Cryptocurrencies

[SharperDingaan]

The reality is that btc is < 60,000 when many hoped it would be > 8O,000 by now; lot of bunnies looking for 'guidance' and not finding it.

 

Not much reason to accumulate until US election results are known, and lots of reason to trade the rips - raising volatility. Opportunity.

 

GLTA

 

SD

 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

Nah - I'm still accumulating. 

 

Bitcoin often takes a breather during miner capitulation post halving. Not to mention the supply event of the German government selling offset much of the prior ETF accumulation in terms of taking BTC supply off market. 

 

Just gotta be patient. Slow accumulation via the ETFs, corporate balance sheets, governments, and retail will eventually eat up the supply which was just halved. Just requires a little patience.

 

I don't mind waiting longer, but I think 100k by December may be in the cards regardless of the election outcome. 

[james22]

2 hours ago, SharperDingaan said:

Not much reason to accumulate until US election results are known . . .

 

Maybe for custody, but who knows? Zero transparency.

[james22]

 

[Paarslaars]

Yes 3-4 months after the halving you would expect the bull run to start but isn't it normal that it takes Longer this time? To go from 3k to 6k you needed 50B, now you need 1T to double. Which I don't think is unrealistic but will take some time.

 

And SD could be right here, makes sense for people to hold off on BTC for a few months until they know what the political landscape will be.

 

Good to see the democrats turning around on this, Trump is not looking great in the polls for now. Then again he was always behind Hilary in polls too...

[UK]

Which Bitcoin ETF is the best? IBIT? And what would be the most important pros and cons of owning BTC via ETF? Thanks!

[gfp]

2 hours ago, UK said:

Which Bitcoin ETF is the best? IBIT? And what would be the most important pros and cons of owning BTC via ETF? Thanks!

 

The main 'pro' for a US investor (no clue what is allowed in the UK) would be the ability to own BTC inside an IRA or other self directed tax deferred retirement account.  Other 'pros' might be ease of use and mitigation of the risk you lose your key and lose access to your BTC.  Inside a retirement account you are not taxed on each BTC sale.

 

The main 'cons' would probably be that BTC trades 24 hours a day and some buying and selling opportunities wouldn't be possible to take advantage of with an exchange traded product.  Weekends as well.  Maybe robin hood or some such has introduced 24/7 after-hours trading but I haven't seen it.  Other cons would be that it comes with a carrying cost, it is not private, it is not the real thing so you can't leave the country with it at a moments notice or use it in a transaction on the other side of the world like buying a piece of real estate at 11pm on a Sunday or something.

Edited August 15 by gfp

[gfp]

Finally someone is on to Warren's master plan -

https://www.cryptotimes.io/2024/08/15/what-if-warren-buffett-launches-a-game-changing-stablecoin/

[73 Reds]

2 minutes ago, gfp said:

Finally someone is on to Warren's master plan -

https://www.cryptotimes.io/2024/08/15/what-if-warren-buffett-launches-a-game-changing-stablecoin/

If Buffett and perhaps Elon Musk and some other multinational giants backed a form of crypto-currency that just might be worthy of consideration.  Still don't follow the idea of crypto with no backing whatsoever.

[rkbabang]

9 hours ago, Paarslaars said:

Yes 3-4 months after the halving you would expect the bull run to start but isn't it normal that it takes Longer this time? To go from 3k to 6k you needed 50B, now you need 1T to double. Which I don't think is unrealistic but will take some time.

 

And SD could be right here, makes sense for people to hold off on BTC for a few months until they know what the political landscape will be.

 

Good to see the democrats turning around on this, Trump is not looking great in the polls for now. Then again he was always behind Hilary in polls too...

 

 

Does anyone know how these polls are collected?   I don't answer calls from unknown numbers and I don't know anyone who does.  Who exactly are they even talking to?  I think modern polls are just scientific samples of what the elderly with landlines and very low IQ non-elderly people are thinking.

 

[UK]

3 hours ago, gfp said:

 

The main 'pro' for a US investor (no clue what is allowed in the UK) would be the ability to own BTC inside an IRA or other self directed tax deferred retirement account.  Other 'pros' might be ease of use and mitigation of the risk you lose your key and lose access to your BTC.  Inside a retirement account you are not taxed on each BTC sale.

 

The main 'cons' would probably be that BTC trades 24 hours a day and some buying and selling opportunities wouldn't be possible to take advantage of with an exchange traded product.  Weekends as well.  Maybe robin hood or some such has introduced 24/7 after-hours trading but I haven't seen it.  Other cons would be that it comes with a carrying cost, it is not private, it is not the real thing so you can't leave the country with it at a moments notice or use it in a transaction on the other side of the world like buying a piece of real estate at 11pm on a Sunday or something.

