Cryptocurrencies

[rkbabang]

On 2/6/2026 at 4:59 AM, wachtwoord said:

 

Also lol at all the Schadenfreude posters in the topic . Indeed what always happens in this part of the cycle so it must still be alive. Human nature is hilariously ironic sometimes

 

Yes, all the same re-hashed arguments every time the price moves wrt fiat.   Meanwhile I just do what I always do regardless of the price -- buy some more.

 

[rkbabang]

“I think crypto is basically a scam. I mean there is essentially no legitimate use for crypto, and nobody is using it for anything legitimate. Fewer than 2% of Americans have ever made a payment in crypto."

--Paul Krugman

 

If this isn't a bullish sign for the long term, I don't know what is.  He will be as correct on this as he was on thinking he personally found a flaw in Metcalfe's Law.

 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

https://search.app/9xZDH

 

Bubbles don't top on apathy 

[UK]

I do not want to risk my own reputation:), so regarding the thesis, I will borrow from Munger: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/01/charlie-munger-calls-bitcoin-disgusting-and-contrary-to-the-interests-of-civilization.html#:~:text=Bitcoin last traded above $57%2C000,Sign up for CNBC Pro

 

On usefulness: “I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth"

 

On peer selection: “It’s really kind of an artificial substitute for gold. And since I never buy any gold, I never buy any bitcoin,”

 

Valuation: with gold total market cap at ~35 B and BTC at ~1.4B, everyone is free to do his math:)

 

 

Edited February 10 by UK

[Paarslaars]

You might want to zoom out.   Below is the inverse for a longer time frame, you can see the recent 'jump' in gold value is but a small bump.

 

 

And here is what happens when gold tops and the money rotates:

 

 

I have no doubt we'll be having a very different discussion on this in 1-2 years but for now, let's give the bears their moment.

Edited February 10 by Paarslaars

[TwoCitiesCapital]

6 hours ago, UK said:

 

 

On usefulness: “I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth"

 

Glad to hear you're abandoning fiat. What are you replacing it with? 

[Milu]

 

Enjoyable interview with CZ. 

[UK]

38 minutes ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

 

Glad to hear you're abandoning fiat. What are you replacing it with? 

That was not an irony:), I do think BTC is useful for criminals (same for fiat)...but also some people in trouble (right now, Iranians maybe?)

[SharperDingaan]

50 minutes ago, UK said:

That was not an irony:), I do think BTC is useful for criminals (same for fiat)...but also some people in trouble (right now, Iranians maybe?)

 

USD and Euro also work very well  but you don't have to walk around with bales of the stuff.

Progress 

 

SD

 

[UK]

6 minutes ago, SharperDingaan said:

 

USD and Euro also work very well  but you don't have to walk around with bales of the stuff.

Progress 

 

SD

 

 

[SharperDingaan]

I like 

 

SD

 

 

[rkbabang]

Newsflash: Criminals like stuff that has value!

 

From now on I'm not going to own anything of value, because I don't want to be like those criminals.

Drug cartels have been using the US dollar for many decades, so I'm done with it.   I'm going to go live under a bridge (unless that bridge is useful to criminals) and dumpster dive for food (unless that dumpster is useful to criminals).

 

[djokovic1]

Love Matt Levine and his writing:
 

Crypto winter

Bitcoin has had a really bad couple of weeks, falling from about $90,000 at the end of January to about $70,000 today. We talked about this on Thursday, and I pointed out that what makes a crypto crash different from a stock-market crash is the lack of fundamentals. “Broadly speaking,” I wrote, “a stock’s price in the short term will reflect things like forced sales by its owners, but its price in the long term should reflect market expectations of the present value of its future cash flows.” With crypto, you have to look elsewhere for explanations.

Here’s a Wall Street Journal article titled “A New Crypto Winter Is Here and Even the Biggest Bulls Aren’t Certain Why,” though they wouldn’t be, would they? (The biggest bears are quite certain why.) One theory is boredom:

Market theories for the selloff ranged from investors’ pivot toward the prediction markets and other risky bets, to widespread profit-taking after a blistering bull run. …

There is no shortage of other markets for traders to make audacious bets, said [Anthony] Pompliano, the CEO of ProCap Financial. Prediction markets, gold, silver, artificial intelligence and so-called meme stocks are all vying for their attention of late, drawing eyes away from crypto.

“It used to be that bitcoin was the consensus view where asymmetry existed,” Pompliano said. “Now you have AI, prediction markets…many other areas where people can go and they can speculate.”

