nrd525 Market Tracker

[nrd525]

It's totally ok.  I'm all about long-term trends and trying to identify real uses for bitcoins. So for instance, the Dark Market article was negative - but I still think the positive developments (ex. Lightning Network, or at least a 2 mb blockchain increase) are strong enough to outweigh the loss of the Dark Markets.

[nrd525]

Chart not looking so good ($411).

Mike Hearn sells all his coins.  A smart guy, but also the whole developer, miner, and customers drama over the block size is so out of control that it is very hard to figure out what is a good idea.
https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.f4dwpw41u

[nrd525]

Coinbase is $11 under Bitfinex.  Typically Coinbase is $2 above Bitfinex.  This is a decent arbitrage opportunity.

In other news, Whale Club reorganized TeamSpeak and got rid of most of their user base (including me).  Is there a way to rejoin?  I just want to listen in and occasionally text chat.  Are there other half-decent IRCs or text chats for Bitcoin?

[nrd525]

I checked Coinbase (regular) and it has a $6 premium over Coinbase exchange.   That's weird!  But still $1-$3 under Bitfinex.
It looks like Coinbase regular might be using some kind of averaging.

[nrd525]

Bought 1 BTC at 356, and one at 365.  Closed 100 of my LTC short at $2.91 (still 400 short).

So far I'm pretty good on picking bottoms, but not so good on recognizing tops.

[nrd525]

Could a snowstorm in the Northeast US be causing bitcoin price decline?    I was just at the local Trader Joes and they had the largest lineup I've seen (line up to get in the store, and then inside the store the line literally snakes through the entire store and has to double back) - as people around here tend to panic a bit about storms (rain or snow).  Even though we had three feet several years ago, so people are aware of what snow is =)

What's the impact of a possible Trump presidency?  If there is any hint of Bitcoin being tied to terrorism I could see Trump totally over-reacting (more so than other Republicans or Dems).  On the other hand, so far the US government has been very hands-off - and it seems to be up to state governments choose whether to regulate.

I used to think that Trump had no chance of winning the Rep nomination, but now his support has been holding strong at almost 40% nationally. Unlike other candidates whose support peaks and then declines never to recover again (like Christie in a previous election where he didn't run, or Carson in this one).

Or maybe it's the 9% increase in the oil price making people think that our global economy is going to do ok.  I think we're still heading for more problems.

[nrd525]

I think the bitcoin mining industry might be like general mining/drilling where prices shoot up very high which causes lots of investment/exploration.  That takes a bit of time to come online, and then you have overproduction which drives the prices down (or in Bitcoin's case you have 0% growth in difficulty - or difficulty at least slows down a lot - it may not hit 0% growth due to technological improvements).

So right now we might be witnessing the bitcoin mining boom that is a result of the last year (2015) which relatively stagnant/slow growth.

Last difficulty increase was 20%!

[nrd525]

The Ethereum bubble is real =)

https://cryptowat.ch/poloniex/ethbtc/1m

I'm considering shorting it at Poloniex - but it's a good thing I didn't short it at 0.012 BTC.

[nrd525]

I decided not to short Ethereum.

[nrd525]

Guys - I need help, otherwise I'm going to short Ethereum if it goes any higher. Please advise

UK referendum could be close and that could help BTC. Might be a bigger factor than the halving which I think is overplayed.  What will be fascinating (and possibly frothy) is if we see two or more factors go the same direction at the same time (Ex. if we had both halving, the developers/miners/etc agreed on a road map to increase the block size, and MtGox bankruptcy starts payouts). 

Global economy continues to look bad.  It's not a worldwide recession by any means, but if a couple things go wrong (ex. Trump starts a trade war with China, energy/mining bankruptcies lead to problems with large banks/investment firms, one or more bubbles collapse, or Russia does something crazy).

[nrd525]

Predictit is an interesting prediction market

https://www.predictit.org/Contract/784/Will-the-UK-vote-to-leave-the-EU-by-year-end-2016#data

and if you want polling data: http://ukpollingreport.co.uk

[nrd525]

How trustworthy is Poloniex?  It looks like they were hacked two years ago, but have kept going since then and the website looks/works well.  Apparently based in Delaware.  They've got BTC lending at 0.5%/day (highly variable - based on supply/demand similar to bitfinex, but without a FRR) which is pretty crazy (probably low supply).  Bitfinex rates are 1/100th of that!

I've avoided shorting Ethereum - which has run up to 0.03 BTC and now is at 0.023 BTC.

[nrd525]

Poloniex btc lending rates were good for a while, but have now collapsed down to 0.04%/day.

[nrd525]

Fortunately I closed the rest of my LTC short before this rally (maybe a month ago) - so I'm fully long BTC (and lending USD).

What are the reasons for this rally?

I've got: SegWit development is faster than expected (allowing for more transactions without getting into the toxic block size debate), stability leads to growth (a long period of stable prices encourages adoption among everyone whose main use isn't speculation) -- aka continued business developement, the UK might leave the EU (maybe 1/3 chance?), Ethereum's bubble is at least temporarily stopped, the block reward halving (July), and the fact that Bitcoin might really be worth $500-$600 (that's my expectation).

On the down side, the block size debate isn't any closer to being resolved (so far as I can tell - I've stopped paying attention), and who knows what Trump would do to Bitcoin when he finds out about the drug markets.

Still waiting for that MtGox bankruptcy settlement.  Should be positive if people get more money than they expect, as many people have probably written it off.

[nrd525]

To quote my Jan 26, 2015 post regarding the Jan 13/14 2016 bottom:

"I continue to think that $150-$166 was probably the bottom of the year-long bear cycle."

It did retry the bottom in August 2015 (especially on Bitfinex, much less so on Bitstamp or the Chinese markets).  But in general, it's one of my better calls =)

[nrd525]

Will the UK leave the Euro zone?  Trading at around 33% yes
https://www.predictit.org/Contract/784/Will-the-UK-vote-to-leave-the-EU-by-year-end-2016#data

[nrd525]

I've done very little research, but in my opinion I'd be very cautious about the ETH DAO (Digital Autonomous Organization).  Bitcoin businesses have a history of fraud and failure.  Also, most business startups fail.  So even if there weren't all sorts of controversies already about the DAO (I've heard that people are concerned about it splitting/atomizing and security), I'd expect it to fail purely on the grounds that it is a very early venture in a community full of scammers.

Meanwhile, BTC hits 500 just now (at least on BFX).  For a while I've been thinking that the MtGox bankruptcy resolution will be a positive thing and they just announced the list of accepted claims (!!!) - though I could be totally biased because I hope to get some of my Bitcoinica losses back.

[nrd525]

Crazy price spike to $540 BFX ($590 in China).  I'd strongly consider selling.  But I don't like the tax implications (trying to go for the longterm capital gains tax rate which is much lower, and I'm using averaged cost basis which in retrospect is a very stupid idea).

[nrd525]

So what fundamental developments are causing this price increase? 

[nrd525]

Auction for 24518 bitcoins seized for crimes:
http://www.afr.com/technology/ernst--young-16-million-bitcoin-auction-20160527-gp53i0

Smaller than the US auctions (144k btc).