Real supply rally or short liquidity hunt?
My two cents:
Volume is turning green, but doesn't increase relatively to the past of this bear market phase (i'd say starting on October 26th EDIT:2025).
Which is showing similarities to the days before the drop after the (double) top in 2025.
I still give the probability that we had a cycle bottom yet no more than 0.2
Busy doing shitty stuff, lately.
EDIT2: Spot seems to come back slowly, though. Oh, and did i forget to say "Fuck Derivatives"?
OOM - Don't you want Bitcoin to act more like gold? BTC derivatives (futures, options, ETFs) are designed to make Bitcoin act more like gold by increasing institutional access, enhancing liquidity, and potentially dampening extreme volatility.
Currently Bitcoin is acting more like a high-risk tech stock, diverging from gold's typical safe-haven role.
Are you able to form the argument for the side you disagree with?
There's a concept called
theory of mind. It is the very helpful ability to understand a different frame of thought than the one that you think or even believe in.
As, I think, has been laid out here many times before by various members of this thread. Many of us believe that the gold market has been fully captured because of a combination of custody and derivative assets which create synthetic gold which artificially lowers the price of gold. Derivative assets give an enormous lever to the institutional big players to manipulate the price of an asset or commodity. There are many good arguments for doing this aside from being able to game the asset if you have power. The most often used argument is smoothing out volatility This is me using theory of mind for what you believe because I don't think it is good for paper Bitcoin to exist. I think it is a net negative. But I know how to make your arguments.
But, hypothetical Bitcoin synthetically challenges Bitcoin's hard asset cap. If you can virtually sell the same Bitcoin five times you have now changed it's properties in the domain where the hypothetical assets exist. Now suddenly we have a virtual cap of 105 million bitcoins instead of 21 million.
The majority of people in this thread do not want to see Bitcoin captured by institutions, even if that does mean our paper gains may be puffed up by it. And the reason is we see the damage and control done to free financial markets by the institutions.
I was thinking of linking an article here, but there's plenty of writings by all kinds of people from wild-eyed, gold bugs to serious analysts who can see that the gold market was captured and controlled by a small number of players. You can find that if you're interested.
Are you familiar with Charlie Munger's famous quote concerning Bitcoin? I believe it was the same time he referred to it as rat poison. But the part I'm talking about is something along the lines of he didn't think it would be a success, but if it was they would "tame" it.
What you are arguing for is how they want to attempt to tame it. But that's the thing. You're not even really arguing for it. You're just saying: "don't you want Bitcoin to be more like gold?"
And the answer from those of us here in the context of this question is resounding, no, we don't.
But here's the kicker. Bitcoin wins this in the end. It's just a matter of how long it takes to get there. The reason it wins is it is designed to be permissionless. So as long as you can take custody of it easily, you can beat the system.
This thinking requires going more levels than just, "if institutions get involved then the price goes up." That's single-level thinking. The magic is in the second and third order effects, which is where Bitcoin wins, but also where Charlie Munger thought they might be able to break it.
He was wrong. I imagine he knows that now. If they get the Internet where he is
I hope he gets to see its success.
@cAPSLOCK - I understand what you're saying, but I do not believe Bitcoin derivatives would be all bad, all the time. I encourage you to open your mind to consider the argument in favor of derivatives...
While the creation of "Paper Bitcoin" can feel like a betrayal of Bitcoin's scarcity, derivatives aren't inherently "bad." In a mature financial system, they serve as the plumbing that allows big players (miners, institutions, and ETFs) to operate.
Think of it like this: Bitcoin on-chain is the gold bar; Bitcoin derivatives are the armored trucks and insurance policies. You need the bar for value, but you need the trucks to move the economy.
The "Good" Side of Derivatives - Despite the risks of synthetic supply, derivatives provide several critical benefits to the Bitcoin ecosystem:
Risk Management for Miners: Bitcoin miners have massive electricity bills paid in fiat. They use futures to "lock in" a price for the Bitcoin they haven't mined yet. This ensures they don't go bankrupt if the price crashes, keeping the network's security (hashrate) stable.
Reduced Volatility: By allowing traders to "short" (bet against) the price, derivatives prevent "bubbles" from getting too out of control. They act as a counterweight to irrational exuberance, leading to smoother price discovery over the long term.
Institutional "On-Ramp": Many large funds are legally forbidden from holding "physical" Bitcoin because of custody regulations. Cash-settled derivatives allow them to gain exposure to Bitcoin’s price without needing a digital wallet, bringing billions of dollars of liquidity into the space.
Yield Generation: Investors can use "covered calls" (an options strategy) to earn interest on their Bitcoin holdings. This makes Bitcoin a productive asset rather than just one that sits idle in a vault.
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