Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[HairyMaclairy]

Guess what happens when the gold price spikes - there is a flood of new supply. As I have been repeatedly saying over the past 5 years, there are a ton of gold mines on care and maintenance waiting for this exact moment.

https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/gamechanger-price-spike-powers-new-gold-rush-20190729-p52bw9

Gamechanger': Price spike powers new gold rush

Peter Ker
From Orange in New South Wales to Bendigo in Victoria and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, the gold sector is forecast to pull a record $22 billion worth of yellow metal out of the ground in fiscal 2020.

''These old mines may have shut down when the gold price was $300 for example, it is now above $2000, they would have bypassed a lot of gold in those underground mines because it would have been uneconomic at the time,'' Olsen says.

As a store of value and subject of speculation, the forces driving gold prices are opaque, but it is safe to say the recent rally has been sparked by a deteriorating US economy and geopolitical concerns about the US relationship with Iran, North Korea and China.

Rising gold prices have buoyed miners in all nations, but Australian miners have received an extra boost in the form of a weaker local currency, which has ensured their Australian-denominated costs have become a smaller proportion of the US dollars they receive for their gold.

Monetary easing from central banks has seen investors turn to gold.
The US dollar's role in setting global gold prices means Australian-denominated gold prices are strong when the greenback is strong against the Australian dollar.

New York based VanEck Securities is the world's largest gold equity manager, and the firm's portfolio manager Joe Foster said an interest rate cut in the US this week could be followed by a recession if history is any guide.

He says that would be a recipe for even higher gold prices.

''If you look historically, after the first rate cut in 2008 we went into a recession three months later. When they cut rates in 2000 we went into a recession two months later, so we could very well see economic weakness over the next six to 12 months, maybe even a recession,'' he tells The Australian Financial Review.

''If we go into a downturn, that increases the risk to the financial system that would probably drive gold much higher.

''We are near the end of a cycle, this is the longest expansion on record, it is the longest stock bull market on record and these things don't last forever.''

While most pundits expect a US rate cut will be good for US-denominated gold prices, Shaw and Partners analyst Peter O'Connor notes that the impact on Australian-denominated gold prices is less clear.

The Australian dollar has dropped in recent days below the 70c threshold.
He points out that gold prices may rise in US dollar terms in response to a rate cut, but may fall in Australian dollar terms if the US currency weakens significantly.

''The outlook depends not just on the fed cut but on the commentary, and probably the minutes released next month,'' he said.

''The short answer is we are getting closer to an Australian-denominated gold price peak, but not a US-denominated gold price peak.''

The situation could change again if, as expected, the Reserve Bank of Australia makes further interest rate cuts later this year, with further cuts likely to support Australian-denominated gold prices.

Gold-rush towns always get a boost when the local mine resumes production, but in Stawell's case the impact on the local economy will be unusually strong and refreshingly traceable, with the mine set to host a multimillion dollar particle physics laboratory.

Scientists studying ''dark matter'' require a laboratory free of background radiation, and deep underground is one of the few suitable places for such research.

Plans to build such a laboratory in a chamber of the Stawell mine were dashed when the mine closed in 2016, denying the laboratory of the ventilation and other support systems required to safely work underground.

But the revival of the mine has enabled a revival of the laboratory project, with state and federal governments contributing $10 million to build the scientists a chamber about 1000 metres down the mine.

''That is an unusual spin-off from an old gold mine opening up again,'' said local mayor Kevin Erwin.

''That side of it will be a real game changer for Stawell. We will have international professors in town and it will raise the bar for local kids in terms of aspirations for what their future careers can be.

"We are on the cusp of a wave and it is just starting to roll.

''We have got a bit of a shortage in housing at the moment so we are just trying to address that very quickly, bucking the trend of a lot of rural communities.

''We have quite a few hundred jobs coming online in the next few years and we need families and we need housing."

Olsen says Arete is looking for other opportunities to invest in old mines that might have been unloved by their former owners.

Hugh Morgan's private equity fund has made its first acquisition in Victorian gold.
Some of those opportunities are in Victoria, where interest in gold mining has rebounded since bonanza gold grades were found in the "Swan Zone" beneath the then marginal Fosterville mine near Bendigo in 2015.