This sort of rhymes with my “Boredom Markets Hypothesis,” which says that the prices of speculative assets vary inversely with how many other fun things there are to do. If your theory of Bitcoin is “it is a thing to speculate on” then, you know, that has no scarcity at all. 

 

And here is a Bloomberg News story about the crypto crash in which everyone is similarly confused:

“It felt like we were due to puke down to these levels at some point,” said Jack Melnick, who works in digital assets and also trades his own funds. He says that the crypto market is searching for a story, “a bull case thesis,” but that it will find one eventually.

“Eventually we’ll figure out why we own this stuff,” okay.

[jfan]

Instead of debating the merits, morals, and economic theories of bitcoin, it might be useful to look at what the network is actually doing, since the data is visible to all for analysis (and for those with software skills, verifiable).

The following charts are from Block. https://www.theblock.co/data/on-chain-metrics/bitcoin

 

This shows the transaction counts on the network. The counts are not going up exponentially, but meandering around 10 - 12.5M over the last 3 years, up from 7.5 to 10M 3 years prior to that. Block time has been stable at ~ 10 minutes. So likely more capacity to process more transaction volumes.

 

The number of active addresses doing transactions on the network has plateaued at ~ 20M each month. 

 

The number of new addresses coming online with a transaction has stepped down from prior years, averaging ~ 10 million each month over past 1.5 years. 

 

So in aggregate, this suggests that # of active layer 1 users, has decelerated. 

 

The $USD denominated transaction volume is slowly climbing, but far lower than in 2021 and 2022, but this is likely similar to other markets during this time period. There is alot more transaction volume ($) relative to pre 2020. This volume is all on-chain, so it doesn't include off-chain activity such as derivatives or BTC-related ETFs and stock activity. 

 

Not on this picture, but the # of addresses with >0.1 BTC (less than 1 BTC) and > 1 BTC (less than 10BTC) have plateaued since 2023 at ~ 4.5M and 1M addresses. Those with > 10 BTC (less than 100 BTC) have plateaued since 2017 at 150K addresses. Those with > 1000 BTC have plateaued since 2019 at ~ 2K addresses. 

 

~ 70% of BTC supply has been active in the past 5 years, 50% in the past 3, and 35% in the past year. This suggest the turnover is pretty slow, at least, relative to stocks, which I believe the average holding period is < 1 year. 

 

These 2 graphs show the daily $ volumes of the ETFs and On-Chain activity, with the ETFs dwarfing the daily volume on-chain. So it appears to me that the ETFs have reduced the on-chain activity which might be a partial explanation why the network fees have stagnated. 

 

 The current average fee to transact on-chain is ~ $0.65 USD/transaction. This is cheaper than my "discount broker". It seems to me there is a choke point at the on and off-ramps from the fiat world to the crypto world. 

Edited February 12 by jfan

[Fly]

1 hour ago, jfan said:

Instead of debating the merits, morals, and economic theories of bitcoin, it might be useful to look at what the network is actually doing, since the data is visible to all for analysis (and for those with software skills, verifiable).

The following charts are from Block. https://www.theblock.co/data/on-chain-metrics/bitcoin

 

This shows the transaction counts on the network. The counts are not going up exponentially, but meandering around 10 - 12.5M over the last 3 years, up from 7.5 to 10M 3 years prior to that. Block time has been stable at ~ 10 minutes. So likely more capacity to process more transaction volumes.

 

The number of active addresses doing transactions on the network has plateaued at ~ 20M each month. 

 

The number of new addresses coming online with a transaction has stepped down from prior years, averaging ~ 10 million each month over past 1.5 years. 

 

So in aggregate, this suggests that # of active layer 1 users, has decelerated. 

 

The $USD denominated transaction volume is slowly climbing, but far lower than in 2021 and 2022, but this is likely similar to other markets during this time period. There is alot more transaction volume ($) relative to pre 2020. This volume is all on-chain, so it doesn't include off-chain activity such as derivatives or BTC-related ETFs and stock activity. 

 

Not on this picture, but the # of addresses with >0.1 BTC (less than 1 BTC) and > 1 BTC (less than 10BTC) have plateaued since 2023 at ~ 4.5M and 1M addresses. Those with > 10 BTC (less than 100 BTC) have plateaued since 2017 at 150K addresses. Those with > 1000 BTC have plateaued since 2019 at ~ 2K addresses. 

 

~ 70% of BTC supply has been active in the past 5 years, 50% in the past 3, and 35% in the past year. This suggest the turnover is pretty slow, at least, relative to stocks, which I believe the average holding period is < 1 year. 

