Longnose Posted June 12 Share Posted June 12 Soon he'll say we need to build a wall to keep BTC from leaving Amercia. 5 hours ago, Xerxes said: Donald wants to bring Bitcoin manufacturing back in the U.S. !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rkbabang Posted June 13 Author Share Posted June 13 7 hours ago, Longnose said: Soon he'll say we need to build a wall to keep BTC from leaving Amercia. 12 hours ago, Xerxes said: Donald wants to bring Bitcoin manufacturing back in the U.S. !! That quote is taken out of context. He references “mining” immediately before that. This is how the corporate leftist media operates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave86ch Posted June 13 Share Posted June 13 (edited) 15 hours ago, Xerxes said: Donald wants to bring Bitcoin manufacturing back in the U.S. !! I get the irony. Unfortunately, sometimes irony is a distraction. Given Lowery's involvement, it makes much sense. His MIT thesis is compelling and one of the most informed pieces of content I have read in recent years (thank you @rkbabang. Antpool is one of the largest mining rigs and it was founded by Bitmain, a Chinese company, and it is still located in Beijing (the same China which banned cryptos). Bitcoin is a timechain, and gaining control over it could become part of a strategic move to get control over a precious resource or to prevent the enemy from gaining control over it. Edited June 13 by Dave86ch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave86ch Posted June 14 Share Posted June 14 "Clashing antlers together to establish a physical power-based resource control hierarchy seems unnecessary. The unnecessarily large structure of antlers looks like a waste of keratin. Why burn so many calories carrying around the weight of that much extra keratin, and waste more energy clanging them together? What could possibly be the point of such an energy inefficient-looking design? 115It would be tragic to condemn antlers for their inefficiency and waste because the intent of the design is quite noble: the preservation of life." Lowery J. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jfan Posted June 17 Share Posted June 17 @Dave86ch The hashrate from mining pools is 57% related to Chinese entities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave86ch Posted June 18 Share Posted June 18 14 hours ago, jfan said: @Dave86ch The hashrate from mining pools is 57% related to Chinese entities. Thank you for the clarification; it makes things even more fascinating given the fact that China banned cryptocurrencies a long time ago. It looks like gaining control over the timechain of truth has some value for them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dave86ch Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 (edited) On 6/18/2024 at 9:21 AM, Dave86ch said: Thank you for the clarification; it makes things even more fascinating given the fact that China banned cryptocurrencies a long time ago. It looks like gaining control over the timechain of truth has some value for them. The competitive nature of Bitcoin fascinates me. An evoltutive being. Edited June 19 by Dave86ch Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ValueArb Posted June 21 Share Posted June 21 Stablecoins and regulatory arbitrage. https://frankmuci.substack.com/p/stablecoins-and-regulatory-arbitrage Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharperDingaan Posted June 22 Share Posted June 22 (edited) When used in a currency application; a stablecoin is little more than a bad currency peg, that instantly becomes obsolete as soon as one of the pegged currencies has a CBDC. It's essentially a collateralised debt obligation with high ongoing fees and the new instrument as the stablecoin. Developers with no other financing choice, using exploitable currency pegs, that routinely collapse. Whereas, when used in an automation application, stablecoin offers off-shore suitcase bankers lots of promise; arguably, the real target in this first stage of the regulatory arbitrage. SD Edited June 22 by SharperDingaan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ValueArb Posted June 24 Share Posted June 24 In the short run prices are heavily influenced by cash flows in and out for every investment, but in this case I suspect the additional volume will be easily absorbed by the market. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paarslaars Posted June 24 Share Posted June 24 MtGox is going to distribute the BTC, not dump it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwoCitiesCapital Posted June 25 Share Posted June 25 I doubt the mt gox news is actually news - anyone who wanted to dump the BTC could've dumped the mt gox claims at any point over the last several years. In reality, many did. And the claims made their way to individuals/strategies whose desire was to acquire BTC on the cheap and hold for the long-term. Most of that $9B is going to flow straight to entities that will likely not sell the BTC IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
james22 Posted June 25 Share Posted June 25 12 hours ago, ValueArb said: In the short run prices are heavily influenced by cash flows in and out for every investment, but in this case I suspect the additional volume will be easily absorbed by Dell. Corrected for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ValueArb Posted June 25 Share Posted June 25 15 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said: I doubt the mt gox news is actually news - anyone who wanted to dump the BTC could've dumped the mt gox claims at any point over the last several years. In reality, many did. And the claims made their way to individuals/strategies whose desire was to acquire BTC on the cheap and hold for the long-term. Most of that $9B is going to flow straight to entities that will likely not sell the BTC IMO. Much of its going to be sold too. But I don't see how even sellling $9B worth over months going to affect BTC price much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jfan Posted June 26 Share Posted June 26 5 hours ago, ValueArb said: Much of its going to be sold too. But I don't see how even sellling $9B worth over months going to affect BTC price much. I think there is potentially a lot of validity to this statement. It really depends on who is in the receiving end of these BTC payouts. Only the fervent retail HODLer or long crypto expert investor who is going to hold on this. If the majority of these claims are held by asset managers that have promised their LPs a massive gain on payout, their LPs will expect return of capital, which means liquidation of BTC in the spot market. PS @ValueArb quite enjoyed your post on China's history! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wachtwoord Posted June 26 Share Posted June 26 On 6/24/2024 at 7:39 PM, Paarslaars said: MtGox is going to distribute the BTC, not dump it. And it will be (for now) much less than the amount the media is reporting. Closer to half. An overview: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