 

Thanks!

[UK]

1 hour ago, 73 Reds said:

If Buffett and perhaps Elon Musk and some other multinational giants backed a form of crypto-currency that just might be worthy of consideration.  Still don't follow the idea of crypto with no backing whatsoever.

 

"Why did Facebook stop Libra? They said they wanted to revolutionize the global financial system. The project ran in to fierce opposition from policymakers alarmed that Libra could give Facebook too much control over the money system, and infringe on users' privacy"

[Paarslaars]

1 hour ago, rkbabang said:

 

 

Does anyone know how these polls are collected?   I don't answer calls from unknown numbers and I don't know anyone who does.  Who exactly are they even talking to?  I think modern polls are just scientific samples of what the elderly with landlines and very low IQ non-elderly people are thinking.

 

Yeah no clue. Also don't know if they take the system into account? Because in the end nobody cares about total votes, you just need the swing states.

[SharperDingaan]

Few doubt that demand for BTC will increase with rising adoption in the institutional market, but there is very little recognition that bankruptcies have frozen 10%+ of total supply. As that supply gets distributed it will force down price as recipients sell at the margin. Selling pressure also amps further as miners have incentive to sell their BTC asap versus hold for an appreciation gain as well. Sell quick to maximize cash, hedging covering losses on any BTC below the strike.

 

if you think bankruptcy recipients will not sell down their written off BTC, power to you. But most everyone who has a lottery win spends at least part of it, before putting away the rest. An unstable market overhang that could go at any time.

 

Sentiment changes every day. Have to think there will be at least a few days when the manic depressives are doing their thing. Seems a shame to stand in their way!

 

SD

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 15 by SharperDingaan

[Fly]

21 hours ago, SharperDingaan said:

Few doubt that demand for BTC will increase with rising adoption in the institutional market, but there is very little recognition that bankruptcies have frozen 10%+ of total supply. As that supply gets distributed it will force down price as recipients sell at the margin. Selling pressure also amps further as miners have incentive to sell their BTC asap versus hold for an appreciation gain as well. Sell quick to maximize cash, hedging covering losses on any BTC below the strike.

 

if you think bankruptcy recipients will not sell down their written off BTC, power to you. But most everyone who has a lottery win spends at least part of it, before putting away the rest. An unstable market overhang that could go at any time.

 

Sentiment changes every day. Have to think there will be at least a few days when the manic depressives are doing their thing. Seems a shame to stand in their way!

 

SD

 

 

 

 

 

 

What supply are you speaking of that is still frozen due to bankruptcy? I thought MtGox was already in the process of being distributed, if not already done. 

[Fly]

21 hours ago, UK said:

 

"Why did Facebook stop Libra? They said they wanted to revolutionize the global financial system. The project ran in to fierce opposition from policymakers alarmed that Libra could give Facebook too much control over the money system, and infringe on users' privacy"

 

Bingo. Centralization is only ok when it is the government as the central agency controlling money. 

 

 

[wachtwoord]

On 8/12/2024 at 9:40 AM, Dave86ch said:

 

I'm from Switzerland, and things are heading in the same direction.

 

At least in Switzerland the landlord cant steal the deposit (blocked account in renters name).

[wachtwoord]

On 8/15/2024 at 3:32 PM, 73 Reds said:

If Buffett and perhaps Elon Musk and some other multinational giants backed a form of crypto-currency that just might be worthy of consideration.  Still don't follow the idea of crypto with no backing whatsoever.

 

You got it backwards. All the backed "cryptos" (in name only: they arent cryptocurrencies) arent worth anything as they require trust. "Cryptos" that require trust are worthless as trustlessness or core to the value proposition.

 

Do you think that gold has no value because it isnt backed? No, of course not, gold is what backs the value of other products not the other way around.

 

Bitcoin is analogous to gold (but with some extra benefits).

Edited August 17 by wachtwoord

[73 Reds]

2 hours ago, wachtwoord said:

 

You got it backwards. All the backed "cryptos" (in name only: they arent cryptocurrencies) arent worth anything as they require trust. "Cryptos" that require trust are worthless as trustlessness or core to the value proposition.

 

Do you think that gold has no value because it isnt backed? No, of course not, gold is what backs the value of other products not the other way around.

 

Bitcoin is analogous to gold (but with some extra benefits).

 

2 hours ago, wachtwoord said:

 

You got it backwards. All the backed "cryptos" (in name only: they arent cryptocurrencies) arent worth anything as they require trust. "Cryptos" that require trust are worthless as trustlessness or core to the value proposition.

 

Do you think that gold has no value because it isnt backed? No, of course not, gold is what backs the value of other products not the other way around.

 

Bitcoin is analogous to gold (but with some extra benefits).

But I wouldn't invest in gold either.