Foster travelled from New York to see Fosterville with his own eyes in 2015, and says the Swan Zone is the best gold discovery he has seen anywhere in the world in the past two decades.

Fosterville, which is owned by Kirkland Lake Gold, has since become one of Australia's most lucrative gold mines, and its success has spawned bullish talk of a broader ''renaissance'' of the Victorian gold sector.

''There is certainly a lot more interest since Fosterville went down below 600 metres and basically broke into Aladdin's Cave,'' said Olsen.

Statistics suggest interest in Victorian gold has improved, but the state remains a very small player in the Australian gold industry.

Spending on exploration in Victoria has quadrupled over the past four years, but at $24.5 million in the March quarter, the state had less than 5 per cent of the national exploration spend for the quarter, according to figures published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Kirkland Lake has listed on the ASX.
For comparison, $353 million was spent on exploration in WA in the March quarter, while NSW ($61.3 million) and Queensland ($75.2 million) also attracted much higher rates of spending.

The Victorian government this year announced it would charge a royalty on gold production for the first time, but the government expects the royalty will generate just $56 million over a four year period.

Victoria's gold sector has boomed in the past four years.
That pales in comparison to the $1.16 billion the WA government expects to raise from gold royalties over the same period.

Compared to the gold rushes of the 1850s, which made Melbourne one of the world's wealthiest cities, Ballarat gold mine general manager Stephen Jeffers says it's a stretch to call the past few years a genuine renaissance.

"It is a long bow,'' he said.

''We have noticed that since Fosterville really hit their straps, explorers are coming around and having a good sniff, for sure, but unless something comes up, they will get bored real quick."

Fosterville's success has triggered a 70 per cent increase in the number of exploration licences granted in the state between fiscal 2015 and fiscal 2018, but the "renaissance" has to date delivered no new "greenfield" mines in Victoria.

''The low hanging fruit in the 'renaissance' will be the reopening of old mines that have existing infrastructure and have a fairly low social impact, if you like, and there are a number of those,'' said Olsen.

''We are looking at those, we are active and keen to invest if the environment allows it.

"But having said that, those mines that are closed down require a huge investment with dewatering and refurbishing, getting all the access and all the power re-established, it can take years and you still need permission to do it.

''There is nothing free about gold mining I can tell you, it has got to be one of the most capital intensive, high-risk industries there is.''

Foster bets on gold discoveries for a living, and he was not exactly optimistic that Fosterville's success will be repeated elsewhere in Victoria.

"It is always possible, but those mines in that area have been around a long time, they have had a lot of work and a lot of drilling, so I would not bet on others discovering another Swan Zone,'' he said.

''They are so few and far between, the probability of discovering another one is low at Fosterville, and it is even lower on other properties where the geology is not quite as well known."

[fillippone]

A little development on the LedgerX saga:

<SNIP all the previous updates>

Latest Development:
Very US solution: SUE

https://messari.io/article/ledgerx-clashes-with-cftc-over-planned-launch-of-bitcoin-futures-platform

Following yesterdays announcement that LedgerX had launched a retail platform allowing for the first physically settled bitcoin ($BTC) futures in the U.S. it remains unclear if contracts are live for trading or will be live any time soon. Earlier today The Block reported that there was no sign of approved contracts on the CFTC website and no listed market volumes.

The CFTC later stated that LedgerX does not have a designated contract maker (DCM) license required to trade futures, only one from 2017 that allows for the trading of swaps. This statement clashes with the fact that the CFTC had reportedly approved LedgerX's DCM license last month. Following these events Paul Chou, CEO of LedgerX, took to Twitter to announce that he would take action against the CFTC stating:
I've decided to sue the CFTC for anti competitive behavior, breach of duty, going against the regs, etc.

https://www.theblockcrypto.com/2019/08/01/actually-ledgerx-might-not-have-launched-physically-settled-bitcoin-futures-contracts-after-all/

Time to call it a day folks.

Now Alita the Battle Angel.

[El duderino_]

Introducing the Bitcoin Difficulty Ribbon. When the ribbon compresses, or flips negative, these are the best time to buy in and get exposure to Bitcoin. The ribbon consists of simple moving averages on mining difficulty so we can easily see the rate of change in difficulty.

via Imgflip Meme Generator

https://twitter.com/woonomic/status/1156968533462413313?s=21

I wonder if difficulty will ever start to just somewhat settle especially with node size getting harder and harder to shrink.