james22 Posted June 29 Share Posted June 29 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwoCitiesCapital Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 I have a question for you all - maybe I'm overlooking something obvious BITO just declared another $1.50/sh dividend - it's 3rd or 4th massive monthly dividend in a row ($1.5 on the share price is over 6%). I guess I'm confused as to how? Bitcoin is down over the last month. Roll yield on futures contracts appears to be negative. And BITO frontloads its exposure in the first month or two of the curve and regularly rolls so it is constantly exposed to this negative roll yield. I don't understand how they're generating a 6+% monthly yield with negative rolls and negative price action? Can someone help me understand what is driving these pay outs so I can better model it? The last 1-2 monthly dividends have wrecked my short put returns as I didn't expect the monthly distribution to remain this high with flat price action and a negative roll yield Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharperDingaan Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 7 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said: Roll yield on futures contracts appears to be negative. And BITO frontloads its exposure in the first month or two of the curve and regularly rolls so it is constantly exposed to this negative roll yield. I don't understand how they're generating a 6+% monthly yield with negative rolls and negative price action? Most would expect that they are selling options, and replacing underling BTC with the derivative equivalent; premium income, plus derivative leverage, releasing cash to fund the dividend while keeping net exposure the same .... the ETF itself ending up as a portfolio of primarily T-Bills and BTC derivatives. Options also gets them around the daily MTM on any BTC pledged as collateral. SD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwoCitiesCapital Posted July 1 Share Posted July 1 2 hours ago, SharperDingaan said: Most would expect that they are selling options, and replacing underling BTC with the derivative equivalent; premium income, plus derivative leverage, releasing cash to fund the dividend while keeping net exposure the same .... the ETF itself ending up as a portfolio of primarily T-Bills and BTC derivatives. Options also gets them around the daily MTM on any BTC pledged as collateral. SD They don't mention options as being part of the strategy in the summary prospectus. Is it incorrect to think they'd have to disclose that before engaging in those activities as an ETF whose objective is to track BTC prices via futures contracts? Also, why is income only being generated in the last 3-4 months with minimal payouts before then? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharperDingaan Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 (edited) 18 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said: They don't mention options as being part of the strategy in the summary prospectus. Is it incorrect to think they'd have to disclose that before engaging in those activities as an ETF whose objective is to track BTC prices via futures contracts? Also, why is income only being generated in the last 3-4 months with minimal payouts before then? You might want to go through the prospectus again; they have disclosed (and remained silent) on everything they need to. This thing has no actual BTC; they maintain their exposure via derivatives plus T-Bills, and say as much. They also have discretion to pay dividends to reduce the ETF's price volatility, and are not tied to an amount or frequency. It looks like they are working towards splitting the fund; one fund that tracks BTC very closely, but does not pay a dividend; and another fund that tracks BTC less closely in return for a variable monthly dividend. The prospectus is silent on the definition of 'closely tracks', and their messaging could use some work. Not to recommend one over another, but you might want to look at the Purpose Investment funds; multiple crypto funds, two of which are BTC funds - one of them a dividend payer. Notable is that these funds existed well before BITO, and the Canadian regulatory review/experience was quite likely a building block that the SEC drew upon. https://www.purposeinvest.com/thoughtful/purpose-investments-launches-worlds-first-bitcoin-etf-invested-directly-in-the-digital-asset We use these funds as our primary crypto vehicle, largely because as Canadian investors we have far better regulatory protections than we would have were we to use a US based equivalent. We have no desire to compound crypto risk on top of market risk as well. SD Edited July 2 by SharperDingaan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ValueArb Posted July 2 Share Posted July 2 I'm a week behind in reading Matt Levine, but this discussion of the selling of FTX claims and whether verbal commitments are binding or whether the sellers can reneg and get the higher than expected payouts seems interesting. Quote One story about crypto is that it does away with the need for trust. Code is law, everything happens on a public immutable blockchain, and you don’t need to trust any central intermediary: You can prove that you own your Bitcoins by pointing to the blockchain. This was never quite true, as a practical matter. Some crypto