nrd525 Market Tracker

[figmentofmyass]

And the China ban is back on =)  Or they probably want to do some blockchain stuff while staying away for speculation and ICOs.
https://www.coindesk.com/china-is-poised-for-another-crypto-trading-crackdown-as-speculation-returns

that's not surprising tbh. people kept painting the president's comments about "blockchain" as a huge about-face on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and free markets. i am/was extremely skeptical about that. if anything, china is becoming increasingly anti-market and the government is actively cracking down on existing crypto markets. 

you can tell because major chinese companies are jumping in line---weibo banning posts about "blockchain" or "crypto trading" and alipay blocking bitcoin/crypto transactions. if the government were about to become bitcoin friendly, this shit wouldn't be happening.

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[nrd525]

SP500 continues to set new records.  Meanwhile bitcoins are dumping (6800 low, currently 7100).  Guess who is bearish? Me!

Feeling bad about all those bitcoins I bought from $8000 to $11,000.


In weird US political news, I'm obsessed with PredictIt.org (and if you are a alt-righter who doesn't believe in polling and has too much money - please join today!) and Bloomberg is at a 11% chance of getting the Democratic nomination while polling at 1%-2%, Clinton (who hasn't declared) is at 6%, and Yang is at 6% (polling around 3%).

Of course if you want more money, you could try betting against these people. And notably betting against Clinton running. People are giving Clinton a 15%+ chance of running. I think it is closer to 1%.  (Unfortunately you can only bet $850 on this, so I've maxxed No).   I'm up around $350 of "free money" by betting No on every single candidate for the Democratic presidental nomination.  They kept on adding candidates and I kept on betting No until I got my initial investment returned ($850) and now an extra $350.

PredictIt has some very strange things happening due to the $850 bet limit on each market and the 5% withdrawal fee.  There is long shot bias as the people who take a 10 cent bet have 9 times the leverage of people taking the other side with 90 cents.  And there is sometimes a good return on bets that will take a long time to expire (say a 10%+ APR) due to the 5% withdrawal fee reducing liquidity.

So far PredictIt is a lot more successful than Augur. It'll be interesting if Augur ever matches it.  PredictIt is currently the best political gambling website in the world (outside of betting on UK politics). Betfair has only a fraction of the liquidity and markets, especially for non-UK politics.

[nrd525]

For the IRS/US, it looks like wash sales are still allowed in bitcoin (and other digital currencies).  So you can sell your bitcoins, get the capital loss, and rebuy the same day or even hour (or even next minute - though I'd suggest maybe waiting at least 1 minute).

I've read some concern that they'd change this rule. But would they do it retroactively?

I'm planning on using my unrealized capital losses to wipe out my short term capital gains (and maybe also some of my long term gains).

[nrd525]

What is the best exchange for US residents (small traders) with lower fees and a decent reputation?  I'm looking at Coinbase Pro and they increased their maker and taker fees to 0.5% (so a total of 1%).

Gemini's ActiveTrader program looks like it is 0.8% (what is an "auction fee"?).  Kraken looks the best at 0.42% total -- 0.16% Maker and 0.26% Taker.

The exchanges are presumably making super-profits, so why competition doesn't work at driving down fees to reasonable amounts is another case of the failures of capitalism.  

[nrd525]

Fun 3 part BBC reality series on trading.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXno18pOHgo

[exstasie]

What is the best exchange for US residents (small traders) with lower fees and a decent reputation?  I'm looking at Coinbase Pro and they increased their maker and taker fees to 0.5% (so a total of 1%).

Gemini's ActiveTrader program looks like it is 0.8% (what is an "auction fee"?).  Kraken looks the best at 0.42% total -- 0.16% Maker and 0.26% Taker.

Binance.us has the best fees I've found: 0.1%, no maker/taker distinction. The problem is that liquidity is still pretty bad. https://www.binance.us/en/fee/schedule

Auctions on Gemini are different from regular maker/taker exchanges. Gemini's ActiveTrader fees are just 0.35% taker and 0.25% maker, so definitely cheaper than Coinbase Pro.

I've been mulling over trying out Kraken for years. Now that Coinbase jacked their fees up, it's looking more and more likely that I'll try them out. Liquidity doesn't look half bad. It seems like the obvious choice over Gemini.