This indicator speaks to the impact of mining on Bitcoin's price. As new coins are mined into existence, miners sell some of their mined coins to pay for production costs. This produces bearish price pressure.
https://twitter.com/woonomic/status/1156968538742988800?s=21

The weakest miners sell more of their coins to remain operational. When it becomes unsustainable, they capitulate, hashing power and network difficulty reduces (ribbon compression), leaving only the strong, who sell less leaving more room for more bullish price action.
https://twitter.com/woonomic/status/1156968540940800000?s=21

Typically we see this at the end of bear cycles, after miners capitulate, the lack of miner selling pressure allows the price to stabilise and then climb; the classic accumulation bottom.

via Imgflip Meme Generator
https://twitter.com/woonomic/status/1156968561404866560?s=21

Credit goes to @VinnyLingham who was the first AFAIK to spot this dynamic in his April 2014 article on how Bitcoin finds its price equilibrium. We now have 5 more years of data to back it up.
https://twitter.com/woonomic/status/1156968565037137920?s=21

Miners capitulate in bears, but also during block reward halvening events when suddenly only half the coins are mined for the same costs and the market price has yet to catch up to pay for it. See the compression after each halvening (marked as vertical lines) as miners die off.

via Imgflip Meme Generator
https://twitter.com/woonomic/status/1156968583571730432?s=21

As a final note, notice how the 2019 the 2012 bull market have the same structure, we saw severe mining capitulation (ribbon flipped negative) leading to a shorter accumulation band before price breakout. This bull market has resembles 2012 more than 2016 structurally.
via Imgflip Meme Generator

https://twitter.com/woonomic/status/1156968606749474816?s=21

[El duderino_]

A little development on the LedgerX saga:



Time to call it a day folks.

Now Alita the Battle Angel.

Boy you’re in for a treat

As for me = HODLsleep

[JayJuanGee]

source: howmanyconfs.com

FYI, this is a worthless metric.

Could you elaborate more on this?
I strongly disagree as the security implied in Bitcoin (ledger costliness) is one of the main value proposition for bitcoin imho.

Who would Store Value on an insecure blockchain?

This does not correctly represent the relative relationship of the security chains.
I'll try to find a link for you later after I catch up a bit.

Thank you.

This is how I discovered this website.

https://twitter.com/lopp/status/1122850107685310464


I don't want to fall into the "appeal to authority" (one of the most common logical fallacy), but I think Jameson Lopp knows how these things work.

It seems to me that Jameson Lopp probably just engaged in a relative straight-forward calculation that accounts for how much hashrate is dedicated to each coin in terms of the amount of security that is achieved and compared the other forks of bitcoin wannabes in comparison to bitcoin's 6 confirmation.

[JayJuanGee]

what will happen after May 2020 when the supply of Bitcoin will be halved overnight?

It's almost as if you're describing a Ponzi scheme.

To dumbass people, bitcoin seems like a Ponzi scheme because they cannot quite understand exactly what a ponzi scheme is.  So, yeah, a simpleton like yourself, who sold all of his bitcoin in the $700 price arena might have some difficulties in his/her/its wishful thinking abilities that have biased his/her/its perceptions to recognize nuances.

what will happen after May 2020 when the supply of Bitcoin will be halved overnight?

It's almost as if you're describing a Ponzi scheme.

This is a cheap objection and you are too smart not to understand why.
I won't indulge in this anymore.

Making me see reality and feel as if I am lacking in self-restraint.    

[HairyMaclairy]

Hash rate follows price.  

Any attempt to chart hash rate to predict price is self defeating.

[Biodom]

Hash rate follows price.  

Only in a very general sense and based on just 2-3 examples so far.
In 2011 bear hash rate declined (at the very end).
In 2014-2015 hash rate flattened, not really declined.
In 2018, hashrate declined (at the very end).

In all three cases observing flattening and/or declining hashrate and THEN buying based on this alone would be very profitable almost immediately following the decline/flatlining of the hash rate.

What Woo is saying: hashrate declining and flatlining is a good btc buy indicator.
What you (HM) are saying is essentially this: hashrate is not an indicator aka price decline itself is a bullish indicator.
Maybe it is correct too, in the final analysis.

