How Billionaires Are Buying Up Bitcoin

Discussion in 'Crypto Assets' started by johnarb, May 31, 2019.

  1. johnarb

    johnarb

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/billyb...lionaires-are-buying-up-bitcoin/#30c1165f208c

    Far from the murky, impersonal world of online bitcoin and cryptocurrency exchanges, billionaires who want to buy bitcoin do it through an office in west London's upmarket Mayfair—and the relatively new service is becoming increasingly popular amongst the super rich with an interest in crypto.

    The Dadiani Syndicate, which styles itself as an investment "platform for ... maximizing your digital holdings," and matches big bitcoin buyers and sellers in a way similar to buyers and sellers of fine art, claims to have helped clients who want to acquire "up to 25% of the bitcoin market." <-- good luck with that, lol!

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    Bitcoin, now worth almost $9,000, has swung wildly in value over the last few years.

    GETTY
    Bitcoin has exploded back into the limelight over the last couple of months after the bitcoin price rocketed higher in April—sparking a bull run that continues to roll on and has taken the bitcoin price to almost $9,000 from under $4,000 at the beginning of this year.

    The Dadiani Syndicate was set up by art dealer Eleesa Dadiani who first began using bitcoin and cryptocurrencies a few years ago in response to investor demand and is operated out of the same office as Dadiani Fine Art.

    Last year, Dadiani Fine Art, in partnership with blockchain platform Maecenas Fine Art, made headlines after putting 49% of Andy Warhol’s 1980 work "14 Small Electric Chairs" up for sale for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies via the ethereum blockchain.

    "When I founded the institution it was a way for people to cash out of their cryptocurrency assets," Dadiani said. "But we found there were people who wanted us to assist them in buying enormous amounts of bitcoin."

    The Dadiani Syndicate is described as a "peer to peer network," with people trading between each other; Dadiani claims her role is to put together people who want to sell and those who want to buy, just as she does in the art world.

    "One of our clients approached us and said they were interested in acquiring 25% of all bitcoin currently available," Dadiani said. "There are a number of entities who want to dominate the market."

    A quarter of all bitcoin currently in circulation, including those bitcoin that may be permanently lost, is around 4.5 million and worth a staggering $38 billion at current exchange rates.

    Dadiani said this kind of accumulation is not possible to "realize" but her company has been instructed, "to scour the markets and gain access to as close to 25% as possible."

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    Eleesa Dadiani's interest in bitcoin and cryptocurrencies was sparked by her work as an art dealer.

    ELEESA DADIANI
    "A buyer of this size is going to push the price up to make this kind of accumulation even more expensive," said Mati Greenspan, brokerage eToro's senior market analyst. "There are ways to offset that kind of demand-based price increase but after a certain level there's not much you can do to prevent it."

    According to Greenspan's estimates, of the 21 million bitcoin that will ever exist, "many will not be mined for a long time and many more are lost for good."

    "Yet even a greater number of coins are currently being held by hodlers [a name for long-term bitcoin holders] who will not be willing to part with them for any price," Greenspan wrote in a note to clients. "Realistically speaking, there are probably less than 5 million coins actually circulating at the moment."

    One of the biggest challenges for Dadiani is how to buy large amounts of bitcoin without affecting the market.

    "People buying large quantities of bitcoin want to avoid slippage," said Dadiani. "The only way to do this is to avoid exchanges."

    Slippage is the difference between the expected price of a trade and the price at which the trade is executed and can be made worse by periods of higher volatility, something the bitcoin market is especially prone to, and when a large order is made in a low volume market.

    Dadiani claims to have built up a consortium of sellers from around the world who have "colossal" amounts of bitcoin or who want to buy significant amounts and she is confident they have all been properly vetted against money laundering regulations.

    "We don't deal with people who are not clients of reputable banks," said Dadiani. "We are market makers, coordinators of these trades. Once you involve banks and institutions, it's up to them to make sure their clients are abiding by regulations."