[nrd525]

Learned that Blockfi has a withdrawal fee of 0.0025 BTC, after your first monthly free withdrawal.  They say it comes from the custodial service. Also withdrawals might take a day or so.  This is unfortunate as I like to break up transactions to reduce my risk.

Celsius Networks says automatic withdrawals without fees.  Their weird token just went from 3.5 cents to 13 cents (peak) and then back to 8 cents in the past two weeks, perhaps after the CEO did a livestream (Ask Me Anything).  Hmm.

[nrd525]

Hex Coin is very similar to a security, and with no use case it is likely to end up scamming people.

[nrd525]

Lists some of the places where you can lend USD and crypto.
https://loanscan.io

[figmentofmyass]

Hex Coin is very similar to a security, and with no use case it is likely to end up scamming people.

it's another bitconnect or plustoken, just more elaborately disguised. this is a pretty good deep dive into how it works. the tl;dr is that the whole system is designed to accrue massive wealth to richard heart. it's more insidious than a traditional ponzi (which would collapse anyway) because he is constantly extracting money from the pot.

[nrd525]

I was watching a couple Hex coin is a scam videos.  1) They shouldn't let Richard Heart speak.  He is a great obfuscator.  2) They lose power by getting too detailed.

The only thing you need to know about Hex Coin is
1) There is no use case for it.

If you want more detail
1) No use case. Hex will be worth near zero.
2) An ethereum address, probably controlled by Richard, has special privileges and gets the ETH in exchange for "minting" Hex.
3) (optional) Challenge Richard to an escrowed side bet on the price of Hex (assuming you can find a non-manipulated exchange with decent liquidity)

The rest of the discussion is mostly noise.  It probably doesn't matter whether it is a security for most users. And it can take years to prosecute people.

...

Bitcoin search trend is looking bad. Worldwide for December we might tie the all-time low since April 2017 (BTC around $1000).
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Bitcoin

Obviously we're a long way to $1000, but if we get a great combination of recession, stock bear market, and a big bust on the halvening (and maybe Democrats winning 2020 presidency - though that shouldn't have too much of an impact even if longshot Sanders wins)...  I'm still thinking we'll bounce at approximately 4.5k as I think we'll establish a new support level above 3k.

[figmentofmyass]

Bitcoin search trend is looking bad. Worldwide for December we might tie the all-time low since April 2017 (BTC around $1000).
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Bitcoin

let's get some perspective on that. bitcoin broke the 2013 ATH in may 2017 and that's when searches for "bitcoin" also reached a new ATH. search trends lag behind price so it's possible the same thing will happen next time around.

Obviously we're a long way to $1000, but if we get a great combination of recession, stock bear market, and a big bust on the halvening

i'll believe it when i see it. stocks are at the ATH, an imminent recession is becoming less likely, and the bitcoin market is 2 for 2 in terms of halvening pumps.

[nrd525]

Search trend doesn't lag price. So much as there is a special dynamic when bitcoin hits its ATH where the trend can go in excess of where it will be when it hits that price a second time in a bear market or in a bull market.  For instance, this past 12 months the search trend peaked at the ATH.

But the comparison point for the search trend now is the two year bear market of 2014-2015 where the search trend was around 3. So we're at approximately 11 (December isn't in yet).  This doesn't warrant the price difference of $7000 vs $350.  Even if the network effect is x^2 - we should only be at around: 11/3 = 3.66^2 = 13.4.  13.4*350=4700 

Hoping for a bump to $8k so I can sell. Though not sure if I will.

6.9k now.  US stock market hit another high.
       

[nrd525]

The role of plus token.
https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/plustoken-scam-bitcoin-price

In June/July 2015, LTC pumped from $1.30 to $9 at the same time there was a chinese LTC ponzi.  It then fell, but achieved a higher floor ($2.50 approx).

[figmentofmyass]

Search trend doesn't lag price. So much as there is a special dynamic when bitcoin hits its ATH where the trend can go in excess of where it will be when it hits that price a second time in a bear market or in a bull market.  For instance, this past 12 months the search trend peaked at the ATH.

no it didn't. the ATH was 100 in december 2017. during the past 12 months, the highest it reached was 20 in june.

after every long term high, search trends follow price down. it's definitely a lagging indicator.

