Bitcoin on the rise

[fiby41]

Taleb is revered on this forum. Here's his take.

https://medium.com/opacity/bitcoin-1537e616a074

[bryan]

What Taleb says (Bitcoin as hedge) falls under the umbrella of what I meant by "The macros still look good for BTC".

CME expiring in less than 24 hours. I would anticipate a price drop before then, but the interesting wrinkle is tether/associated exchanges willingness to print tethers (I think the first major reporting was almost a year ago: https://hackernoon.com/meet-spoofy-how- ... c711d28eb4 and now it's 7x tether supply). I don't think this was accounted for by futures traders making bets and overall it seems like a pretty spooky situation. The obvious play now is for tether/associated exchanges to (continue to?) be heavy in the futures. So price should generally rise after contract expiration tomorrow, until some new big news e.g. a tether/exchange exit event (which would cause a 40%-80% crash, I would guess).

Mostly I'm just glad I re-balanced last year when I did. If I were advising anyone who has no crypto-assets right now (that wants some), I would probably say to buy half your (planned USD allocation of) BTC in about 12 hours and then DCA the rest over the next 12 months (or lump-sum the remaining once the tether/exchange crisis hits).

[bryan]

CME event was pretty much a non-issue, other than a small dip and bounce.

I would probably say to buy half your (planned USD allocation of) BTC in about 12 hours and then DCA the rest over the next 12 months (or lump-sum the remaining once the tether/exchange crisis hits).

It looks like I basically timed the market perfectly (mark it down as luck, again): 12 hours from my post was in the trough of the dip. Just using that prediction, you would be sitting at a +11.2% ($11.16 $10.47 -> $11) unrealized gain (well actually, my advice was to DCA the second half. Jury still out.)

[jacob]

You're not a rich genius until you've closed out your position and paid your taxes

[bryan]

Yep. And to be clear, I am not even making these trades myself (unless I said so explicitly... so how confident am I, really?). Just fun to speculate and put down as public record and maybe it will inform someone.

Robinhood will be offering ("trading fee free") crypto-currency trading.

[fips]

Does anyone here have an opinion on CFTC's raw financial data on CBOE?

http://www.cftc.gov/files/dea/cotarchiv ... 011618.htm

Both leveraged funds and other reportables are shorting bitcoin as of January 16th.

Does anyone have an idea what the bitcoin players behind "Other Reportables" and "Nonreportable Positions" are?
Once that is figured out, any opinions about on what future players would actually turn the tide?

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any comparable information for the CME futures yet.

[Fish]

Here’s Big ERN’s take on cryptocurrencies. It’s rather rudimentary but I found the perspective useful. https://earlyretirementnow.com/2018/01/ ... urrencies/

[Mister Imperceptible]

I’ve been a naysayer on this very thread. But the GREED and FOMO factors are very real.

My friend who has taken some nice profits off the board from BTC tells me February and March have not been kind in the past and have been the worst pullbacks. Do those experienced in the crypto game agree?

I’m considering making a bet on the roulette table that there are enough “hodlers” and potential for new “converts” to the crypto religion that “the macros are good.” Enough of a bet to make a difference, not so much that if it goes to zero, I’m ruined.

I still don’t believe in it. There’s no cash flow, no underlying business. It’s way too energy-intensive. But it doesn’t matter what I believe- as long as there are others who do, and are willing to reward me for having a favorable position within the “pyramid.”

Bitcoin commercials during the freaking Super Bowl? “Imhotep! Imhotep!”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bb-rENuLJeg

[BRUTE]

brute has seen BTC peak at ~$1,500 and then drop to ~$300, where it stayed for several years. this is fine. or it might go to zero. if that distinction causes a human distress, BTC is not for that human.

[Seppia]

I still don’t believe in it. There’s no cash flow, no underlying business. It’s way too energy-intensive. But it doesn’t matter what I believe- as long as there are others who do, and are willing to reward me for having a favorable position within the “pyramid.”

It does matter if you believe in it or not in my opinion.
With the super wild swings this asset class has experienced, HODLing is hard enough for a believer. May be next to impossible for a skeptic.
I would pass if I were you

[James_0011]

Also, has anyone seen this?

https://www.trustnodes.com/2018/03/06/b ... blockchain

Looks promising

[Jason]

I am currently involved in an ancillary capacity with a bitcoin mining company. Coincidently, I found this article. It's fascinating to me, despite me not understanding the technology side. It really is like a virtual gold rush.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ure-217230

[bryan]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story ... ure-217230

Many also fear that the new mines will suck up so much of the power surplus that is currently exported that local rates will have to rise.

Reminds me of stories I hear from CA that during the last major years of droughts, some utilities had to go out and install water meters at residences (too cheap to meter before).