    The Dadiani Syndicate is currently in the midst of its fourth trade, all of which have been "very large volume" and each taking weeks or months to complete. The Dadiani Syndicate receives a percentage of each trade; a brokers' fee.

    The trades so far have all been well into the millions of dollars, made up of thousands of trades per day.

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    The bitcoin price has recently rebounded somewhat but remains far from its all-time highs of almost $20,000.

    COINDESK
    Since the beginning of this year, the bitcoin price has ballooned over 120%—adding billions of dollars to the value of these trades.

    "The interest in bitcoin has never waned," said Dadiani, adding her art gallery has dabbled in cryptocurrency for years. "Though the media paints a very different picture."

    "At the moment, people just want to buy bitcoin. There's little interest in other cryptocurrencies but we have not been doing this long and would be open to others in the future if clients wanted it. If someone wants large amounts of ether or another major cryptocurrency, we would likely be able to find a seller."

    "Art and cars are a small industry, bitcoin and crypto is something different," Dadiani added.
     
    zdreg likes this.
  2. zdreg

    zdreg

    https://www.trustnodes.com/2019/05/30/can-the-rich-corner-the-bitcoin-market

    Can the Rich Corner the Bitcoin Market?
    May 30, 2019 5:38 pm0

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    “We haven’t had a universal currency since gold and silver. A decentralised economy allows for borderless trade, which hasn’t been possible before with such ease; people are used to decision-making in trickles, with the group up top choosing what everyone can and cannot do … cryptocurrency requires a cognitive shift.

    People need to understand why cryptocurrency should be adopted wider, integrated into our existing way of life, for gradual change.”

    So says Eleesa Dadiani, who is believed to have made an astonishing claim. Stating:

    “One of our clients approached us and said they were interested in acquiring 25% of all bitcoin currently available. There are a number of entities who want to dominate the market.”

    Is it true? Well who knows. Is it credible? Well, credible enough for us to publish it with disclaimers of unconfirmed and all the rest. Is it possible?

    The Rich, One of Us?
    Ever since a number of studies effectively proved that bitcoin and cryptos in general are an uncorrelated asset, and thus very useful for diversification and as a hedge, the beginning of the entrance of institutional investors has been a theme running in parallel to monetary mismanagement.

    From the hyperinflation in Venezuela, to the constitutional crisis in Britain, the fall in Yuan’s value and the plunge in Argentinian Peso, central bankers have time and again proved the fundamental premise of this space: that however much they try and however much they like, that even if they are angels incarnate, they will mismanage our money.

    Sanctions on Russia, a financial blockade on Iran, the entrance of rich Arabia and perhaps even the welcoming of Africa have been a developing theme since last year.

    Then since the tipping point was crossed in 2017, with bitcoin debuting in awareness at the end of that year, and then with studies last year amounting to sufficient evidence where one can say – as much as humans can say anything – it is thus, the beginning of the movement from the early adopters phase to institutional investors was confirmed by the announcement of a number of institutions.

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    Adoption cycle memed.
    This is a meme chart, and someone has indeed memed it. The smart money part should be replaced with early adopters. That red line cycle has gone through about three times now or maybe four while still being in the early adopters stage.

    You should remember of course that a US Congressman still thinks it fit to get the microphone and outright say bitcoin should be banned. To say nothing of Warren Buffet and all the rest. Or the fact Amazon doesn’t accept bitcoin yet. Not even eBay.

    So arguably we are now just entering the institutional investors stage. Here we have rich people and also somewhat smart people and also, you know, milkers.

    For an institution to sell bitcoin to “retail” as they call it, to cattle as they mean it, they first have to buy it right?

    The more you have of course the more you can control it, it’s price and so on, and thus the more you can milk.

    That someone, whether a person or an institution or even a government, want’s 25%, thus, is to be expected not surprising. But can they have it?

    House of Dadiani

    “Accepting Russian sovereignty in 1802, the Dadiani were elevated to the dignity of Prince of the Russian Empire and enjoyed significant independence in their home affairs.

