Hailing from the Money Laundering Capitol of the World, UBS Declares Bitcoin to be ‘The Bubble to End All Bubbles’

The Swiss banking giant is out with some unkind words for Bitcoiners, calling it “the bubble to end all bubbles”, in an absolute old man screed that would make Clint Eastwood proud.

“The bubble to end all bubbles continues. Cryptocurrencies only have value if accepted as currencies. However, they cannot be used for the most important transaction in an economy, and cryptocurrency supply can only rise and never fall (making them a poor store of value),” global chief economist Paul Donovan wrote in a post Monday. “To date, using cryptocurrencies requires (effectively) a simultaneous asset sale and purchase of goods or services.”

While I have never been a fan of the cryptos as a currency, they are an asset class and that’s the point that many are missing. While you might not be able to buy milk and eggs with BTC now, that’s sort of the bullish argument for the asset. If I wanted to, right now, I could accept payment for iBankCoin services with Bitcoin. I only opt not to because I am slothful in that regard. The BTC would auto convert to dollars and I’d get paid immediately, as opposed to normal settlements that usually take 1-5 days using PayPal or Stripe.

BTC and other cryptos have risen too much too fast; but it’s certainly fun to watch and I’ve finally come to grips with that fact: I am a fan of asset classes and enjoy seeing how people value them. Bitcoin, Ethereum are no different than stocks in this regard.

This is a huge piece of shit — but that’s what’s moving nowadays. All of you old men are shitting your pantaloons watching the Bitcoiners make all of the money, while you’re there calculating Sharpe ratios. Meanwhile, people are getting absurdly rich off nothing.

I bought some MARA this morning, based on its chart patterns.

Inside Exodus, I’ve got a whole list of these little fuckheads that are related to cryptos. They’re moving today.

UPDATE: Terrorist identified.

At least one person is in custody after a bomb exploded in the very busy Port Authority terminal in NYC this morning. As you can see by the live footage below, people were injured and possibly a lot more than that.

MSNBC is reporting this is an ISIS attack and the man who was apprehended was wearing a device with wires sticking out.

UPDATE: The terror suspect taken into custody tried to detonate his homemade device, but it was a dud. He is alive.

UPDATE: Via Zerohedge

The suspected bomber – a 27-year-old who lived in Brooklyn – had wires attached to him and was armed with a five-inch metal pipe bomb and battery pack as he walked through the Manhattan transit hub, sources said.

Police took the man into custody.

Former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the man was inspired by ISIS and originally from Bangladesh.

There was at least one injury and the wounded was the suspect. The man, who was seriously injured, was taken to Bellevue Hospital.

Investigators briefly spoke to the man, who told them he made the explosive device at the electrical company where he works.

Update 2 : The Terrorist in NYC attack is injured and in custody. Bomb exploded prematurely. The suspect is reportedly a Muslim man from Brooklyn, east Flatbush area, Investigators are on the way to his home, for further investigations

Bitcoin futures were launched and the price of Bitcoins soared higher. Like stocks, this was a sell the fear; buy the news situation. What will come from the launch of futures in the weeks and months to come are elaborate schemes propped by by investment banking houses aimed at profiting from Bitcoins. I expect there will be new ETFs cropping up now and that might, in fact, hurt GBTC — due to the premium differential. Either way, having a futures market is not a good thing, in my opinion, because it motivates the biggest fucked faces the world has ever known to rig markets.

I’ve taken a more sanguine view on the cryptos in recent days. I’m not interested in buying up here, but I am interested in examining the asset class and perhaps building some tools to help people analyze them. There is definitely a vacuum to fill.

Europe is flat, as well as US futures. All of the cryptos are running higher, with Litecoin being the most energetic, +12%. The Santa Claus rally begins now, in earnest, so do not expect a gigantic market move. Instead, you should anticipate a reduction of volatility and an easy time through the New Year’s.

Here’s the morning headlines:

Vonage target raised to $12 at Needham

NXP Semi: Activist Elliot Advisors releases a letter to shareholders and a presentation making the case that it believes NXP is worth $135/share on an intrinsic standalone basis, above the $110 offered by QUALCOMM (QCOM) in its bid to acquire the Company

Waste Mgmt upgrade details — to Buy at Stifel; tgt raised to $95

Bluebirdbio target raised to $309 from $186 at Goldman

First Solar upgraded to Outperform at Robert W. Baird; tgt raised to $82; top pick in solar sector

DaVita upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Citigroup

Illinois Tool initiated with a Buy at BofA/Merrill; tgt $190

The Trade Desk upgraded to Buy from Hold at SunTrust

Freeport-McMoRan target raised to $16 at B. Riley FBR, Inc.

What a pack of absolute retards. Here’s the CBOE trying to launch Bitcoin futures.

Bloomberg covers the uneventful launch.

Meanwhile, prices are racing higher with exuberance. BTC is +15% to 16,454 and most high profile ICOs are running up in kind, but to a lesser degree.

First and foremost, the past two months I spent most of my evenings writing a book, one that many of you absolute fuckheads had requested over the past 10 years, and, thus far, have received ZERO reviews. Sure, several hundred have purchased the darn thing, and that’s all fine and good, but I want some reviews. You know damned well the book is good — because I wrote it. By the way, the paperback is out now with RARE art. It is doubtful that I will get around to writing part 3 of the series anytime soon, so enjoy the first two with my compliments in the meantime.

