18 years in Wall Street, left after finding out it was all horseshit. Founder/ Master and Commander: iBankCoin, finance news and commentary from the future.
Evercore’s Rich Ross stepped onto the CNBC set this evening with venomous malice for the crypto currency world. He went over the charts and saw nothing worth liking, flippantly discarding the asset class as something beneath him and his institutional clients.
Watch Ross as he maligns the crypto currencies, calling the hands that own them less than weak — but in fact ‘baby hands’ of a 13 yr old befit with a credit card ready for action.
“Let’s not even compare this to stocks for a second. What bothers me, we’re staring at the greatest bull market in the last 20 years, where you can double your money in like the best industrial companies — like a Boeing, which is sort of pillaring here for no good reason, up over 200% over the past two years and we’re talking about this stuff here that’s lost over 50% of its value in a month.”
Enter Dan Nathan, the ever gracious host at Fast Money — taking exception to Ross’s glib commentary on crypto currencies, taking Ross to task for impugning the integrity of this asset class that has attracted all of the finest people.
I won’t even transcribe the damned exchange. Watch it for yourselves and prepare to cringe.
I was taking a leak in one of my bathrooms, having a discreet conversation with my urinal shadow and he told me to buy LEDS. After cleaning up, I punched up the chart and really liked what I saw. Although I could buy the entire company myself, and still have some money left over for a nice dinner, I do believe this rocks straight to $5.
In the event it doesn’t, I will sell right away.
This is a fuck you money trade, unlike my OSTK trade — which is all but assured win.
Yesterday stocks took a turn for the worse and I got antsy, hopped off the crypto bandwagon, and I even shorted semis. Today, upon seeing markets recover, I immediately closed out my semi short and added a few crypto proxies to my ledgers. I will have you know, “The Fly” now finds himself handsomely situated in a pastiche of well performing equities, all very honorable and distinguished. These last 5 weeks have been so good, I’ve all but stopped looking at Sharpe ratios and have regaled myself in perfidious degeneracy — all done with the proper decorum and zeal that a gentleman of my station is accustomed to.
It seems I am all but a one man band at iBC again, which is perfectly fine. I went into this foray into financial literacy by myself and intend to exit by myself. Over the years, I’ve tried numerous avenues with the site, but at the end of the day, it all comes down to trading and whatever the hell I’m doing on a regular basis.
I think Bitcoin bounces with vigor this evening, which will lend to some bullishness for crypto proxies. I am long OSTK and XNET for these purposes. I also own NXTDW, and have for some time now, but in a very small and insignificant manner.
Stocks are higher by nearly 300, Nasdaq 70. The govt will likely shut down soon, not because our politicians are assholes (which they are), but because we are running BUDGET DEFICITS. Blame politicians all you want for not striking deals. But the fact remains, if we weren’t running budget deficits, the President would not need last minute deals done to keep the government running. Blame the boomer generation, an absolute pox on this timeline, a tawdry band of perverts, drug addicts, and sexual harassers.
In the stock world, a bounce like this would get faded the next day, unless of course it was a Central Bank fueled V shape recovery. Most large cryptos have shed more than 50% of their value over the past three weeks. With that in mind and all biases aside, it would be wise to play a dead cat bounce here — but it’d also be wise to draw a line in the sand to protect on the downside, whilst also being prepared to sell the rips.
Intra day, we’ve seen Bitcoin rise from ~$9,000 to $10,400, Ethereum ~$790 to $915, and Ripple from 0.89 to $1.05.
Meanwhile, over in Exodus, we’ve been playing some of the crypto proxies, like OSTK, XNET, OTIV, and LFIN. I’m up nearly $4 since my early morning purchase of OSTK and will probably hold into tomorrow, curious as to the veracity of the crypto trader class.
Do they have the balls to run prices higher from here? Or are they now cucked to the whims of the CME and option whores on Wall Street?
My gut says sell rips, but that advice would’ve been poor over the past three years.