But the comparison point for the search trend now is the two year bear market of 2014-2015 where the search trend was around 3. So we're at approximately 11 (December isn't in yet).  This doesn't warrant the price difference of $7000 vs $350.  Even if the network effect is x^2 - we should only be at around: 11/3 = 3.66^2 = 13.4.  13.4*350=4700

google trends is just an oscillator. it oscillates between 0 and 100 based on relative data. any point between 0-100 is not indicative of price. there is no such relationship.

[nrd525]

"For instance, this past 12 months the search trend peaked at the ATH."
(clarification: I meant the high for those 12 months, eg. 13.8k)

Search trends are correlated with demand.  There isn't a perfect correlation because search trends can be bad (Ex. Is bitcoin a scam?   What did Biden do in Ukraine?). 

I used search trends as one of many variables for my 2016 Democratic Primary model which ended up better than the 538 model after several iterations (though not as good as the Decision Desk HQ model). Search trends matter and I made money betting on them on PredictIt.

Notably search trends are saying that this move to 13.8k wasn't based on demand. The fact that we peaked at 20 (search trend) at 13.8k vs 100 at the 2017 high is very compelling.  After we came out of the 3k bottom, I started selling bitcoins at 5700-5900 (1.7 btc), and then sold a bit more at 8100-8300 (0.6 btc) -- because I was skeptical about the move.  Of course then I decided to buy back in at 9k (0.8 btc) in case we were back in a bull market, and decided to fomo at 11k (0.5 btc).

...

There might be a ponzi cycle.  Bitconnect was associated with the 2017 high, and PlusToken with the 2019 one.  Previously we had Bitcoin Savings and Trust which died in August 2012 and wasn't associated with a strong bull market.  It's quite possible that there will be another major ponzi every couple years.  We need more research into whether they are caused by bull markets or help cause the bull markets.

[figmentofmyass]

Notably search trends are saying that this move to 13.8k wasn't based on demand. The fact that we peaked at 20 (search trend) at 13.8k vs 100 at the 2017 high is very compelling.

the disparity suggests to me that the run to $13.8k was just a warm up. it took very little mainstream interest and awareness to reach that price. it wasn't the climax of a bubble, just the start of a new bull market. compare google trends for the june 2016 rally to december 2013---it's much lower, but it was the early stages of a bull market and we ended up going to a new ATH. the same thing could be occurring now.

it's in the later stages of the next bubble---when CNBC, forbes, and other mainstream media are hyping crypto everyday and mom and pops are buying in---where we would expect to reach 100 again.

[nrd525]

Sold 1 btc at 7140 (before the run-up to 7440).  (Edit: And then it went up to 7680, but fell back to 7200).

[nrd525]

In the 1 month to 6 months time frame, I've got no idea what will happen.

But at some point in the next 3 months to 2 years, I'm expecting a bottom caused by a lack of interest and a global economic slowdown that will include a recession in a lot of the industrialized countries where bitcoin demand is greatest.  We've never seen how bitcoin will act in an economic slowdown, and my guess is it will be bad.  A lot of speculators will have to learn about how people reduce risk by moving money into secure investments like US treasuries or cash. This will come as a surprise to the libertarians who believe that bitcoin is an alternative to governments and banks.

It's possible that the libertarians will reduce the depth of the bear market, but I expect them to be overwhelmed by smart money.

If Bitcoin fails to provide safety during a global slowdown, it will reduce its longterm value.

Sold 1 BTC for 7249
(have about 4 btc left)

[exstasie]

In the 1 month to 6 months time frame, I've got no idea what will happen.

No opinion on the upcoming halving next May? The August 2012 rally (in the old days we called it a "bubble") happened shortly before a halving. Same with the rally ending July 2016, where price roughly doubled over a couple months.

The bearish trend over the last 6 months suggests the market hasn't begun pricing the halving in yet. That gives me a bullish outlook for Q1 next year.

But at some point in the next 3 months to 2 years, I'm expecting a bottom caused by a lack of interest and a global economic slowdown that will include a recession in a lot of the industrialized countries where bitcoin demand is greatest.

Perhaps 2 years out, yes. The stock market is extremely bullish right now though, which is good for BTC. Bitcoin and stocks have both been in a strong uptrend for the last 10 years.