I didn't read anywhere in the article about opportunity cost of time between buying and using mining equipment. That's actually a main reason most of the mining is in/around China (near the manufacturers) since 2013. China leading on solar cell production helps cement that region as a good place to mine. Allegedly the largest manufacturer (and miner.. Bitmain) of BTC mining equipment profited in the billions in 2017. That puts them right with nVidia for 2017, who have done very little to anticipate/meet mining market demand since 2013.

[DutchGirl]

In the Netherlands, yesterday an illegal bitcoin mining operation was closed ... illegal, because they were stealing the electricity.

Of course, the electricity company noticed pretty soon.

Life is better if you're not an idiot.

[jennypenny]

Did any of you bitcoin aficionados listen to McAlvany's podcast this week with Becker Polverini? If so, I'm wondering if what he said was accurate (basically, if he knows what he's talking about).

[bryan]

On the whole I think he is mostly right.. Seems like he's researched the stuff and speaks intelligently about it, but maybe just the surface level stuff. Any specific points you were wondering about? Him knocking Estonia was pretty daft and an indication that perhaps he maybe can't see any forest here.

I think he's flatly wrong that crypto-currency original, main (only?!) use is using the money in a way others don't want you to. Sure that's a big feature (kind of like other monies, no?), but the actual reason was simply that we've been wanting digital money since the 80s and it's never worked. If the governments, banks, whoever had provided something that worked and could be built upon, we would have adopted it (Paypal (Thiel, Musk, etc) wanted to introduce something like this but.. meh). He says correctly that Bitcoin was a solution to "Byzantine Generals Problem" (I'm sure he read the quora answer one of my friends wrote years ago.. think I shared that somewhere here) i.e. trusting, sharing, and interacting with a ledger with those you can't completely trust. He doesn't really divide miners, full nodes, or users and how they each have consensus roles to play in the network (to be fair, neither did Bitcoin software; and miners do have the clearing/mining power after all). Him thinking miner A could just assign miner B's new block to herself as long as her cartel friends backed her is flatly wrong (for Bitcoin, at least).

"private innovates, public appropriates" seems correct. I think governments, banks, whoever will roll out their own digital currencies or public ledgers. You can be sure it won't be Proof-of-Work. Honestly a direct democracy coin/ledger has seemed to me an excellent solution; I may move to whatever country, corporation introduces it . And of course there is the whole privacy, anonymous thing to consider..

[jennypenny]

Thanks bryan.

[BRUTE]

Honestly a direct democracy coin/ledger has seemed to me an excellent solution; I may move to whatever country, corporation introduces it

brute's thesis: as soon as an actual, effective technical solution for Democracy is implemented, humans will finally realize what a dumb idea it really is. it's just mob rule with lipstick on it.

[suomalainen]

@brute - what's a better governmental / societal / organizational design?

[BRUTE]

brute isn't convinced those are context-independent. he certainly likes the Republic part better than the Democracy part. as a libertarian, brute believes humans telling him what to do is bad. doesn't matter if those humans are kings, popes, gods, The People, or representatives thereof. the part brute doesn't enjoy is being told what to do.

brute likes the idea of anarcho-capitalism, but believes it wouldn't work right now. maybe there's something to the whole Marxian idea of historic necessity/determinism. maybe dictatorships and tyranny have to happen in certain contexts. maybe democracies have to happen in others. maybe, one day, humans will be advanced enough for anarcho-capitalism. or something else that's good.

brute thinks that, in the political/organizational sense, civilization is the average distance from "human likes A therefore human will take A" (violence/theft) and "human B is like human A so human A likes human B" (tribalism). animals have a very low capacity to recognize the long-term benefits of denying current pleasure for more future pleasure, eg. having a society with specialization of labor instead of clubbing each other over the head for food. humans are not born with this ability, but can build it over many generations. the current generation of humans is clearly not advanced enough to even perform democracy right - and maybe there isn't a way to perform democracy right.

brute thinks that there are certain things humans like (food, shelter, roads, protection from other humans), and there are various ways to get those. which way is the best depends on many factors, among them technology, circumstance, terrain, population, and culture.

it's obvious to most humans that the government is not the best way to feed humans. it's clear to many humans that the USPS is not the best way to deliver mail. it's conceivable to some humans that the government might not be the best way to provide roads and protection under all circumstances.

if dividing the power of government into 3 branches is good, why isn't it better to have more branches? and instead of sharding by category ("horizontally"), powers could be sharded in thin vertical slices (competing law enforcement agencies with their own ruleset) or any other combination. it could be a matrix, where certain law enforcement agencies use the rulesets of certain legislative bodies, combined with the adjudication of certain judges or agencies.

brute doesn't have a very strong opinion on "that one system is clearly the best!", but it seems obvious to him that the way to get to a better system involves competition, iteration, and experimentation.