investors do organize their lives around not having to trust anyone, but that is very inconvenient, and lots of crypto investors end up trusting people: You hold your crypto on a centralized exchange, not directly on a blockchain, and you trust the exchange to hold it for you. Or you do hold your crypto on a blockchain, and use it in decentralized applications, and you trust that the smart contracts you use do what they say they will, without carefully auditing their code yourself. But it is possible that the philosophical trustlessness of crypto is somehow corrosive to actual trustworthiness. A lot of crypto exchanges turned out not to be all that trustworthy. If a stock exchange collapsed and took customer money with it, people would go around saying “where were the regulators” and “we need better rules to prevent that.” When a crypto exchange collapses, some people go around saying those things, but other people go around saying things like “not your keys not your coins” or “if you didn’t know that that exchange was shady then really it’s your fault.” Or when Avi Eisenberg spotted a profitable opportunity to manipulate the Mango Markets token, he did that, because he was philosophically committed to an ethos of code-is-law and trustlessness, though now he’s in jail. Similarly, if you are used to anonymous, trustless international transactions, and if you think of those transactions as being subject not to any nation’s laws but to “code is law,” and if you are used to transactions settling instantly on the blockchain, might you become … untrustworthy? Might you agree to a trade, and then renege on the trade when prices move in your favor, and say “well, that’s not a real trade, it wasn’t even on the blockchain”? I don’t know. The Wall Street Journal reports: Since FTX’s 2022 implosion, hedge funds had scooped up the rights to customers’ frozen accounts for pennies on the dollar, with five firms alone buying claims with a combined face value of about $2.4 billion. That meant a huge payday was in store. But collecting these winnings won’t be straightforward. Investors are mired in legal battles with some of the original owners of the claims. They allege those former FTX customers abruptly reneged on trades and are suffering from an age-old affliction: seller’s remorse. The FTX case has thrust investment firms, some for the first time, into the Wild West of crypto. Compared to typical bankruptcy cases—where investors buy claims from relatively staid corporate creditors—firms this time are instead cutting deals with crypto traders. “We have sellers from all over the world that are interfacing with buyers and the bankruptcy court for the first time and have never experienced a U.S. Chapter 11 case,” said Andrew Glantz, chief strategy officer of Xclaim, a platform that has facilitated more than $200 million of FTX claims transactions. ... Many sellers, including some sophisticated crypto players, are now demanding bigger payouts, according to court documents and people familiar with the matter. Others have tried to back out entirely, or have tried to find other buyers to take their claims. FTX claims were trading at close to zero cents on the dollar when FTX first went bankrupt, and are now likely to pay back at least 118 cents on the dollar. If you agreed to sell your claim at 30 cents on the dollar, but there was a long delay between the verbal agreement and finalizing the paperwork, then arguably you had a free option: If the claim’s value fell to 20 cents, you’d close the deal and sell it for the 30 cents you agreed to, but if it rose to 50 cents, you’d find a problem with the paperwork and get out of the deal.[3] And in fact it rose to 118 cents, and a lot of sellers seem to be trying to get out of their deals. Also: Tom Braziel, a claims broker, sold tens of millions of dollars of FTX claims to big investment firms like Oaktree Capital, Attestor and Silver Point Capital. He said many of the sellers don’t have lawyers and “don’t realize that a verbal contract to sell a claim is binding under New York law, where most of these hedge funds are based.” Yes, right. One is tempted to say “if only these trades took place on the blockchain, then there would be no dispute about who owned them: Settlement would be instantaneous, and the claims would be tradeable tokens whose ownership could be proven based on an open, tamper-proof blockchain.” But of course people have tried to build tokenized platforms for trading crypto bankruptcy claims. Most notably, the guys from Three Arrows Capital, the famously imploded crypto hedge fund, were building one! Surely you trust them, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
james22 Posted July 10 Share Posted July 10 As with any scarce commodity—be it oil, gold, or rare-earth minerals—countries often engage in fierce competition with each other to secure the lion’s share of resources. And as one of the scarcest commodities on planet earth, there’s little reason to believe bitcoin would be any different, especially if its value continues to grow as many financial analysts expect. https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/07/03/trump-sparks-talks-of-bitcoin-as-a-strategic-reserve-asset/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SharperDingaan Posted July 10 Share Posted July 10 (edited) On 7/10/2024 at 1:21 AM, james22 said: https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/07/03/trump-sparks-talks-of-bitcoin-as-a-strategic-reserve-asset/ Please, please, please ..... let the US Fed take over what the US security services currently holds. 'Cause without it, we're all f***** !!! SD Edited July 13 by SharperDingaan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fly Posted July 11 Share Posted July 11 10 hours ago, SharperDingaan said: Please, please, please ..... let the US Fed take over what the US security services currently holds. 'Cause without it, we're f***** !!! SD Makes sense. Germany just rail dumped their 50k BTC, then it becomes a strategic asset. A few years from now they will buy it back at higher prices. Just like the German energy policies Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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