Baron's Crypto Trading Journal

[NoahA]

I think many of us don’t discount info we receive outside our 1st hand or 2nd hand experience heavily enough.

I think many of us actually don't go to any lengths to search for truth. I don't know what you opinion is on inflation, but its an absolute crime. You have officials gaslight us into thinking 2% is good, but when you really study the topic, you understand that this is the sweetspot they figured out most people put up with. It is not necessary and its outright theft. Inflation is just another tax that governments use to extract more money out of you. Most people don't know this, and if they did, I like like to hope there would be more pushback. So I think its not that we need to discount information more, we need to search more. Of course there will be lots of garbage out there, but if everyone searched more, we would all develop better filters.

But I’m not sold on the idea that things are way worse than ever.

Another thing I learned is that what the US has essentially done these past few decades is export inflation. We buy cheap goods and give them depreciating fiat. The whole system is designed for the world to run on the US dollar which gives the US incredible power. The world is now re-balancing and as countries become more less global, or change trading partners or currencies, that inflation will come right back to the US. So I think its just the beginning of a lower quality of life for US citizens. The rest of the world gets better while the US has to sucks it up. The people at the bottom will absolutely revolt when it become obvious the system isn't working for them. Lots of US citizens are already moving from blue to red states, but the smarter ones are one step further by leaving the US all together. (Have you heard that Dollar General is closing 1000 stores? Jesus, even a dollar store can't survive... what does this say?)

I am very bullish on the US long term though. But first we need the current system to break and go on a bitcoin standard. Then people can get back to to building in a fair and equitable system and then we can watch the US prosper again. Its like an earthquake. Pressure builds up, and eventually the quake happens. Then you see major shifting in fault lines, roads are ripped up, but then you rebuild after all that pressure is released.

 

[Overnight]

And Baron is even more in profit now with BTC at ATH for like the third week in a row. Last print for BTC I saw was ~72K per. Who is going to still poo-poo on his position, at ATH when his AWP is what it was??

Could this be a reverse pizza-gate?

When will Baron start taking profits? Hmmm!

 

[semperfrosty]

And Baron is even more in profit now with BTC at ATH for like the third week in a row. Last print for BTC I saw was ~72K per. Who is going to still poo-poo on his position, at ATH when his AWP is what it was??

Could this be a reverse pizza-gate?

When will Baron start taking profits? Hmmm!

We're all down 15% right now so youre unlikely to get a celebratory response!

 

[semperfrosty]

@Frederick Foresight

Okay, so this is a pretty legend quote. Kind of invalidates some of what I wanted to discuss with you lol.

I think we’re at an interesting time, where the worldview of BTC revolutionaries and traditional financiers kind of overlaps. They can extend the BTC % rally of past cycles into $1M/BTC with conviction, and the rest of us are seeing a familiar hype cycle of a commodity.

In a few years one of the two hypothesis will be invalidated by price. (I hope) most BTC maximalists will re-evaluate their views if we don’t crash through 250K and 500K in time. And the in the event BTC does reach those prices, the rest of us should be updating our view and admitting something is occurring that we do not currently foresee.

You’re extremely skeptical nature toward BTC comes across as a little overblown actually. Are you above 50 or 60 years old? Past a certain point it seems like the it gets harder for some to conceptualize the viewpoint of a new development/generation if too many priors are foreign to your experience.

I think it’s fairly plausible that BTC will be treated like a commodity, and after the adoption inflows cease will have a long-term return similar to inflation. There’s utility in a limited, cheaply stored, non-decaying asset that has a consensus of value, and hence resiliency to inflation. With the embedding of BTC into mainstream portfolio allocation, it seems like consensus of value won’t be completely fading anytime soon.

Even if BTC goes down to 30K and flatlines for years a lot of these early adopters will remain completely vindicated and entrenched in their beliefs for a long time to come because they bought at $100. Your comparisons with beanie babies and plates come across as fairly cheap and straw-manish because BTC clearly has qualities absent in those items such as being instantly and cheaply transferred globally, highly liquid, and permissionlessly transparent.

It’s actually a wonder to me that you spend the time to consistently post so much with such a bearish sentiment. Seems like a waste of time and energy, but I guess I don’t have much room to talk because I finally cracked and made a reply to you haha.

I think Spectre here has the most rational view out of everyone here. Non-yielding commodities have close to zero real returns in the long haul, but volatility makes for good trading opportunities in the mean time. If you learned how to navigate the blockchain you could be trading arbs yielding 10bps a day or more on the back of all this uneducated flow.

