Crypto Currency Thread

Crypto Currency Thread

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anonymous-user

56 months

Tuesday 7th April 2020
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Also, what was the price of btc when you formed your opinion of it?

Condi

17,405 posts

173 months

Tuesday 7th April 2020
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JPJPJP said:
Also, what was the price of btc when you formed your opinion of it?
Given as I think the end result is £0, anything over that is too much!

Flip it round, why do you think it has value, and what is the correct price for 1 bitcoin?

anonymous-user

56 months

Tuesday 7th April 2020
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Zero could be right eventually - are you sure enough to short it?

But I think it has value > 0 until at least all coins are mined or it is banned (either could come first)

If I didn’t already hold, I’d buy a throw away money quantity at today’s price. As it stands now, I think a throw away money quantity could buy, say, a decent holiday at some point. Not life changing, but a better outcome than a couple of moderate nights out that I can’t have due to lockdown.

As I do hold, I won’t buy more and I wouldn’t consider selling until the volatility has clearly fallen to “normal” levels - appreciating that might be a very costly decision, but it’s my decision and I’m happy with it




Behemoth

2,105 posts

133 months

Tuesday 7th April 2020
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Condi said:
I trade things for a living, and the starting point for any trade is some form of fundamental analysis. How much do people want and how much is there? Why do people want that much, and is that going to change? I can't answer many of those questions with Bitcoin, and the more you look the more it seems it offers little over regular money for 99.9% of the population, - the only people really needing to use it for an exchange of goods and services are people who can't use bank transfer or cash. If that is the only use I can see, the logical conclusion is that it will either remain very niche, or eventually be banned.
You fail to see the obvious use as a store of value, then. Because that's where a money typically starts, long before medium of exchange kicks in. You can't do your fundamental analysis on bitcoin because you are stuck in the day to day metrics of your industry.

If you studied the history of money, you might be a little wiser as to what its future may hold. Modern money isn't that old, but you seem to think that its immemorial.

What is your vision of the future of money in 10, 50, 100 years?

Condi

17,405 posts

173 months

Tuesday 7th April 2020
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JPJPJP said:
Zero could be right eventually - are you sure enough to short it?

If I didn’t already hold, I’d buy a throw away money quantity at today’s price. As it stands now, I think a throw away money quantity could buy, say, a decent holiday at some point. Not life changing, but a better outcome than a couple of moderate nights out that I can’t have due to lockdown.

As I do hold, I won’t buy more and I wouldn’t consider selling until the volatility has clearly fallen to “normal” levels - appreciating that might be a very costly decision, but it’s my decision and I’m happy with it
1) Not confident enough to short it because there are a lot of dumb people in the world, and tbh I dont want or need the risk. Neither do I have the cash to fund margin calls while it dicks about.

2) If you dont have an idea of the 'right price' how do you know when to sell? You can't make a fundamental analysis of it, eg it should be worth X, like you can with a commodity, and it doesn't generate a return like a stock.

Behemoth

2,105 posts

133 months

Tuesday 7th April 2020
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DonkeyApple said:
And then there is the dichotomy of the disenfranchised who don’t want it to become further brought into the mainstream because for them it’s what is supposed to kill what they fear and despise.
You needn't worry. Similar zealots inhabited the early internet, but never troubled its mainstream adoption.

g4ry13

17,293 posts

257 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
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Condi said:
JPJPJP said:
Zero could be right eventually - are you sure enough to short it?

If I didn’t already hold, I’d buy a throw away money quantity at today’s price. As it stands now, I think a throw away money quantity could buy, say, a decent holiday at some point. Not life changing, but a better outcome than a couple of moderate nights out that I can’t have due to lockdown.

As I do hold, I won’t buy more and I wouldn’t consider selling until the volatility has clearly fallen to “normal” levels - appreciating that might be a very costly decision, but it’s my decision and I’m happy with it
1) Not confident enough to short it because there are a lot of dumb people in the world, and tbh I dont want or need the risk. Neither do I have the cash to fund margin calls while it dicks about.

2) If you dont have an idea of the 'right price' how do you know when to sell? You can't make a fundamental analysis of it, eg it should be worth X, like you can with a commodity, and it doesn't generate a return like a stock.
If 10 years ago someone asked you what the 'right price' for Google shares is, do you think that you'd give a price projection anywhere near the price of Google stock today?