 

These 2 graphs show the daily $ volumes of the ETFs and On-Chain activity, with the ETFs dwarfing the daily volume on-chain. So it appears to me that the ETFs have reduced the on-chain activity which might be a partial explanation why the network fees have stagnated. 

 

 The current average fee to transact on-chain is ~ $0.65 USD/transaction. This is cheaper than my "discount broker". It seems to me there is a choke point at the on and off-ramps from the fiat world to the crypto world. 

 

ETFs have definitely reduced on-chain metrics all around. It is harder to glean trends from the addresses/transaction sizes/etc because of it. On-chain users are likely the more hardcore bitcoin crowd and/or foreigners without easy access to liquid ETFs. 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

12 hours ago, Fly said:

 

ETFs have definitely reduced on-chain metrics all around. It is harder to glean trends from the addresses/transaction sizes/etc because of it. On-chain users are likely the more hardcore bitcoin crowd and/or foreigners without easy access to liquid ETFs. 

 

ETFs, development of the lightning network, and the trend to fewer/larger settlements which is what was expected as a store of value (ie you buy a house with Bitcoin, you buy candy bars with fiat or LN). 

 

Additionally, you have more efficiency and scale running through the system. Consider that Coinbase didn't even batch withdrawals until 2020, meaning every single withdrawal request was an individual transaction on-chain where now Coinbase batches withdrawal requests over a period of time into single settlement with multiple counterparties on chain. 

 

Without adjusting for these new products and ways of transacting, on-chain activity only tells a portion of the story. 

 

Non-zero wallets might still be a useful metric going forward, but I don't know if activity will be.

Edited February 12 by TwoCitiesCapital

[jfan]

On 2/5/2026 at 1:37 PM, Spekulatius said:

What else other than TA can you do if you want to trade bitcoin?  It’s not like there is an intrinsic value floor here.

The floor will probably be the cost to run the network. A very simplistic look at it is: 1) network electricity cost Plus 2) cost to purchase the mining rigs to run (ignoring the other infrastructure and labor costs).

 

Below is Cambridge's power estimate. https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci 

At 97.32 TWh of annualized usage, at $0.05USD/kwh, this equates to $4.8 billion USD.

At 180.77 TWh, this equates to $9B USD. And at 313.86 TWh, $15.7B USD.

 

Below is the tiered cost price/TH of the mining equipment across different efficiency tiers. 

ASIC Price Ihttps://data.hashrateindex.com/asic-index-data/price-indexndex

 

Coupling this, with the total hashrate in the network, as seen below: https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/hash-rate

 

The cost to replace all the mining rigs with the newest, most efficient version could be $14.3B. Most of these rigs last ~ 3 years, longer if they can be maintained well. So the annual "cost" is ~ $4.8B. 

 

With the current transaction fee as a % of the total block reward (reward + fees), the miners should "create/earn" 165K of bitcoins in a year.

 

Bottom line:

1) Bear case ($4.8B + $4.8B)/165K = $58K USD/bitcoin

2) Base case ($9B + $4.8B)/165K = $83K USD/bitcoin

3) Bull case ($15.7B + $4.8B)165K = $95K USD/bitcoin. 

 

* many assumptions baked in here, no true insight into true electricity costs, nor distribution of active rigs in the network

[Dave86ch]

On 2/12/2026 at 2:19 AM, jfan said:

Instead of debating the merits, morals, and economic theories of bitcoin, it might be useful to look at what the network is actually doing, since the data is visible to all for analysis (and for those with software skills, verifiable).

The following charts are from Block. https://www.theblock.co/data/on-chain-metrics/bitcoin

 

This shows the transaction counts on the network. The counts are not going up exponentially, but meandering around 10 - 12.5M over the last 3 years, up from 7.5 to 10M 3 years prior to that. Block time has been stable at ~ 10 minutes. So likely more capacity to process more transaction volumes.

 

The number of active addresses doing transactions on the network has plateaued at ~ 20M each month. 

 

The number of new addresses coming online with a transaction has stepped down from prior years, averaging ~ 10 million each month over past 1.5 years. 

 

So in aggregate, this suggests that # of active layer 1 users, has decelerated. 

 

The $USD denominated transaction volume is slowly climbing, but far lower than in 2021 and 2022, but this is likely similar to other markets during this time period. There is alot more transaction volume ($) relative to pre 2020. This volume is all on-chain, so it doesn't include off-chain activity such as derivatives or BTC-related ETFs and stock activity. 

