I am looking at the history of the asset, the technicals along with the fundamentals. next question please. Then don't invest in it
Seems like there are one or two half functioning brains in here so here's a quick primer. ET is about two years behind when it comes to knowledge about products and market knowledge so no wonder mouth breathers like NewTraderAdventure keep flaming. Most of the big spot exchanges are regulated and have some deposit insurance. All of them use custodian services and I don't think that a customer lost a single dollar because of a hack of a major exchange during the last 2 years. All of it was refunded when something happened. When it comes to derivatives, things are a bit different, tho. None of the derivatives exchanges are really regulated but none of them have ever been hacked. There are no margin calls but positions are liquidated automatically and the liquidation fees feed an insurance fund. This insurance fund will guarantee the payout in case the counterparty defaults. CME is not the place to be when it comes to liquidity. 914m $ traded there yesterday with an open interest of 390m $. That is a complete joke when you look at Binance where 7 billion $ traded. The entire BTC futures market traded 33b $ yesterday with a combined OI of ~3b $. Bakkt... 51M $ and 11m $ in open interest. For options there is only one place to be and that is called Deribit. 86% of all options volume trades here, expirations range from weekly to 9m out. One caveat, tho: I cannot think of one derivatives exchange that accepts US customers... Nobody who trades short term for real will EVER trade on legacy exchanges. A lot of trading is done over the weekends since especially BTC has real world use and Asia and LatAm will transfer to family or re - adjust their finances over the weekend. The risk of getting stuck in a massive weekend move is always there so you either have an account with a crypto native exchange or you are a massive HF who holds longer and doesn't care. HOWEVER: I would advise anyone retail to stay away from crypto native derivatives until these things are really understood. Every product is quoted in USD but settled in cryptocurrency, making their payout profiles non-linear and that is also true for futures. Imagine a futures on gold that is quoted in USD but margined and settled in gold. Futures spread trading involves time decay and dynamic ratio adjustments because of convexity, so you most certainly need at least a spreadsheet to stress test your position. Knowing your way around FX derivatives helps a lot. Besides that you can trade any structure you want if you are big enough to go OTC. I'd say crypto native derivatives are way over the head of 90% of ET, so just stay away from them until you've done your homework. Otherwise you'll wonder why you've just blown up your account in a 50% drop by going long unleveraged. If you want to bet on BTC price with the indicator or orderflow shenanigans trade spot against stable coins as already suggested. How do I know all this? I added crypto derivatives to my portfolio early 2018 and I'm making markets at some exchanges. If you do it right, you can create a synthetic dollar that you can arb against a variety of products since it also has a yield and a volatility.
This is basically the prototype ET user. Instead of diving into it and trying to figure out how this market actually works, you guys work with the current narratives of how it's done. That's why you don't make money because edge has to be discovered, not copied. Cryptocurrencies exist for 10 years and they are flying for 3 now. They are not going away and there is currently no single industry that grows so quickly. So obviously there is something to it, right? Perhaps there are fundamentals, cash flows and real world supply and demand? Perhaps you just don't understand it, because your lazy ass never made an effort to look at some numbers? Isn't that a much more viable scenario than "I am right and everyone who is pouring millions into cryptocurrencies has no idea or is a criminal?"
PTJ called it great speculation. He didn't say future of money, or great investment or the greatest invention. “When I think of bitcoin, look at it as one tiny part of a portfolio."
Tax evasion and support of black market activities are the only truly unique properties of Bitcoin that other tradeable assets can't replicate. The only reason to buy it outside of wild speculation or to pay a ransom on ransomware would be if it's the only portable asset that can be bought to escape a rapidly inflating currency such as Venezuela -- a convert it or lose it situation. Other than that, it has no value. Very few people actually use it as a currency because it is far too volatile. Those that use it are hodlers trying to convince others that it actually has a practical use case. How come I don't see people on here running around trying to convince others to buy Microsoft or Apple stock? Because there are fundamental reasons to own those stocks. But the Bitcoin people constantly run around trying to convince others to buy in (admittedly the gold bugs do this too, but not nearly as vocal). The Bitcoin crowd are full time marketers trying to find more suckers to drive up demand and buy in so they can get out. I think it will eventually go towards its intrinsic value.