nrd525 Market Tracker

[nrd525]

Currently 9340 and testing the yearly high of around $9420.  Placed bids from 7270 to 9270.  This might be the first time I've bought into a bull market (Unless you count 2013 I bought a couple btc at $100, I think after it stabilized a bit after the 2013 spring bull market).

Removed my bids below 2k. Still have a lot in the 2k-3.3k range.

But with a lack of fundamentals, stocks/property at all-time-highs -- pure bullish hype can be very irrational (and potentially very profitable).  So long as we can hold off the recession for another 6-12 months (one poll of economists had a 30% probability of a recession, I think in the US, in the next year).

The lack of a sizable pull back is very troubling.

[exstasie]

The lack of a sizable pull back is very troubling.

It'll come, after we've all given up calling the top and the bears have mostly bought back. Bitcoin always goes further in both directions than we expect. I thought it would top at $6K. We'll probably go to $12K for good measure now.

Masterluc's $10K-->$6K call is still a possibility. Maybe it'll morph into something like $12,500-->$7,500 but something like that is definitely in the cards.

[nrd525]

This idea that FB's coin or bitcoin could serve the unbanked likes to overstate the use case.  Notably there are 1.7 billion unbanked people in the world, but most of these are probably in the 44% of the world's population that doesn't have internet access.

I don't see how FB is going to pull off a global coin that is stable, unless they are backing it with the USD. But that would only be stable in USD terms. Everyone else would be realizing capital gains and losses all the time.  Maybe more likely that they do a series of stable coins (Euro, USD, Yen, etc) and forget about international payments (other than the Euro bloc).  Their main advantage is they'll be able to fund a ton of lobbying.  So FB might be able to get legislation written to handle their use case.

[nrd525]

I reviewed my buying strategy (from 5k down to 1k).  That sure bit me hard! I built it to spend increasing large amounts in the 1k-3k range. So I bought relatively little in the 3k-5k range.  It got me a nice low cost basis, but fewer btc than I wanted.  It was far too conservative!

By contrast at the bottom of the 2015 bear market I was buying the same amount of btc each $10 drop.  And managed to buy a lot in the $200-$450 range.

[figmentofmyass]

I don't see how FB is going to pull off a global coin that is stable, unless they are backing it with the USD. But that would only be stable in USD terms. Everyone else would be realizing capital gains and losses all the time.  Maybe more likely that they do a series of stable coins (Euro, USD, Yen, etc) and forget about international payments (other than the Euro bloc).

it looks to me like a single stablecoin backed by a basket of currencies and/or other assets. multiple stablecoins wouldn't make sense because it would only eat away at their use case by regionally segregating markets. the point IMO is to compete in the remittance market, so the aim is to push everyone into a single market and a single currency. the selling point being much lower fees than legacy money transmitters.

this is from calibra's FAQ page:

Libra is a global cryptocurrency built on the foundation of a blockchain (the Libra Blockchain). Libra is fully backed by the Libra Reserve, a collection of currencies and other assets used as collateral for every Libra that is created, building trust in its intrinsic value.

[nrd525]

Unlike prior bull markets (notably at the top), we aren't seeing major divergences in the price of bitcoin by country/exchange that I know of.  Ex. 2017 we had a Korea premium of up to 30%(?) and in 2013 we had a Chinese premium of similar levels.

GBTC premium is relatively tame (33% when I last checked).

[nrd525]

Bought 0.8 btc around 9k (several days ago).

[nrd525]

I'm thinking of buying more (perhaps a modest amount like 0.5-1 btc).  1) because we could shoot for 20k if not in the next several months than in the next 2-5 years.  2) to truly understand bitcoin culture and psychology you have to FOMO at least once.  So even if I lose a lot of money, it could be very educational!

