax being the cause of the Monkeypox/Shingles virus out there.

There are two things I can say for sure:

1.  The Earth has been polarized into two camps across so many continuums it makes my head spin.  And from what I can tell if you really try to honestly evaluate what is really happening, both sides are usually significantly wrong.  It begins to make me wonder if that is the whole point.  Divide into two polarities and control.

2.  The last 2.5 years have absolutely destroyed the public's confidence in government, healthcare, and "science".  I put that last one in quotes because it is absolutely evident that what has been paraded around for the last couple years (actually much longer) is not science at all.  It hit me when the phrase "trust the science" started memeing around.  I tried but I cannot think of a shorter phrase that is more powerfully anti-science than that one.

One horrifying result from this will be the lives lost because of the trust lost in ACTUAL healthcare and science.  For example.  An MRNA drug.  These kinds of drugs have the potential to do wonderful things for man.  Possibly cure cancer, for example.  And yet an enormous percent of people will go to their graves never taking another vaccine because of what happened the last few years.  And the people hooting about how they deserve to die because of not "trusting science" are just WRONG.

It's a sad mess.

Fuck monkeypox.  Fuck the governments.  Fuck Davos and all those fuckers.

I am buying more ammo.  (And fuck you fucking spooks.  Maybe get a different job where you actually HELP the world.  If you can;t think of one, I would suggest pizza delivery as a start)

It absolutely would be if it were not for Proof of Work.  What you are describing is the US dollar, or a PoS coin.

This is one of the most simple, but badly understood pillars of Bitcoin.  And we are not even close to being done with the attacks against PoW.  Because not only is it what gives Bitcoin actual value it is also the KEY to taking the power away from the state.

I know a lot of us cipher idealists don't want to like him... but he is some of the clearest signal out there.

We have been saying "Bitcoin is for everyone/enemies/etc" for years.  He is shouting to the mountaintops to the people with the money.

The Luna crash will be bullish for bitcoin because it will bring the regulation.

But the cipherpunkish secret? They can't regulate bitcoin.  They can only regulate all the other centralized garbage (I think they will have a little trouble with Monero too, but hey... it's Saturday)



Also very high signal.

Monero is showing a sort of strength and resilience I do not believe we have seen since 2017-18.

• The macro environment is EXTREMELY uncertain right now, and all signs are pointing in the down direction.
• Money is moving away from risk, and to the dollar (amazingly) and ruble.
• Tech is getting whallumped. We are seeing draw downs that look like Bitcoin bears in strong tech stocks
• Crypto in general is correlated to the stock market, and particularly the tech side
• Arguably we are seeing an altpocalypse. ETH is down like 2/3rds and almost all alts are getting killed
• Bitcoin dominance is up sharply to level not seen since last year
• Terra/Luna/UST need I say more?

And Bitcoin, while also down is showing fairly strong support and not doing the sort of draw down we have seen in past bears.  Many are still calling for Bitcoin to do something it never has and pull back to below the last cycle's highs.

But Monero...  Well this is complicated.  But it is showing some unique things in the midst of this.

• Monero DID draw down with the other alts during the Luna fiasco.  Losing (like ETH) about 60% from JUST LAST MONTH.
• But while the rest of the alts are either continuing downward, or at best not recovering Monero is up 60% from lows
• Monero transaction volume remains high but flat. Down from it's peak, but still high.
• Monero short interest is still higher than most other coins. Backwards from BTC and ETH

Before the Luna debacle Monero was seeing huge gains, out of proportion with the rest of the crypto sector.  And though It participated in the crash, it has resumed it's prior upward trajectory to some extent.  Much more so than other coins which remain beaten down. 


What is driving Monero's buying pressure?  We are not seeing anything that would support this in the on chain data.  Transaction volume is fairly flat.  The comically backwards short/long makeup of interest in Monero continues to be an anomaly.  Yet the price is showing strong signs of buoyancy often being one of the only green alts in the top 100, or at worst at least holding.

I think we are seeing organic interest in Monero.  And I think we are only seeing the very beginnings of it.  New crypto folks are trickling in and one by one the lightbulb goes on for some of them.  It's unique use case, and excellent properties put it in the position of being a peculiar draw.  Monero has made clear and decisively different choices than bitcoin in the areas or privacy (obviously), issuance (tail emission), ASIC resistant mining , and block size.  Some Bitcoinners who would even be seen as Maxis by most are starting to come to Monero because of it's very unique and potent properties.

I think we COULD be in the early stages of it's most epic rise.  And I think the cartoonish short interest may end up fueling the rise dramatically enough to cause some fomo out there amongst the dog-coin types.  They might not know they are actually fomo-ing into something really good for once... but that will not matter to Monero's bottom line.

I remain bullish.

OK.  I apologize for having done this.

And I am not going to say the thing this morning I want to say too.

I can make that sort of sacrifice for my friends.

I think PlanB has showed some very interesting and often accurate analysis.  I do agree that his rise to mythical predictor status was, like MasterLuc WAAAAAY overblown.  But so is the way everyone now treats him like he is some giant failure has been.

I remember the first interview I heard him on he said, something like "This model is amazing and super accurate over the last xyz period, but all models are only accurate until they break."  And I think he often said that over time.

I would also point out that his model has not broken yet.  We really need more of this cycles time behind us to really make that conclusion.  It seems HIGHLY likely that it will have failed during this cycle... but there are paths forward where it still retains it's accuracy.  They just become less and less likely the further we go.

AND to add some nuance I have always thought his model was quite 1 dimensional, and more about backfilling accuracy than something reliable for the future.  All the acolytes are the ones responsible for the worship of this model.  I always thought it was a kind of silly thing.

Now his 100k by December proclamation.  There he was 100% wrong.  And that was a hubristic mess, that prediction.  I wanted it to be true, as we all did, but that is just silly.  Some of the other silly predictions were even worse.  I still remember Matt Odell getting super drunk and ceiling "Bitcoin T.I.N.A." a bear.  But Tina said he did not think BTC was going to go way up, but that it would probably pull back and go up to 6 digits later.  His prediction in that regard has been right so far.  (Odell irritates me with his "stay humble" bit. His definition of humble is not risking money on alts.  My definition is speaking to others with respect in part, which he never really does)

I honestly think that the right combination of fundamental evens like the ES conference, and an eventual decoupling of BTC from Nasdaq will drive the next bull.  The question is WHEN does it go...  PlanB is a stupid bull like me, and his prediction that "the bear market is almost over" is fairly bold.  And if it IS true he *could* also still get the last laugh for the s2f model...

Probably not... but I hope he's right

Well evidently I just need to use a little powder for this.

(But I still expect a move... this is a beartrap!)