As it's yet again been one of those light news weeks for #Bitcoin, let's get down to brass tacks. Bitcoin is now the 6th... largest... currency in the world. ✊ It's 7th if you include gold. This is quarterly update #11.

2/ For 12 years the world's been trying to understand #Bitcoin, forget Bitcoin, legitimize Bitcoin, criticize Bitcoin, love Bitcoin, hate Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a protocol, it does what it does. But if you want to speak of its value as money, you gotta understand the monetary base.

3/ What follows isn't a lesson in stimulus or bailouts, whatever the world faces. It's an attempt at painting the monetary landscape around the globe. This is an exercise in perspective. The dollars, euros, and yen we're all familiar with, collectively, are worth $27 trillion.

4/ As many know, the response from governments worldwide to Covid-19 has been drastic, so expect big moves in the data.

5/ Gold & silver is base money of the past. Government fiat is base money today. It comprises both physical cash, *and* a digital cash component. Bitcoin may be base money of the future. Before we show the charts, it's important to clarify exactly what basic money is.

For those who were trading in 2017 or earlier bull markets this may be obvious, but these kinds of corrections are typically driven by overleveraged longs, not whales dumping on you. That hasn’t started yet. Let me break down why it happens and why it is worse on the weekends.

I should probably have data to back this up, but I haven’t kept up to date with the latest trading data so much of this is based on intuition and experience trading through 2016-2018. If you have data that invalidates this please provide it, happy to be wrong here!

Firstly in an early bull market you have some OG holders taking profit around previous ATH, they have “learned their lesson” and are trying to not get rekt like last time. Once they finish taking some profits or hedging they are riding this up to multiples of previous ATH.

For example I sold around 5-10% of my ETH into stables between $500-$1200, over $1,200 you would need to claw it out of my cold dead hands before we hit $3k. If we don’t get there this cycle (we will) then I will just keep holding. I know a lot of people who did the same.

The problem with this is that the new money coming in and pushing the price up is highly leveraged, and the people with the most conviction are mainly holding and so while they might buy some dips they probably don’t have the dry powder to soak up huge liquidated positions.

1/ Thread explains the rationale for $GBTC over #bitcoin. (Speaking from experience, but not necessarily an endorsement of GBTC):

2/ $GBTC fills a need and is designed to permit exposure to #bitcoin for professional, registered investment advisors in the US. Money managers have unique circumstances compared to individual investors.

3/ #Imagine you are an investment mgr with 250 client accounts (an average-sized separate account manager would have 400). Owning #bitcoin means setting up another 250 accounts - major work with not a lot of reward. If you want to rebalance (stocks/bonds/bitcoin)...

4/ you have 250 transfers to make. Doubles admin workload, makes operational life very complicated. Lots of work for a 5-10% allocation (or less!) to $BTC.

5/ Client reporting is a nightmare. 2 sets of custodian statements not easily combined... A typical client already has 3 accounts, now it is 6 accounts & 6 statements, and there are few software feeds to consolidate data from #crypto exchanges into traditional portfolio reports.

A more detailed explanation of the whole

"A double-spend broke Bitcoin" FUD that was circulated by an irresponsible publication.

1/

There was a chain re-organization in the Bitcoin blockchain. This is a common occurrence that is part of Bitcoin's normal operation. It is a result of decentralized consensus under Proof-of-Work. All PoW chains do this.

2/

Two blocks were mined almost simultaneously, competing for the same height, meaning that they had the same parent block and were trying to extend the chain of the same block

3/

Only one can ever succeed in the long run. It is possible that different nodes and miners see one or the other block first and assume it is the winner. This is also normal in a decentralized consensus algorithm

4/

Eventually, within an average of 10 minutes another block is mined. This new block has as its parent *one* of the two competing blocks. Which one? Whichever one the miner saw first and assumed to be the winner.

The new block extends the chain, resolving the issue.

5/

1/ @Square buys $50M of #Bitcoin w/ its balance sheet 🚀

let's untangle what corporate treasurers do and why this matters...

the role of corp treasurer didn’t exist until the 1970s, when co's faced high inflation and financial uncertainty

2/ in this environment, companies with no cash management or treasury strategy were losing 10-12% / yr to inflation

modern corporate treasury is typically focused on cash management and managing the opportunity cost of capital

holding cash is *not* a strategy

3/ when i worked in corp treasury, we mostly traded the overnight and short term rate markets

we could earn a nice 3-5% return in these very low-risk assets w/ time preference

treasurers today are living in a radically different world!

RATES ARE 0

TARGET INFLATION IS >2%

4/ faced with this new reality, corporate treasurers (and all investors) are looking at alternatives

#Bitcoin is a highly liquid asset that trades 24/7 in an increasingly regulated and structured global market - and its an effective portfolio diversifier!

5/ Square’s willingness to hold bitcoin on its balance sheet as a treasury asset speaks to:

(1) the changing landscape that treasurers must navigate, and;
(2) their ability to manage the operational, risk, and compliance requirements of holding bitcoin directly

0/Why HODL?

Bitcoin is a proxy for the struggle for human dignity. It is a peaceful revolution seeking to displace the anomaly of false monies. The world stands at the cusp of social and political upheaval. Though many look to politics, money’s fate will determine our future.