[wachtwoord]

42 minutes ago, 73 Reds said:

 

But I wouldn't invest in gold either.

 

Fair enough.

 

Bitcoin's still a lot cheaper though (as price discovery is still ongoing). If that discount is not enough again: fair enough.

 

Don't feel compelled into "backed" "cryptos" though. No value there.

[Milu]

My net worth currently has about 13% allocation to crypto (10% btc, 3% Eth). Bought and held for over 4 years so have about a 6x on my btc and 10 or 11X on my eth purchase.

 

I always felt that I got the thesis on bitcoin (Store of value, digital gold etc) a lot more than ETH. With that in mind I am considering gradually selling out of my ETH position, because essentially I don't fully understand it and I don't really keep track of the latest goings on in that space. There are also other rival platforms to eth like solana etc which serve slightly different purposes but again I don't fully keep on top of the latest updates.

 

Curious how other posters feel about this and what their feelings are on ETH as a technology/investment?

[james22]

 

[Fly]

5 hours ago, Milu said:

My net worth currently has about 13% allocation to crypto (10% btc, 3% Eth). Bought and held for over 4 years so have about a 6x on my btc and 10 or 11X on my eth purchase.

 

I always felt that I got the thesis on bitcoin (Store of value, digital gold etc) a lot more than ETH. With that in mind I am considering gradually selling out of my ETH position, because essentially I don't fully understand it and I don't really keep track of the latest goings on in that space. There are also other rival platforms to eth like solana etc which serve slightly different purposes but again I don't fully keep on top of the latest updates.

 

Curious how other posters feel about this and what their feelings are on ETH as a technology/investment?

 

A lot of the ETH hopium about it becoming the world supercomputer and onboarding huge corporations never made sense to me either. What respectable company is going to give up control of their platform in order to run it on ETH (or Solana or any other similar)? It is a speculative platform for retail to create meme tokens and outright scams. 

 

Blockchain Trilemma: Security, Scalability, Decentralization. Pick two. 

 

ETH, SOL, and others make sacrifices on all three and don't do any of them particularly well. BTC focuses on Security and Decentralization with the scalability (speed) as a sacrifice for the base layer. 

 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

6 hours ago, Milu said:

My net worth currently has about 13% allocation to crypto (10% btc, 3% Eth). Bought and held for over 4 years so have about a 6x on my btc and 10 or 11X on my eth purchase.

 

I always felt that I got the thesis on bitcoin (Store of value, digital gold etc) a lot more than ETH. With that in mind I am considering gradually selling out of my ETH position, because essentially I don't fully understand it and I don't really keep track of the latest goings on in that space. There are also other rival platforms to eth like solana etc which serve slightly different purposes but again I don't fully keep on top of the latest updates.

 

Curious how other posters feel about this and what their feelings are on ETH as a technology/investment?

 

I bought into the ETH story as I watched it unfold from crypto-kitties to DeFi and figured it'd continue. 

 

Ultimately, I think there is a lot of potential to DeFi, but the regulatory framework is going to have to change and they're going to have to find better ways to scale it. It was tiresome paying $7-10 everytime I wanted to do something and often times was more as some things require multiple  actions (like staking). It's also a pain in the ass to track regular transactions, gains/losses on gas fees, capitalization of gas fees into the basis of new positions, and etc for tax purposes and paid services didn't do this function particularly well either. 

 

I started off with ~20k within the DeFi universe and eventually migrated much of that to CeFi counterparties like BlockFi, Celsius, and Ledn because they could better scale the transaction fees by batching customer trades/actions and it simplified the taxes. If 20k wasn't enough to start with, how many people are actually going to be involved in that eco-system? And then, eventually Celsius and Block Fi both went under (amongst others) and the whole trust in that CeFi ecosystem was shattered so where do you go now? 

 

As a result, ETH and DeFi ecosystem have really lost their luster. Not to mention there have been few improvements over the last 3-4 years and it could be argued that ETH got worse now that it's PoS instead of PoW. 

 

I'm basically 99% BTC and 1% ETH and LINK and that's predominantly just to scratch my trading itch without touching the BTC stack as much. 

[SharperDingaan]

On 8/16/2024 at 9:16 AM, Fly said:

 

What supply are you speaking of that is still frozen due to bankruptcy? I thought MtGox was already in the process of being distributed, if not already done. 

 

MtGox, FTX/Alameda, multitude of smaller law enforcement seizures in various jurisdictions around the world, collateral that was put up for loans (Tether), etc. While derivatives can transfer beneficial ownership at any time (avoiding on-chain visibility), borrowers have to maintain enough ongoing liquidity to settle MTM adjustments; when they suddenly can't .... it's the same as a margin call. Collateral gets sold down, not HODLed.

 

SD