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

[jojo69]

After FTX Implosion, It's Time To End Bitcoin's Dysfunctional Relationship With Crypto

But what if one side doesn’t have your best interests at heart? What if they are dishonest? What if there becomes a pattern of disrespect? What if they ignore your needs? Sure, you can hope for change, but you still feel drained, stressed, anxious, or depressed. Eventually, you want out. Your need for a positive, healthy relationship overwhelms the comfort of the known, current relationship. The first step is admitting there’s a problem. Acknowledging signs of a toxic relationship are necessary.

!

[1714516414]

1714516414

[HI-TEC99]

After FTX Implosion, It's Time To End Bitcoin's Dysfunctional Relationship With Crypto

But what if one side doesn’t have your best interests at heart? What if they are dishonest? What if there becomes a pattern of disrespect? What if they ignore your needs? Sure, you can hope for change, but you still feel drained, stressed, anxious, or depressed. Eventually, you want out. Your need for a positive, healthy relationship overwhelms the comfort of the known, current relationship. The first step is admitting there’s a problem. Acknowledging signs of a toxic relationship are necessary.

!

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[Popkon6]

Which direction will Bitcoin take? SELL OR BUY

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[yudi09]

Only not the one I’m
With on holiday
Not in Bali not yet in Tulum… now see what Cancun brings
Just arrived…
But damn this is a hard nut to crack, I think uncrackable for me though  

In Bali there is a G20 meeting. The heads of state from several continents were gathering for discussion. In the many agendas discussed, the issue of the digital economy is also included in one of the agendas.

We can meet there @El duderino_ 

[In the silence]

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[shahzadafzal]

I think Nayib Bukele is among us and have been reading philipma1957 and JJG

He followed JJG and philipma1957's suggestion of DCA



https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1593113857261965312

[ThemePen]

Choose wisely bitcoin or big-melons...can't be both..

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[JayJuanGee]

There are those who suddenly became rich amid the recent crash of the FTX stock exchange. I read in the news that there are Hackers exploiting a now bankrupt exchange last week making a lot of money which propelled them to Ether whale status. This is very frustrating because hackers who have no compassion also take advantage of the difficult situation that the FTX exchange is currently in. Source: https://twitter.com/Cointelegraph/status/1592917963077722114

I doubt that very many people who have any kind of clue regarding the situation actually buys into the "hacker" story, so it seems a bit misleading to be putting out this kind of information/assessment of the situation without describing a more reasonable context in which there were a lot of FTX folks acting in criminal ways, and this is likely an additional part of their insider ploys...

Sure, the evidence is not in yet.. so it may take a while to figure out who various aspects in which it might later be figured out who did what or where the the more reasonable inferences lead us.

I love how, at the very bottom of every single downturn, the collective Bitcoin community has a pause and a moment of self-reflection where they wonder if Bitcoin is making any real-world progress at all. And if it is even worth it to still be investing in it...

...A sentiment only to be completely forgotten and smuggly snickered at a mere 12 months later.  

#thistooshallpass #buybtc

I don’t really trade BTC but it is amazing how your emotions try to coerce you to do the worst things possible. I do wonder what would happen if BNB crashed and Binance went bankrupt. What if Tesla sells, mtgox and the US gov crash the price back below $2K. What if Saylor gets liquidated and GBTC dissolves? This whole thing could melt down or it could boom. It’s still an experiment. Personally though, I think people are better off selling at multi year highs as opposed to multi year lows.

Which largely should mean that people, whether long term HODLers, bitcoin newbies or some variation between, should be thinking about ways to be buying BTC rather than thinking about ways to cause themselves to hesitate to buy or pondering over their fantasies to sell high. .when we are quite likely not even close to being in a selling period... we are either in a buy more period or a HODL period if you happen to have some bitcoin, but if you don't have shit for bitcoin, you have nothing to HODL, so you better get your ass buying, even if the BTC price might go down or sideways from here rather than UP.