1/HODLers voluntarily participate in the reformation of money. This is a multi-generational effort to secure & ensure a future sans fiat. HODL forms the basis of a simple ideological framework entirely forward looking. It abandons past constructs & releases one from the present.

2/HODLers sacrifice present needs for future rewards. Not just monetary riches, but the gift of an economy free of fiat’s false prosperity. Bitcoin succeeds where fiat fails. Savings is rejoiced, opportunity is available for all.

3/Our civilization is engaged in an epic conflict this time centered around money. Greater than any physical battle in history, fiat’s war on the public seeks deep authoritarian control over every aspect of life. You will work, live, love at their mercy, upon their whims.

4/Historically conflict existed at physical borders between tribes and nations. Members forged ideological bonds allowing them to selflessly coordinate, overcome threats and establish regional security.

1/ Everyone knows that time is money. In the digital realm, however, money is also intricately related to time. It has to

2/ Among other things, money solves a coordination problem. Trading a single good against others solves the combinatorial explosion of a barter economy. It is a scalability solution that allows coordination across large groups of people.

3/ The two basic forms of money are ledgers (made of information) and physical tokens (made of atoms). Physical tokens keep track of themselves. Ledgers need someone who is in charge.

4/ In the informational realm, only ledgers exist. And to make sure that transactions on a ledger are in order, a concept of time is required. In other words: Tokens are timeless, ledgers are not.

5/ A decentralized system can't rely on our human concept of time. A trustless, non-local time is required. Trustless, because we must not introduce a third party. Non-local because we don't have the luxury of a central frame of reference.

1/ The #Bitcoin bear case has two two components:

The macro, and the miners.

THREAD 👇

2/ On the macro side, if the dollar reverses its major downtrend and/or real rates turn positive, that will hurt $BTC considerably.

I don't expect either to happen in 2021, but have to pay attention to these.

3/ On the miners side, one has to consider the miners' cycle.

It works like this 👇

4/ Miners' hashrate (the aggregated bitcoin computing capacity) is directly tied to mining difficulty, which is the main variable in the bitcoin cost of production

=> the more capacity installed, the higher the difficulty, and the higher the cost.

5/ In a bull-run, miners' hashrate lags price, so as price takes off and moves higher, miners' profitability explodes (as price goes up but production costs don't as much).

These are the happy times.

Here’s my thoughts with BTC lending as this cycle heats up. During the previous cycle we saw BTC prices jump from 10,000 to 20,000 in 16 days. This means that if the borrower overcollateralized with an LTV of 50%, their escrow will be liquidated (unless margin is met)...1/

within half a month. Now, what happens if this cycle produces growth that keeps running at double the price action in another 16 days from there? Well, it means those that just met the previous margin calls, now only have 4 days to respond to the next. So what does 2/

this mean for spreads? It means borrowers start to disappear from the market...which also means the spreads in the derivative market don’t get market makers to service the short-side of the trade. For lending/borrowing platforms that are completely overcollateralized, there 3/

shouldn’t be any problems for the depositors, but if lending/borrowing platforms are cutting corners for some of their borrowers (and they aren’t overcollateralized), the borrowers ability to meet margin calls due to counter-party risks in other parts of their portfolio mix ...4/

could cause systematic risk for all participants of the borrowing/lending platform. This is why transparency on borrowing/lending platforms are paramount to long-term trust and growth in the industry. I suspect the risk to lending/borrowing platforms is actually....5/

1/ Don’t Fear Tether

Whenever Bitcoin has a bull run, naysayers try to cope with missing the boat by rationalizing why it will fail through FUD. Most of these are completely unsubstantiated, but annoyingly persist as negative narratives Bitcoin must fight against.

1\ There is an alarming amount of misinformation (fueled by the media) on what exactly happened to Bitcoin yesterday, and whether funds were "double spent"

Here's everything you need to know 👇

2\ On the 18th, a user broadcast a transaction with very low fees.

When users underpay fees, their transactions gets stuck because miners have more profitable opportunities.

Users are left with 2 options:

a) wait until fee levels drop
b) tell miners they will increase fees

3\ The most popular way to (b) increase fees of an already-broadcast transaction is through a "Replace By Fee (RBF)" transaction.

Put simply, RBF is a copy-and-paste of the original transaction with higher fees and an explicit instruction to favor the new transaction instead.

4\ Nearly a day passed after our infamous user broadcast the original transaction and miners did not include it.

So the user decided to issue an RBF on the 19th with higher fees... but not high enough!

And the transaction was again stuck...

5\ A couple of hours later, the user decided to bump fees up again via a second RBF!

This time around the user paid enough fees.

1/ Why Silicon Valley Doesn't Get Bitcoin

Over the last 12 years of it’s existence, Bitcoin has been misunderstood by Silicon Valley which has led to many cringe worthy moments as they’ve endorsed silly ideas and even worse, scams.

✨ Today, I started my ８ＴＨ ＹＥＡＲ working full-time in #Bitcoin.

I've been a journalist, I've worked at a global exchange and I've spent thousands of hours down the rabbit hole.

If you're just starting out, here are the lessons I'd pass along 🧵