[figmentofmyass]

I'm thinking of buying more (perhaps a modest amount like 0.5-1 btc).  1) because we could shoot for 20k if not in the next several months than in the next 2-5 years.  2) to truly understand bitcoin culture and psychology you have to FOMO at least once.  So even if I lose a lot of money, it could be very educational!

dude you've been around since 2011 and never gave into fomo before?

with the halving coming next year, hyped institutional markets (bakkt, fidelity) expected to come online soon, and the way the long term chart looks.....i'm thinking you won't need to wait 2+ years.

[nrd525]

Never gave into FOMO.  Closest thing is buying bitcoins maybe around $600-$700 after the 2013 peak.

Bought 0.5 btc at 11070.

[nrd525]

Classic FOMO!  Was fun while it lasted (13.8k) and now underwater as we plummet down to $10300.  No regrets!!! (well maybe not)

[nrd525]

So a 25.8% correction on Bitstamp (assuming 10.3k holds) and 24.5% on Bitfinex.  Interesting to see Coinbase have a higher high and lower low.  Does Coinbase have more US traders?  It might just be based on who trades on the exchange and whether they are awake.  Or it could be a retail vs institution thing.

[exstasie]

Classic FOMO!  Was fun while it lasted (13.8k) and now underwater as we plummet down to $10300.  No regrets!!! (well maybe not)

LOL. No worries, we'll be back above $11K shortly if only for a good bounce. We hit my first downside target (a stop run below the $10,500 area) so I think we'll grind upwards for the next few days into the weekly close.

We could be in for a multi-week (or even multi-month) correction though. It's a bit early to tell exactly.

[nrd525]

https://www.coindesk.com/june-sets-records-for-cme-bitcoin-futures-as-sign-ups-surge-30

Is it one bitcoin per contract?

[figmentofmyass]

https://www.coindesk.com/june-sets-records-for-cme-bitcoin-futures-as-sign-ups-surge-30

Is it one bitcoin per contract?

contract unit = 5 bitcoins. https://www.cmegroup.com/education/bitcoin/cme-bitcoin-futures-frequently-asked-questions.html

there is also leverage to consider though. i think it's limited to 3x or something so we should probably assume most positions are leveraged 2-3x beyond actual collateral.

[nrd525]

https://decrypt.co/7795/investigators-tether-loaned-usdt-to-investors-illegally-traded-in-new-york-ran-an-unregistered-securities-offering
Remember when I wanted to setup an offshore corporation so I could loan USD on Bitfinex?  They changed the terms of service to ban US persons, but apparently if you were a rich NY trader they accomodated you (in spite of NY having the strictest regulations on cryptocurrency in the US!).

Also the news about the IRS's plans to go after US taxpayers is very bearish.  They might use social media (google searches, fb, twitter, etc), and interviews to identify crypto currency users!  There might be billions of unpaid taxes at stake, and depending on how they operate (do they prosecute people for their tax avoiding felonies or settle for payment plans with interest and penalties?), a lot of people could go to jail.

80% conviction rate. About 3000 people going to jail per year.
https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/statistical-data-for-three-fiscal-years-criminal-investigation-ci

Meanwhile bitcoin continues the denial phase bull run as we got a higher high (12.8k beats 12.4k) on the medium term, and we might be set to break the 13.8k high of the current bull market. Search trends aren't so great either.

[figmentofmyass]

https://decrypt.co/7795/investigators-tether-loaned-usdt-to-investors-illegally-traded-in-new-york-ran-an-unregistered-securities-offering
Remember when I wanted to setup an offshore corporation so I could loan USD on Bitfinex?  They changed the terms of service to ban US persons, but apparently if you were a rich NY trader they accomodated you (in spite of NY having the strictest regulations on cryptocurrency in the US!).

the bit about loaned USDT to new york traders (galaxy/mike novogratz are involved apparently) is intriguing. does this give some validity to the claims that tethers were being "printed" and used to buy bitcoins/crypto? novogratz is an uber perma bull, of course.

they always openly served "eligible contract participants" ($10m assets, incorporation outside of USA) who are considered USA persons, even after the ban. that's why galaxy was trading there. i think they had no respect for the state of NY's ability to do anything about it. they were only concerned about the feds IMO.

