2021.14 - Brutal
TLDR:
The fight to take out $60k has been fierce. If doesn’t end decisively this week, it’ll likely drag on for the rest of the month and we should see some nice dips.
Regardless: keep stacking hard.
THE STANCE
My personal opinion on where the ball might be heading.
Bitcoin’s global, 24/7 price discovery is a remarkable and somewhat mysterious thing filled with complex dynamics and high drama. It’s probably the closest thing we have to a real-time rendering of the mythical “invisible hand” of the market.
The scenario right now seems starkly clear:
Bitcoin is not only growing in adoption as a passive reserve asset, it’s also growing in functionality as a financial instrument. As insurance companies, credit card companies, local governments, oil and gas producers and countless other entities start to understand Bitcoin and what it can do for them.
Maybe $60k will hold for the rest of the month, maybe it won’t, it doesn’t really matter. If you can see what’s happening, it’s painfully obvious that Bitcoin is a monetary juggernaut that is upgrading the very concept of money. The price is simply a function of people waking up to what is already in front of them.
Some will join of their own accord, others because they had no choice:
Make no mistake, regardless next week’s/month’s price, one thing is now clear: they are ALL coming.
Stack hard, HODL harder.
LONG BITCOIN
Recent news that keeps me bullish on Bitcoin —"long / bullish" means you have the expectation something will rise in value.
Insurers DIG BTC
NYDIG has been firing on all cylinders . Their latest announcement has them partnering with insurance companies to develop Bitcoin strategies that will protect their ability to pay out to policy holders.
"Fiat depreciation causes inflation in fiat premiums, while collapsing the purchasing power of claims. We see a brighter bitcoin-powered future for the billions who depend on the insurance industry every year.” —Ross Stevens
It would be difficult to overstate the size of this opportunity.
Et Tu Bloomberg?
Bloomberg joins the chorus of wild price forecasts from mainstream outlets with a bold $400k call should the pattern from the 2017 run repeats.
Semper Fidelity
Fidelity is one of the few institutions that were early to Bitcoin, they understand the space well. They may be stating the obvious, but coming from them it’s big deal. As long as governments keep raising to debase their currencies, Bitcoin will shine bright.
We’re not going to get out of this stimulated environment anytime soon. —Tom Jessop
CRYPTO WARS
crypto- | ˈˌkrɪpˌtoʊ | concealed; secret.
The monopoly over fiat money will not be given up without a fight.
Weaponizing Bitcoin
Billionaire Peter Thiel is a long-time Bitcoin maximalist. He’s also the founder of Palantir (think Big Brother Corp). His reputation seems to be “you don’t want him as an enemy”.
He made some interesting statements about Bitcoin at a recent event":
Consensus among the students of Bitcoin tea leaves seems to be that Thiel is not advocating for the US government to crack down on Bitcoin, but rather to look at its adoption seriously —perhaps adding a Palantir surveillance kicker— before China takes an insurmountable lead.
Coinbase IPO
Coinbase is a polarizing company. Honor where honor is due, their interface is clean, easy to use and they have become a well-established brand name (surely more so after the IPO), all of which makes them an attractive platform for beginners. Their size and professional custody also makes them an attractive option for large corporations —they are the crypto-equivalent of “no one gets fired for buying IBM.
Their success is not in question:
But not all is roses when it comes to Bitcoiners and Coinbase, in fact they are often denounced as being anti-Bitcoin.
Grievances include Coinbase pushing “crypto” ahead of Bitcoin (sometimes with a tenacity that borders on the ridiculous), their aggressive deployment of Chainalysis (crypto-surveillance systems) on their customers and their lackluster reputation in customer service —among other issues they are infamous for going offline whenever there’s a pronounced spike or dip.
Perhaps most damningly, they have failed to show faith in Bitcoin as an asset, as evidenced by their holdings, which are pitiful considering both their revenues and how early they got into the game:
Add a very rich valuation to the mix and one wonders if the IPO will be a worthwhile investment. Personally, I’ll just keep holding Bitcoin.
