Bitcoin price discussion and analysis

[Trader X]

Can't imagine TB or Giselle having the time to work out their own finances. All these American athletes have business managers who manage their finances. Very rarely do they do it themselves. They also both still earn $40+ million a year.

Well yes, but what competent financial or business manager would recommend such a huge stake in FTX? No doubt they will be live quite comfortably regardless of the FTX investment debacle.

I have met plenty of people who have invested in crypto but still to this day I have not met anyone I consider a financially literate who has invested money in crypto.

Financial literacy aside, it was always the extreme hubris that's been most annoying. The mere suggestion to the crypto crowd that perhaps crypto is just a fad, promoted by pump and dump merchants with its price pure speculation supported by hopium and the bigger fool principle would usually garner dismissive remarks like "just stay poor". The music stopped a year ago for Bitcoin, -75% later and now it's clear who is going to the poor house, crypto speculators and hodlers.

 

[waterbottle]

Binance has pulled out of the acquisition. RIP FTX.

Binance statement in full after not acquiring FTX

As a Result of Corporate Due Diligence, as Well as the Latest News Reports Regarding Mishandled Customer Funds and Alleged US Agency Investigations. We Have Decided That We Will Not Pursue the Potential Acquisition of FTX.com.

In the Beginning, Our Hope Was to Be Able to Support FTX's Customers to Provide Liquidity, but the Issues Are Beyond Our Control or Ability to Help. Every Time a Major Player in an Industry Fails, Retail Consumers Will

Suffer. We Have Seen Over the Last Several Years That the Crypto

Ecosystem Is Becoming More Resilient and We Believe in Time That

Outliers That Misuse User Funds Will Be Weeded Out by the Free

Market.

As Regulatory Frameworks Are Developed and as the Industry Continues to Evolve Toward Greater Decentralization, the Ecosystem Will Grow Stronger.

 

[Trader X]

As Regulatory Frameworks Are Developed and as the Industry Continues to Evolve Toward Greater Decentralization, the Ecosystem Will Grow Stronger.

Remains to be seen if the "Ecosystem Will Grow Stronger" or crumble.

Binance Pulls Out of Deal to Acquire Rival Crypto Exchange FTX

The rapid collapse of FTX, built by the billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, suggests that no company in the freewheeling, loosely regulated crypto industry is safe.

www.nytimes.com

Interesting quote from this article...
“This episode highlights the vulnerability of the entire crypto edifice,” said Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University economics professor. “Even large and apparently financially solid institutions turn out to have fragile and shaky foundations that crumble at the least hint of trouble.”

 

[The Triangle]

Well yes, but what competent financial or business manager would recommend such a huge stake in FTX? No doubt they will be live quite comfortably regardless of the FTX investment debacle.

Same as a managers for all the funds around the world making the same investment.

"it's not my fault, everyone else made the same investment"

 

[CityIndex]

Not sure if this was already mentioned, but might be worth noting that the all-time-highs in Bitcoin occurred exactly 12 months ago today. It’s now down over 77% since.

In that time, people have gone from calling $100K as the next price target to be hit in a matter of months, if not weeks, to some floating their opinions online today that this may be the end for cryptos.

Quite a bold statement to make, and it seems like an unlikely outcome at this point. But it will be interesting to see what the next development in this story is, and how things unfold in the upcoming 12 months.

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Not sure if this was already mentioned, but might be worth noting that the all-time-highs in Bitcoin occurred exactly 12 months ago today. It’s now down over 77% since.

In that time, people have gone from calling $100K as the next price target to be hit in a matter of months, if not weeks, to some floating their opinions online today that this may be the end for cryptos.

Quite a bold statement to make, and it seems like an unlikely outcome at this point. But it will be interesting to see what the next development in this story is, and how things unfold in the upcoming 12 months.

It looks like the "smart" money is bailing out.

What a dreadfully depressing chart for BTC holders.



gg

 

[CityIndex]

It looks like the "smart" money is bailing out.

It will actually be quite interesting to see how the fallout of this impacts the institutional traders who were getting into the space, as it may be a pretty significant deterrent.

 

[Dona Ferentes]

It looks like the "smart" money is bailing

gg

FTX’s share registry includes two of the institutions that have become synonymous with the irrational froth of the past few years, namely Japan’s SoftBank and US crossover fund Tiger Globall. It also attracted capital from some of the biggest names in global investing: passive investing giants BlackRock and VanEck, venture capital icon Sequoia and local giant Telstra Ventures, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek and one of Canada’s pension fund giants, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.


In September, OTPP chief executive Jo Taylor told Reuters that he felt the fund had found the lowest-risk way to play in the crypto sector, because of the role FTX played in the market.

“In terms of the risk profile, it is probably the lowest risk profile you can have in that it’s everybody else is trading on your platform.”

Smarting money, more like.

