1) #Bitcoin $ETH #Defi THE ART OF Contrary Thinking by
HUMPHREY B. NEILL

It Pays To Be Contrary

"What is the Theory of Contrary opinion?"

Primarily, it is a method of ruminating over a broad range of public questions; political, economic, and social.

2) In sum, the purpose is to contest the popular view, because popular opinions are so frequently found to be untimely, misled (by propaganda), or plainly wrong.

3) When everyone thinks alike, "everyone" is likely to be
wrong When writers write alike, readers are prone to
think alike Too many predictions spoil the forecasts;
or, to put it another way, the weight of predictions causes
their own downfall.

4) Caution: The contrary theory is a way of thinking, but
let's not overweigh it. It is more of an antidote to general
forecasting than a system or forecasting.

5) Human traits that make the theory of contrary opinion
workable, include:
Habit
Emotion
Irritability
Custom
Greed
Pride-of-Opinion
Imitation
Hope
Wishful Thinking
Contagion
Impulsiveness
Fear

$BTC & $USDT & the criminal cartels that pump the prices of BTC while laundering out real fiat profits through their exchange partners. While tax evasion & general financial malfeasance is problematic enough, one has to wonder what else is occurring with the laundered funds ..1/

Despite the romantic, libertarian view of Bitcoin subverting the oppression of the centralized fiat economy, in reality, the backers were also engaging in drug smuggling, assassination markets & human trafficking. 2/

While some of Bitcoin’s ideology of civil disobedience & the hope of building a shining new economy upon the distributed ledger was exciting for a time, the Bitcoin Civil War side-tracked the project heavily. 3/

Once Dread Pirate Roberts and The Silk Road was closed down, nastier websites emerged, and so too did some of the shadiest venture capitalists in the world — necessitating the split of the Bitcoin protocol away from the BTC economy in 2017. But this requires some context. 4/

Unfortunately, in the era spanning 2014-2016, venture capitalists created media entities such as CoinDesk & Cointelegraph, development groups such as Blockstream & MIT Digital Currency Initiative, exchanges like Coinbase & Bitfinex, 5/

The global blockchain market is growing fast & it is expected to grow from USD 3.0B in 2020 to USD 39.7B by 2025 at an impressive CAGR of 67.3% during 2020–2025. The global fintech market has also significantly grown over the past 2 years & so is the case in Southeast Asia. (1/n)

2) Thanks to the increased application of blockchain & cryptocurrency in the region.
With a total pop. of 570M, a young demographic & high Internet usage, Southeast Asia (SEA) is promising for companies & investors in blockchain & crypto.

#Blockchain

3) The use of blockchain in SEA has certainly come far ahead from the time when the technology was seen as another speculative commodity or a mere passing fad.

Today, the application of decentralized finance (DeFi) is under the limelight.

4) The region’s fast-growing economies are well-positioned to drive adoption of #blockchain & crypto. As each country competes to stay relevant in today’s digital age & embrace emerging technologies such as blockchain & #cryptocurrency, large-scale adoption is the key to success.

5) Here’s an overview of where the region is headed in terms of blockchain w/ respect to digital financial transactions.

As the financial hub for SEA, Singapore plays a critical role in supporting the region to push it forward technologically & financially.

Crypto trading - some personal takeaways from 2020

Disclaimer: my job requires picking investments, at times with short/medium term view (days-months), many times with a long term view (years).

This is mostly a thread on reminders to myself relating mostly to the former.

Watch out for decisions based on fear & greed

Confirmation bias (ignoring contrary signals), anchoring bias (married to entry, trading PnL), sizing too big on low r/r trades, hesitating to buy cheap assets because "it's fallen/rallied too much".

/1

Minimize regret

Constantly question whether you have done all you could to maximize returns in the past month/quarter. Review all tools at your disposal (vol strats, momentum strats, fundamentals) but don't Dunning-Kruger yourself. There are no jack of all trades.

/2

You can't catch them all

Don't regret missing out on a few trades/ investments. Better to win big on 1 high conviction idea then win big on 100 small ones. Be ok with missing out but be ruthless with not learning from it.

/3

1/21 Don't fear it, secure it.

A thread on creating a secure #Bitcoin backup with the Hodlr Disks from @hodlrswiss.

If you value permissionless money & the ability to transact without being censored then self-custody & get your bitcoin out of third party control.

