nrd525 Market Tracker

[Samarkand]

...
I watched a recent Tone Vays video and he, who is normally very bullish, was saying that the mempool is now very low and that it might have been spammed all this time by big blockers (or others) - and thus the fundamental of how many people use bitcoin is vastly over-stated...

I share the same sentiment.

Have you read this article regarding the spam attacks?
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/curious-case-bitcoins-moby-dick-spam-and-miners-confirmed-it/

Aside from the spam attack the lack of genuine growth in daily transactions
could also be explained by the 2017 bull market. Who wants to buy a good
with BTC when Bitcoin´s value is increasing all the time.
People, who used to buy something with their BTC from time to time simply started
to hold their coins (or at least a higher percentage of their stash) due to the price increase.

[nrd525]

Michael of BoxMining (YouTube channel) makes an excellent point that there is a strong bias towards "survivors" aka  "winners" in the crypto markets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N01jgDx0sQ0

So you will see many people telling stories about losing some of their money to a scam, hack, alt-coin, bitcoin bear market, etc. However you are seeing a much smaller fraction of these than you are of the winner stories.  We might also be seeing a lot of stories of people who lost some money, but then more than made up for their losses on the latest bull market.

Would I be still posting if Bitcoin was at $200 and I'd lost thousands of dollars?  I doubt it.

It is totally possible that we have a bear market and most investors are deep in the negative, and then leave.

[nrd525]

...
I watched a recent Tone Vays video and he, who is normally very bullish, was saying that the mempool is now very low and that it might have been spammed all this time by big blockers (or others) - and thus the fundamental of how many people use bitcoin is vastly over-stated...

I share the same sentiment.

Have you read this article regarding the spam attacks?
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/curious-case-bitcoins-moby-dick-spam-and-miners-confirmed-it/

Great article!  Are the miners able to spam the blockchain and pay lower transaction fees by mining their own transactions?  Or at least they get some of the money back if they mine the block.  It still seems like it'd be a bit expensive to spam the block chain.  Maybe they were using transaction fees that were 1/10 or even less of the median fee.

[nrd525]

Bitfinex continues to go off the deep end into the world of new and ever so tempting financial (aka gambling) instruments with their new chain split tokens based on SegWit2X (BT2) and the original bitcoin (BT1).

BT1 is currently trading at 75% of BTC.  A very round number.  Volume is low.

So traders are predicting that the original bitcoin will win, and I believe that is the way to go - mostly because you don't want to annoy the bitcoin core developers (none of whom support 2X), it looks like we can give SegWit and the Lightning Network a chance to handle transactions (and there is evidence that the miners were maliciously spamming transactions).

But we're going to need to see some of the major players in the original NYA change their position pretty fast, otherwise we'll get 2x.  


This has odds too on whether the 2X chain will be the largest - and it is pretty high (56% to 69%).  Some kind of arbitrage might be possible with Fairlay and Bitfinex.
https://old.fairlay.com/market/will-a-block-larger-than-1mb-be-mined-before-january-1-2018/

[nrd525]

BTC new ATH of 5400.

 It's just so insane that I really don't know what to say.    It's especially high considering the upcoming November 13-14 (approximately) 2X hardfork.  The last hard fork might be setting us up to under-estimate the damage that it will cause - especially if there is no clear majority as to what side will win and if there is no replay protection.

[Samarkand]

... The last hard fork might be setting us up to under-estimate the damage that it will cause - especially if there is no clear majority as to what side will win and if there is no replay protection.

In my opinion it can´t be completely ruled out that the SegWit2x fork will be cancelled. If you take a look at
the recently mined blocks you can see that several mining pools don´t signal for SegWit2x (https://coin.dance/blocks):
-Slush Pool
-F2Pool
-Bitcoin Russia

Additionally, the pools controlled by or affiliated with Bitmain are kind of unpredictable in my opinion.

It is possible that additional supporters will drop out in the next weeks. If that would happen I can´t imagine
that they will go ahead with the fork when it is clear that support is not high enough.

[leowonderful]

BTC new ATH of 5400.

 It's just so insane that I really don't know what to say.    It's especially high considering the upcoming November 13-14 (approximately) 2X hardfork.  The last hard fork might be setting us up to under-estimate the damage that it will cause - especially if there is no clear majority as to what side will win and if there is no replay protection.

Some people may be buying up just to get 2X coins too; it seemingly happened the last time a fork like this was scheduled (BU). We're back in the green, at least temporarily, but who knows how long we will be here...

[nrd525]

People buying bitcoin to get the 2X coins are idiots.  Just as likely for the sum of Bitcoin and 2X coin to go down (of course unless everyone buys the hype!).  Some day the hype isn't going to work =)

I was sad that nobody was livestreaming the bullish surge from 5000 to almost 6000 (I checked Youtube).

