Did you use Bitcoin recently? Segwit adoption has gone up a lot resulting in piss low fees. I haven't paid more than ~$0.08 in fees for my last transactions. In case there is a sudden increase in transactions I use RBF to bump the fee a bit. Times are different now. USDT's shift to ERC20 helped a lot too. Please don't tell me that $0.08 is still too high.  I have. The fees are only low when the price is down. Everytime the price surges, the mempool fills up and the fees climb. |
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Facebook's Libra was really aimed at the remittence market (which is why they proposed a stablecoin). It's worth looking at other attempts of cryptocurrencies to break into the remittence market, and George Harrap, the CEO of Bitspark (Hong Kong based remittence company) did a useful assessment of the viability of different coins: https://blockgeeks.com/news/bitcoin-outruns-ripple-at-global-remittances-says-new-report/The biggest issue is liquidity: There are no liquid Nigerian naira (NGN) and Ethereum (ETH) market, EOS and Vietnamese dong or XRP and Philippine peso markets,” Harrap observes. “The only market which has sufficient liquidity and people willing to provide a local currency in exchange for a cryptocurrency is usually bitcoin.” Ripple, which was the stablecoin that was supposed to be ideal for remittences seems to be a failure because you can only convert it to bitcoin and USD: The report notes that Western Union has trialed Ripple’s products, but have steered clear of xRapid, the solution which uses XRP. The report states, this is because “there is not enough liquidity, depth, nor enough on-ramps and off-ramps for it to work as intended.”
The majority of remittance payments are sent to developing countries, whose currencies lack liquid markets with XRP. Bitcoin, on the other hand, has been out there for a long time and has more market approval along with some level of regulatory recognition.
Bitcoin also supports direct exchanges to almost all the local currencies. Even though there are approximately 20 tokens that provide support for remittances, they have all failed to establish reliable liquidity channels with smaller fiat currencies.
As of February 2019, 99.9% of all cryptocurrency money transfers are in Bitcoin. The only problem with bitcoin is the fees and the delays when the price rises and the mempool gets backlogged. If a coin can appear with low fees and no backlogs, and if that coin takes over the remittence business, it should have a good chance to make a breakthrough as the dominant crypto. Zuckerberg was hoping that coin would be Libra, but that dream is dead now. |
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the fall of the stock market will make investors look for alternative investments, namely gold and bitcoin. bitcoin and gold are good choices for investing because they are good storage devices. I am optimistic that the price of gold and bitcoin in the future will be even higher.
IIRC there is a study that said most people still believe that Bitcoin is a speculative asset. This means, if economics crumbles, then they won't store their wealth in Bitcoin. Gold is still the choice for a store of value, and the next one is land. This might change with time but I don't think it can change that easily. It's because it's so volatile. People want to put their money into something that will hold it's value, and all those who bought near the $20,000 top got very badly burned. |
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The UK has such a big economy that Brexit means the EU's GDP will shrink by 16%.
There are 27 countries left in the EU, and of those only five are net contributors. So the strain on those economies to fill the financing gap left by the UK will be immense.
We shall find out in the next recession whether the EU survives or not.
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There have also been big de-dollarization campaigns adopted by china, russia, turkey and other nations of the world who abandoned the dollar as if to insulate themselves from an expected crash of the US economy coupled with significant inflation of the US dollar.
It might be said these circumstances are not isolated and unique only to be found in the case of the dutch. But rather global trends that apply to nearly every nation on earth. If that is true, then what should we make of central banks across the world accumulating and hoarding gold reserves the way that doomsday preppers do?
Well China is desperate for the yuan to become a reserve currency, and Russia is wary of using the dollar because it exposes them to the Americans regulating them. I personally think the big risk is the euro. It barely survived the 2013 eurozone crisis. It has negative interest rates of -0.5% even though the world economy is still growing. It's doing worse than Japan (which has base rates of -0.1% and a positive yield curve). I think the eurozone will be the epicentre of the next financial crisis, not the US, China or Russia all of which have a good grip on their financial systems. If you are part of the eurozone, like the Dutch, it makes sense to prepare for the worst. |
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The Dutch are unhappy at the way the euro is being managed by the European Central Bank. See the following: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-12/draghi-faced-unprecedented-ecb-revolt-as-core-europe-resisted-qeEuropean Central Bank governors representing the core of the euro-area economy resisted President Mario Draghi’s ultimately successful bid to restart quantitative easing, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.
