nrd525 Market Tracker

[figmentofmyass]

>>so why would they want to hold USDC? what's the appeal over credit cards?

Discounts at the merchant level. 

but why not for bitcoin? the way i see it, bitcoin should be extremely attractive to merchants since payments are irreversible. eliminating the risk of chargebacks should enable them to offer significant discounts over other payment methods. this is why bitpay is charging 1% with no chargeback risk when credit cards are costing merchants 3-5% after fraud costs.

by using USDC, they might be able to save on bitpay's fees, assuming coinbase allows them to cash out cheap. but the thing is, i don't think consumers are interested in spending stablecoins.

[nrd525]

NVT signal looks ready for dump.   Bounced off 8950 but looks like we're going through 9k in the next hour if not minutes.
http://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-nvt-signal/

[nrd525]

Any good comparisons between the steepness/speed of the run-up now vs 2017?  I think it looks steeper than the early bull market (late 2016 / early 2017), but not as steep as the final stages.

If we get all bull crazy, the pull backs will only last 1-5 days, not the 11 days (May 14-24) or 29ish days (Apr 2 to Apr 30) we're seeing now.  Hmm, that said, that drop from 29 days in neutral to 11 days is very dramatic.  And the prior neutral period was around Feb 17 - Mar 29 = 40ish days.

Google trends are up and bitcoin is becoming more useful for scams, creating securities (ex. Bitfinex's $1 billion token issue), and/or speculation.  So I guess those are fundamentals.

[figmentofmyass]

Any good comparisons between the steepness/speed of the run-up now vs 2017?  I think it looks steeper than the early bull market (late 2016 / early 2017), but not as steep as the final stages.

if this crashes into the monthly close so we see a big wick, it will look like the october 2015 - january 2016 period. that would mean a fast initial crash followed by months of establishing a new range. i would expect that range to be higher than the $3000s-$4000s range from earlier this year.

that's a big "if" though. we've got less than a week until the candle closes, and right now it still looks like the trend is going vertical.

[nrd525]

Bitcoin SV up 90% in the past 24 hours.  From $60 (May 21) to $230 (May 29).
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-sv/

[nrd525]

I was watching Crypto Kirby (after you get past all the silliness, he makes some good points, though also hedges everything) and liked his comment about how it shouldn't be that easy to make money.   This year almost everyone has made money, unless a lot of people are buying in very late and selling the bottom.  A 12% correction from 9080 to 800 is laughably small, as is that from 8250 to 7000.  We should be seeing bigger corrections (relative percent), not smaller ones!  Our biggest correction was from 4300 to 3400!

[STT]

Bitcoin SV up 90% in the past 24 hours.  From $60 (May 21) to $230 (May 29).
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-sv/

The gains are attractive but the market is abnormal as I understand it.   Dangerous ground to gamble on unless people are confident of actual business done on that blockchain rising.   Playing whales can be painful, but also profitable if people caught this wave up well done.    Im mixing investment perspectives with trading but personally I prefer to trade a product I have belief will do well long term not just short so on that Im unsure so far tbh

[exstasie]

Bitcoin SV up 90% in the past 24 hours.  From $60 (May 21) to $230 (May 29).
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin-sv/

The gains are attractive but the market is abnormal as I understand it.   Dangerous ground to gamble on unless people are confident of actual business done on that blockchain rising.   Playing whales can be painful, but also profitable if people caught this wave up well done.    Im mixing investment perspectives with trading but personally I prefer to trade a product I have belief will do well long term not just short so on that Im unsure so far tbh

Same, I need to believe in the fundamentals (or at least that there is sustainable hype) to trade something. BSV just seems like a disaster waiting to happen in every way. Craig Wright will eventually run out of stupid stunts to pull and BSV will resume its bleed to oblivion.

[nrd525]

Oh yes, I find Bitcoin SV a hilarious example of a lot the excess and hype that is wrong with many crypto speculators.

...

Is this the first time Poloniex margin lenders have lost a sizable amount of money?
https://www.coindesk.com/margin-lenders-lost-13-5-million-in-may-to-poloniex-crypto-crash

I don't recall this ever happening on Bitfinex, though we came close a couple times (and got bailed out (or saved by the price recovering) once I think by someone who bought the bitcoins during a flash crash or after it?).  This was the big risk of lending out USD on Bitfinex especially in the early years like 2013.

