The Cryptocurrency Trading Journal

SusquehannaVanna said:
Thanks, super interesting, especially BlockFi stuff. Yea I definitely agree, huge red flag that they only say "we just do what banks do but give you the benefit" without explaining any details. They are almost certainly trying to trade this on their own through futures basis or etf arb, rather than just sec lending.

I left big institutions before crypto really took off. Any speculation around institutional limitations for USD/stablecoin funding? Hard to imagine them paying +15% for USD to post as margin to short the futures. They can definitely get USD cheaper. Maybe because compliance won't let them buy stablecoins with fiat? Seems odd that they'd then be allowed to borrow USDC to post.

I suppose another driver of the high stablecoin yield is lending to exchanges that charge even higher rates on margin trading. These are probably looped into the "stable institutional" buckets mentioned by these lenders.
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Not an expert on this, but from what I understand, it has to do with prime broker/securities lending space

Cryptos trade 24/7/365 Wiring takes days between exchanges, cryptos, eth, btc, ltc, USDT, USDC, PAXOS, GUSD, takes minutes or hours at the most to transfer between exchanges

Now, imagine yourself a big trader for Susquehanna, able to arb pricing discrepancies between exchanges, you know there's a ton of cryptos trading, could be btc, eth, link, ada, mana, enj, etc, etc and there are many exchanges, coinbase, kraken, bitfinex, binance, etc, etc

You're probably going to want to execute $10's or $100's of millions worth of trades, to make it worthwhile, no?

Are you gonna hodl all these shitcoins in your inventory? In the values of $10's or $100's of millions when you're only going to be trading them so you can have positive PNL? Your bosses going to let you own these cryptos?

Or, wouldn't you rather put $300M (140% collateral) at Celsius and they'll loan you these cryptos short term, yea pay high interest for a couple of weeks, whateverz? During the crypto crash last year, you probably needed to wire a few hundred million $ to Celsius to meet the margin calls, but so what, it's peanuts, no?

btw, the pairs are not always stablecoins, there's btc/eth, enj/usdt, enj/eth, etc, etc, there are many ways to skin the arbs mispricings

Celsius claims they have not liquidated a single institutional borrower as the clients they deal with seem to be able to put up more collateral immediately

But I never worked for those firms. You worked over there so maybe you can call your buddies to check on the Celsius claims and if they are truly doing this borrowing and collateral stuff and crypto trades

@Daal wrt to your doubts, you're a smart guy, don't you think Celsius will have blown up or blow up soon if they are not legit? They're paying millions in interest every week. The burden of proof is on the accuser, tell us how they can keep up the ponzi?

A few months ago, Celsius claims 200 institutional borrowers, also it was asked if there's a limit to the amount of deposits they can handle, if there's enough borrowing demand, and they said, absolutely! Celsius has enough demand even if the deposits were 10x bigger. That's a big statement to how robust this crypto securities lending space is, and you somehow can't see how they're making it?
 
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johnarb said:
Picked up my 5th NFT today at Niftygateway...

I don't know when the top will be for NFT's, but I can tell you what I've been seeing. I buy NFT's (open editions, they are cheaper) and after a a week or 2, they are worth more

all 5 of them are worth more even the 1 I picked up today (Jose Delbo open edition).

I have not sold a single NFT, but I am very much tempted to sell my hackatao which at the lowest price is more than double my purchase price and will more than recoup all my investments in all 5 NFT's, however, hackatao NFT at Makerspace released a day or so ago is priced at $23K, so it's got me conflicted

Some of the crypto riches are fueling the NFT bubble and it's also sucking mainstream $ and stonk market $ and WSB $ into the bubble, fwiw

Here's a twitter thread discussing the NFT ecosystem at Niftygateway

https://twitter.com/x/status/1375224938194292736
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The time to buy NFTs will be over the next year when the entire NFT market is down 90%. Then, maybe there will be some bargains to be had. But this is super similar to the ICO space, it didn't matter whether it was a good project or not, eveything imploded. I recall even a DeFi token that came out in 2017 being down over 80% in 2018, before it finally started to go up again. Eventually it went much higher but that was one in 200 shot and you had to had the staying power of a champ
All my instintics tell me the NFT top is coming. And I really doubt many, if any, of these NFTs will beat BTC/ETH in the coming year. Most wont even beat the USD. Now, if you think im full of it and want to keep buying them, good luck
 
Daal said:
The time to buy NFTs will be over the next year when the entire NFT market is down 90%. Then, maybe there will be some bargains to be had. But this is super similar to the ICO space, it didn't matter whether it was a good project or not, eveything imploded. I recall even a DeFi token that came out in 2017 being down over 80% in 2018, before it finally started to go up again. Eventually it went much higher but that was one in 200 shot and you had to had the staying power of a champ
All my instintics tell me the NFT top is coming. And I really doubt many, if any, of these NFTs will beat BTC/ETH in the coming year. Most wont even beat the USD. Now, if you think im full of it and want to keep buying them, good luck
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I think I may have given the impression that I'm a big NFT fan. I'm just dabbling in it. This is play $. I said I don't know when the top will be for NFT

I'm only offering the idea that there's $ to be made. I leaked alpha, but I'm no financial advisor, but so it's clear, you can buy an open edition Jose "Delbo Satoshi the creator" for $2600 right now (I was going to type $2500, but I checked and it sold already). Wait a week or 2, you'll be able to sell it for profits, or if you're a flipper, you can sell it tomorrow for profits

That's what the twitter I posted, but hey caveat emptor, we're just sharing ideas

