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Weekly: The Bitcoin Barometer
Bitcoin tends to peak around blow-off tops for speculative excess.
That's not a coincidence. Whatev
Bubble, Bubble Toil & Trouble; $BTC breakdown is but another tremor in the upcoming Stock Market defalcation!
Crypto is a manifestation of too much money in the system, via the series of boom and bust cycles we’ve been on since the overreaction to September 2001. There weren’t enough “assets” to absorb the money, so people went searching for substitutes, everything from collectibles, to fake money.
Well said Dog. Bitcoin is a wholly contrived asset, based on very valid criticisms of fiat currency, but no actual solution. A chart comparing Bitcoin to gold YTD dispels the myth of cryptoBros who insist that Bitcoin is a legitimate “store of value.” Triple levered single stock ETFs and Bitcoin are YOLO/MOMO young men chasing dreams.
Very persuasive argument vs. bitcoin sophists. I wish my crypto infatuated colleagues were as insightful.
As far as the QQQ’s selloff, it has always amazed me how mainstream journalists look to market price to write the narrative for the day’s market wrap. The year end profit taking by funds wanting to lock in compensation coincided with a suddenly obdurate Powell and Michael Burry’s NVDA and PLTR shorts, suspiciously timed as it was on the day following Palantir’s earnings. Just because there’s been mindless mo-monkey chasing of anything A/I related doesnt cancel the thesis for all tech stocks. The doomers are gloating today; over the long run time will tell who the winners and losers are. I bet Burry has covered some of his short position.
H-Man, I remember some years back a you wandered into the bitcoin space. It obviously left a very bad taste.
Not at all. I still own it, Ether, some Solana and a tiny bit of all sorts of other stuff, some of which I don’t even remember buying. I still own all the photography NFTs I bought too, mostly because they’re entirely illiquid. I did sell the majority of the crypto and crypto-related stuff I owned in percentage terms (i.e., I had XYZ, and I sold ~80% of XYZ ), but I still have a fair amount in absolute terms, and I’m certainly not bitter about the experience. You learn by doing, and I came away from the three or four months I spent immersed in DeFi knowing more about it than a lot of would-be Web3 mavens. Of course, the verdict I delivered wasn’t favorable (at all), but that’s something different from saying I regret the experience, or that I’m somehow “anti” crypto.
It seems that the majority of underlying use for bitcoin is to transfer wealth in exchange for illegal, illicit activities or in situations where people want to avoid detection and/or taxation by governments. These “shady” users prefer to use bitcoin instead of currencies of western governments, which can get tracked and are often reported by banks.
Much like fine art can be used. Easier to pay/receive with a desirable piece of art than suitcases full of USDs or a wire transfer.
Maybe this won’t be true in the future, if the western government officials actually clamp down on anything that can be used to circumvent the laws of our country.
Russia likes crypto because it makes it easier to hide from sanctions.
Seems like gambling to me.
The Trump crime syndicate also likes crypto because it’s an easy way to accept bribes while pretending they are running a legitimate business.
100%
I can’t wrap my mind around how crypto is not a scam. But, paintings, fine wines, rare stamps, old comic books, and all collectibles exist and some people want to own them. Fine with me. I can find other great investments that hold the money together and spin off income. I am happy others want the other things, because if they all started buying the things I am investing in, the competition would make my job harder.
Great read, I do not disagree about the ultimate reason to hold BTC, the amount I still own I expect indeed to be able to sell to someone (or something) at a higher price. That aside, having access to BTC and crypto the last coupe of years in particular allowed me to keep my deceased father’s company alive and doing business in Venezuela, along with the 14 or so people it employs. Given the state of relations between the two nations and ongoing sanctions it is impossible to get capital into and out of the country by traditional means (banks, wires, WU), so crypto it is. Small potatoes in the grand scheme of everything, but not to the folks down there whose livelihood, under difficult circumstances, very much depends on my ability to keep them employed. To date, this remains the only valid use case I have found for crypto besides speculation.
The main reason for Bitcoin was and still remains a scam to reward its creator who is its biggest holder(?). The ultimate con because even the marks have made something, some of them at least.
The bubble may not have popped, but surely the balloon has been pricked!