[STT]

dude you've been around since 2011 and never gave into fomo before?

with the halving coming next year, hyped institutional markets (bakkt, fidelity) expected to come online soon, and the way the long term chart looks.....i'm thinking you won't need to wait 2+ years.

I might be a stubborn idiot but I refuse to believe we will keep rising up from here now till the next year Halvening.    For starters that is a false hype event in my view, yes lower supply but thats only true with every block there after so the actual date is not that important, its not a very significant event.    The effect is culmative and the history from the last half of block reward backs me up on that, mostly that date was the high.   Not a great sell but still not a launching point and theres no need to rush, market is not already starting for that date imo.   If its bullish, its for other reasons and after halvening, yea is helps price I guess.


FOMO is misguided, commit to buy a small amount ahead regularly in every month of a year and thats a good idea for a long term belief in crypto expansion.   I should have been alot smarter like that.  Just jumping onto a rise is a bit dangerous, some traders can do this (can write off any loss) and other people get holding more BTC then they needed for years.

Bought 0.5 btc at 11070.

I sold there in 2017.   Clearly I'm way too much of sceptic  

[exstasie]

Also the news about the IRS's plans to go after US taxpayers is very bearish.  They might use social media (google searches, fb, twitter, etc), and interviews to identify crypto currency users!  There might be billions of unpaid taxes at stake, and depending on how they operate (do they prosecute people for their tax avoiding felonies or settle for payment plans with interest and penalties?), a lot of people could go to jail.

80% conviction rate. About 3000 people going to jail per year.
https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/statistical-data-for-three-fiscal-years-criminal-investigation-ci

That gives you an idea how many people will probably go to jail over this. Probably not many. I'm guessing there will be some steep fines and penalties with payment plans, plus a limited number of criminal prosecutions of bigger fish, so they can make an example of them.

They don't need to use something so unreliable as social media. Last year, the courts compelled Coinbase to hand the IRS data about 13,000 customers. Based on what the IRS has said, only a small fraction of those customers reported anything on their tax returns. Some of those people are about to be audited.

[nrd525]

IRS - that's true. We'll probably see the big fish go first and get audited.  The audits will get messy.  For instance, at some point I lost (or more likely probably donated and spent without recording it) a small amount of bitcoin.  And I think i've lost my earliest addresses (some of which might be in the Bitcoinica database but that is lost).

...

I was watching Willy Woo saying how the NPT shows that Bitcoin is overbought. Though he is only calling for a correction down to 6k (if I recall correctly).  For instance, the NVT 90 day model is calling for a $6047 bitcoin price.

https://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-price-models/

...

Fact check. A lot of new players are ignorant about the fact that you could short bitcoin fairly easily starting around Jan-March 2013 using Bitfinex (and even earlier on Bitcoinica in 2012 and even earlier in 2011 on another website that I'm forgetting). They claim that shorting is new which is blatantly wrong.  Now margin-trading took some time to get up to speed, and generally wasn't that stable on Bitfinex until 2014 (swap rates still at 40% APR) or 2015 (when swap rates fell to 20%/APR, representing lower risk) - but it was doable. And was definitely doable in the 2017 bull market on many exchanges.

A related theory is that alt-coins were more useful when there was less bitcoin margin trading as one of their most important features was speculation, and speculation with higher volatility than bitcoin. I agree with this point, however as I think that the change in the ability to use margin trading with bitcoin is less than others think - I think alt coins will still have a role to play.  Notably, there isn't anywhere currently that a retail US investor can do margin trading on bitcoin without violating terms of service (unless I'm mistaken).

...

I'm skeptical of the Halvening. Though with a lack of fundamentals people tend to latch on to things and assign them weight they don't deserve (ex. Tone Vays thinks the Cyprus banking crisis was critical),  And then they get weight because of it.  So the Halvening is likely to be an event, especially if we are in a bull market.  Or it might be seen as the cause of a spike in the prices even if it isn't one (some people were assigning the LTC price increase to its upcoming Halvening).