1/ ETH reached 18-month low today and there is this narrative that the price of is dropping because ICOs are liquidating their treasuries. Well, it’s completely wrong. Let’s look at the data!

https://t.co/yG0vecC7VT

2/ The sum of ETH holdings of ICO treasuries is now a little over 3.57M ETH (3.5% of supply). In April, the treasuries held 4.65 million ETH (4.5% of supply) indicating that they likely liquidated (or moved) about 23% since then.

3/ Despite the decline in ETH price, the selloff hasn’t been as drastic as many analysts anticipated. In the past two months, treasuries of projects that held ICOs liquidated (or moved) 172,00 ETH, or ~4.6% of total holdings.

4/ The most aggressive sellers were Status, district0x and Tierion (in order), which sold (or moved) nearly 55,000 ETH combined since September 9. Out of the 57 companies I tracked, 50% didn’t touch any of the ETH in their treasuries.

5/ At least 11 ICOs currently have a smaller “market capitalization” than the amount that they hold in their ETH treasuries alone (see table below).

Bitfinex files discovery in "Yo bro, where did our $800 million go?" action and it is every bit as interesting as you'd expect it to

Here's their CFO describing their agreement (which we know from other litigation was never contractualized because, presumably because money launderers hate paper trails):

Bitfinex's CFO was shocked, shocked to learn that the money launderer they engaged to provide money laundering services while I-swear-to-God-this-is-an-actual-quote "we learned to bank like criminals" may have from time to time lied to banks.

"Institutional constraints" means, here, "We were attempting to avoid velocity checks placed by our banking partners to detect fraud and money laundering, which would have detected our fraud and money laundering."

Money at the speed of code, yadda yadda yadda, the Bitcoin economy is surprisingly blasé when several hundred million dollars is in an interstitial state for months.

In a situation never before encountered by a financial institution: the check was not, in fact, in the mail.

Let me indulge in a story...

Once upon a time there was a genius called Satoshi, this anonymous character laid down a block, it was called the Genius Block, but we we spell it wrong to this day.

Then along came your standard noob who believed in freedom, we know this because he went by the name NewLibertyStandard.

He created a site to buy and sell Bitcoins.

On his site, he priced Bitcoin on electricity.

The price went up, the price went down.

Then one day, he changed the pricing system.

BTC was no longer priced at the cost of mining.

He priced it by DEMAND and SUPPLY.

Geeks and legendary futurists, bought and sold the rarest commodity on the Internet for pennies.

Price teleported upwards.

Then came a Magic The Gathering gamer. He smashed together a shaky piece of software called Magic The Gathering Exchange.

It became the first widely used BTC exchange.

The whole world sent this kid money to buy BTC.

A new market had unlocked. Price teleported.

Let's fast forward 6 glorious years of price teleportation events.

Many of the story details remain unknown to me, though I see their impact on the blockchain.

But let me bring you to the year 2017 and save you lots of reading...

Let me indulge in a story...

Once upon a time there was a genius called Satoshi, this anonymous character laid down a block, it was called the Genius Block, but we we spell it wrong to this day.

Then along came your standard noob who believed in freedom, we know this because he went by the name NewLibertyStandard.

He created a site to buy and sell Bitcoins.

On his site, he priced Bitcoin on electricity.

The price went up, the price went down.

Then one day, he changed the pricing system.

BTC was no longer priced at the cost of mining.

He priced it by DEMAND and SUPPLY.

Geeks and legendary futurists, bought and sold the rarest commodity on the Internet for pennies.

Price teleported upwards.

Then came a Magic The Gathering gamer. He smashed together a shaky piece of software called Magic The Gathering Exchange.

It became the first widely used BTC exchange.

The whole world sent this kid money to buy BTC.

A new market had unlocked. Price teleported.

Let's fast forward 6 glorious years of price teleportation events.

Many of the story details remain unknown to me, though I see their impact on the blockchain.

But let me bring you to the year 2017 and save you lots of reading...

1/

So what actually moves the prices of cryptocurrencies? We spent over a month parsing through data to answer that question for you 👀👀

Special thanks to @eToroUS for partnering with us on this research

A thread:

2/

Leveraging The TIE’s Crypto SigDev™ feed we set out to identify whether news moved the crypto market and what, if any, impact sentiment had following key announcements.

SigDevs are news on token updates or major events (like M&A and Listings).

3/

Looking at ​maximum price increases within 24 hours after different SigDev announcements, we see that certain announcements tend to procure more responses than others. These are ordered from left to right in order of increasing average positive effect on price.

