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Crypto Strikes Back

DOUCHE bank is going to collapse, Italy is going to stuff all of EU’s debt into it’s boot then flush it into the Mediterranean and GDPR is the canary in the coal mine that Big Data social media companies are grossly overvalued.

The Fed has put a bid under the market for 10 years. Maybe they will do it another 10 years. But today….today Crypto strikes back with gains while markets plummet. Fiat, government backed currencies are getting closer to a showdown with decentralized HARD money backed by math. So far it’s been an landslide win for Crypto.

Markets are cyclical. Every 40+ years a new asset class is birthed. Like any birth it’s messy and loud and you want to throw up. In the juvenile stage there are times when you want to shake the baby.

But for those assets that survive there is a chance at reshaping markets and even our day to day lives.

The past week Crypto suffered a dramatic correction. The correction may not be over. I am looking at charts daily to consider selling a rally. But this post is not about short term movements. This is big picture stuff….

When Fly posted about his losses in Crypto and how he’s abandoned the space I thought “perfect”. This is what is needed. We need the latecomers who got fleeced to completely abandon Crypto. That’s when smart money steps in and the new ramp begins. Tweets like this are a good sign.

There are Manias (tulips), Bubbles (beanie babies) and S-Curves (Internet). Crypto is an example of all three. At times Crypto is Manic. Remember our $1,000 daily candles? That’s insane. A rocket ship form $1k to $20k Bitcoin in 2017 definitely qualifies as a Bubble. But……if you ZOOM OUT, you start to see an S Curve. That S Curve is what you buy and the price you pay is riding out the volatility.

I detest the HODL mentality. I want to punch people in the face when I hear that word. But in the grand scheme playing Warren Buffett and holding hard money for 6+ months hasn’t failed yet.

Sell your altcoins. The market is nearing purge mode where alts will be punished severely.

Buy the S Curve. Sell the Bubbles.

 

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Crypto Wasteland

The moment you stock trading knuckle draggers have been waiting for is here. Crypto is experiencing another ass kicking and you get to mean mug the Crypto world while sitting on your FANG + TSLA genius level of creativity portfolio.

You feel validated in your skepticism. Vainglorious in your decision to pass on Crypto. A smirk a mile wide crosses your stupid face every time CNBC updates the Bitcoin price.

Personally, I took small profits the past two weeks. Still, I am looking at what could have been another life changing trade slip through my hands in a matter of days. Crypto is volatile. Doomed if you do and doomed if you don’t. I am DOOMED this week. I have been entertaining additional sells the past 7 days but held my ground. Result: profits rekt and I’m in an elevator to hell where the cords are cut and there is no safety brake.

Why is this happening? Several reasons:

The infighting in Crypto is atrocious. Crypto has the opportunity to overthrow the traditional banking/fiat/government confiscation of money providing a new level of freedom for humanity. Instead, Crypto leaders routinely engage in juvenile taunts on Twitter for likes and retweets. As smart as Crypto devs/traders are they do some really retarded shit. Imagine if that energy was put towards fighting the banks instead of some irrelevant project that you don’t like.

A few years ago Charlie Lee copy and pasted the open source Bitcoin code and made a few small edits. He named it Litecoin. Litecoin gradually gained momentum and made Charlie very rich. He’s called Ctrl+C Lee for a reason. This encouraged a slew of others to do the same and now we have over 1,000 Cryptocurrencies. Many are copy/paste clones of existing coins with slight tweaks. Many aren’t functioning coins at all. They are just a token on Ethereum. This created an epic gold rush in 2017 as these coins were rocketing upwards on nothing more than a website and a whitepaper. This is how bubbles operate. People rush in and most latecomers get destroyed.

While this has been happening Wall St got serious about Crypto. The biggest complaint from Consensus 2018 was there were a lot of financial “suits” there. Yep, these guys are sharks. They can smell blood in the water from 3 miles away. They saw the money in Crypto and showed up en masse to feed off the uninitiated. Bitcoin futures on CME was the beginning of that trend. Now there are big firms setting up HFT shops specific to Crypto. Wall St are the Borg and Crypto will be assimilated.

Some are calling for a serious bounce around here or possibly BTC $6,000. I’m bearish till the charts turn. BCH has some support around $900.

This game will play out over a long time. I think once the malinvestment in the terrible Crypto projects is cleared out the coins with utility will survive and thrive.

Enjoy the destruction of Crypto.

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BTFD in Crypto?

I sold more EOS for BCH this past week and added to my fiat. I didn’t like the uncertainty in the charts. Crypto was dancing on the edge of a razor blade.

BCH was on critical support at ~$1200. It held for days (unusual in Crypto). I was waiting for confirmation if this was accumulation or distribution.

BTC is breaking up this morning and most of the market is following.

It may be time to be buying again.