[exstasie]

Is this the first time Poloniex margin lenders have lost a sizable amount of money?
https://www.coindesk.com/margin-lenders-lost-13-5-million-in-may-to-poloniex-crypto-crash

I don't recall this ever happening on Bitfinex, though we came close a couple times (and got bailed out (or saved by the price recovering) once I think by someone who bought the bitcoins during a flash crash or after it?).  This was the big risk of lending out USD on Bitfinex especially in the early years like 2013.

Damn, that's a lot of coins. Is Poloniex really not paying the lenders back!? Do they not have an insurance fund? This is why futures exchanges always have insurance funds, to cover large liquidations when the book can't handle it.

I always felt like most altcoin markets lacked the liquidity for significant margin. I guess this sort of proves the point.

In other news, Binance is adding margin trading soon.

[TheQuin]

Do they not have an insurance fund? This is why futures exchanges always have insurance funds, to cover large liquidations when the book can't handle it.

The big difference is that futures don't use peer to peer lending. The brokerage and clearing firm take the risk of lending, not the customers. If you're the one taking the risk shouldn't you be the one to insure it?

[exstasie]

Do they not have an insurance fund? This is why futures exchanges always have insurance funds, to cover large liquidations when the book can't handle it.

The big difference is that futures don't use peer to peer lending. The brokerage and clearing firm take the risk of lending, not the customers. If you're the one taking the risk shouldn't you be the one to insure it?

I'm not talking about a literal insurance policy.

It's more of an existential problem for the lending platform. If they allow borrowers to default without covering the losses, liquidity will dry up very quickly. Bitfinex has always covered these types of losses to prevent an exodus of lenders. Obviously if an event is catastrophic enough, they won't be able to cover everything, but that hasn't happened yet.

Sucks to be Poloniex right now.

[TheQuin]

I'm not talking about a literal insurance policy.

I get that. I was just trying to point out that it isn't comparable to futures where the broker and the clearing house take the lending risk.

It's more of an existential problem for the lending platform. If they allow borrowers to default without covering the losses, liquidity will dry up very quickly. Bitfinex has always covered these types of losses to prevent an exodus of lenders. Obviously if an event is catastrophic enough, they won't be able to cover everything, but that hasn't happened yet.

Sucks to be Poloniex right now.

It's been an existential problem for brokers in the past as well. Alpari and FXCM both went bankrupt when the Swiss Franc flash crashed in 2015 and they were unable to liquidate their customers' positions quickly enough to cover the margin they had lent them.
 

[nrd525]

This an interesting service.  You can buy Amazon gift cards (and others) at steep discounts. It's located in the US.  They are also doing money transmission to countries around the world by providing escrow services. Of course you need to worry about credit card fraud, charge backs, etc.  So don't release the funds until you have the goods!

https://paxful.com

Their Amazon gift card rates seem better than Purse -- some vendors are offering 11k bitcoin, so 37.5% over the current market rate of 8k, whereas Purse has closer to a 20% discount.

Has anyone used Paxful?  I've used Purse.io without too many issues for small purchases (had one or two orders that needed to be remade, but never lost any money).  I'm skeptical because it seems like the greater the discount, the more likely there is something illegal going on.  But I've also heard that there are people paid in Amazon Gift Cards and they need to convert them to regular currency (though doing it via bitcoin seems tedious).  If they were just using it to get around currency controls for countries like China and Venezuela - I'd be fine with that (and the US regulators probably wouldn't care about Venezuela - not sure how they feel about China's controls).

[exstasie]

This an interesting service.  You can buy Amazon gift cards (and others) at steep discounts. It's located in the US.  They are also doing money transmission to countries around the world by providing escrow services. Of course you need to worry about credit card fraud, charge backs, etc.  So don't release the funds until you have the goods!

https://paxful.com

Their Amazon gift card rates seem better than Purse -- some vendors are offering 11k bitcoin, so 37.5% over the current market rate of 8k, whereas Purse has closer to a 20% discount.