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

FTX’s share registry includes two of the institutions that have become synonymous with the irrational froth of the past few years, namely Japan’s SoftBank and US crossover fund Tiger Globall. It also attracted capital from some of the biggest names in global investing: passive investing giants BlackRock and VanEck, venture capital icon Sequoia and local giant Telstra Ventures, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek and one of Canada’s pension fund giants, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.


In September, OTPP chief executive Jo Taylor told Reuters that he felt the fund had found the lowest-risk way to play in the crypto sector, because of the role FTX played in the market.


Smarting money, more like.

Unfortunately, as with our Industry Super Funds it is not all that difficult to become a board member of outfits like OTPP even though they manage hundreds of billions of $CAN.

Intelligence or aptitude for changing markets is not a requirement.

Just pass the Institute of Company Directors examinations, know a few people who you've given the nod to, keep your nose clean, parrot the risk and benefits metrics, be able to read a financial report, don't proposition the young lady or gentleman at reception, and you are on.

FTX.!!! lol.

gg

 

[noirua]

El Salvador says China offered to buy all its foreign debt as the nation looks to avoid default

"China has offered to buy all our debt, but we need to tread carefully," Vice President Felix Ulloa told Bloomberg.

markets.businessinsider.com

But in January, Moody's warned that El Salvador's bitcoin buying spree may boost the country's credit risk if it continues. The country's government, has had liquidity issues in the past, making trading bitcoin "quite risky," Moody's analyst Jaime Reusche told Bloomberg in an interview.

 

[noirua]

Max Keiser wont give way on Bitcoin and will not admit he's lost well over $200 million from the high around $67,000.

9 November 2022

 

[Trader X]

Max Keiser wont give way on Bitcoin and will not admit he's lost well over $200 million from the high around $67,000

The usual banter from maximalists, Bitcoin is the only legit ctypto network and everything else is sh$tcoin. Both Klippsten and Keiser are both in total denial about the failure of BTC as legal tender in El Salvador bordering on being delusional.

Keiser, like Mike Saylor, Anthony Pompliano, Mark Moss et al will go down in history as influential purveyors of Bitcoin hyperbole who led millions into the crypto financial abyss. Bitcoin could retreat to $500 and they would still be extolling its virtues and forecasting a bright future for it, even though the only thing that's really dematerialized is speculator's money.

 

[moXJO]

Bitcoin is a casino people.

Once a bit of enthusiasm starts coming back and the multi baggers start getting reported-
Greed gets the next bunch of degens.

No one seems interested in crypto right now because inflation popped their dreams.
If we see inflation tamed we might see life again, but not before.

There's no interest in coins. Nft is still building out though and web3 is developing. But they are the true believers.

We might get a spark these next few weeks. But I wasn't counting on next year going that well.

 

[JohnDe]

It will actually be quite interesting to see how the fallout of this impacts the institutional traders who were getting into the space, as it may be a pretty significant deterrent.

It definitely won't be good.

The spectacular fall of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried
Another serious blow to crypto’s reputation

Last week Sam Bankman-Fried was the most important person in crypto. The floppy-haired 30-year-old former billionaire, who goes by sbf, is the founder of ftx, then the industry’s third-largest exchange. When crypto prices collapsed earlier this year he swooped in with loans for Voyager and BlockFi, handing the lending ventures hundreds of millions of dollars, and snapped up assets from Three Arrows, a crypto hedge fund. Many saw a new John Pierpont Morgan, the banker who saved the American financial system in 1907.

Mr Bankman-Fried also spent millions of dollars from his vast fortune, worth $26bn at its peak, supporting political campaigns on crypto regulation. He planned to give away much of the rest, having endorsed effective altruism, a movement that espouses charitable giving to safeguard humanity’s future. Politically engaged, seemingly altruistic, decidedly not a crypto bro: many thought sbf was the man who could save the industry from itself, a reputation he hardly discouraged.


Oh, how the mighty have fallen. After rumours ftx might be insufficiently liquid began to swirl, customers pulled $650m of assets from the exchange on November 7th, before it stopped meeting requests. The value of an ftx Token, a mechanism for sharing the firm’s profits, has fallen by 90% since November 4th (see chart). On November 8th Mr Bankman-Fried and Changpeng Zhao, the boss of Binance, the biggest crypto exchange, announced that Mr Zhao’s firm had signed a letter of intent to buy ftx. Then the next day Binance pulled out, after having taken a look at ftx’s books. Mr Bankman-Fried is reported to have told investors that ftx faces an $8bn shortfall and that it will, without more capital, go bankrupt. According to Bloomberg Wealth, he is now worth less than $1bn, a drop of 94%—the biggest single-day fall on record.

The carnage is spreading to other parts of the industry. Bitcoin has tumbled by 19% since November 8th, to $16,600 at the time of writing. The importance of ftx for the wider ecosystem is such that JPMorgan Chase, a bank, has warned crypto markets could face a “cascade” of deleveraging and company failures, and that there is a shrinking pool of strong institutions able to step in to rescue those in trouble. The reputational damage to the industry looks likely to be profound.