    Russia made a de facto annexation of Samegrelo in 1857, but Samegrelo remained nominally in existence until January 4, 1867, when Niko Dadiani, the last Prince of Samegrelo, was deposed and the principality was abolished. Prince Niko Dadiani officially renounced his rights to the throne in 1868.”

    As a kid, the 1800s sound like a trillion years ago, but of course when our grandfather was born, the 1800s were what we’d now consider the 90s.

    Much has changed since then and in many ways little has. Wealth has moved in a caroselo, but largely the rich have continued being rich, through war and peace, devastation and prosperity.

    Eleesa Dadiani herself tries to downplay this heritage. “I lived in Oldham, for heaven’s sake!” she says. Oldham being an industrial powerhouse in 1800s UK Manchester that now looks kind of stuck still in that century.

    “‘Unschooled, with no degree, I’ve always been on the prowl, on the lookout for new opportunities,’ says Dadiani. Hence her early adoption of Bitcoin, as well as more obscure cryptos like Dogecoin.”

    On the other hand “her talk is peppered with references to former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the petro-dollar, capital flight in China, and Russian trade relations.”

    As the talk above with the BBC clearly shows, this appears to be a woman in the business of serving the very rich who may have some need or desire for this new digital money.

    Nakamoto on Cornering the Bitcoin Market
    “BTC Vulnerability? (Massive Attack against BTC system. Is it really?).” So says a noob all the way back in 2010 when anyone and everyone was trying to find any little whole in the bitcoin designed with the presumed premise of “this doesn’t work.” And here is Satoshi Nakamoto, bitcoin’s inventor:

    “What the OP described is called ‘cornering the market’. When someone tries to buy all the world’s supply of a scarce asset, the more they buy the higher the price goes. At some point, it gets too expensive for them to buy any more. It’s great for the people who owned it beforehand because they get to sell it to the corner at crazy high prices. As the price keeps going up and up, some people keep holding out for yet higher prices and refuse to sell.

    The Hunt brothers famously bankrupted themselves trying to corner the silver market in 1979:

    “Brothers Nelson Bunker Hunt and Herbert Hunt attempted to corner the world silver markets in the late 1970s and early 1980s, at one stage holding the rights to more than half of the world’s deliverable silver.[1] During Hunt’s accumulation of the precious metal silver prices rose from $11 an ounce in September 1979 to nearly $50 an ounce in January 1980.[2] Silver prices ultimately collapsed to below $11 an ounce two months later,[2] much of the fall on a single day now known as Silver Thursday, due to changes made to exchange rules regarding the purchase of commodities on margin.[3]”

    25% of bitcoin’s total supply is more than half of all bitcoins that have moved in a year, with circa 10.5 million bitcoin not moving at all since May 2018.

    Moreover only about one million moves onchain in any given day, with 25% being 4 times that.

    Circa 5 million bitcoin are also estimates to have been lost in the early days or in dust amounts or by lost private keys and so on.

    Meaning bitcoin is a lot more scarce than 21 million, with even less in exchanges where the price is set.

    Thus a $1 billion injection in fiat can make a far bigger difference in price or market cap than just adding $1 billion to it.

    Suggesting a rich person or institution wouldn’t quite want to attempt to corner the market, with this 25% probably being more of a way of saying: as much as you can.

    And since perhaps there isn’t much sell supply Over the Counter (OTC), they may well have thought they could go to the media and basically ask for sellers.

    Alternatively you can say maybe they bigging up the price to sell higher after accumulating, but of course anyone smart enough to access the media bigly would also be smart enough to know that’s exactly what you’d think.

    Thus, they’d achieve both their aims at the same time. Let people know they need sellers, while fooling people into thinking they want to sell when they actually want to buy.

    3D chess, that’s the big league. There’s 4D and 5D later on, but for now we can enjoy the two levels below.

    Editorial Copyrights Trustnodes.com
     
  3. Desperate bitcoin bulls are manufacturing stories of demand....
     
  4. maxinger

    maxinger

    Luckily I don't read such news.
    Nowadays there are too much non quality news.