Global Macro Trading Journal

Daal said:
From what I have read its because its more anonymous than bitcoin so some people are thinking this will do well because of the demand from criminals, tax evaders and the like. But the same thing could have been said about XMR and ZEC and their rallies have been more contained in recent days, so who knows
As far as bitcoin goes, a few years back I thought this might have been a great buy because of criminal demand, but I was completely wrong. Bitcoin is so public it offers very little value for people that want to do dirty stuff. Just check out the site
https://www.walletexplorer.com/

And put in an address that you have used, you will see all the transactions that were ever done in the history of that address. And the history of the addesses that were sent from the original address. This whole bitcoin thing is a prosecutor's dream, all they need is to prove that someone own an address, after that they have ALL that persons 'bank' records publicly avaliable on the blockchain. And to prove someone owns an address all they need is pressure the exchanges or if they are not balking, a court order for them to turn over records. That's not that hard to do.
Bitcoin is only anonymous if you store bitcoins in a private wallet forever and never use it, kinda like Satoshi is doing with his 1M BTC. The minute he uses it in a retailer or cashouts out in an exchange, the entire world will know who he is. So he is a billionarie but cant spend a dime without revealing himself
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Thanks for your thoughts Daal. I've been reading Kevin Marder (https://twitter dot com/mardermarket) for about 18 years now, and I learned from him the importance of noticing relative outperformance. His context is the outperformance of a growth stock versus the Nasdaq or S&P.

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Daal said:
From what I have read its because its more anonymous than bitcoin so some people are thinking this will do well because of the demand from criminals, tax evaders and the like. But the same thing could have been said about XMR and ZEC and their rallies have been more contained in recent days, so who knows
As far as bitcoin goes, a few years back I thought this might have been a great buy because of criminal demand, but I was completely wrong. Bitcoin is so public it offers very little value for people that want to do dirty stuff. Just check out the site
https://www.walletexplorer.com/
More...

IOTA looks like another outperformer. It has leapfrogged Litecoin (#8), BitcoinGold (#7), DASH (#6) to move up to number 5 on the cryptocurrency "market cap" chart.

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"“We continue to experience banking bottlenecks for some customers, but are proceeding to open accounts around the world,” according to the quarterly report. “While we have some clear challenges, please note that tens of millions of dollars continue to flow in and out of Bitfinex daily. Although not available to everyone, these fiat flows have been sufficient to keep our market in alignment with other exchanges as we continue to gain market share.”"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...her-and-its-links-to-biggest-bitcoin-exchange

"These fiat flows", it this what is going to break this market? People think BTC has a lot of value because it can be readily converted to USD and withdrawn to a bank account but if a lot of the exchanges don't have many or have unstable/fragile banking relantionships, when these fiat inflows stop, there wont be enough fiat for everyone (the amount might be there but not the ABILITY to wire the funds). There will be a huge rush to liquidity, coin values will drop like a rock relative to fiat because they will be too illiquid
Maybe I dont understand this market completely but if the biggest player around is saying that they rely on fiat flows to be stable and that they dont have enough banking relationships thats a sign that there is something wrong
 
Daal said:
"“We continue to experience banking bottlenecks for some customers, but are proceeding to open accounts around the world,” according to the quarterly report. “While we have some clear challenges, please note that tens of millions of dollars continue to flow in and out of Bitfinex daily. Although not available to everyone, these fiat flows have been sufficient to keep our market in alignment with other exchanges as we continue to gain market share.”"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...her-and-its-links-to-biggest-bitcoin-exchange
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Maybe I misunderstood them or I dont understand how they work but it sure heck sounds like they rely on something unstable ("these fiat flows") in order to keep their pairs from being priced widely. What happens when "these fiat flows" suffer big changes? You would expect that to happen in a speculative market.