He was dubbed to be "most generous billionaire" by Nas Daily, that video was posted on 26 Jan 2022.
Although the already updated the video title "(FRAUD) The Most Generous Billionaire" and promise to delete the video

https://twitter.com/nasdaily/status/1590021329084108800
This reminds me of Ruja Ignatova and her glamours marketing concerts  

Nas Daily clarifying his mistake
https://youtu.be/zgoLpOTUeCE

A bit of a dramatic presentation, and not very much substance there that goes beyond what is being said all over the place.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[Mpamaegbu]

Glad tidings, if you asked me. The crypto industry, of a truth, has come to stay.

https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1592508098648084482?t=_V3eT0EPlOFLSn0TTEYRvA&s=19

[JayJuanGee]

I tried logging into my Gemini account, and it is "temporarily grounded" at the moment...  Looks like it has been down for about an hour so far, so it is not anything to get overly worried about, yet...  Hopefully, Gemini has NOT overly gambled with their client's funds too.....even if they may well have lost a lot of funds that were in such "earn" product.  So many folks believe that they need to "earn yield" on their coins.. which seems to be a slippery slope into shenanigans.. even tough we likely know that there should also be legitimate ways to "earn" so long as the "earning" is actually put into some product that is actually something other than a ponzi scheme and has actual collateral backing it up.

On paper, Gemini Earn appears to be a relatively simplistic lending program:

Gemini Earn is a lending program through which you may choose to lend your crypto to certain institutional borrowers and earn interest on your crypto.

At least based on the APYs (for example BTC 2.5%), it's not screaming ponzi, but ultimately how it actually functions under the hood is a different story... This probably isn't the real issue right now though.

The real question will be whether Gemini itself can deal with the withdrawal demand that comes it's way, this is what I'd trust a lot less right now. Given Gemini considered Genesis "trustworthy" and "audited" when they filed a claim against 3AC for $1.2B for loan defaulting months ago, should have screamed red flags. The fact they had $175 million effectively lost in FTX becomes much less relevant given that since July it looks like they had a big hole in their balance sheet - at least that's how it looks at a glance. Gemini not considering this an issue to terminate their partnership with them shows real poor oversight. So while there's apparently going to be 5 day delay for the Earn-based withdrawals - which I can actually believe as you can't just liquidate institutional borrowers overnight, but otherwise the loans could well be collateralised  - the real question remains whether Gemini itself has the liquidity to deal with the bank run coming it's way. While everyone was looking at Kucoin and Crypto.com, it seems obvious now why Gemini could soon fall.

PS - Bare in mind FTX.US was also "completely unaffected" by FTX Int. going bankrupt, for about 24 hours at least 

I would think that Gemini would be a bit better at keeping the funding or their various products separate, even if they had that "Earn Product" that was likely having some funds held in ways that the funds were "earning" greater interest somewhere else in order that Gemini could pay the relatively modest rates of 2.5% APY on BTC in that program. 

I personally never used that product, even though I do have some funds on their exchange.

Chief Executive Officer Derar Islim admitted that withdrawal requests exceeded current liquidity at Genesis Global Capital, the lending arm; but made it clear that Genesis's spot and derivatives trading and custody businesses “remain fully operational.”

The contagion of Genesis lending issues has already hit one large firm, as Gemini Trust Co., the cryptocurrency platform run by the Winklevoss brothers, has halted withdrawals from its Earn program:

Nice word selection there.
Doesn't say anything about being solvent.

If you don't let customers make withdrawals you can't be insolvent.gif

Exchanges have tried those kinds of things historically, including their websites completely disappearing.. The BIGGER (and maybe well established in physical space) the harder it is for them to disappear like that.  hahahahaha

But they could have one person "supposedly" hold all the private keys to all the stash, go on an orphan saving trip to India and then end up dying.. which might be almost the same as disappearing from the web.

A LOT of people are getting hurt by this damn thing.  And almost none of them deserve it. certainly no one I know here...

I can think of a few.. but maybe I should not make a list?

How about eXPHorizon?  He surely deserves it, no?

or

How about Billy_No_Coiner?  He surely deserves it, no?

Ok...

no reason to get personal or into elaborate lists...   

I suppose.

Which direction will Bitcoin take? SELL OR BUY

Don't do anything.  Just wait it out.

This is professional financial advice. from a nonprofessional.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[hisslyness]

Hm?  You do not want to name the exchange?   Sometimes we should be naming the exchanges, and hopefully other folks do not end up NOT being able to withdraw.. even though you got yours out.