Condi

17,405 posts

173 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
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Behemoth said:
You fail to see the obvious use as a store of value, then. Because that's where a money typically starts, long before medium of exchange kicks in. You can't do your fundamental analysis on bitcoin because you are stuck in the day to day metrics of your industry.

If you studied the history of money, you might be a little wiser as to what its future may hold. Modern money isn't that old, but you seem to think that its immemorial.

What is your vision of the future of money in 10, 50, 100 years?
The store of value in money was linked to the Gold standard, something no longer exists with any currency and never existed with Bitcoin. Money is always losing value, that is what inflation does.

In the past all sorts of things have been used to store value, the Romans paid their soldiers in salt, the Egyptians in grain, and until a few hundred years ago tally sticks were used to record debts. It doesn't mean that any of those are used these days either as store of value or a medium of exchange.

Money over the next few decades will go digital, in many ways it already is, but as that happens more oversight will be wanted by banks and governments, not less. Hence the view that Bitcoin will some day become banned or regulated, and thereby lose any benefits over and above trading in Pounds or Dollars. Once it has lost its advantage, there is no incentive to keep using it or keep mining it and so it eventually dies. Maybe some diehards will use it, the same way as they do now, but a vast majority of its users won't want the oversight it will eventually have, because (feel like I'm repeating myself here) the main reason people use it now is because they cannot, or don't want to, use the regular banking system!

Condi

17,405 posts

173 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
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g4ry13 said:
If 10 years ago someone asked you what the 'right price' for Google shares is, do you think that you'd give a price projection anywhere near the price of Google stock today?
The price of a stock is related to the value it creates. Google have done very well to produce products and services which people use in their billions, and that has obvious value to shareholders.

No idea how that relates to Bitcoin though - Bitcoin doesn't generate a return, doesn't sell a product or service. The 2 are not comparable.

wisbech

3,018 posts

123 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
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Behemoth said:
Bitcoin is the best performing asset in all history. .
How can this be true when it hasn't been around for all history? If I had put on a massive leveraged short just before black friday in 1987, that would have given me an absurdly high annual rate of return as well - would that be a better performing asset?


wisbech

3,018 posts

123 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
quotequote all
Condi said:
g4ry13 said:
If 10 years ago someone asked you what the 'right price' for Google shares is, do you think that you'd give a price projection anywhere near the price of Google stock today?
The price of a stock is related to the value it creates. Google have done very well to produce products and services which people use in their billions, and that has obvious value to shareholders.

No idea how that relates to Bitcoin though - Bitcoin doesn't generate a return, doesn't sell a product or service. The 2 are not comparable.
Plus, ten years ago, why would I pay today's price for a Google share? That would lock in ten years of zero gains. Like saying you should go back to 1980 London and pay today's price for property

anonymous-user

56 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
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Condi said:
1) Not confident enough to short it because there are a lot of dumb people in the world, and tbh I dont want or need the risk. Neither do I have the cash to fund margin calls while it dicks about.

2) If you dont have an idea of the 'right price' how do you know when to sell? You can't make a fundamental analysis of it, eg it should be worth X, like you can with a commodity, and it doesn't generate a return like a stock.
That dicking about (volatility) represents an opportunity to trade and many are taking it. There will be winners and losers in that and, as usual, the general losers will be retail traders. The opportunity to hedge with cash settled futures on the main futures markets helps offset some of the risk if used properly

The right price might become clear in future. If a decent use case pops up, that price might be higher than if there is no use case. The right price could be zero, or it could be the current all time high, or any other number. I make no claim to know, but I want to hold until it becomes clearer. That’s my choice and I’m happy with it. I appreciate others have different views / stances

It’s a bad example, but Amazon started as a book seller - not many early shareholders realised then that it would make much of its money / valuation from AWS. That fundamental only emerged later, but people who punted a few bucks on it as a book seller profited from AWS pushing up the share price

Is there any event or combination of events that could make you change your mind about btc, or can you already say never ever will I touch it?


p1stonhead

25,815 posts

169 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
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JPJPJP said:
Condi said:
1) Not confident enough to short it because there are a lot of dumb people in the world, and tbh I dont want or need the risk. Neither do I have the cash to fund margin calls while it dicks about.