Obviously, this is only for small portion of your capital and no I do not think NFT's are better than BTC, I'm a bitcoin maximalist, but not so much a fan of ETH which has blockchain issues
 
johnarb said:
Not an expert on this, but from what I understand, it has to do with prime broker/securities lending space

Cryptos trade 24/7/365 Wiring takes days between exchanges, cryptos, eth, btc, ltc, USDT, USDC, PAXOS, GUSD, takes minutes or hours at the most to transfer between exchanges

Now, imagine yourself a big trader for Susquehanna, able to arb pricing discrepancies between exchanges, you know there's a ton of cryptos trading, could be btc, eth, link, ada, mana, enj, etc, etc and there are many exchanges, coinbase, kraken, bitfinex, binance, etc, etc

You're probably going to want to execute $10's or $100's of millions worth of trades, to make it worthwhile, no?

Are you gonna hodl all these shitcoins in your inventory? In the values of $10's or $100's of millions when you're only going to be trading them so you can have positive PNL? Your bosses going to let you own these cryptos?

Or, wouldn't you rather put $300M (140% collateral) at Celsius and they'll loan you these cryptos short term, yea pay high interest for a couple of weeks, whateverz? During the crypto crash last year, you probably needed to wire a few hundred million $ to Celsius to meet the margin calls, but so what, it's peanuts, no?

btw, the pairs are not always stablecoins, there's btc/eth, enj/usdt, enj/eth, etc, etc, there are many ways to skin the arbs mispricings

Celsius claims they have not liquidated a single institutional borrower as the clients they deal with seem to be able to put up more collateral immediately

But I never worked for those firms. You worked over there so maybe you can call your buddies to check on the Celsius claims and if they are truly doing this borrowing and collateral stuff and crypto trades

@Daal wrt to your doubts, you're a smart guy, don't you think Celsius will have blown up or blow up soon if they are not legit? They're paying millions in interest every week. The burden of proof is on the accuser, tell us how they can keep up the ponzi?

A few months ago, Celsius claims 200 institutional borrowers, also it was asked if there's a limit to the amount of deposits they can handle, if there's enough borrowing demand, and they said, absolutely! Celsius has enough demand even if the deposits were 10x bigger. That's a big statement to how robust this crypto securities lending space is, and you somehow can't see how they're making it?
More...

If you are correct, you collect 5-6% a year. If you are wrong you lose an asset expected to rise at 200% a year. This assymetry makes the burden of proof, not on the accuser but on the people trusting the service, this aint a court of law, its about making good decisions.
By my math, you need over 95%+ confidence everything is fine to use Celsius for investing with them to make rational sense. I'm not even 95% sure Interactive Brokers will be around within 5 years, nevermind Celsius
Now, if you were a SHAREHOLDER of Celsius, then, things MIGHT have been different. Because you get access to info clients dont and you get to enjoy EXPONENTIAL gains, not 5-6% a year. VCs are getting exponential gains on BlockFi/Celsius, a 10x in a year is not very difficult, that is different from clients earning peanuts and taking the lion share of the risk
Its about MATH, risk/reward, not just opinions
 
Daal said:
If you are correct, you collect 5-6% a year. If you are wrong you lose an asset expected to rise at 200% a year. This assymetry makes the burden of proof, not on the accuser but on the people trusting the service, this aint a court of law, its about making good decisions.
By my math, you need over 95%+ confidence everything is fine to use Celsius for investing with them to make rational sense. I'm not even 95% sure Interactive Brokers will be around within 5 years, nevermind Celsius
Now, if you were a SHAREHOLDER of Celsius, then, things MIGHT have been different. Because you get access to info clients dont and you get to enjoy EXPONENTIAL gains, not 5-6% a year. VCs are getting exponential gains on BlockFi/Celsius, a 10x in a year is not very difficult, that is different from clients earning peanuts and taking the lion share of the risk
Its about MATH, risk/reward, not just opinions
More...

There are no VC's in Celsius, they did 1 round at bnktothefuture, per my previous post

I have no horse in Celsius anymore, I traded all my CEL tokens yesterday to other cryptos, will jump back in when its price starts to move up again

edit: you are correct about risk/reward on btc. I have taken out my btc's from BlockFi and Celsius, but in a world of ZIRP/NIRP, stablecoins paying 9% or higher with no opportunity cost risk (no value appreciation), it is tempting, however, I'll choose DeFi for that even at a lower interest
 
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johnarb said:
Article on Bloomberg about crypto yields...

https://elitetrader.com/et/threads/...xplained-and-why-12-yields-are-common.357287/
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Good link. In my mind, a safe way to earn this yield is buy buying USDC on TradeStation Crypto. They pay 6% a year (automatically) for USDC on balances and I consider this pretty much guaranteed by the parent in case something goes wrong, given the reputational risk (so, in a way, its a TradeStation Bond offering a decent yield). They have been in business since 1982.
I dont like using Celsius for this, for reasons explained before. Although Balancer and Compound are certaintly options. I just like the fact that on TSC, I can quicky convert USDC back to USD and wire it to other brokers very easily, its connected to 'old finance'.

The link does not explain how can one offer 6% on BTC deposits, rather than stablecoins. They are short BTC from the get go. I imagine some of these banks are taking the deposit base borrowing 10-20% against it and investing in BTC. Then paying out the BTC returns to clients, and absorbing the losses in case it goes down. If some of them are doing that, its a completely unsustainble business model
 
NFT boom over?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...whether-stimulus-led-fad-is-over?srnd=premium

upload_2021-4-4_7-45-19.png
 
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