Caveat: I am sticking to my thesis that the amount of malinvestment in Crypto is a systemic risk. There are too many coins that are complete garbage. The Consensus event in NYC produced ZERO interesting announcements, partnerships or momentum.

There is also the SEC to consider. They may rule at any time that Crypto is a security. Some believe this would be a big problem for Crypto but I am not so sure. There’s no way for the SEC to regulate Crypto. They can pass laws to limit Crypto but Crypto is global and there’s no single entity to shutdown. The genie is out of the bottle. However, the SEC did create a honeypot website with a fake coin that has many concerned they are lining up to take action to “protect consumers”.

Those risks are not new in Crypto though. The details change but there’s always been a threat that a government would “shut down Bitcoin”. It’s impossible without shutting down the Internet.

With that said I want to highlight the difference in Crypto between BCH and everything else. Case in point:

In the top picture you have four leaders in top coins: ETH, BTC, LTC and XMR. They created a youtube channel called Magical Crypto Friends. Imagine My Little Pony mixed with Crypto culture. Cryptos is full of trolls but …how can you take that shit seriously?

The bottom picture is Calvin Ayre who hosted the BCH CoingGeek conference in Hong Kong on Friday. Contrary to Consensus the CoinGeek conference was focused on several big announcements related to BCH: a BCH SDK, BCH adoption by purse.io, atomic swaps coming to BCH, capacity increase to match Paypal transaction volume, and oblivious transfers for privacy. Yes, that’s a lot of tech and it will get normalized/transparent for the average user over time. This is how tech moves. The roadmap has been laid and now the appreciation will grow as adoption grows. It’s still early.

In terms of tech and new partnerships BCH reminds me of ETH during it’s epic run in 2017 before the severe limitations of ETH as a platform were exposed.

The challenge and the opportunity: the market hasn’t figured out what coins have value and what is complete garbage. The challenge is that good coins my get dragged down with market volatility as zero value coins approach their true value of ZERO. Price discovery is a bitch. The opportunity is that if you can muster foresight and some fortitude you can buy coins today that will have outrageous gains as they cannibalize the rest of the market over the next 2 years.

EOS has it’s mainnet launch June 1st. For the past year EOS has been nothing more than a token. In other words, startup phase with no actual product. Extreme volatility ahead for EOS as it goes live.

Long BCH. Trading in and out of EOS.

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Here’s Some Crypto TA

First, a palate cleanser:

Bear case on BTC:

Bullish scenario:

Consensus 2018 is next week in NYC. This has usually been bullish for Crypto. Sample of the crowd you will find at Consensus.

Coingeek, which is owned by Gaming Billionaire and BCH shill Calvin Ayre, is hosting a conference May 18th in Hong Kong. Sample of the crowd you will find at this BCH conference:

Long BCH.

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Booked Some EOS Profit

I added to my EOS position March 27 at ~$6.15. Booked a 185% gain in just over a month. I am letting the principal ride as this is pure profit harvesting.

Did I sell the recent top? Nope. Called it, didn’t trade it. Story of my life. This chart was screaming sell. I mark the 4.618 fib as overbought on all my charts. Problem was EOS blew past that to $23 and I switched gears to charting EOS at $50 because I am greedy animal trained in the crypto circus to always push my luck.

EOS may hit $50, but not in one sweep. The once in a lifetime run of ETH from $6 to $1,000 in 2017 is not guaranteed to repeat. Given I’m in EOS under $5 for my core holding I have plenty of room to play this lotto ticket.

Overall the crypto market is dancing on the edge of a cliff. So many charts have bullish setups but if this rally fails it’s a quick trip down an elevator to hell. Couple of charts I’m watching.

BTC falling out of this pitchfork could move entire market down. Breaking the double top may put BTC in bull mode and could decimate most alts near term.

BCH has an Adam and Eve PLUS a Cup and Handle PLUS heavy resistance at the triple top. Flip a coin. One thing, if BCH breaks $1600 I expect it will explode upwards.

Long term Crypto is still a once in a lifetime investment opportunity. And it’s volatile.

Near term, whichever way the market moves next will set the tone for Summer.

 

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Immutable, Monetized Social Media on Bitcoin Cash

There is a new short message format social media platform that runs on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain and it is called Blockpress.  https://www.blockpress.com/

Blockpress is similar to Twitter. However, Blockpress has done several things that are very unique. First, every action on Blockpress is a microtransaction on BCH. Change your name, picture, post or reply requires a very small amount of Bitcoin Cash (less than one cent) to complete. There is also an integrated tipping system where you can send other users Bitcoin Cash.

Many firsts here: Blockpress has successfully monetized a social media platform out of the gate. Also, since the platform writes everything to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain all posts are uncensorable (we’ll have to see how that works) and immutable. Your posts are in the blockchain forever. Also, the microtransactions may counter some forms of SPAM, although the costs are so low maybe not.