 

Not on this picture, but the # of addresses with >0.1 BTC (less than 1 BTC) and > 1 BTC (less than 10BTC) have plateaued since 2023 at ~ 4.5M and 1M addresses. Those with > 10 BTC (less than 100 BTC) have plateaued since 2017 at 150K addresses. Those with > 1000 BTC have plateaued since 2019 at ~ 2K addresses. 

 

~ 70% of BTC supply has been active in the past 5 years, 50% in the past 3, and 35% in the past year. This suggest the turnover is pretty slow, at least, relative to stocks, which I believe the average holding period is < 1 year. 

 

These 2 graphs show the daily $ volumes of the ETFs and On-Chain activity, with the ETFs dwarfing the daily volume on-chain. So it appears to me that the ETFs have reduced the on-chain activity which might be a partial explanation why the network fees have stagnated. 

 

 The current average fee to transact on-chain is ~ $0.65 USD/transaction. This is cheaper than my "discount broker". It seems to me there is a choke point at the on and off-ramps from the fiat world to the crypto world. 

Transactions happen on Lightning,

private, cheaper, faster.

Edited February 14 by Dave86ch

[Spekulatius]

What is interesting  is shift  from bits into atoms is also playing out with Bitcoin to Gold.

It’s not coincidence either because I think the same people hold high multiple growth stocks and bitcoin. 

[UK]

7 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

What is interesting  is shift  from bits into atoms is also playing out with Bitcoin to Gold.

It’s not coincidence either because I think the same people hold high multiple growth stocks and bitcoin. 

+1

[Milu]

9 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

What is interesting  is shift  from bits into atoms is also playing out with Bitcoin to Gold.

It’s not coincidence either because I think the same people hold high multiple growth stocks and bitcoin. 

I think a lot of the recent drawdown in bitcoin has been connected to the recent drawdown in high growth SAAS stocks. I expect this type of correlation to decline over time but still seems like bitcoin behaves in this manner. 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

18 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

What is interesting  is shift  from bits into atoms is also playing out with Bitcoin to Gold.

It’s not coincidence either because I think the same people hold high multiple growth stocks and bitcoin. 

 

The connection to high-growth stocks and the NASDAQ narrative has always been interesting to me. 

 

I myself generally eschew them. I bought Google in 2008/2009 - and had sold by 2012 because I was concerned about a 20-22x multiple on its earnings (what an idiot!). I'm nothing but skeptical of companies like TSLA and PLTR (and even Apple). 

 

I tend to be more of an asset, P/B, deep value guy who loves a turnaround story. But that led to me to a lot of commodity companies, and BTC is a commodity, and the approaches to valuing it, comfortability with supply/dynamics underpinning price, etc. maybe just makes more sense to me than most traditional "value" guys who solely demand cash flows. 

[UK]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/goldman-nasdaq-ceos-headline-mar-a-lago-crypto-forum-hosted-by-don-jr-eric-trump-2026-02-17/

 

In a statement, World Liberty spokesman David Wachsman said the forum, opens new tab is “about deepening relationships and extending U.S. dollar dominance in the digital economy,” comparing it to the Milken Institute Global Conference or Sun Valley. He added that media will be invited to attend the event, its speakers were not paid to participate, and announcements will be shared publicly. World Liberty said in posts on X that it would also invite top online promoters of its tradable crypto token, “WLFI” and USD1 stablecoin.

[TwoCitiesCapital]

7 hours ago, UK said:

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/goldman-nasdaq-ceos-headline-mar-a-lago-crypto-forum-hosted-by-don-jr-eric-trump-2026-02-17/

 

In a statement, World Liberty spokesman David Wachsman said the forum, opens new tab is “about deepening relationships and extending U.S. dollar dominance in the digital economy,” comparing it to the Milken Institute Global Conference or Sun Valley. He added that media will be invited to attend the event, its speakers were not paid to participate, and announcements will be shared publicly. World Liberty said in posts on X that it would also invite top online promoters of its tradable crypto token, “WLFI” and USD1 stablecoin.

 

I wonder if they'll also announce their commercial ties with Binance, or how it holds 80-90% of their stablecoin issuance, which only occurred after Trump pardoned their founder?

 

Or would that kind of public acknowledgement of corruption be too on the nose?

[UK]

2 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

 

I wonder if they'll also announce their commercial ties with Binance, or how it holds 80-90% of their stablecoin issuance, which only occurred after Trump pardoned their founder?

 

Or would that kind of public acknowledgement of corruption be too on the nose?

 

Yea, well...nobody is perfect:))). But how does all these stable coins (or even crypto USD one day) bodes for BTC? It should be somewhat negative? Or not?

 

Edited February 18 by UK