And whats worse, the exchanges got some banks accounts where the banks are being flooded with deposits, which they love. So these banks got an incentive to go "to the dark side". If inflows turns into outflows, I dont think these banks will be so happy. So expect reflexivity on the way down
 
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Daal said:
What happens when the government siezes PrivCoin domain and issues arrest warrants against the owners? The government has jailed people for less, I think (Liberty Dollar and E-Gold)
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The governments have jailed people for far less, I agree. However, this one is no different from any other mass money laundering schemes, in that it's going to be nearly impossible to untangle the ownership once it has been passed through the tumbler.
 
sle said:
The governments have jailed people for far less, I agree. However, this one is no different from any other mass money laundering schemes, in that it's going to be nearly impossible to untangle the ownership once it has been passed through the tumbler.
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If this type of thing becomes larger, its going to taint cryptos further, which will make banking relationships even harder. then its back to the problem of, what does one do with all that bitcoin if you cant convert to fiat and you cant use it anywhere? If ISIS kills 500 NYers and its found out that they used cryptos to fund stuff, banks will leave the exchanges by the droves. People will have all this bitcoin and cryptos and wont be able to conver to fiat and wont be able to shop with it
 
Daal said:
If this type of thing becomes larger, its going to taint cryptos further, which will make banking relationships even harder.
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After TGD, US has effectively outlawed ownership of gold. It did not prevent gold from getting more expensive.

I think a far more likely outcome for bitcoin is the "acceptance into boredom". Eventually (that moment is pretty close or maybe even already passed) the financial industry will admit to itself that it was wrong and that crypto is now widely perceived as a store of value. Soon after, KYC and various other compliance protocols will be introduced (which, just like with fiat currencies, can be circumvented with enough effort). After that, we will see minor portfolio allocations for the general financial clients, 'cause "it's decorrlated from everything". Next thing we know top 2-3 cryptos will be as exciting as gold (yawn). Before that we are likely to see a major crash with everyone getting out (and all sort of pundits crowing loudly) and another, slower, round of appreciation to some long-term fair value.

There is a distinct possibility of bitcoin and other crypto going away with a bang. Personally, I think it's less likely now, given the user base and nascent acceptance by the mainstream financial industry. There is also a tail possibility that bitcoin together with the blockchain tech will break the world as we know it, upending the concept of securities issuance, concept of exchanges etc. We have seen this before with other disruptive technologies.
 
sle said:
After TGD, US has effectively outlawed ownership of gold. It did not prevent gold from getting more expensive.

I think a far more likely outcome for bitcoin is the "acceptance into boredom". Eventually (that moment is pretty close or maybe even already passed) the financial industry will admit to itself that it was wrong and that crypto is now widely perceived as a store of value. Soon after, KYC and various other compliance protocols will be introduced (which, just like with fiat currencies, can be circumvented with enough effort). After that, we will see minor portfolio allocations for the general financial clients, 'cause "it's decorrlated from everything". Next thing we know top 2-3 cryptos will be as exciting as gold (yawn). Before that we are likely to see a major crash with everyone getting out (and all sort of pundits crowing loudly) and another, slower, round of appreciation to some long-term fair value.

There is a distinct possibility of bitcoin and other crypto going away with a bang. Personally, I think it's less likely now, given the user base and nascent acceptance by the mainstream financial industry. There is also a tail possibility that bitcoin together with the blockchain tech will break the world as we know it, upending the concept of securities issuance, concept of exchanges etc. We have seen this before with other disruptive technologies.
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Interesting thoughts, I frankly get confused in terms of trying to value bitcoin. i think its very hard, it seems similar in that respect to gold. Whatever the price is its fine because its a psychological asset. But there is one thing that I do know, buying into euphoria is usually a mistake, buying into parabolic charts is usually a mistake, buying when mainstream celebs are talking about the investment, is usually a mistake. Buying when Buffett, Dalio, PTJ and other smart money players are saying its a bubble, is usually a mistake (unless you sell when you got profits)
I`m getting very close to liquidating all that I got left and moving on, I got about 1.5% but I doubt my positions will be around by monday (when the futures go live). 25-40% crashes in a day are typical on BTC, I have found 9 using 12 midnight as the "close" in my BTC spreadsheet. And if there is one thing that we learned from 1987, is that markets makes new records. There is also the 70% drop from 2013

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Even if BTC has a great future, I really doubt it can double or triple from here without a massive crash first. At least thats what financial market history would suggest, so I plan to bail on this soon. The `convexity` of potential upside gains is being offset by crash risk, as a result, the easy money has been made. Its time to bank profits and call it a trade
 
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