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

[Wilhelm]

World premiere of the new Mercedes C class.

It's basically a smaller S class but more sporty and it's bigger than the previous C model.

Already contacted my local dealer, he said there will be a special introduction model.

I'm on the potential buyer's list, it will be either the E coupe ore this new C model.

https://media.mercedes-benz.com/c-class

https://i.imgur.com/LJdLaKa.png

It looks good but the wifey doesn't like a Merc.
It won't be an Alpina for now but a BMW is good enough 

M850i

[1714471772]

1714471772

[aesma]

Well, as I said it's best to have fiat (shitcoin) for this one. Which is why I won't do it. But, basically you buy however many BTC on the spot for current price of 55000. At the exact same time you sell a future, perhaps Sep 26th for this example, for the same number of BTC at a current price of 62700. profit equals 7,700 minus fees per coin

This can be done using CBOE and CME as well as many others, perhaps less reputable exchanges.

The risk for this trade is couter-party only and of course opportunity cost (there is no possiblity of capital gains or losses). Not your keys not your coins. Thing is it's all about levels of risk and what you are comfortable with in the end as well as your goals. Just remember nothing is risk free. Even holding your own keys is not risk free, there are roughly 4million inaccessible coins to prove that.

*Above prices are taken from Deribit.

How does this work exactly? I would love a bit more ELI5.

I posted a link earlier, here it is again.
https://blog.bitmex.com/how-to-arbitrage-bitcoin-futures-vs-spot/

The WO sometimes must be combed thoroughly, but it usually does deliver good info - be it bitcoin or digital cameras.

Or you're just halftrolling and... username checks out? 

I don't believe CBOE offers BTC futures anymore. And i don't see Sept futures on CME. They're not trading now but i believe June futures were trading at around 7% premium. What you're forgetting is that CME is cash settled so they won't take your BTC as collateral for margin. Thus you'd actually need to lock up 150%, 100% to hedge with real BTC and then 50% to post for margin. At 150% that would bring actual premium down from 7% to 4,7%
As far as risks, you're forgetting that if BTC goes up before your settlement date you're gonna get margin called and will need to come up with more cash, or get automatically closed on a spike.

Also transfer times might be an issue, you'd need to sell your BTC and transfer funds to yourself and then to your broker at settlement.

Sure there are some premiums to be had if you want to tolerate the risk, just don't try to claim "140% returns with 0 risk"

I didn't know about CBOE discontinuing BTC futures, or about CME futures being cash settled.

Transfer timing, 3rd party risk and other factors do exist. No trade is a free lunch: even arbitrages can go awry. However, the so-called inverse futures have a mathematical structure such that short positions with leverage < 1 can never get liquidated. Just sayin'.

EDIT in ELI5 form for OP - I have to add, though, that this arbitrage works either way - number go up or number go down - only because the profits are measured in fiat. When measured in bitcoin, there are profits only if number go down. So for a real hodler it's not really an arbitrage, but rather either (a) a sale (at over market price, though!), or (b) a btc gain. What it turns out to be depends if number go up/down.

In other words: if number go up, you end up with a higher dollar value, but your btc value has gone down (you still give up less btc than if you had sold, because the resulting effective price is over market). If number go down, you end up with a higher dollar value and a higher btc amount too: your btc quantity goes up, since number went down and the result must make up for that, PLUS the arbitrage profit.

This could be one of the reasons why short interest in futures is always so high, and futures expiry dates are so often bloody for the hodlers - just like now.

I think I need more coffee.

Let's say I have 1 million dollars and 20 BTC (I haven't). I don't want to spend my dollars do buy more BTC for reasons.

Is there a way, playing with futures, that I can get more dollars, more BTC, or more dollars, same BTC, or more BTC, same dollars, in the end ?

[Paashaas]

World premiere of the new Mercedes C class.

It's basically a smaller S class but more sporty and it's bigger than the previous C model.

Already contacted my local dealer, he said there will be a special introduction model.