[nrd525]

I'm thinking about setting up a PA state LLC (single propreitorship) as Bitfinex says they will allow US corporate customers to continue to use their services. 

Looks like it costs $200 startup and $70 every ten years maintenance.  By contrast, off-shore corporations in Belize are $1000-$2000 startup and possibly $1000 annual maintenance.

For tax purposes, it looks like I would just declare the income on my Schedule C (as I don't have any employees or sales that would be taxable).  Or perhaps because it is interest income I can report it on the personal interest income.  I don't want to pay the 15.6% self employment tax.

https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/2902651-how-where-do-i-report-interest-income-from-my-business-banking-account-sole-proprietor-llc-paid-to-an-ein-that-isn-t-my-ssn

I'm doing very well lending out USD at BFX currently at 0.2%/day (or 0.17% after fees).  I expect rates to remain high through the November 13 (approximately) fork.

[Syke]

Looks like it costs $200 startup and $70 every ten years maintenance.

Wouldn't you need a registered agent in PA (something like $50/yr)?

[nrd525]

I live in PA.

[nrd525]

BFX USD rate spike is probably over.  At 0.09% and falling.  Meanwhile BTC rate might spike due to Bitcoin Gold fork in the next 24 hours (or so?).  I'm predicting Bitcoin Gold will be a huge failure - maybe worth $50 at the most and then rapidly falling to near zero. 

It's going to be super messy when people start forking the forks.  I could see revenge forking becoming a thing.

Though at some point even exchanges like Bitfinex will have to start ignoring minor forks and leave them to the alt-coin exchanges.

[FiendCoin]

BFX USD rate spike is probably over.  At 0.09% and falling.  Meanwhile BTC rate might spike due to Bitcoin Gold fork in the next 24 hours (or so?).  I'm predicting Bitcoin Gold will be a huge failure - maybe worth $50 at the most and then rapidly falling to near zero. 

It's going to be super messy when people start forking the forks.  I could see revenge forking becoming a thing.

Though at some point even exchanges like Bitfinex will have to start ignoring minor forks and leave them to the alt-coin exchanges.

Bcash is still hanging around, why would you think bgold won't do at least as well?

Personally I think it was a brilliant move to create bgold, now the core devs have a asic resistant fork of Bitcoin to move to if necessary.

[nrd525]

Bgold doesn't have any major figures or miners publicizing it (so far as I can tell). There is no community, a complete lack of transparency (we don't know whether there will be replay protection), and a possible 100k premine.

Bitcoin cash is doing better than expected, though it is consistently dropping compared to Bitcoin.

[nrd525]

Bitcoin Gold futures trading at $500 at Yobit.
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-gold/#markets

Yobit is weird. Also has a dice site and an InvestBox which doesn't explain how it makes you up to 0.2%/day.

[nrd525]

Bitfinex has a chain split token for Bitcoin Gold trading around 2.5% BTC (by contrast it is 8% on YoBit)
https://www.bitfinex.com/trading/BG2BTC

[FiendCoin]

Bgold doesn't have any major figures or miners publicizing it (so far as I can tell). There is no community, a complete lack of transparency (we don't know whether there will be replay protection), and a possible 100k premine.

Bitcoin cash is doing better than expected, though it is consistently dropping compared to Bitcoin.

Despite the obvious problems, my gut is telling me bgold may be more than it appears. I've been wrong before but I'm going to wait and see what happens before I dump it.

Edit: I'm getting 403 Forbidden on their website, not a good sign.

[nrd525]

Ha, I wouldn't be surprised if someone wasn't DDOSing the bitcoin gold website.

Bitfinex is a bit of an outlier, but also has the most volume. So price will probably converge towards it - currently 0.02 BTC.
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-gold/#markets

There has been one pump so far on BFX (0.036 BTC).  Probably another one to come - especially once a wallet starts supporting it.

[nrd525]

Bitcoin Gold down to $100 on Bitfinex and they are still premining it.    Jimmy Song did an insightful interview with one of the two Bitcoin Gold developers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2765&v=ACi5ua1wPLg

He was pretty polite about it, but it sounds like their development team is small and lacking experience.

[FiendCoin]

Bitcoin Gold down to $100 on Bitfinex and they are still premining it.    Jimmy Song did an insightful interview with one of the two Bitcoin Gold developers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2765&v=ACi5ua1wPLg

He was pretty polite about it, but it sounds like their development team is small and lacking experience.

Is that any worse dev wise than bcash or s2x?

I'd rather support bgold over bcash or 2x.

Bottom line, since nya people don't want to throw the towel in on 2x and seem hellbent on pushing that crap upon us, I'll hold and wait. I think it would be foolish to dump anything at this point unless you wanted to get out of crypto completely, which I don't, yet...