2/21 This thread is the short version of a more detailed article which can be found on my

3/21 Covered here is unboxing, setting up, & torching the Hodlr Disks made by @hodlrswiss. In Nov. Hodlr Swiss reached out to see if I would be interested trying their new stainless steel backup. It looked really cool so I said "hell

I started learning about Bitcoin in February. Ten months later, I’ve changed more than I could ever imagine changing in a year. Let’s review.

How Bitcoin fixes me: A thread from a class of 2020 pleb.

Bitcoin has opened up many rabbit holes to me. I’m learning more about money, economy, history, spirituality, religion and diet than I could ever have expected. It’s also personally changed me by lowering my time preference. Let’s go through this.

Money, 1/2
Ten months after starting this journey, I have more money than I could have ever imagined having as a poor student. I also have less of an urge to spend than I’ve ever had. Except for essentials, I’ve spent less during this year than I used to spend in a month.

Money, 2/2
This is partly NgU technology and partly a lack of spending. But it’s impacted me on more than the monetary front. I’ve become much less materialistic as a result. I used spend hours drooling over the stuff I could buy. I've never wanted to spend money less than now.

Economy 1/6
Ten months ago, I was an avid socialist. I just didn’t understand how anyone could vote right, except for selfish reasons. Mind you, this was after six years of both economics and management basics in the highest level of Dutch high school.

1/20 #Bitcoin $BTC I created my own risk management calculator some time ago, 10 entries 10 take profits, avg to position sizes. + many advanced things.

The brilliance of the one and only private algorithmic stable coin in crypto..... A thread. 1/ $XHV $xUSD

There has never been a private algorithmic stable coin before.

The idea that you can store money in crypto, privately, without volatility, is a new concept. $XHV $xUSD 2/

Previously, if you wanted to hide money in crypto, you were subject to the volatility of bitcoin, and you might wake up in the morning to find you're down 45%. Any stable coin option, has never been private, so stable coins have been limited. $XHV $xUSD 3/

All that changed the moment the Haven Protocol introduce their algorithmic stable coin $xUSD backed by their $XHV coin. It gives people a way of storing money outside the volatility of the crypto market, while remaining completely private. 4/

$xUSD is created by a brilliant mint and burn of $XHV, inside its own wallet, without needing an active market to trade on for liquidity. Just owning XHV, provides you the liquidity needed to jump into xUSD. XHV becomes the door way to and from xUSD anytime you need it. /5

THREAD!!
1/ If you are wondering, how much higher the $DFI price can go, let me tell you: much, much, much higer, and this is why: #Bitcoin was the first #DeFi project and its function is that of creating value (it is better than anything else) and is starting to transfer value.

2/ This function is still at the very beginning though. @DeFiChain is covering functions of DeFi that Bitcoin does not have, but is building on the same fundamentals: it is a code fork, it is very interoperable, it needs Bitcoin for its security, and much much more - AND:

3/ it has the additional DeFi function sets of #lending, #exchanging, #staking and #tokenization. Bitcoin derives its value from people seeing it as digital gold. $DFI derives its value from people exchanging, staking, tokenizing and lending on the blockchain - natively!!

4/ This is very different to any other smart contract blockchain such as #Ethereum, etc., where all this is NOT happening onchain, but on the dapps. Big difference, as here the value is not necessarily captured by the coin, rather the 2nd layer projects.

5/ #DeFiChain captures all that value and therefore the metrics of Total Value Locked (TVL) and Total Coins in Staking are absolute essential. The more value is locked, the higher DFI has to go - it cannot be any different, as you couldn't lock the value otherwise.

I often hear the argument: Bitcoin mining is wasting enormous amounts of energy.

Bitcoin mining uses about the same amount of energy as a small country and that is fine!

Time for a thread:

To start, energy consumption in general is not a bad thing. Without it, civilization as we know it would simply not be possible.

If we would monetize your manual labor by putting you on a rowing machine you would have produce approximately $0.30 of value per day.

Energy grids are in nature in efficient. It is impossible to tranport electrical energy over long distances. Because of this approximately 6% of the US energy production is wasted because of losses alone. Just about 3.5X the total energy consumption of the Bitcoin network!

Varying load, seasonal or daily, poses challenges to the grid and the producers. It is for example not always possible or easy to lower supply to match demand.

This brings the need for balancing the network. Without it, the grid will become unstable.

With the increase of renewable energy, the need for load balancing solutions will continue to grow:

Solar energy only creates energy when the sun shines. Wind energy only creates energy when the wind blows.

Thoughts on #bitcoin price here in a thread

TL;DR: $BTC is caught between a tug of war of market manipulation by #tether, pushing price on low volume on one hand and undeniable fundamental asset price inflation driven by the Fed’s printing on the other.