I imagine that you want to be able to have options, and personally, part of the reasojn that I keep some coins on exchanges is to have options... but yeah, at some point, maybe our options are going to dry up.. but we seem to be "no where close" to having any kind of Bitcoin circular economy yet, so part of my own reasons of having had ongoingly supported exchanges, has been to support that these kinds of services are available.. and of course, none of us want to be rug pulled in our own exchange(s).

I am hoping that the exodus of coins is inspiring various exchanges and third parties to strive towards becoming more responsible with customer funds and more responsive towards appreciating that customers are using their services rather than perhaps feeling like they have to go out of business.

Sorry for the late follow up...

I really didn't want to "name and shame" them. If i had felt there was something fishy going on, i would have no hesitation! Their intentions were great and all, just the speed of their communications was lacking. I have sent them a follow up email and suggestions to improve and they have taken it on board, lets hope support is there next time i need help!

But you are right about keeping options open, that was primarily the reason they were still on there! as much as i am HODL, i know some day i may want to take advantage of the demand and sit on the sell side of the wall! For now i am comfortable where i am.

The intention of the post was a reminder to have full control of your coins at all times! No matter how long they have been in business, how solid management is, all it takes is one major fuck up and your coins (actually their coins) are at risk.

And i don't mean just exchanges, old mining pools (I had almost 0.1BTC sitting there) and any other external custody.

The exodus of coins really does highlight the need for Exchanges to be more transparent with verification of their reserves (proven by signing with private keys etc...)

But what I am more excited with, is the idea that people are becoming more aware of self custody and taken control of their own Bitcoin! that is friggen awesome news!
 

[JayJuanGee]

I think Nayib Bukele is among us and have been reading philipma1957 and JJG

He followed JJG and philipma1957's suggestion of DCA


https://twitter.com/nayibbukele/status/1593113857261965312

I would consider that Bukele's approach to bitcoin is a quite a bit closer to my approach to BTC rather than Philip's approach, yet ultimately the three of us have different approaches to BTC both historically and also what we currently are doing, so it is doesn't seem very accurate to lump them all into one, as if we were all doing the same thing.

One of the main sticking point with Philip's approach is that he never really did accumulate bitcoin on an ongoing basis, even though he has been into bitcoin for 11.5 years.. so it does not even seem fair to lump him in the same group, even if he happens to be the oldest in terms of length of time that he has had as opportunities to accumulate bitcoin.  He also sold recently and is cheerleading for lower prices in order to attempt to get a better BTC buy price while at the same time putting quite a bit of faith in the dollar.. and getting dollar yield.. which seems to be somewhat in tension with a motivated bitcoin accumulating approach.

Bukele does seem like a somewhat newbie to bitcoin, yet if we are talking about his countries accumulation of bitcoin  (in comparison to his own personal bitcoin accumulation - which we do not really seem to have information about that), his country really has ONLY been announcing themselves to have been publicly accumulating bitcoin since sometime around the time of their June 2021 announcement that they would be getting into bitcoin and establishing bitcoin as legal tender in their country.  They made several BTC purchases between June 2021 and recently; however, they did seem to slow down in their BTC purchases since about May 2022, and ONLY announced one time purchasing some BTC at around $19.5k.. perhaps at around the same time that Philip was selling BTC at around that same price.  So El Salvador and Bukele proclaims to have had never sold any BTC from the ones that they were accumulating, though it is not really clear how they are funding some of their BTC related projects, yet apparently that is coming from other funds - not their BTC treasury accumulation funds.

There still can be some overlap with similarities, yet with me, I proclaim DCA to be a strategy that is good for beginners and good for anyone to get into while they are still trying to reach some comfortably high levels of allocation towards BTC, and I proclaim to have had largely met my BTC accumulation goals in late 2014 - even though I did continue to feel compelled to accumulate in 2015 and 2016 - and maybe on a personal level I have been feeling as if I am somewhat back into BTC accumulation since May or June 2022, but my BTC accumulation is likely more in line with buying on dips rather than being very close to DCA - especially since I am also adding some new funds into my BTC purchases rather than just using money that I had accumulated from selling as the BTC price went up.. and largely that money of selling as the BTC price went up ran out around $18k-ish.