2) If you dont have an idea of the 'right price' how do you know when to sell? You can't make a fundamental analysis of it, eg it should be worth X, like you can with a commodity, and it doesn't generate a return like a stock.
That dicking about (volatility) represents an opportunity to trade and many are taking it. There will be winners and losers in that and, as usual, the general losers will be retail traders. The opportunity to hedge with cash settled futures on the main futures markets helps offset some of the risk if used properly

The right price might become clear in future. If a decent use case pops up, that price might be higher than if there is no use case. The right price could be zero, or it could be the current all time high, or any other number. I make no claim to know, but I want to hold until it becomes clearer. That’s my choice and I’m happy with it. I appreciate others have different views / stances

It’s a bad example, but Amazon started as a book seller - not many early shareholders realised then that it would make much of its money / valuation from AWS. That fundamental only emerged later, but people who punted a few bucks on it as a book seller profited from AWS pushing up the share price

Is there any event or combination of events that could make you change your mind about btc, or can you already say never ever will I touch it?
It won’t happen in my lifetime (and I’m 33) so no point worrying about it. It’ll either stay as it is as fringe ‘investment’ or lawmakers will ban it IMO.

Behemoth

2,105 posts

133 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
quotequote all
wisbech said:
How can this be true when it hasn't been around for all history? If I had put on a massive leveraged short just before black friday in 1987, that would have given me an absurdly high annual rate of return as well - would that be a better performing asset?
You can compare this report (pdf from Credit Suisse)

https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corpora...

2020 version obtainable here: https://www.opiniopro.com/2020/03/credit-suisse/su...

with this :

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-31...

Also, can you construct a Sharpe ratio chart over a few years for your very precisely timed short?


Edited by Behemoth on Wednesday 8th April 08:41

anonymous-user

56 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
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Here are some questions I ask myself about btc prices now and then. I don't know the answers to any of them.

For those people that bought 5 years ago with a 5 - 10 year horizon, the price would have been around £170 / btc. Today it is £5,960. A 35 bagger.

Should they sell part or all of their holding today? Should they thank their lucky stars that they haven't yet lost their £170, or give thanks for their lucky £5,790 on paper windfall?

Does another 35 bagger in the next 5 years (i.e. £202,650 / btc) look more or less likely than a 35 bagger did on this day in 2015?

Does a total loss in the next 5 years look more or less likely than a total loss did on this day in 2015?

Also, are the Dec 2021 or Feb 2022 crude oil futures a good buy at $37.92 or $38.51

DonkeyApple

56,294 posts

171 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
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JPJPJP said:
Zero could be right eventually - are you sure enough to short it?

But I think it has value > 0 until at least all coins are mined or it is banned (either could come first)

If I didn’t already hold, I’d buy a throw away money quantity at today’s price. As it stands now, I think a throw away money quantity could buy, say, a decent holiday at some point. Not life changing, but a better outcome than a couple of moderate nights out that I can’t have due to lockdown.

As I do hold, I won’t buy more and I wouldn’t consider selling until the volatility has clearly fallen to “normal” levels - appreciating that might be a very costly decision, but it’s my decision and I’m happy with it
Yup. Got the pension sorted, got the cash reserves sorted, got the mortgage sorted, generally got everything all sorted and just have an excess amount of cash left over each month then it doesn’t matter what you do with it. If the excess is too great then it pushes people naturally into the next sort of consumption brand but if it is a modest amount then putting a bit into BTC etc carries no risk and could have good upside unlike renting a luxury car etc.

If you have a good sized investment portfolio that has already put grown equities and has been diversifying into property and other assets such as gold then arguably holding an element of BTC does make sense and plenty of investment portfolios do.

But as per usual we all know that few people taking part in these esoteric financial markets fall into those categories. Just like with retail fax, penny shares, mini-bonds, high street and online gambling etc the bulk of participants have no such wealth and are participating in the hope of making more money than they can through working. Part of this is human nature, such gamblers have always existed in humanity but part is also due to not much wage inflation at the mid level since the mid 90s and part is down to modern tech that has broken the immense geographic constraints of the vendors who have gone from only being able to sell products to punters in their local pub and street corner to being able to shift their model wide open into the global stage.

I would love to remove crypto’s from my business, I do a fair amount of BTC volume each month and it’s not lucrative business because it all has to be hedged so there is no B book income despite the heavy losses on the smaller accounts, there is little income from the spread, its often negative because the time lag between the client’s remote platform on a slow connection is often greater than the price movement such is the volatility. And even on the huge funding, much of that goes to the clearers to cover their funding charges. But a lot of the business is HNWs hedging crypto positions and needing to do so through a secure platform and I’ve widened out the costs so that any normal retail business is discouraged because all they do is lose money and I simply don’t want that business.