1/ $BTC is up 22% in 5 days on ever falling, low volume in holiday trading. During this time it has defied every sensible signal. Leveraged funding is unsustainably high, futures are as far in contango as I can remember.

2/ #tether has printed $400m during the holidays, implying that either huge (and I mean HUGE) institutional investors have wired real Dollars over the period when they aren’t in the office or, as we all know it to be true: they are printing freely out of thin air.

3/ With these $USDT and the help of all the connected #tether exchanges price has been painted upwards without resistance. The manipulation, to any experienced market participant, is so obvious it hurts.

4/ However, it is absolutely true that #bitcoin, along with every other asset in the world is acting as a vacuum for the central bank liquidity unleashed on markets. It is just as ridiculous to deny this perfectly legitimate effect as to say #tether is not manipulating prices

#Bitcoin has never taken any money from anybody. Every person in the world that bought #BTC and did not sell or lose it has made money. I mean hard money too. The only ones that lost either sold it or lost it. What’s the lesson?

The simple answer is #HODL don’t sell and secure it, but not many have done that #. Why? Here is what I learnt from being involved in #Bitcoin for over a decade.

1. You need to overcome the emotions of fear and greed which is hard wired into the human psychology. Not so easy.

2. You need to resist the urge to trade when everybody is telling you #Bitcoin is going to be killed by another competitor or it’s a scam or it’s a Ponzi scheme or it’s just for drug dealers or it’s a dinosaur compared to other crypto or it’s going to get banned or etc. etc. etc.

3. You need to learn how to become your own bank that requires learning a new skill that became easier over time, but was very hard in the early days. Securing your own wealth without a bank gives you freedom, but new problems to solve.

20,000 friends in 2020.

20 lessons to do better.

1) Be part of a like-minded group. Applaud different views. Welcome different skills. Build a team mission.

2) Debate. Don’t argue. Share views, opinions. Eliminate heated environments. Agree to disagree, move on.

3) Numbers can’t change you. Cash. Follower count. Assets. Keep your feet on the ground. It can all disappear quickly.

4) If you can’t help for free, you don’t deserve paid work. Help, without expectations. Every action is experience. It somehow pays off.

The #STABLEAct is a confused attempt at regulating perceived harms that are not actually caused by the technology, but are, ironically, inherent in the existing financial system that cryptocurrencies are designed to replace

👇🏽

Stablecoins, by their nature, can only INCREASE access to financial services. Unlike the existing system, they do not require the use of a bank account

The existence of stablecoins does not prevent consumers from using any other traditional payment, savings or credit offerings

In contrast, people can and do lose access to financial services when banks freeze or close their accounts

This happens when banks make arbitrary and opaque risk decisions that are in turn based on cumbersome regulations which deputize banks to do the government’s job

According to the press release

1. Stablecoin issuers could take advantage of low income consumers
2. Stablecoins are an ‘outsourced issuance’ of US dollars
3. Stablecoins pose market, liquidity, and credit risk

But all of these concerns are

The press release compares stablecoins to ‘shadow banks’ e.g mortgage & payday lenders, that lend on a fractional reserve basis, and often take advantage of consumers

This is the opposite of stablecoins like USDC, which are fully collateralized and don't charge interest or fees

1/9 In 2019 I checked out Craig Wrights claim that in 2008 he had installed a fibre link between his rural property (ranch) in Bagnoo/Byabarra to the local exchange.

This claim was proven false
A few days ago I revisited this claim and dug much deeper - the story is still false

2/9 Craig claimed that due to his initiative he opened up a rural town to high speed internet and approx 50,000 people benefited 🙃

The Byabarra exchange is tiny and in 2009 didn't service many properties, maybe a hundred or so

Craig must think we are clowns 🤡

3/9 Craig also said he had racks of PC's set up in his shed at his ranch to support the Bitcoin network in the early stages of 2009. The high speed Fibre internet link was an integral part of this.

Why on earth would you need all that to support the Bitcoin network 2009? 👎

4/9 I found photos of his shed online as the property was being sold at one point, just looked like a normal shed with lots of tools. It was a metal shed, no insulation, no cooling, so not a great place to host PC's mining Bitcoins

Aussie sun + metal shed = very hot PC's 🔥

5/9 So I checked the facts and found the claim about having fibre to the home was total nonsense.

I did this by phoning a local business, also the NBN co, Optus, Telstra and I spoke to real estate agents and 2 key people in the local area.

Nope, no fibre then, no fibre now