This is a much more user friendly platform than Memo.Cash but credit is due to Memo.Cash for releasing their version first. The release of two viable social media platforms in a short period of time by different teams shows the kind of development that is happening in Crypto and specifically on Bitcoin Cash. Blockpress is a leap forward in usability and so far the developers are already taking requests and promising quick turnarounds on user requests.

As every post is written to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain there is currently a meager limit of 74 characters per post. When BCH upgrades on May 15 that will change to 220 characters. Images and other advanced features are not available yet but for a new release this is a very usable product and exciting use of BCH as a platform.

One thing you can do is grab your Blockpress ID and then input it into a monitored address on https://txhighway.com/. Every time you post on Blockpress you’ll hear your transaction hit the blockchain via the TX Highway website. This is real time demonstration of a distributed ledger in action.

Looking forward to what’s next for Bitcoin Cash.

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The Best Offense is a Good Defense

Crypto is near an interim double top. So many setups showing big moves ahead but there’s been a failure to punch through proving that resistance is resistance until broken.

BTCUSD Ichimoku cloud chart below. For now, the market overall is closely correlated to BTCUSD moves. Will the price resolve upwards or downwards? There is a mix of bullish and bearish indicators for the 800lb gorilla in Crypto.

BTCUSD pitchfork:

Holding the bottom of this pitchfork but flirting with a breakdown. $8,900 looks very important here.

So the market is between a rock and a hard place. Will there be a shakeup in the top 5 coins? Will a coin decouple from BTC? Will BTC break down or break up and take the whole market with it?

BCHBTC ratio is on the move upwards and approaching a double top / key resistance level. However the ratio has a recent bearish TK cross (similar to BTCUSD). If there’s is a break of that recent high and bullish recross of the TK then that is very bullish for BCHBTC. Add in that BCH has an upgrade in two weeks that will enable new functionality. Will it be a sell the news event or a confirmation of BCH maturing?

My overall take is that it’s best to watch the charts closely near term. Any significant breakdown and it’s time to sell and wait for the next bull signal. Crypto is volatile and you may get whipsawed in both directions. That’s the risk you take. This is an important move ahead for the market and I think will set the tone for Summer. I’m keeping a close eye on how these charts play out. The crypto market is about to choose a direction and right now the best offense is a good defense.

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Investing vs Speculating

One of the important distinctions that is missing in today’s markets is that Speculation is not the same as Investing. Crypto is speculating (today). Don’t be fooled by the holding mantra as a smokescreen for crypto investing.

“An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and a satisfactory return. Operations not meeting these requirements are speculative.” -Benjamin Graham

Definition of Speculation: the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence.

Speculation is relative. It may be a theory without firm evidence to the majority but if you dig in eventually you see that Crypto is inevitable. At that a-ha moment it’s no longer speculation for you. Your thesis hits bedrock and you now stand firm in your conviction. The Internet did not have firm evidence for it being ubiquitous when it started out, it was speculative, but now it’s obvious to everyone. When did you finally figure that out? What gains did you miss out on being skeptical?

Reality today is there are very few practical reasons to buy crypto. Surprise! No one uses that shit! Crypto is 100% speculation for 98% of the population. Speculation gave birth to the dot com boom when people still had dial up modems. Wall St speculated in the mortgage market and caused a housing bubble. Speculation is time bound. It’s speculation until it becomes obvious, then the returns skyrocket. The early speculators are the future titans of industry…..IF they survive. I don’t want to step over survivor bias but rather than address it head on I’ll just share a Jesse Livermore quote:

Basically, idiot speculators don’t survive.

You have a decision point in front of you. Crypto is a new field. Will it survive and thrive? Is it the future? If it’s the future what are the likely returns? What does a Bitcoin need to be worth in this scenario? Imagine if you did that kind of due diligence when Google was $80 at it’s IPO.

There is no promise of safety or satisfactory return in Crypto. In fact, while speculating in Crypto you are likely to catch a live grenade and lose a limb every six months. In exchange for forgoing safety for that level of risk there is a chance of outrageous returns. But you won’t get those returns applying investing rules in a speculative world. Investing rules will have you exit in a drawdown for the “safety” of your stockholm syndrome annual index of choice + 3% returns, like a pleb.

The only way Investing works to change your life is if you live to 300 years old like Warren Buffett grinding out the earnings potential of GE every quarter to gain a few percentage points in your portfolio. No thanks!

So if you are an investor leave that investing knowledge at the door. It’s served you well. Channel your inner speculator. Research until you are comfortable or just swing out in Crypto with your riskiest portion of your portfolio. Accept you may lose a limb or two and pony up to the Crypto table. Today’s speculators are tomorrow’s billionaires, at least the ones that survive.

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