But the likes of BitMEX soak it up all day long and without the regulatory restrictions they can stick such massive leverage into the product as to guarantee huge losses and no need to hedge plus there are not regulatory restrictions to what you can do with client money or physical positions so you can use that for hedging and happily sit there running one big pyramid of risk, client risk.

And of course there is nothing stopping you from setting that sort of mech up and just slipping the closes all day long, running non existent client cash balances and waking up every morning and not quite believing how many people are chucking money at you.

The lack of price stability crippled the product and restricts it to being a haven for spankers milking punters all day long. And unlike most fring financial instruments and markets this one is turbocharged by the David Icke brigade.

anonymous-user

56 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
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DA "If you have a good sized investment portfolio that has already put grown equities and has been diversifying into property and other assets such as gold then arguably holding an element of BTC does make sense and plenty of investment portfolios do."

This is pretty much the 'get off zero' call that Mark Yusko / Morgan Creek Capital Management has been a strong proponent of for a couple of years now:

btc as the only / the main / a significant part of a large, planned portfolio is ultra risky - go there at your own risk and don't be surprised to end up skint. No btc at all in such a portfolio might mean missing out on a good risk / reward asset class.

As far as I can tell from reading his stuff, 'get off zero' is any amount up to, but not beyond, 0.5% of the money put into that portfolio. I don't know if / how his strategy deals with rebalancing (i.e. if the 0.5% becomes 1% due to btc only gains, should half the holding be swapped into other asset classes?).

He might be right. He might be wrong. That's not for me to decide

DonkeyApple

56,294 posts

171 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
quotequote all
JPJPJP said:
DA "If you have a good sized investment portfolio that has already put grown equities and has been diversifying into property and other assets such as gold then arguably holding an element of BTC does make sense and plenty of investment portfolios do."

This is pretty much the 'get off zero' call that Mark Yusko / Morgan Creek Capital Management has been a strong proponent of for a couple of years now:

btc as the only / the main / a significant part of a large, planned portfolio is ultra risky - go there at your own risk and don't be surprised to end up skint. No btc at all in such a portfolio might mean missing out on a good risk / reward asset class.

As far as I can tell from reading his stuff, 'get off zero' is any amount up to, but not beyond, 0.5% of the money put into that portfolio. I don't know if / how his strategy deals with rebalancing (i.e. if the 0.5% becomes 1% due to btc only gains, should half the holding be swapped into other asset classes?).

He might be right. He might be wrong. That's not for me to decide
Yup. The instrument is ultra risky but how that risk translates to the beneficial holder is at their discretion. Diversifying 0.5-1% of your investment portfolio makes the instrument low risk in the grand scheme of things. You have exposure to a considerable possible upside but if it went to zero by means of price or theft it has no negligible impact to your wealth.

Simultaneously, what is also overlooked is that there is a similar risk at the lowest end in markets like the UK where a welfare state underpins the economy. If your financial obligations are being met by the State then it really doesn’t matter what you spend your free capital on as total loss has no material impact.

It’s about the middle ground and running excessive exposure to a speculative asset to the point that losses have a material risk. The C19 crisis will have laid these types of risks bare for many. But human nature tends to mean they will be ignored if not completely misunderstood.

Behemoth

2,105 posts

133 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
quotequote all
Condi said:
The store of value in money was linked to the Gold standard, something no longer exists with any currency and never existed with Bitcoin. Money is always losing value, that is what inflation does.

In the past all sorts of things have been used to store value, the Romans paid their soldiers in salt, the Egyptians in grain, and until a few hundred years ago tally sticks were used to record debts. It doesn't mean that any of those are used these days either as store of value or a medium of exchange.

Money over the next few decades will go digital, in many ways it already is, but as that happens more oversight will be wanted by banks and governments, not less. Hence the view that Bitcoin will some day become banned or regulated, and thereby lose any benefits over and above trading in Pounds or Dollars. Once it has lost its advantage, there is no incentive to keep using it or keep mining it and so it eventually dies. Maybe some diehards will use it, the same way as they do now, but a vast majority of its users won't want the oversight it will eventually have, because (feel like I'm repeating myself here) the main reason people use it now is because they cannot, or don't want to, use the regular banking system!
Money certainly hasn't always lost value. The key metric there is scarcity. The breaking of scarcity has usually been a catastrophic event and a subsequent switch to the base/reserve money rather than a slow dribbling out via inflation.