What on earth happened? Two stories circulated, both a touch Shakespearean. The first is one of rivalry and the second of hubris. Start with the rivalry between Mr Bankman-Fried and Mr Zhao. Mr Bankman-Fried owns three firms: ftx, a global exchange; ftx.us, an American exchange; and Alameda Research, a crypto-trading fund. In theory, these are separate entities. But the connection between Alameda and ftx has long been unclear. On November 2nd CoinDesk, a news website, reported that tokens issued by ftx made up two-fifths of Alameda’s assets, and were worth $5.8bn. That sum was almost double the market capitalisation of the tokens, and a slice was marked as collateral, raising concerns that Alameda had borrowed against them, possibly from ftx itself. Apparently in response, Mr Zhao tweeted he would liquidate Binance’s holdings of ftx tokens, then worth over half a billion dollars.

That he later moved to snap up the firm led many to believe he had orchestrated the chaos—casting doubt on ftx in order to set off a fire sale. It seemed a plausible story. There is little love lost between Mr Bankman-Fried and the less-celebrated Mr Zhao. The Binance boss has long claimed his firm is headquartered “nowhere”. It is banned from providing some services in countries including Britain, owing to a lack of information about compliance with regulations. Mr Bankman-Fried has reportedly goaded Mr Zhao about this.

But the apparent size of the hole in ftx’s balance-sheet indicates problems ran far deeper than a rival starting rumours. The details of what went wrong in the beanbag-strewn offices of ftx and Alameda are not yet clear. An exchange, which sits between buyer and seller and takes a spread, should not be an easy business to bankrupt. It is not typically exposed to runs, since it merely holds assets on behalf of investors.

Problems can emerge, though, when such firms make loans, allowing customers to buy “on margin”, or lend out crypto tokens they hold on behalf of investors in exchange for collateral, like cash or other tokens. ftx seems to have allowed Alameda to borrow customers’ assets by posting ftx tokens (issued by the exchange itself) as collateral. As ftx tokens fell in value, the firm no longer had enough assets to cover the liabilities it owed to customers, causing a downward spiral. In coming up with its wealth estimates, Bloomberg assumes both Alameda and ftx are now worth just $1. Sequoia, a venture-capital firm, has told investors it has written down its stake in the exchange to zero.

Reports on November 9th suggested that the Securities and Exchange Commission, America’s top financial regulator, had months ago launched a probe into ftx’s handling of funds, as well as the connections between Mr Bankman-Fried’s firms. America’s Justice Department is also reported to be investigating the firm. ftx has not yet commented on either story.

The fallout will have wider consequences. The crypto winter had previously claimed only the types of victims that would be expected, including a poorly designed stablecoin, a hedge fund and several platforms that made risky loans. That it has come for ftx, a well-regarded business, and Mr Bankman-Fried is an enormous blow. It has left other institutions scrambling to reassure customers. Coinbase, a large exchange, has sent out reassuring missives to the press. Its share price has nevertheless shed a fifth of its value in recent days, and is close to all-time lows.

The collapse of ftx may be enough to reverse the embrace of crypto by institutions, ordinary folk and the occasional government. Institutional investors including Temasek, a Singaporean wealth fund; SoftBank, a Japanese tech-investing group; and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, a Canadian fund, had all dipped their toes into the industry by buying stakes in ftx. Legislators will now eye crypto with even deeper suspicion. Whatever the precise cause of ftx’s implosion, the story is already a tragedy for the industry.

 

[moXJO]

We might get a spark these next few weeks.

STACKS ON!!!!

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

This is what is known as capitulation.

I'll be interested to see it go South forever at 12.31 am AEST Tuesday morning.

gg

 

[Garpal Gumnut]

Anders Åslund is well worth a follow on Twitter.

gg

 

[mullokintyre]

I am not certain about the prohibition part, its not illegal, or should not be to invest in cryptos.
They are no different to CFD's, CDOs', and other exotic financial derivitives.
They have no intrinsic value or use in themselves.
Just like investing in anything else, you take your chances, the bigger the risk, the bigger the expected returns.
It is not possible to eliminate greed and/or stupidity.
The idea behind the original crypto, Bitcoin, is the distributed ledger and a is neat piece of thinking.
Unfortunately, most of the money in crypto has been made and lost.
Mick

 

[Trader X]

Anders Åslund is well worth a follow on Twitter.

gg
View attachment 149110

All true but with one important caveat. The public beta testing of all these flawed, unregulated crypto projects has given central banks and planners a blueprint for the introduction of CBDC. So crypto will become real currency in the form of CBDCs with all the controls, manipulation and monitoring that comes with it.

Weary of the unregulated crypto casino? Then place your confidence in CBDC, after all who better to trust than your central bank.

 

[Dona Ferentes]

"A lot of people have compared this to Lehman. I would compare it to Enron,"

says Larry Summers ( @LHSummers ) about the FTX meltdown.