Has anyone used Paxful?  I've used Purse.io without too many issues for small purchases (had one or two orders that needed to be remade, but never lost any money).  I'm skeptical because it seems like the greater the discount, the more likely there is something illegal going on.  But I've also heard that there are people paid in Amazon Gift Cards and they need to convert them to regular currency (though doing it via bitcoin seems tedious).  If they were just using it to get around currency controls for countries like China and Venezuela - I'd be fine with that (and the US regulators probably wouldn't care about Venezuela - not sure how they feel about China's controls).

Paxful is just a P2P marketplace and escrow service, same thing as Localbitcoins. I have the same suspicions as you about fraud risks with these deeply discounted gift cards. I would steer clear of them after the horror stories I've heard about with Purse.io. I wouldn't want to put my Amazon account at risk by running lots of fraudulent cards through it. At high enough volumes, you could have the police knocking on your door!

[nrd525]

$8400 bitcoin and litecoin pumped all the way up to $144 from the bear market low of $22. This is pretty crazy but does fit with Litecoin's pattern of being very boring and then doing exagerated moves that correlate with bitcoin bull markets, but in a delayed/weird way.

So I suppose it is possible that we aren't in a global recession yet and are in for another 1-2 years of bubble froth.  Which could explain the bitcoin price and stories like this:

Bitfinex issues $1 billion in tokens to replace the missing (or held by governments, nobody has clarified this) $850 million.  The tokens go from $1 to $1.93 in 25 days. Then they start buying them back. If they are buying back at 50k/day, that is a lot faster than I think their minimum in the whitepaper (27% of gross consolidated revenue), and they'll buy them back in 200 days.  So they'd buy back $2 billion in tokens in 200 days, but only made $404 million in 2018. It's more likely that they decided to kick off the buyback with some higher numbers using profits from the last x weeks/months.  The fun thing about this is that it is almost a reverse of the TH1 mining contract (neo-ponzi) that I fell victim to in that you can inflate the LEO token to infinity and Bitfinex will still be forced to buy it back!  (The major difference with the TH1 mining contract is that in the case of LEO bitfinex isn't obliged to spend more than 27% of its profits - so there is a bit of a limit, though once they are down to only a couple hundred LEO - why not pump them to $1 million?  I guess bitfinex would change the rules if you did this.)
https://leo.bitfinex.com

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/unus-sed-leo/

Why are people not more concerned about the new rule (is it just a proposal or is it likely to be implemented?) from the Financial Action Task Force?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/fatf-to-release-new-rules-for-global-crypto-sector-impacting-exchanges-funds-custodians

I'm not too concerned about that rule, though it could lead to an IRS crackdown which would get very interesting.

[exstasie]

$8400 bitcoin and litecoin pumped all the way up to $144 from the bear market low of $22. This is pretty crazy but does fit with Litecoin's pattern of being very boring and then doing exagerated moves that correlate with bitcoin bull markets, but in a delayed/weird way.

It's probably being driven by hype around the block reward halving, slated for the first week of August. I know Bitcoin pumped into both the previous halvings.

Why are people not more concerned about the new rule (is it just a proposal or is it likely to be implemented?) from the Financial Action Task Force?
https://cointelegraph.com/news/fatf-to-release-new-rules-for-global-crypto-sector-impacting-exchanges-funds-custodians

I'm not too concerned about that rule, though it could lead to an IRS crackdown which would get very interesting.

I'm pretty worried about what it means for non-KYC exchanges where you only deposit/withdraw crypto. Mandatory KYC at Bitmex and others means no more Americans sneaking by with VPNs. Sucks for us.

Is it possible some crypto-only exchanges and brokers won't comply? Set up in a blacklisted country and say screw it to the legacy financial system?

[nrd525]

I want to fomo.

[figmentofmyass]

I want to fomo.

go ahead. there's still time.

we've been consolidating around $8000 for a month. now that we've finally made new highs, that's a month worth of sellers (and shorters) being pressured to buy back. we're about to see some incredible fomo. i don't think this is stopping anytime soon.

[nrd525]

I'm posting to get a timestamp.  Did I say I want to fomo (at around 9k) and then it went up $350?  I think so.  Still not fomoing. I suppose it is a crazy theory, but I think there is a chance that we could see the most unexpected dump ever (and not just a correction, but a dump down to say 2k-3k).  Though this chance is decreasing as we go full fomo.