On the issue of Bitcoin, BTC is trading up 2,000 from last night’s lows, at $15,700. Total market cap for the crypto world is $420b, and I am definitely going to do create a market intelligence platform for cryptos, not because I love them, but because I feel they should be properly analyzed.

Here’s an absolutely old man from Germany, land of the Nazi, warning that BTC could pose a systemic risk to markets, should they crash, burn, and dissipate into nothing at all. Clearly, he doesn’t know that the future is now and that the blockchain is going to render his job absolutely obsolete. Nonetheless, there’s an important question to be asked now.

Given the run up, it’s only natural for a reversion to the mean, correct? Say cryptos ballon up yo $600 billion and then halve, would a loss of $300 billion in wealth, over a very short time period, be systemic?

Get ready cryptfags: the futures shall trade tomorrow and the sector is in flux.

Who’s buying this wonderful dip?

Are there twins more hated than the Winklevoss? In a CNBC interview, the hated twins weighed in on the Bitcoin craze, saying it wasn’t competing with dollars, but instead out of crush gold. They believe it’s ‘multi-trillion dollar asset.’

“We’ve always felt that bitcoin, given its properties, is gold 2.0 — it disrupts gold. Gold is scarce, bitcoin is actually fixed. Bitcoin is way more portable and way more divisible. At a $300 billion market cap, it’s certainly seen a lot of price appreciation, but gold is at $6 trillion and if bitcoin disrupting gold is true and it plays out … then you can see 10 to 20 times appreciation because there is a significant delta still,” Cameron Winklevoss told CNBC on Friday.

“Long term, directionally, it is a multitrillion-dollar asset — I don’t know how long it takes to get there,” he added.

“We’ve seen the bubble term thrown around and it’s just not the right way to look at this,” he said. “Social networks grow in value exponentially based on the number of users and participants. The difference between one and 100 is dramatic — 100 and a million is that much more dramatic and exciting. As more people join it gains more value.”

“Bitcoin is not competing with those other currencies. It is competing with gold. Bitcoin is the oldest, it has the first mover advantage and there’s tremendous liquidity,” he said, adding that the problem ether is trying to solve is different than bitcoin’s payment application. “I think it’s great if there are a number of cryptos.”

Meanwhile, BTC is off a little bit today to $14,666, or -7.5%, ahead of the CBOE futures that will begin trading Sunday evening. In a related note, Litecoin is higher by 15%. With over 1,300 ICOs traded, I think it’s time that someone delved into all of them and made sense of the chaos. Starting 2018, iBankCoin will take on the crypto world in earnest, not because I want to step in an invest after 10,000% gains, but because it’s a brand new asset class that is generally not explained very well. I am also thinking about applying the Exodus technical algorithms to the cryptos to see if there’s anything of value there.

I love how Obama nerds love to praise Obama’s stock market, which was fine from 2009-2013; but let’s be honest here — it did nothing in 2014-2016 and was only bailed out in 2016 because of the Trump rally. As a matter of fact, before Trump got elected, markets were awfully grim, were they not? Or are you forgetting the negative yield situation in Europe and how TLT was trading higher every single day?

NOTHING was working, up until the day after the election.

The past year has been retarded, from a Presidential viewpoint. Trump relishes in the idea of making himself to be a walking a living meme — but stocks have enjoyed it. Not only is the SPY +20% for the year, but we’ve seen scores of sectors rifle higher, big, big gains in tech and banks. Almost everything has worked. More than that, volatility has been nil.

In Exodus, we only had 4 overall system oversold signals this year — all of which were immensely profitable. Have a look.

All members had to do was sip tea all year, stay diversified, and add to positions when the system flagged OS. Pretty damn dreamy if you ask me.

Going forward, there are all sorts of fun things to look forward to, such as the firing of Mueller. I saw today ‘globalist Dina Powell’ has finally been ousted inside the White House and Trump is getting ready to fire everyone but Ivanka and Jared.

Both GOPtards and DEMtards alike should thank President Trump this joyous Xmas season for his many gifts of stock market success and you should all remember how terribly miserable Barry’s market was in 2014-2016.

This whole trading gambit is for idiots. I am serious. My quant portfolio has a Sharpe over 2 and has crushed the SPY in over 75% over the time this year. For the week, it moved higher by 0.41%, about 7bps better than the SPY. Although higher today very nicely, stocks didn’t bode too well for the week and most high beta names dropped in value.

I made my adjustments for the week and carry on without a care in the world.

On the other hand, and I am pointing this out as a perfect example, my discretionary portfolio is filled with murderholes. Just yesterday, I was sucking the knee caps off of FIZZ; today’s it’s scrambling lower. Let’s not even mention my UVXY position. The more I think about it, the more comfortable in never trading like this again, instead favoring quantitative strategies that can be analyzed and tweaked, without flawed human intuition.

For those who purchased my story today, via Amazon, just know that I just made revisions to it after finding some errors. Ten thousand apologies for that. It should be almost flawless now.

Today is Jean Sebelius birthday, a national holiday in Finland.

Enjoy.