nrd525 Market Tracker

[nrd525]

Another 2% BFX token redemption.  If they reimburse 1.5%/month and the tokens are 55 cents that is a decent return rate (around 13.5% APR). It's kind of like compound interest working in the wrong direction.

(1-0.015)^12 = 0.834

So if you buy tokens at 55 cents, if they reimburse 1.5%/month, you'll have 83.4% left at the end of the year.  So they will have reimbursed 16.6% of the tokens.  This will give you a return of (45 cents * 0.166) /  55 cents = 13.5%

On the other hand if the percent of token reimbursement increases each month (which makes sense as they should be able to redeem the same absolute number of tokens) you would have more like a 18% redemption - and get a return of (45 cents * 0.18) / 55 cents = 14.7%

On a more optimist view, they might do 2%/month - for a return of (45 cents * 0.24)/55 cents = 19.6%

By contrast if you lend USD swap at 0.07% for 350 days, you'll make around 23.1% (after fees). Of course the swap rate could plummet to 0.02-0.03%/day for months and you could get as low as 8-10% return.

Both returns are probably heavily correlated. If BTC goes into a bear market, both USD swap rates and Bitfinex's ability to reimburse BFX tokens will fall.

[nrd525]

BFX tokens at 67 cents (and a ATH of 69 cents). Any news?  The 2.0% reimbursement was 8 days ago.  I should have held.

It's a low volume market, so the move could always be random.

[nrd525]

BFX tokens at 75 cents wow.  Also RRT at 14 cents.  Looks like some people think they'll get the coins back.  BTC at $950.  Could be in for some political instability in the US as Trump already starts off his presidency with one of the lowest approval ratings in recent times.

[nrd525]

BTC at 1010.  Flirting with new highs. I'm suspicious that this could be a "false breakout" and that we're headed lower.  Of course the news that the UAE isn't banning bitcoin is very bullish (kidding).

[RoadTrain]

Oh, Bitfinex redeemed another 4.6% of tokens. Looks good. Maybe that's the reason BFX is $0.8 already. The more they redeem, the closer we get to parity as risks decrease.

"There are now 28,784,623 BFX tokens outstanding."

[nrd525]

Apparently the BFX token reimbursement was easy to predict (someone on Reddit got it within 0.25%) based on trading volume.   I think there is something else going on.

We're at a BTC price crossroads.  If we stay at over 1000 for an extended period of time (say 4+ weeks) it is very bullish.  We could be entering another bull market (and potentially a crazy one that goes up 100% or more), or if we fail to do this we could have an extended bear market (even 1-2 years).  Of course this is all sentiment based.  The fundamentals seem decent - though not stellar. 

[nrd525]

Part of the BFX token increase could be caused by the policy change where they started making people with short positions pay for the token reimbursements and those with long positions getting them.  This was an overdue change that makes a lot of sense to me. It also dramatically increases the cost of shorting.

[nrd525]

The interesting thing about this price recovery/possible return to bull market is the lack of over the top fervor.  Notably the China premium is near zero.  And currently OkCoin futures are actually below Bitstamp and Bitfinex! 

There is also a lack of demand for USD swap at Bitfinex (maybe partially because they started to charge you for a full day even if you just use it for a minute, but perhaps not - as would the 0.04% really make a difference?)

So this run-up looks a lot healthier than the past one.

[nrd525]

I'm reading the book Plutocrats - about the rise of the super rich.  I recommend it. 

It strongly reinforced my opinion that Bitcoin could be used by the super rich as a store of value (or some other purpose) and thus become extremely valuable.   (Of course it could also totally fail - the DAO is a great recent example of this).  So for the rest of us, who aren't in the top 0.1% or even top 1%, it makes some sense to invest in the bubble/moon dream.  Of course, only risk what you can afford to lose.  The book also noted that people who live in communities/countries with rapid economic growth are less happy than poor farmers.  So while Bitcoin could make you rich, it is also likely to make you unhappy. For instance, you might have 10 bitcoins and be envious of those with thousands.

At BFX USD swap rates are low (0.03%/day), but BTC swap rates are higher than norm (aka 0.05%/day).  Very paradoxical unless someone is borrowing the BTC to short alt-coins?

[nrd525]

Estimates of a Bitcoin ETF trading in 2017 - about 50%.  Though very low volume (0.4 BTC) and I'm not sure of if the time-weighing of bets might affect the odds:

https://bitbet.us/bet/1356/bitcoin-etf-has-trades-in-2017/

Also - 1130 at Bitfinex. Pretty crazy!  What will be interesting is if we break the USD record but are still 600-1000 Yuan from the Chinese record as the Chinese exchanges are lagging.

[nrd525]

So we're at the USD high (1170 on BFX, $5 short), but a good distance from the Yuan high.

Also, someone hacked Bitcoin!
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5vqd6k/sha1_collision_bounty_has_been_claimed/

Just kidding.  They appeared to have broken SHA1 in one case.  Bitcoin is based on SHA256 which is more secure by orders of magnitude.  Not sure how many orders of magnitude.