Someone posted before that, paradoxically, when btc drops below one of the long term averages (I forgot which one, could be 200d or 50wk), then, historically, it is bullish and not bearish indicator while in stocks it is mostly a bearish indicator.

[HairyMaclairy]

Buy the macro dips

[HI-TEC99]

This is impressive.
I mean: what will happen after May 2020 when the supply of Bitcoin will be halved overnight?

This.

[JayJuanGee]

Fuck, we are due for another halvening already? It feels like the last one wasn't too long ago. These things are always such events but I have learned from the previous ones, they price in a few months before. That means Jan/Feb expect the boom, not May.

If you look at previous halvenings, you will see that there is a small bump up in price before the halvening, and a BIGGER rise that tends to come more than 6 months after the halvening.  Of course, we only have two previous cases, so it really is not a good sample size, and there are some schools of thought that this time around might have a bit more of a front-running, meaning that the price boom would come earlier than it did last time.  We should be taking all of those theories with a decently sized grain of salt because momentum is a factor of many events of human behavior so we cannot really know too well, ahead of time, with any kind of precision when the momentum is no longer going to be enough to keep the price going up or if the buying support is able to keep up with the speed of the price rise, that will sometimes grow to out of control levels.. We saw a mini-version of that in June, especially the end of June.. holy fuck..

Observing $10,101.

I hope bitcoin doesn’t get a nose bleed at the thought of going north of $10,000 & dive below again.

Activity in the WO lately -

Only the poor remain.

Feeling so "poor" and desperate during these trying times, with a kind of gnawing realization that the no coiners, fence sitters, jonoiv, roach and lambie were correct.   

Jonoiv was a sad one to see, he so quickly turned the corner from this is a fun thing to being R0aches partner in crime and this is all a big ole scam and the boogie men are out to get our moniez.

Even though I had been razzing the fuck out of jonoiv, mostly because of his ongoing arrogance, there is a part of me that feels a bit sorry for those types of gamblers who sold too much too soon and they are just waiting, waiting and waiting for their trade to play out.. which we know may or may not happen.  Bitcoin's exponential growth curve might not allow another revisit of sub $6k prices, so it can be a bit sad for those people who sold all of their coins and they are experiencing a decent amount of stress about whether they should continue to wait or if they should just suck up the loss, at some seemingly reasonable point.

Even though I feel a bit sorry for jonoiv, I still have trouble considering him as a kind of good guy that turned the corner.  He had always been quite bearish and a bit much of a gambler in those bearish directions and lack of hedging towards the possible upside... so in some sense, it can also feel good to see that kind of arrogance and lack of hedging to be punished by the realities of the exponential s-curve adoption, which seems to be quite a powerful phenomenon in bitcoin that nocoiners, fence sitters and shorters seem unable to properly appreciate and to properly hedge for the possible upside

[HI-TEC99]

This is impressive.
I mean: what will happen after May 2020 when the supply of Bitcoin will be halved overnight?

This.

Fuck, we are due for another halvening already? It feels like the last one wasn't too long ago. These things are always such events but I have learned from the previous ones, they price in a few months before. That means Jan/Feb expect the boom, not May.

We were at three digits before the last one. This time we are at five digits. If we can reach six digits after the next one I'll be happy.

[Biodom]

Last time we went from roughly $1K to $20k.
I would say that $50K is a minimal expectation IF the cycles continue the up down pattern, which is always an unknown.
I would not be surprised by $200K, but would not plan for it as far as seriously laying out what to do if and when.

[jbreher]

just like jbreher currently flies of the government agent rails for certain kinds of references in that direction

....  I think that, for the moment, I have bit off enough personal bashenings in the ad hominem direction. 

Haha. You think?

Go Fuck Yourself, JJG.

[BTC_ISTANBUL]

What I believe is we are experiencing a bull trap.The ''new'' money is lacking.The china-usa trade war issue is somehow positive for BTC and interest rate cut may draw interest of some big multi million whales to crypto investment however taxation and risk aversion will keep the actions as reactions and bull traps.

[JayJuanGee]

just like jbreher currently flies of the government agent rails for certain kinds of references in that direction

....  I think that, for the moment, I have bit off enough personal bashenings in the ad hominem direction. 

Haha. You think?

