These graphs clearly show that demand far exceeds supply. Over 400,000 bitcoins have been withdrawn in the last 6 months, which is 15%. In 1 month over 100,000, with 40,000 withdrawn from Kraken alone yesterday. In 4 months, Kraken's reserves are down by nearly 40%. Mathematically, what is happening now is impossible - bitcoins are running out and the price is going down. This proves only one thing - that there is invisible manipulation. Nothing new, it was the same in 2020 when bitmex played against their customers. One day their bosses were arrested. The next day those nasty barts stopped, if you recall. It's the same now, I'm just not sure exactly which exchange is the cancer. It's clear that they are selling off non-existent bitcoins somewhere. The problem is that traders are influenced by the price of derivatives, even when they don't have the backing of owning bitcoins. So the culprit is most probably between bitmex, binance and bitfinex, and perhaps all of them. But I know from experience that somehow this problem will get resolved. At the very least, soon the bitcoins on kraken will dry up. Then coinbase, etc., and at some point the derivatives crooks will get screwed up badly by not being able to drive down the price with their paper bitcoins. And then there will be no one to stop the bull run.
(Click on the images for enlargement.)
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P.S. There are some rumours that FTX will repay $16 billion cash to their customers. Whether it will be in USD or USD Tether, it remains to be seen. When exactly it will happen is not certain, although Q4 is still possible. One can only speculate how much will be invested in Bitcoin, and will it affect the price significantly.
I think that your point about bitcoin being withdrawn from exchanges and the BTC price still going down (or failing to go up) is a valid point. I think that your blaming Bitmex for the 2020 manipulation is looney, and I also think that your overall blanketly blaming exchanges is a bit looney.
I do understand that there are likely ways that BIGGER players can buy OTC (or even buy from themselves) while selling on exchanges, so that would push down the BTC price, yet they still have to get the coins on the exchanges, so the exchanges might be complicit in the way they might see coins coming on exchanges... yet I am not sure about the extent to which coins might not be real in terms of how risky it might be for any of the third parties to NOT have coins that they claim to have... so I find it problematic to be attempting to overly speculate regarding how manipulation might be taking place with fake coins if that is what is happening, and surely risky if the price moves against the manipulators and they are not able to keep the price within bounds while the are engaged in such supposed manipulation.
It would be a bit amazing if FTX customers were to be reimbursed in USDT rather than USD.. Kind of a bit of a "horey sssshhhheeeeiiittt" moment.
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Do I get that right, you plan to spend
BTC for something just for the sake of spending
BTC and plan to later buy it back?
Can't follow this line of thought to be honest. Spending
BTC is not fun, it's always painful as you sold always too early. Buying
BTC is the fun part.
Again (mis-)quoting JimboToronto with: "Buy if you can, sell if you have to."
I agree that even selling and buying relatively small amounts of BTC can be painful, especially the earlier you are in your accumulation phase. .and once you accumulate more (perhaps bordering upon over accumulation then the sell and replace likely becomes a bit less painful.
Personally, I do consider that it is good to support businesses that accept bitcoin too when possible (since it does not even seem that common), and also sometimes attempting to engage in various kinds of direct interactions with bitcoiners and transactions with bitcoiners when possible, too. It can get a bit complicated to learn how to use various kinds of bitcoin wallets or even to keep track or maintain some bitcoin wallets, so to have some regular bitcoin wallet and maybe even some lightning network wallet, and some of them are self-custody and others are using third parties, so surely there should be some preference to try to interact directly without going through a third party to practice doing those kinds of things and maybe even to encourage others to transact in those kinds of direct ways...... including figuring out ways to secure your funds and also attempt to be private too... so maybe keeping only a few hundred dollars in various kinds of hot wallets, yet it can still become complicated to do those things too... and to practice.
Not too long ago, I recall having an issue with one of my phones, which largely meant that I had to recover some wallets that were connected with the phone, and yeah, it was not pleasant to do the extra work, yet there still can be some value in terms of knowing how to do some of those kinds of things and attempting to interact with our bitcoin infrastructure.. including that sometimes talking with people about bitcoin, which also might not always be good for personal OpSec, yet at the same time, how is the bitcoin infrastructure continue to grow if it becomes harder and harder to find anyone to interact directly? In recent times, I went to a wedding of a bit of a distant relative, and I thought I was not going to know very many people there, and there were several people who ended up mentioning to me that they knew me as the bitcoin guy, and I had not even hardly interacted with them, and surely a couple of them had heard things through my dad... so that is a bit of difficulties when some people talk and say things, and then we don't even realize how far the topic travels.. and also wondering why they even remembered that my dad said something, and you know parents can sometimes want to brag about their kids, even though they might not seem to be paying any attention or even very knowledgeable about the topic, yet for some reason, they communicated to other folks that their kid is the bitcoin guy... Oh and I have an aunt with even a bigger mouth than my dad.. My dad might tend to not really say anything, but one of my aunts loves those kinds of topics and even exaggerates as if she even knows something about the topic.
I wished there were more options to transact and interact with bitcoin, especially when I am traveling... but there sometimes might be needs to interact locally with people and to be using bitcoin or trying to use bitcoin in order to have infrastructure available for travelers who might pass through from time to time. It seems that during covid, part of the objectives of the "powers that be" was to create situations that we do not want to interact with each other and we do not even want to use cash because we are afraid of the germs that might be traveling with it.. which also seems like bullshit after reflecting on these matters.. ETF purchasers are not buying bitcoin directly, yet hopefully the buying of the ETFs helps to introduce them to the idea of the potential of holding bitcoin directly and even transacting in bitcoin.