I sold my SOXS position, which was a hedge against my longs, for a 40 cents loss. With the proceeds, I bought OSTK, the best and biggest crypto proxy out there — with the added bonus of being a decent online retailer.
The stock has been hammered into sea shells this past week, off by 13%, and I’m looking for it to bounce sharply, providing bitcoin can stop bleeding out.
This was the comeuppance that was delicately planned by Wall Street months ago, way before the CME began trading BTC futures on 12/18. They’d crash the market on the very same day that Goldman reported earnings, all for poetic justice.
Now you didn’t honestly think the Bitcoin was going to replace King Dollar did you? We’ve built an empire using the dollar, and it’s backed by our military might. We can bomb any country into dust, from outerspace, and then occupy said country — causing pain, mayhem, and anguish on a biblical scale. As a nation, we do evil things — toss our own into the furnaces of hell — for political purposes, or sometimes for sport. We enjoy playing puppet master and relish in the idea of foreclosing on homes, all the while profiting from the destruction. Historically speaking, no other nation has been more war like than Americans. Our business leaders foment strife and hire mercenaries to kill off the competition.
And you thought a few hipsters with avocados falling out of their pockets could displace all that? Seriously, there are Bitcoin ATMs on every street corner in Brooklyn. How long did you think this sort of depravity would last?
No
Like all things in life, a correction will be good for the asset class, providing regulators don’t shut it down altogether.
Right now, Bitcoin is well below $10,000, sinking rapidly towards 9k. Ethereum is at $794 and Ripple has been eliminated from the field, now trading at $0.91.
As for me, I am pleased with the progress of FTK this morning, and glad to see XON recovered and is now sharply higher. Wall Street celebrates the destruction of the crypto market, with a toast, and a +100 day.
Bitcoin touched below $10,000 earlier this morning, placing the fear of God into a slew of aestheist crypto traders. For now, it appears prices have stabilized, unless of course you’re long Bitconnect — which is lower by 96% to $9 now. In terms of the billion dollar club cryptos, Siacoin (storage related) is doing best — higher by 9% over the past hour.
On the other hand, stocks continue to jog on. Futures are +140 and I’ll probably lose a little in my SOXS insurance policy this morning.
Here in Princeton, NJ, the roads are slippery — after a light dusting of snow. I suspect several automobiles will crash and be set aflame, perhaps a few might perish in the fires. But all in all, most will make it to work okay.
Here are some other important headlines.
Ross Stores target raised to $90 from $80 at Nomura
UnitedHealth target raised to $268 from $235 at Citigroup
Gappers: ASML +6.7%, JUNO +59.5% (WSJ reporting CELG / JUNO in merger talks), ADAP +8.4%, BLUE +7.1%, BLCM +6.4%, ZIOP +3.8%, NURO +72.7% (announces collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) involving Quell Wearable Pain Relief Technology; GSK to pay the co $5 mln and up to $21.5 mln in milestones), AEZS +37.7% (enters into licensing and assignment agreement with Strongbridge (SBBP) for Macrilen (macimorelin) in the U.S. and Canada), NEWA +14.6% (Newater Technology +25% after announcing new strategic partnership with NW Blockchain Limited to jointly develop blockchain applications to use in the wastewater treatment industry)
Goldman Sachs prelim Q4 adj. EPS $5.68 vs $4.95 Capital IQ Consensus Estimate; revs $7.83 bln vs $7.64 bln Capital IQ Consensus Estimate
Crypto currency Bitconnect (BCC) plunged from $321 to a tad over $35 today, a drop of more than 86% after regulators from state authorities issued cease and desist letters for unauthorized sale of securities. That’s right. Just because your shit is on the blockchain, that doesn’t mean you get to solicit your fucking Ponzi scheme to people in America. State regulators will have something to say about that.
Via the company’s website, as per the reasons for shutting down.
The reason for halt of lending and exchange platform has many reasons as follow:
The continuous bad press has made community members uneasy and created a lack of confidence in the platform.