HSBC: HFSP
In a remarkable show of chutzpah, HSBC announced it would no longer allow its customers to make further investments in Microstrategy under the “Orange Coin Bad” blanket argument.
Will they have the guts to do the same with Coinbase once it goes public? Dumb and patronizing moves like this will make it increasingly obvious which institutions will not display the adaptability required to survive in the era of decentralized money.
From me to HSBC: Have Fun Staying Poor.
SHE Gets it
I’m grateful that the US has legislators like longtime Bitcoiner Hester Pierce, who understands that banning Bitcoin is not the way.
The Surrender Of King Arthur
BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes surrendered to Hawaii authorities. He and his co-founders face up to 5 years in prison for failing to take the necessary steps to prevent money laundering in their exchange.
CCI: Friend or foe
On the surface, the announcement of the shiny, new Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) seems benign enough
The Crypto Council for Innovation (CCI) is a global alliance of crypto industry leaders…
…comprises some of the leading names in crypto, including Coinbase, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paradigm, and Square. —CCI Website
Seasoned Bitcoiners know better than to brush off this announcement lightly though, they feel the CCI could simply be the new face of an old foe, the DCG —the consortium that tried and failed to push for big blocks back in the 2017 blocksize wars.
Beautyon describes this at length in this highly recommended thread (which has apparently been censored on Twitter) how he believes the consortium will try to kill Lightning in favor of a proprietary database shared between the consortium members as well as any privacy-enhancing improvements to Bitcoin.
The existence of the CCI could be setting the stage for a new war between Bitcoiners. I was new to Bitcoin when the 2017 blocksize wars came. I followed them with interested but could not get up to speed fast enough to participate. Seeing them firsthand made a deep impression on me about the importance of running your own node.
If you are invested in Bitcoin, this is the time to become a proper part of the Bitcoin Network and Run Your Own Goddamned Node, it’s no longer that difficult or expensive.
SHORT FIAT
Recent news that makes me bearish on the legacy financial system —"short / bearish" means betting it will go down in value.
Stonks Go Up?
You thought your stocks had been doing well? It seems they may just have been keeping pace.
If they used leveraged stock buybacks to achieve these results the cost of staying in place was a weakening of their balance sheets.
The Cruelest Tax
Inflation has proven impossible for governments to resist, it goes almost unnoticed when low but its devastating effects are very palpable when it inevitably starts running out of control.
PRICE DISCOVERY
This is the section where I talk about price with an updated weekly price chart. If this is your first time here, there’s a “how to interpret” guide below the chart.
Knocking on the Ceiling
Bitcoin has been bumping against (even breaching) $60k for over a month now. I the chart below we see that Bitcoin’s “board” (currently just north of $55k) is on a trajectory to bump against the $60k ceiling soon.
In my mind, the “crash up” to $65k is ultimately inevitable, a question of when, not if. The real question on the table is whether we will revisit $50k before going up, which we well might.
Could we drop lower than $50k? Sure. Do I think it’s likely? no I don’t, but Bitcoin has surprised me many times before.
I wouldn’t “wait for the dip” to buy. For me, fishing for dips is an accumulation strategy for people who already have a decent allocation to BTC, not for someone building an initial position.
Each candle in the chart represents 1 day. My comments are a personal opinion on the likelihood of BTC revisiting each price range.
Remember: ALL LINES IN THIS CHART ARE IMAGINARY
There are thousands of ways to interpret/draw charts, mine are no better than others. I claim no edge here.
The one thing that you need to keep in mind to make sense of price action at moments like this, is that whales can make money from price going up and from price going down.
So whenever “everybody knows Bitcoin has to go up” that’s the perfect time for whales to dump coins on the market, trigger stop-losses and liquidations, and scoop up some cheap coins. And they know that we are about to run out of sub-$60k Bitcoin, so they’ll do their best to get as much as they can
NEED TO UNDERSTAND BITCOIN?
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