The unprecedented revolt took place during a fractious meeting where Bank of France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau joined more traditional hawks including his Dutch colleague Klaas Knot and Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann in pressing against an immediate resumption of bond purchases, the people said. But they got outvoted, and there is nothing they can do about it unless they exit the euro. Of course if they exit they'll need their own currency and they'll have to prove to the markets that the central bank can manage that currency well - and having a reserve of gold will be part of that. |
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There is a third group of people. They arn't bulls or bears, but have embraced crypto as a source of income. So they earn their income from crypto and they sell crypto to pay bills, and are treating it as a real currency. This group would like there to be less volatility and more of a steady price.
One of the saddest developments in the last five years is cryptocurrency being seen as a purely speculative asset.
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There is a nice nugget of information in the following article as to why Paypal and others have withdrawn support for Libra: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-15/facebook-s-libra-cryptocurrency-exodus-has-an-upsideIt’s clear why PayPal Holdings Inc., Stripe Inc., eBay Inc., MasterCard Inc. and Visa Inc. have decided not to join the Libra Association, which Facebook has been organizing to run the proposed digital currency. They took seriously the recent warning of Senators Brian Schatz of Hawaii and Sherrod Brown of Ohio that because of their membership, they could “expect a high level of scrutiny from regulators not only on Libra-related payment activities, but on all payment activities.” It was the threat of scrutiny of ALL their activities. Bitcoin by contrast stands alone, not affiliated with any of these payment processors, and is thus not a problem for these senators (especially as bitcoin has a public ledger they can follow). |
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My main question is what makes usd so dominant?
Two things - they have never defaulted in the 200 years they have been in existence (like Britain). And they have interest rates at 2% (in the UK interest rates are 0.75%, in Japan -0.1% and in the eurozone -0.5%). So if you want a stable govt and high interest rates, you would put your money in Treasuries - and in order to buy treasuries you sell your currency and buy dollars - and that strengthens the dollar. The dollar is going nowhere. Currencies like the euro might disappear if they have another crisis. |
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Evryone is writing about recession. So, what to do right now? Buy gold?
Pay down debt and build a stash of cash. In recessions everything becomes cheap - imagine if you had a lot of cash in 2008 and could have bought Google shares at the bottom. You'd have made a 600% return. |
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Well, Brexit failed and I don't think the EU is going to its decline in the nearest future. The countries are tightly interrelated and dependent on each other now. That's a great risk for anyone to quit on this stage.
Brexit hasn't failed - they negotiating a deal as we speak and it's likely it will get agreed by parliament next week. Britain is the least integrated of the European countries - exports to the EU were 66% of the total in the year 2000 but had dropped to 44% in the year 2016 (the year of the referendum). Britain has been decoupling from the EU for two decades. |
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The only country where private debt is going down is Britain - and that's because Brexit has acted like a wake-up call and forced people to put their finances in order so that they're in good shape to deal with the future.
Last month British businesses repaid £3bn in debt, which is a measure of how seriously they're taking things.
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Binance is availale in Hong Kong, isn't it?
So it should be interesting to see whether they're seeing an increase in deposits from people in Hong Kong (or even people approaching them to do large over-the-counter purchases).
The continuing unrest is definitely a support for both bitcoin and gold.
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Wechat and Alipay has already started flagging transactions a while back, but I haven't actually heard anyone getting banned. I do know for a fact though that Chinese traders on there are now a lot more cautious than before, e.g. asking people to not speak of anything crypto related in Wechat's dialogue when conducting a transaction.
Binance made a mistake tweeting in public that they were accepting Alipay purchases from Chinese users. What they should have done was email the users and they'd have got the information in private. Big fail on Binance's part. |
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The latest attempt features Alipay (payment processor): https://cointelegraph.com/news/official-alipay-to-ban-all-bitcoin-related-transactionsAlipay, the digital payment arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, has declared that it will be banning any transactions related to Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrencies.