I'm on the potential buyer's list, it will be either the E coupe ore this new C model.

https://media.mercedes-benz.com/c-class

https://i.imgur.com/LJdLaKa.png

It looks good but the wifey doesn't like a Merc.
It won't be an Alpina for now but a BMW is good enough  

M850i

The M850i is a monster lol, if i was younger i might have bought this one ore just the 'cheaper' 840i.

Although, this is the best looking BMW out there i really love the interior!

[Torque]

Bill Gates On Investing In Bitcoin: 'If You Have Less Money Than Elon, You Should Probably Watch Out'
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-investing-bitcoin-less-095518862.html

You hear that Average Joe? The wealthy elites have billions of $$$ to throw around on speculative scams like bitcoin.

But you're poor, so you better not do it too.

Stay the fk away from Bitcoin, or else lose all your (poor man's) money! /s   

[Richy_T]

Artificial scarcity? That's the whole thing about bitcoin, I think. Come on, let the poor horse get a worthy burial already.

It's not dead. Only sleeping. Pining for the fjords.

I'm not going to hang on about it but I do think it's relevant when it does something like negatively affect a valid strategy for dollar cost averaging

[Richy_T]

Even Dutch media mention Elon Musk's tweet" that Bitcoin's price seems high. Let me guess: next month he'll post that he bought another billion dollars worth of Bitcoin?
Why do so many people care about the opinion of a billionaire, who has different or even opposing interests than the general public?

People, in the vast majority, are sheep and can only zig when others zig.

[Parazyd]

Even Dutch media mention Elon Musk's tweet" that Bitcoin's price seems high. Let me guess: next month he'll post that he bought another billion dollars worth of Bitcoin?
Why do so many people care about the opinion of a billionaire, who has different or even opposing interests than the general public?

People, in the vast majority, are sheep and can only zig when others zig.

Can't stress this enough. I often think why is it so, and then I remember it's recursive and they're still sheep

[ivomm]

May be this is some pathetic bear trying to scare the n00bs. With daily low at $44846 it is only 23% from the last ath. Way too far from the last (and only) 30% dump in 21 Jan for 11 months. A dump for ants for sure.  

[rolling]

necessarily small.

Please show your working. Also please explain how "necessarily small" has been updated to include up to 4MB of segwit data (while only apparently managing 0.3).

This dead horse needs to be left alone.

People with weak arguments tend not to want to have to justify them.

I said that fees were artificially high and I've justified my position. I'm happy to leave it there if others are.

Are you seriously coming back to this thread after all this time to start this shit again. Fork off!

[Richy_T]

so lets say miners are the gate keepers. if your fee meets their criteria you are in. if not, increase fee to try again or go home.

 

No, there is no well defined criteria, only a bidding war which drives the cost up in unhealthy ways.

[Torque]

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/23/bitcoin-btc-price-falls-below-50000-as-janet-yellen-raises-alarm.html

"“It’s a virtual forest fire,” said Glen Goodman, a U.K.-based trade. “The wood was bone-dry and waiting for a spark. Elon Musk was that spark.”

“Crypto futures traders were borrowing so much money to buy Bitcoin contracts, they caused borrowing rates to skyrocket,” Goodman added. “By Saturday 20th Feb, they were paying 144% per annum. Clearly that situation couldn’t continue. In those conditions, prices have to fall to shake out the over-optimistic borrowers and return borrowing rates to normal levels.”

Bitcoin has been getting traction from mainstream investors, in part because of the perception that it’s a store of value similar to gold. Bullish investors claim the cryptocurrency can act as a hedge against rising inflation.

But skeptics warn that bitcoin has no intrinsic value and is one of the biggest market bubbles in history. Analysts at JPMorgan last week said bitcoin was an “economic side show” and that crypto assets rank as the “poorest hedge” against significant declines in stocks."

Laughable how they always end every Bitcoin article with the negative thought.