At least find a way to get short if you have such a strong opinion about the uselessness of the asset class so you can have some skin in the game besides idle chatter. Or maybe talk a little less frequently and insistently if you can’t monetize your view yet.

Excellent post.

 

[semperfrosty]

I think many of us actually don't go to any lengths to search for truth. I don't know what you opinion is on inflation, but its an absolute crime. You have officials gaslight us into thinking 2% is good, but when you really study the topic, you understand that this is the sweetspot they figured out most people put up with. It is not necessary and its outright theft. Inflation is just another tax that governments use to extract more money out of you. Most people don't know this, and if they did, I like like to hope there would be more pushback. So I think its not that we need to discount information more, we need to search more. Of course there will be lots of garbage out there, but if everyone searched more, we would all develop better filters.


Another thing I learned is that what the US has essentially done these past few decades is export inflation. We buy cheap goods and give them depreciating fiat. The whole system is designed for the world to run on the US dollar which gives the US incredible power. The world is now re-balancing and as countries become more less global, or change trading partners or currencies, that inflation will come right back to the US. So I think its just the beginning of a lower quality of life for US citizens. The rest of the world gets better while the US has to sucks it up. The people at the bottom will absolutely revolt when it become obvious the system isn't working for them. Lots of US citizens are already moving from blue to red states, but the smarter ones are one step further by leaving the US all together. (Have you heard that Dollar General is closing 1000 stores? Jesus, even a dollar store can't survive... what does this say?)

I am very bullish on the US long term though. But first we need the current system to break and go on a bitcoin standard. Then people can get back to to building in a fair and equitable system and then we can watch the US prosper again. Its like an earthquake. Pressure builds up, and eventually the quake happens. Then you see major shifting in fault lines, roads are ripped up, but then you rebuild after all that pressure is released.

Another great post.

One of the best things about Bitcoin:it helps you start to wake up and realise.

 

[SunTrader]

Exactly. It is not tethered to anything real. And so, you have no way of determining if it is overvalued or undervalued at any given time. Any such notion is utterly arbitrary.

My gut feel is that one day there will be a collective awakening and the realization that everyone sleepwalked into the middle of the highway. And it’s gonna leave a mark. But until then, there are no boundaries and pigs can fly.

Annnnnyday now.

Maybe it will ... the day the concept of overvalued/undervalued exists when buying/selling anything. Value is what someone will pay or sell something - at that moment in time. All other valuation talk is just that, talk.

 

[Frederick Foresight]

Annnnnyday now.

Never said that.

Maybe it will ... the day the concept of overvalued/undervalued exists when buying/selling anything. Value is what someone will pay or sell something - at that moment in time. All other valuation talk is just that, talk.

Real stuff is tethered to the real world. Value can then be attributed to it fairly objectively, which may or may not intersect with the sentiment at any given time. (Consider Soros's theory of reflexivity.) With crypto, there is no such comparative benchmark - it's all just made up in its entirety depending on the moment and absolutely nothing else.

You may well be making money in crypto, and good for you. But you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[semperfrosty]

Annnnnyday now.

Maybe it will ... the day the concept of overvalued/undervalued exists when buying/selling anything. Value is what someone will pay or sell something - at that moment in time. All other valuation talk is just that, talk.

Also,there is the hurdle of:

'I can put 1 of 2 things in your hand,a $100 bill or this seed phrase,which do you want?'

Until you get your head in the digital world,you still value paper over what could possibly be a $50,000 account.

Not the best analogy in the world obviously,but they give you a coffee and toasted sandwich at McDonalds when you tap your card so I'm not sure how people can remain oblivious to digital value.

 

[Frederick Foresight]

Not the best analogy in the world obviously,but they give you a coffee and toasted sandwich at McDonalds when you tap your card so I'm not sure how people can remain oblivious to digital value.

If it were a digital currency with economic backing, then it would have value. Crypto has no such economic underpinning. It's all just evangelism and whim, which is why its volatility is so feverish.

 

[SunTrader]

A) Never said that.


B) Real stuff is tethered to the real world. Value can then be attributed to it fairly objectively, which may or may not intersect with the sentiment at any given time. (Consider Soros's theory of reflexivity.) With crypto, there is no such comparative benchmark - it's all just made up in its entirety depending on the moment and absolutely nothing else.

You may well be making money in crypto, and good for you. But you have no idea what you are talking about.

A) I know. I did. You said "My gut feel is that one day there ..." IOW anyday, otherwise put a date on it.

B) Real stuff is tethered to real buying and selling, not opinions.