In the last half millennium, the world's de facto reserve currency has moved roughly every hundred years from Portugal in the 15thC through to Spain, Netherlands, France, UK and now the US.

At Bretton Woods, Keynes strongly advocated for a world currency (called Bancor) but the great powers couldn't agree.

What are the chances of the great powers agreeing next time around? I don't see Putin, Trump, Lagarde, the Chinese etc agreeing anything of the sort. Even if they did, how long would it really last before being torn up?

When will this crisis be? If you think it's going to be business as usual, good luck. Repo markets were coughing badly well before covid19 popped up. The Eurodollar has been in ICU for many weeks with a horrible fever, with swap lines rarer than ventilator units in a Lombardy hospital. I'm sure things can be patched up yet again like they were in 08 but these efforts are nothing more than tourniquets.

The time is suddenly very ripe for a non-sovereign money that nobody can feck up. Whether it's bitcoin is a long shot (it's too early imo), but it's more likely than the existing set of world leaders quickly agreeing on a viable stable solution.

Yes, bitcoin will almost certainly be banned in various places. But adopters within places like Goldman Sachs become legislators in economy/banking's revolving doors. Plenty of politicians already own bitcoin & before too long, there'll be enough of them that really don't want to vote away their own stores of value. Just like in India with Modi's recent gold ban, they'll try taking it off the hoi polloi whilst leaving open avenues for their own stores.

Condi

17,405 posts

173 months

Wednesday 8th April 2020
quotequote all
JPJPJP said:
That dicking about (volatility) represents an opportunity to trade and many are taking it. There will be winners and losers in that and, as usual, the general losers will be retail traders. The opportunity to hedge with cash settled futures on the main futures markets helps offset some of the risk if used properly

The right price might become clear in future. If a decent use case pops up, that price might be higher than if there is no use case. The right price could be zero, or it could be the current all time high, or any other number. I make no claim to know, but I want to hold until it becomes clearer. That’s my choice and I’m happy with it. I appreciate others have different views / stances

It’s a bad example, but Amazon started as a book seller - not many early shareholders realised then that it would make much of its money / valuation from AWS. That fundamental only emerged later, but people who punted a few bucks on it as a book seller profited from AWS pushing up the share price

Is there any event or combination of events that could make you change your mind about btc, or can you already say never ever will I touch it?
How can you trade something you don't understand?! How can you have an opinion from today to tomorrow whether Bitcoin should be worth more tomorrow than it is now, or less? What are you basing your trading decisions on? What changes in the market?

Amazon is a terrible example, because as with the Google example earlier, Amazon is a business which takes your money, invests it in people, machines, ideas and sells those products and services, thus creating value. Bitcoin does nothing of the sort, it does not create value.


JPJPJP said:
Also, are the Dec 2021 or Feb 2022 crude oil futures a good buy at $37.92 or $38.51
A good buy. The current oil price is unsustainable for everyone involved, despite what the Saudis and Russians may say. A large proportion of their government spending comes from oil revenues, and they both rely on that money to keep their populations in check. They cannot afford to get to a state whereby military investment or social bribes are unaffordable, and given that Aramco was only floated on the stock exchange a few months ago, the rich Saudi investors are not going to be happy seeing their share price down below its IPO. You should be happy going long at $38 with a target of $50 to get out.





You see the difference between that and Bitcoin? You can analyse the oil market and come to a measured, logical opinion. There is an actual reason why oil cannot stay this level for too long. Real things are happening in the world as a result of oil being $38 rather than $60. Whereas with Bitcoin, whether the price is £10 or £10,000, it doesn't make much difference to the supply side. If prices come off, people stop mining, the mining gets easier. Its a self-fulfilling feedback loop designed to maintain supply, not offer more/less incentive to mine. Just illogical if you wanted to create a market which adds value.



To me this whole thing is a bit evangelical Christian. Whatever I say, the people who support it have an answer they can't prove, and I cant disprove, despite how illogical it may be. No matter what argument is put in front of them, they come up with something, probably different to the answer they gave before. Only, instead of the Bible you have the writing of Satoshi. Instead of churches you have forums and Twitter. Instead of pastors you have 'influencers' and people with skin in the game trying to pump the price higher. The one similarity they do have is that those talking the loudest are making money out of it at the expense of all their followers.


Edited by Condi on Wednesday 8th April 12:09

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