On Oct. 10, Alipay reiterated its anti-crypto stance in a Twitter thread, which warned that the company is closely monitoring over-the-counter transactions to identify irregular behavior and ensure compliance with relevant regulations. Alipay wrote:
“If any transactions are identified as being related to bitcoin or other virtual currencies, @Alipay immediately stops the relevant payment services.”
This move follows various reports that Alipay is being used for BTC transactions.
Binance uses Alipay for buying crypto
On Oct. 9, major crypto exchange Binance confirmed on Twitter that it has begun accepting fiat currencies through online payment service Alipay and mobile messaging and payment app WeChat.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, clarified that the exchange is not working directly with WeChat or Alipay, and users are still able to use them for peer-to-peer transactions.
This announcement followed the implementation of Binance’s peer-to-peer trading for Bitcoin, Ether (ETH) and Tether (USDT) against the Chinese yuan (CNY) earlier, as reported by Cointelegraph. I think what has happened is this: China closed down all the cryotocurrency exchanges back in early 2017. Then Binance tweeted to their Chinese users that they could buy bitcoin with Alipay. The Chinese authorities then put pressure on Alipay to close down any bitcoin related transactions, which is what they've done. |
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Well back in July the US Congress asked Facebook to pause it's development of Libra until they had time to access it's impact: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/03/libra-us-congress-asks-facebook-pause-development-cryptocurrencyIn a letter from the Democratic head of the house committee on financial services, congresswoman Maxine Waters, and the heads of its subcommittees, the legislators ask the company to “immediately cease implementation plans”.
“Because Facebook is already in the hands of over a quarter of the world’s population, it is imperative that Facebook and its partners immediately cease implementation plans until regulators and Congress have an opportunity to examine these issues and take action,” the letter says.
“During this moratorium, we intend to hold public hearings on the risks and benefits of cryptocurrency-based activities and explore legislative solutions. Failure to cease implementation before we can do so risks a new Swiss-based financial system that is too big to fail.” |
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That is indeed very good news! Now we need people to actually donate using either bitcoin or ethereum, or we'll find these payment methods disabled in a few years if no money flows in via crypto. |
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The price isn't the key metric.
The key metric is adoption. If one of the alts develops a use case that is popular, which means they jump in demand and transactions, then that alt will become dominant.
Will people sell bitcoin to buy the newly dominant alt? Maybe, but it's possible both will have a high price as they target different audiences (Bitcoin is now an asset rather than a currency).
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I don't believe that we're even much closer than before with how the manipulation and wash trading concerns can't be solved from within the states. It gives the SEC enough reason to continue rejecting applications.
The only thing that will persuade the SEC is if it can be proved that the bulk of trading happens in regulated exchanges that it trusts. The Japanese are trying to promote the idea of a standard regulation of crypto that applies across the world - they talked about it at one of the G7 meetings earlier in the year. They actually got the G7 to approve Japan's cryptocurrency Swift alternative which Japan is currently developing: https://cointelegraph.com/news/g7-approves-japans-cryptocurrency-based-swift-alternativeOnce there is a standard, then in theory the SEC could approve an ETF if more than say 66% of global bitcoin trading took place on exchanges regulated by the common standard, and hence they could trust the prices were not being manipulated. But as long as exchanges like Binance exist, with their Tether shenanigans, an ETF is dead in the water. |
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see The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected the latest attempt at creating a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF).
The SEC announced Wednesday that the ETF proposal, filed by Bitwise Asset Management in conjunction with NYSE Arca, did not meet legal requirements to prevent market manipulation or other illicit activities. The SEC placed the burden on NYSE Arca, rather than Bitwise’s proposal itself.
To date, the SEC has rejected all bitcoin ETF proposals, citing market manipulation and fraudulent activity concerns. It's now five years since the Winklevoss twins first tried to get an ETF off the ground. And the problem remains the same - as long as the bulk of the trading takes place on exchanges that allow manipulation, the SEC can't approve the ETF, because the dodgy exchanges set the price. If bitcoiners really want to see an ETF happen, they need to move their trading away from Binance and co, and towards Gemini, Coinbase and the other regulated exchanges. |
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