[nrd525]

Prediction contract for whether the COIN ETF will be approved is trading at approximately 50% on Bitmex.  Not sure if the volume is enough for this to be significant and it is also very hard to predict things like this.

https://www.bitmex.com/app/contract/COIN_BH17

Bitcoin semi-stable price at ATH in USD is very bullish.  Though short-term we might be setting ourselves up for the typical "buy the rumor, sell the news" meme - in which case even if the ETF is approved we might go down.

We had some very warm weather in the Northeast US when we broke the USD high a week ago. Up to 70 degrees.  We're having another round of 65 (today) and 72 (tomorrow).  Has anyone ever correlated "nice" weather will bullish market sentiment?  It seems especially likely to work in markets like Bitcoin (or to a lesser extent gold) where fundamentals are less important.

How important is the Cloudflare security leak? It seems like if it were more important, we'd be getting more notices to change passwords.  I saw Purse put out one, but even Bitfinex has not.
https://it.slashdot.org/story/17/02/24/0319243/cloudflare-leaks-sensitive-user-data-across-the-web#comments

[rjclarke2000]

7 billion people on the planet and they aren't all in America. You may be surprised that some people outside of America own bitcoin and the weather is different there.

Maybe I missed the point and you were messing about.

[nrd525]

US financial capital (and a lot of hedge fund people) are concentrated in the NYC area and northeast in general.  Probably only a tiny influence on the market, but it also only takes a couple hedge fund managers (or very rich people) to move the market. 

The US is currently leading the market, China is lagging.

The potential SEC approval of the ETF, also American, is a major cause in the uptrend (and far bigger than weather of course!).  The US stock market also continues to hit new highs.

As we approach the ETF deadline, it will be interesting to see if we spike up.  If we go up 10%+ in a single day, that is pretty unhealthy and likely to lead to a major drop.

While I haven't studied the role of weather and financial markets (other than the obvious connection to farmers), I do know that weather plays a role in social change - for instance rioting and large uprisings are both affected by it.

[nrd525]

5% BFX token redemption and price is now at 88 cents. I really missed the call on this one!  I guess they're getting better than expected fees, as even their prospectus (for issuing shares) had them taking 5-10 years to pay it back (at current income level).

[nrd525]

SEC turned down the ETF due to the inability to regulate bitcoin markets.  USD markets dropped 20-25%, but China only 10%.  Then USD markets recovered very well and we're at 1150 which is very good.  All sorts of shenanigans today!

[metony]

SEC turned down the ETF due to the inability to regulate bitcoin markets.  USD markets dropped 20-25%, but China only 10%.  Then USD markets recovered very well and we're at 1150 which is very good.  All sorts of shenanigans today!

may be some dump and pump occur next week.

China always strong to recover and never hype

[nrd525]

Umm China is #1 on hype in Bitcoin historically.  We've regularly seen a 10% premium for BTC in China.

[pitbully2000]

I'm reading the book Plutocrats - about the rise of the super rich.  I recommend it. 

It strongly reinforced my opinion that Bitcoin could be used by the super rich as a store of value (or some other purpose) and thus become extremely valuable.   (Of course it could also totally fail - the DAO is a great recent example of this).  So for the rest of us, who aren't in the top 0.1% or even top 1%, it makes some sense to invest in the bubble/moon dream.  Of course, only risk what you can afford to lose.  The book also noted that people who live in communities/countries with rapid economic growth are less happy than poor farmers.  So while Bitcoin could make you rich, it is also likely to make you unhappy. For instance, you might have 10 bitcoins and be envious of those with thousands.

At BFX USD swap rates are low (0.03%/day), but BTC swap rates are higher than norm (aka 0.05%/day).  Very paradoxical unless someone is borrowing the BTC to short alt-coins?

^^ And there we have it ^^
That was what I "bet on" back @ sub $100. Moving large amounts of money is expensive, always figured the true end game would be the big money using BTC to side step the ridiculous fees associated with moving said cash. Over time, I'm thinking more and more that it's simply not "easy" enough for the average Joe to purchase and use for daily spending (yet...we ARE getting closer). BUT, with that being said, I'm thinking that an infallible (for now as quantum theory is on its way to becoming a reality), transparent ledger is the real value. Imagine elections with no "oops, we miscounted". Maybe the mega-corps no longer being able to get away with that first embezzlement.
 Just my humble .02 

[nrd525]

Bitfinex USD swaps down to $23 million. This is from a recent, but not ath, high of $33 million during the ETF runup.  Lots of room for growth.

BTC swaps are pretty high at 24k (down a bit from recent high of 30k).  I wonder if miners are using Bitfinex to decrease volatility in their earnings?  Anyways, over the past year there is a big increase in BTC swaps. It used to be than USD swaps were typically 3-5 times larger.