Go Fuck Yourself, JJG.

Your coy response is not really providing any kind of meaningful discussion point, so this would be a good time for a commercial break.     Regularly scheduled programming will return at some currently unspecified time, in the meantime, how's your laddering going?

I would like to say that my decision from nearly two weeks ago to incorporate some buying of some extra BTC by cancelling a few of my sub-$4k scheduled laddered buys and incorporating that freed up fiat into my buy ladders had pretty much filled more than my anticipated number of buy orders between  $10,400-ish and $9,200-ish.  Otherwise, I probably would have had fewer buy orders between $10k-ish and $9,200-ish (I had about 7 buy orders fill as opposed to would have had around 5 buy orders).

Of course, I likely bought more bitcoin than I had anticipated and even at higher prices than necessary in the supra $10k arena, but I am still happy with the whole situation, largely because of such extra BTC accumulation (and I did not market buy the BTC at $11k as the BTC price was on Saturday, July 20, the time of the supposed buy campaign), I have therefore been able to subsequently increase my BTC sell quantities too to give me greater sell amounts, but at the same time retaining more BTC, overall.

The theory has not completely played out since, as we recognize, the BTC price has not returned to going up beyond just in small quantities that has so far triggered a couple of my smaller sell orders in the upper $9ks and in the $10,500 arena.

I wonder if you, jbreher, might still be playing with much tighter BTC laddering ranges than me, perhaps?  Maybe even you have spread your increments out a bit larger as compared to what you had been doing in early 2018, no?   

[JayJuanGee]

What I believe is we are experiencing a bull trap.The ''new'' money is lacking.The china-usa trade war issue is somehow positive for BTC and interest rate cut may draw interest of some big multi million whales to crypto investment however taxation and risk aversion will keep the actions as reactions and bull traps.

I'm sure that a lot of BTC HODLers are trembling in their boots upon reading such news, just like I am from the confidence that you inspire, BTC_ISTANBUL.

In other words, seems like another soothsaying doomsday sorcerer is on the scene predicting "down before up."  

Is that your face-saving alias account: jonoiv?  Biodom?  Amateur? Lambie?

Surely JSRAW has not denied your version of possible events, yet, either..  because even JSRAW would not mind picking up a few more lil fiends in the 4 digits, so you got that going for you too, BTC_ISTANBUL.  

[HairyMaclairy]

What I believe is we are experiencing a bull trap.The ''new'' money is lacking.The china-usa trade war issue is somehow positive for BTC and interest rate cut may draw interest of some big multi million whales to crypto investment however taxation and risk aversion will keep the actions as reactions and bull traps.

I agree.  This bull trap might run all the way to $300k.  A lot of bitcoin bulls might get caught and be forced to sell part of their stack well above $100k.

[JayJuanGee]

What I believe is we are experiencing a bull trap.The ''new'' money is lacking.The china-usa trade war issue is somehow positive for BTC and interest rate cut may draw interest of some big multi million whales to crypto investment however taxation and risk aversion will keep the actions as reactions and bull traps.

I agree.  This bull trap might run all the way to $300k.  A lot of bitcoin bulls might get caught and be forced to sell part of their stack well above $100k.

Oh gosh, and now you got the hairy_beary with you too.

[Searing]

Introducing the Bitcoin Difficulty Ribbon. When the ribbon compresses, or flips negative, these are the best time to buy in and get exposure to Bitcoin. The ribbon consists of simple moving averages on mining difficulty so we can easily see the rate of change in difficulty.

via Imgflip Meme Generator

https://twitter.com/woonomic/status/1156968533462413313?s=21

I wonder if difficulty will ever start to just somewhat settle especially with node size getting harder and harder to shrink.

We should see a dump in some BTC difficulty soon. There was a lot of ASIC makers who made 50/50 handshake deals with hydro utils in China because of excessive rain

and excess electric. you let us run our outdated or stuff we can't sell for free and we will split the coin with the hydro power you bleed off.

I should google and see if China this summer has started to dry up yet.

If/when it does, I'd 'guess' you will see a drop of 20% or some such.

But people being people it likely will not matter much to BTC difficulty and will pop right back up again, even if my guess is right.

Betting on Moon seems to be the crypto pastime, with ASIC miners as the 'chips'

Brad