We have received two Cease and Desist letters, one from the Texas State Securities Board, and one from the North Carolina Secretary of State Securities Division. These actions have become a hindrance for the legal continuation of the platform.
Outside forces have performed DDos attacks on platform several times and have made it clear that these will continue. These interruptions in service have made the platform unstable and have created more panic inside the community.
Price action.
What did Bitconnect do? They quite literally ran a Ponzi scheme. Look at one of their brochures, promising investors 40% returns, PER MONTH.
Via Tech Crunch:
Many in the cryptocurrency community have openly accused Bitconnnect of running a Ponzi scheme, including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.
The platform was powered by a token called BCC (not to be confused with BCH, or Bitcoin Cash), which is essentially useless now that the trading platform has shut down. In the last The token has plummeted more than 80% to about $37, down from over $200 just a few hours ago.
If you aren’t familiar with the platform, Bitconnect was an anonymously-run site where users could loan their cryptocurrency to the company in exchange for outsized returns depending on how long the loan was for. For example, a $10,000 loan for 180 days would purportedly give you ~40% returns each month, with a .20% daily bonus.
Bitconnect also had a thriving multi-level referral feature, which also made it somewhat akin to a pyramid scheme with thousands of social media users trying to drive signups using their referral code.
The platform said it generated returns for users using Bitconnnect’s trading bot and “volatility trading software”, which usually averaged around 1% per day.
Of course profiting from market fluctuations and volatility is a legitimate trading strategy, and one used by many hedge funds and institutional traders. But Bitconnect’s promise (and payment) of outsized and guaranteed returns led many to believe it was a ponzi scheme that was paying out existing loan interest with newly pledged loans.
The requirement of having BCC to participate in the lending program led to a natural spike in demand (and price) of BCC. In less than a year the currency went from being worth less than a dollar (with a market cap in the millions) to a all-time high of ~$430.00 with a market cap above $2.6B.
Lenders into the Bitconnect Exchange have revealed the company is closing out accounts, issuing BCC in exchange for their dollars — which is causing the price to plummet.
Bitconnect is officially closing up. They sent me 33 BCC for my $11k+ in loans. Worth $6600 and dropping by the second. Their exchange is down so the only option is to send the BCC to an external exchange.
Was too late getting BCC to an external exchange. Price has already plummeted. $11k now worth less than $100. They pulled a good one by letting us believe they were doing the right thing. Paying us back BCC that is now worthless. Should have known better I guess…
Over on Reddit, there is a subreddit dedicated to this Ponzi scheme, which has just gone private — likely due to an influx of schadenfreude. Suicide watch is in effect.
This just about sums it up.
And then there’s this guy — popular Youtuber, Trevor James, who rose to fame because of Bitconnect, telling people he’s buying Bitconnect now at these prices. He has since taken down that video and is in hiding.
Jesus Christ this is funny. In response to Trump’s alleged ‘SHITHOLE’ comments, referring to people domiciled in failed states trying to migrate into ‘Merica, Jim Acosta asked Trump if he only preferred to have people from white countries immigrating into the United Steaks.
For that question, Acosta was tossed out of the Oval Office. Later on, Jim tried to ask another question — and was summarily shouted down by Trump’s staff — which Jim quickly compared to the practices of non-democratic nations suppressing freedom of MUH press.
A few hours ago I blew out of all of my crypto proxy plays, after booking monstrous gains this morning in NCTY and IZEA. Seeing the crypto space getting lit, I opted to avoid the tension and take the path of least resistance and get small.
I blew out of SRAX, NXTD, LC, and NETE. With the proceeds I shorted semis, 3x, via SOXS.
Presently, I am long a sundry of oil stocks, in addition to today’s purchases of RAS and AMCN.
My Quant account is barely down, off by 0.04%. While markets are still moderately strong, seeing the Dow and the S&P reverse lower after a giant early move, I’d rather be cautious here than aggressive, especially after my recent success.
