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
5/ That is what makes trading this market exceedingly difficult in the short term. You know (it’s as certain as #Ripple being a scam) there is one party manipulating prices who could simply pull the rug at some point so you want to be cautious,
6/ but you also know that this manipulation (different from 2017) does not happen in isolation - there are strong legitimate drivers that are pushing $BTC higher as well. Therefore, you are kind of inclined to ignore the high funding and low volume pump to still be leveraged long
7/ The key question then becomes: what should we expect and what is actually going on? This is my theory (I remind you - I know nothing!):

#Tether seized the moment when there was no volume to speak of in order to achieve three things.
8/ Firstly, the pump in #bitcoin allows the ‘real world’ to quickly lose sight of the fact the 3rd largest #crypto has been shown to be a scam ( $XRP; Side point: They will still reply to the SEC suit; don’t believe their lies).
9/ Secondly, the fundamental drivers that might make institutions want to get into #bitcoin (which doubtless exits) are the best chance to spark some kind of institutional FOMO. Looking at $USDT prints, google trends and generally low levels of
10/ euphoria, so far it would seem that (aside from Saylor) #tether has had to do most of the hard lifting on their own. This pump over the holidays, while leveraged funds are record short on CME futures may be the perfect opportunity to finally get this institutional FOMO going
11/ Thirdly, the break of $20k is very important to keep the narrative going and #tether knows the later it gets re-tested, the more likely it is to hold. So pumping the price further away from it is a prudent thing to do.
12/ In terms of expectation, I would assume that when traditional markets re-open, we could first see a short squeeze from CME leveraged funds. Once that is done, it will take a correction to flush out funding / leverage from #crypto exchanges which is the opposite of the CME
End/ So we could see a volatile blow off top that finally brings the correction to the $20-25k levels afterwards.

Conundrum: it would likely not be the end as long as the Fed keeps printing

Mind you - this is personal speculation. This is not advice. I don’t know more than you

More from Crypto

Out of curiosity I dug into how NFT's actually reference the media you're "buying" and my eyebrows are now orbiting the moon

Short version:

The NFT token you bought either points to a URL on the internet, or an IPFS hash. In most circumstances it references an IPFS gateway on the internet run by the startup you bought the NFT from.

Oh, and that URL is not the media. That URL is a JSON metadata file

Here's an example. This artwork is by Beeple and sold via Nifty:

https://t.co/TlJKH8kAew

The NFT token is for this JSON file hosted directly on Nifty's servers:

https://t.co/GQUaCnObvX


THAT file refers to the actual media you just "bought". Which in this case is hosted via a @cloudinary CDN, served by Nifty's servers again.

So if Nifty goes bust, your token is now worthless. It refers to nothing. This can't be changed.

"But you said some use IPFS!"

Let's look at the $65m Beeple, sold by Christies. Fancy.

https://t.co/1G9nCAdetk

That NFT token refers directly to an IPFS hash (https://t.co/QUdtdgtssH). We can take that IPFS hash and fetch the JSON metadata using a public gateway:

https://t.co/CoML7psBhF

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The UN just voted to condemn Israel 9 times, and the rest of the world 0.

View the resolutions and voting results here:

The resolution titled "The occupied Syrian Golan," which condemns Israel for "repressive measures" against Syrian citizens in the Golan Heights, was adopted by a vote of 151 - 2 - 14.

Israel and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/HoO7oz0dwr


The resolution titled "Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people..." was adopted by a vote of 153 - 6 - 9.

Australia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No' https://t.co/1Ntpi7Vqab


The resolution titled "Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan" was adopted by a vote of 153 – 5 – 10.

Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/REumYgyRuF


The resolution titled "Applicability of the Geneva Convention... to the
Occupied Palestinian Territory..." was adopted by a vote of 154 - 5 - 8.

Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and the U.S. voted 'No'
https://t.co/xDAeS9K1kW
1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.