4/

These initial results are intuitive: one would expect 51% attacks — a negative assault on a blockchain — to not typically have a positive effect on price, while getting listed on a new exchange (“L​isting​”) increases demand for a cryptocurrency and thus should increase value

5/

Although Listings and Partnerships have an immediate large influence on price, it does not mean the increase is sustained.

We looked at how sustainable each SigDev was. Specifically, the max price 24 hours after each SigDev compared to the following week's average price

0/ Predictions for 2021:
(This is not investment advice, or any other type of advice. DYOR)

1/ #ETH hits new ATH(s).

2/ #Bitcoin breaks $55K; but BTC YE2021 close is < $30K.
wins!

3/ > 3 billion-dollar crypto IPOs successfully occur (eg CoinBase, BlockFi, et al).

4/ @SBF_Alameda’s ‘off-chain BTC folding’ strategy goes unnoticed; whole crypto ecosystem wins!

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.

Tesla just announced that it had bought 1.5 billion dollars of bitcoin and could in the future sell cars in bitcoins. Since this morning both Bitcoin and Tesla are going up in the market. Maybe there is afterall something in the saying that“Bitcoin is Tesla without the cars”1/ 20

Musk is seen as a genius, a true Midas, by many investors and millennials. For them he can never go wrong. He became recently the richest man in the world dur to Tesla stock valuation (+353% yoy). He moves markets and today´s announcement is “kind of legitimise “ bitcoin 2/

Tesla shares attained $870 which represents a Price/ Earnings ratio of 1.747 (!) on the basis of last year´s profits. Apple is at 37 and the S&P firms average is 23 (against a historical average ≈16). Future profits would have to increase a lot to justify a more normal ratio 3/

Tesla has a good product but the question is if it will sell enough cars to get such profits in face of coming fierce competition. However, this is not the question I want to comment upon. It is also not about what may interest the SEC and market conduct…4/

It was not disclosed when Tesla had made this investment. In December, Musk said that Tesla could buy bitcoin, and this was followed by many statements that he supported bitcoin. Bitcoin kept going up & Tesla investment has appreciated. The SEC will look into this 5/

Tesla just announced that it had bought 1.5 billion dollars of bitcoin and could in the future sell cars in bitcoins. Since this morning both Bitcoin and Tesla are going up in the market. Maybe there is afterall something in the saying that“Bitcoin is Tesla without the cars”1/ 20

Musk is seen as a genius, a true Midas, by many investors and millennials. For them he can never go wrong. He became recently the richest man in the world dur to Tesla stock valuation (+353% yoy). He moves markets and today´s announcement is “kind of legitimise “ bitcoin 2/

Tesla shares attained $870 which represents a Price/ Earnings ratio of 1.747 (!) on the basis of last year´s profits. Apple is at 37 and the S&P firms average is 23 (against a historical average ≈16). Future profits would have to increase a lot to justify a more normal ratio 3/

Tesla has a good product but the question is if it will sell enough cars to get such profits in face of coming fierce competition. However, this is not the question I want to comment upon. It is also not about what may interest the SEC and market conduct…4/

It was not disclosed when Tesla had made this investment. In December, Musk said that Tesla could buy bitcoin, and this was followed by many statements that he supported bitcoin. Bitcoin kept going up & Tesla investment has appreciated. The SEC will look into this 5/

Today we've reached another milestone:
$2,000,000 in customer deposits made to date!

It took us 1 year to reach $1 million but only 40 days to reach $2 million!

Thank you to all our customers.
Stay tuned for more awesome updates from POKKET!

#Crypto #Bitcoin #Earning #HODL

Some thoughts on this super inaccurate piece.

tl;dr: this is not a defence of Tether/ iFinex, who I would like nothing more than to see disappear into irrelevance. However, most of the conclusions here show zero understanding of crypto market

1. First up: it’s completely inexcusable that Tether refuse to have a 3rd party audit. I can’t find a single good faith reason for this.

Bitfinex GC recently did a superb job of sidestepping that question on WBD:

2. For better or worse, USDT (tether) started as a way for people to move fiat between exchanges (a major problem) in the absence of the ability to onboard banking partners, none of whom wanted to touch crypto. USDT is now the dominant stablecoin by mkt cap & liquidity.