[Paashaas]

Even Dutch media mention Elon Musk's tweet" that Bitcoin's price seems high. Let me guess: next month he'll post that he bought another billion dollars worth of Bitcoin?
Why do so many people care about the opinion of a billionaire, who has different or even opposing interests than the general public?

People, in the vast majority, are sheep and can only zig when others zig.

Can't stress this enough. I often think why is it so, and then I remember it's recursive and they're still sheep

Comment section is quite positive on Bitcoin, much better than 1 a 2 cycles ago so the general narrative has improved.

[vapourminer]

so lets say miners are the gate keepers. if your fee meets their criteria you are in. if not, increase fee to try again or go home.

No, there is no well defined criteria, only a bidding war which drives the cost up in unhealthy ways.

then we more or less agree as the criteria changes constantly. but well defined or not you still need to meet it, and currently that criteria is mainly highest fees get priority. im fine with this.

but once institutional players come in big time and start sloshing institutional sized millions of dollars per tx all day long they wont care about the fee as its just a business expense. thus the fees will become institutional sized too. imo of course.

[Richy_T]

Are you seriously coming back to this thread after all this time to start this shit again. Fork off!

Checks for admin or mod flair. Observes none. Disregards gatekeeping attempt.

Some people get really uncomfortable hearing views which don't agree with their own. It's the curse of this age.

[Torque]

Are you seriously coming back to this thread after all this time to start this shit again. Fork off!

Checks for admin or mod flair. Observes none. Disregards gatekeeping attempt.

Some people get really uncomfortable hearing views which don't agree with their own. It's the curse of this age.

I got a better idea, Richy. Why don't you leave the block size issue up to the Bitcoin core developers to decide what/when/how to do about it?

Ok? Instead of coming back here just to kick an old hornet's nest with the WO peeps?

It's not like *we* have any control over it anyway. There's no point in even debating it here.

[aesma]

I've seen a 8 series coupe yesterday. Good looking, but still a grandpa's car.

[rolling]

Are you seriously coming back to this thread after all this time to start this shit again. Fork off!

Checks for admin or mod flair. Observes none. Disregards gatekeeping attempt.

Some people get really uncomfortable hearing views which don't agree with their own. It's the curse of this age.

Not sure what any of that means but these things have been discussed thousands of times already on here, but you already knew that. I'm not going to dredge up old arguments to satisfy your sadistic obsession with the topic.

[Slot Kid]

Quite a significant dip but we bounced back quite well. It’d be extremely bullish if we could end the day above $50,000. Next leg up to $75,000 by the end of March.
Watch this space.

#stronghands

[d_eddie]

I think I need more coffee.

May I have some too, please?

Let's say I have 1 million dollars and 20 BTC (I haven't). I don't want to spend my dollars do buy more BTC for reasons.

Is there a way, playing with futures, that I can get more dollars, more BTC, or more dollars, same BTC, or more BTC, same dollars, in the end ?

Not that I know.*

The system outlined in the previous posts by somac., Biodom and others has only two outcomes: (a) more dollars, less (or equal) btc; (b) same dollars, more btc. In both cases, the total dollar value at the moment of the outcome is more than the value at the start.


* (As if I would tell you if I knew! All bitcoinz belongz to me!)

[JimboToronto]

Good morning Bitcoinland.

Another day another dip, but not quite as deep as yesterday... currently $48730USD/$61463CAD (Bitcoinaverage).

Wish I could buy this dip but I'm in sell mode. I need $2mCAD cash by May to finish paying for my lake (no mortgages for me!) so I need to sell a coin a day, which is what my OTC contact can comfortably handle.

Luckily the price is still higher than it was last week when I started selling for the purchase deposit.

Go Bitcoin go.

I blame bitcoin twitter.

They jinxed it with laser eyes.

Of course the Twitter Eyes cultists are mostly to blame but to be honest, we were due for a little correction anyway.  
_____

@xhomerx10:

Would it be too much to ask for a hat alteration?

I was thinking of Mr. Natural blowing a green laser fart cloud out his butt.

Affirmative action... we need to steer the price back up toward $350k.