I promote DCA as one of the best of newbie BTC accumulation strategies - but as someone reaches more and more BTC accumulation, then his/her options should become greater because his/her BTC stash has increased - and so El Salvador seems to still be working its way up to getting towards higher levels of BTC accumulation, and I assert that I had already largely gotten to adequate and over-accumulation beyond my targets after late 2014.  Philip seems to have had never gotten there, even though he sometimes talks a BIG game - and he even gives what seems to be opposite advice in regards to proper mindset when he refers to the 50 year old with 100 or more BTC as if that person should be in a desperate state to sell BTC, when the opposite seems to be true.. because in fact the 50 year old with 100 or more BTC seems to be having way more options because he has BTC versus someone who does not have much if any BTC and is just sitting on his hands and buying $50 of BTC a week, which seems to be something close to what Philip is doing - which does not seem to be the place that any 65 year old should be in who had been into bitcoin for 11.5 years and seems to be dabbling with baby level BTC buys and praying for sub $10k BTC prices that may well NOT end up happening.

So BTC accumulation party depends upon where you are at, and if you put yourself into a place where you do not have coins, I would suggest that your BTC accumulation should be way more assertive.. rather than waiting around for the BTC price to drop.. and I suppose, even if El Salvador got nervous because of BTC price drops since May 2022 (or they might have been forced by public pressure to be nervous and to lay off of their aggressive BTC buys), they are showing signs of getting back into a reasonable BTC accumulation level that would fit for someone that is in their somewhat early BTC accumulation stages including that their BTC is not in profits and continuing to buy BTC will bring down their current average price per BTC.

[dragonvslinux]

I tried logging into my Gemini account, and it is "temporarily grounded" at the moment...  Looks like it has been down for about an hour so far, so it is not anything to get overly worried about, yet...  Hopefully, Gemini has NOT overly gambled with their client's funds too.....even if they may well have lost a lot of funds that were in such "earn" product.  So many folks believe that they need to "earn yield" on their coins.. which seems to be a slippery slope into shenanigans.. even tough we likely know that there should also be legitimate ways to "earn" so long as the "earning" is actually put into some product that is actually something other than a ponzi scheme and has actual collateral backing it up.

On paper, Gemini Earn appears to be a relatively simplistic lending program:

Gemini Earn is a lending program through which you may choose to lend your crypto to certain institutional borrowers and earn interest on your crypto.

At least based on the APYs (for example BTC 2.5%), it's not screaming ponzi, but ultimately how it actually functions under the hood is a different story... This probably isn't the real issue right now though.

The real question will be whether Gemini itself can deal with the withdrawal demand that comes it's way, this is what I'd trust a lot less right now. Given Gemini considered Genesis "trustworthy" and "audited" when they filed a claim against 3AC for $1.2B for loan defaulting months ago, should have screamed red flags. The fact they had $175 million effectively lost in FTX becomes much less relevant given that since July it looks like they had a big hole in their balance sheet - at least that's how it looks at a glance. Gemini not considering this an issue to terminate their partnership with them shows real poor oversight. So while there's apparently going to be 5 day delay for the Earn-based withdrawals - which I can actually believe as you can't just liquidate institutional borrowers overnight, but otherwise the loans could well be collateralised  - the real question remains whether Gemini itself has the liquidity to deal with the bank run coming it's way. While everyone was looking at Kucoin and Crypto.com, it seems obvious now why Gemini could soon fall.

PS - Bare in mind FTX.US was also "completely unaffected" by FTX Int. going bankrupt, for about 24 hours at least  

I would think that Gemini would be a bit better at keeping the funding or their various products separate, even if they had that "Earn Product" that was likely having some funds held in ways that the funds were "earning" greater interest somewhere else in order that Gemini could pay the relatively modest rates of 2.5% APY on BTC in that program.  

I personally never used that product, even though I do have some funds on their exchange.

Think you're probably right. The "Earn Product" was/is definitely separate, as it's managed by Genesis which appear to have f'd up, whereas Gemini otherwise claim all funds are backed 1:1. So far their 188K balance has only dropped to 165K after news broke, so unlike FTX seems like traders still have faith with this exchange. Baring in mind it was technically Genesis providing the 2.5% APY, via Gemini, rather than Gemini itself.

Still think it's not a time to be holding any "unnecessary" capital (inactive) on exchanges right now though, just as a precautionary measure.