3. As a result of the difficulty of having a fiat on/off rail, many exchanges, like Binance, chose to be ‘crypto only’, using stablecoins in lieu of fiat. This is why the majority of inflows into BTC (article says 70%) is via USDT

4. Unbanked exchanges are in aggregate larger than banked ones. This is true, but it’s not because of a giant conspiracy to steal your BTC. Being unbanked = real regulatory arbitrages (lower cost + ability to innovate fast), and lower barriers to entry means there’s more of them.

Options used to be close to irrelevant for bitcoin's price.

Until now.

At current price levels, hedging large option notionals has a major impact on price.

Here's a quick thread on options 👇

Let's start with the meaning of delta.

Delta is the rate of change of an option's price relative to a change in the price of its underlying.

For example, the price of a 50 delta option will move 50% as much as the underlying.

For practical purposes, think of it as how much of the underlying you have:

- if long 50 delta call on 1 BTC => long 0.5 BTC
- if long 50 delta put on 1 BTC => short 0.5 BTC
- if short 50 delta call on 1 BTC => short 0.5 BTC
- if short 50 delta put on 1 BTC => long 0.5 BTC

An option where the option's strike (i.e. exercise price) is equal to current spot price is known as an at-the-money option (ATM). ATM options have a delta of 50, while deep in the money options have a delta of close to 100.

Can also think of delta as probability. A 50 delta option has a 50% chance of expiring in the money.

For a call, the higher price goes => the more in the money the call => the higher the delta.

Once delta gets close to 100, odds are ~100% the option will expire in the money.

1/  We've reached a critical inflection point in bitcoin's adoption curve.

A moment wholly unique in the history of markets.

Are you ready for what comes next? 👇

#Bitcoin

2/ A perfect storm of demand dynamics is driving #Bitcoin price.

I think something shifted in the market -- and active investors & traders would do well to adjust their mindset.

3/ After years asleep at the wheel, institutional leaders are now jarred awake, en masse.

If they want this asset: they'll have to hustle, compete with the masses and FOMO in above ATH's.

Against a backdrop of scarcity unlike anything they've ever seen.

4/ They will buy *all* dips.

Their bots will not stop buying.

There isn't enough supply for all of them, and they know it.

5/ And the whales who accumulated much lower?

How much appetite will strong hands have to market sell, just to run stops?

In the opening hours of the greatest bull market of their lives.

In a liquidity crisis.

Big #Altcoin thread for $ALTS: Where are we at in the cycle, how long do we have, is this #ALTSEASON, what are the relationships like, all of that. $BTC #Bitcoin $ETH $LINK #Altcoins

First: What is #Altseason? The true altszn was seen in 2017/2018, where $BTC fell off a cliff and $ALTS were the 'safe haven' from btc dumping. ALTS went literally 1000%+ (many much higher). Since that time we have seen many #Altcoin pumps, starting primarily in late Q4 each year

These Altcoin pumps are usually 20-1000% gains on nearly the ENTIRE #Altcoin market. This is awesome to see and genius season- you can't lose. Dips are bought up quickly and both ALT/USD and ALT/BTC pairs pump HUGE. Are we currently in that environment? I'm not quite sure tbh.

I think that $BTC still has a little more gas in the tank, which would result in ALT/BTC pairs suffering IMO. You can see more of my thoughts on #Bitcoin below, but I think that we could see 1 more shakeout + then we could see a big run starting in December 2020 for $ALTS

As an #Altcoin trader, you need to understand several things for the environment in which to trade $ALTS successfully:
- $BTC PA
- $BTC.D
-Seasonality
- $ETH
- and much more

Election day in US; to skip the politics and get straight to the money, here's our quarterly update. How do gold, silver, and government fiat money compare with bitcoin's 21 million? #Bitcoin is the 10th largest money in the world, ex-gold & silver. This is update #10.

2/ Bitcoin's monetary system marches on its continuously-lowering coin emission; meanwhile, other world monetary systems' units inflate, either naturally (like gold & silver ounces), or via monopolistic privilege (like government fiat money "printing").

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. The dollars, euros, and yen we're all familiar with, collectively, are worth $25 trillion. This is an exercise in perspective.

4/ As many know, the response from governments worldwide to Covid-19 has been drastic, so expect big moves. Also interestingly, central banks have been much slower to update their data these days.

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 get to the charts, it's important to clarify a few common misconceptions in money.

1/ Fear and Bitcoin.

Whenever Bitcoin has a bull run, naysayers try to cope with missing the boat by rationalizing why it will fail through “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt” or what we Bitcoiners have nicknamed “FUD.”