What I will not be looking for (or at least I wont be weightning heavly in my BTC decisions) are retail contrarian indicators. SNL and Kathy Pery topped out BTC in Dec 2017 but retail is actually the smart money on this market. They bought before the institutions. Kathy bought before Musk and Druckenmiller, of course, she probably traded like shit but the insight was correct. Also, retail doesnt have the capital to move this market like institutions. So if Lindsay Lohan buys a lambo with a BTC plate on it, I wont be caring much about that. I want to see lots of Pension funds saying BTC will be 5% of their portfolio, to me the latter will be more meaningful in telling me that market is super heated and in late stage
With NFTs, I think its different. Because that is a retail driven market. So when SNL taught the world what that is, to me that is a sign NFTs are in late stage (on this cycle). But if SNL does a class on BTC, I'm not concerned because they did beat the MBAs and PHDs of the institutions by several years. They just had awful timing on that cycle
Honestly, its kind of shocking to me to read you mention things like a 1-3 year bear market and a collapse. And this is especially so if more institutional money comes in. I of course under the whole "buy the rumor and sell the news" part, but crypto bulls keep pushing the thesis that big players haven't even really gotten in yet. So if they do, with such little supply, price would have to go vastly higher. Also, if its such a good store of wealth, then why should we have to worry about a bear market or collapse? Don't get me wrong @Daal , I very much appreciate your analysis and it seems well balanced. And you seem to be looking at this more from a trading perspective, rather than buy and hold forever, which I think is smart. But its still quite the departure from the main crypto narrative that states this is how the world will work and you need to own the coins or be left behind.
I just want to mention an alternative viewpoint and Fink sort of alluded to it, in the sense that he's portraying a survivorship bias of the conversations not taking place at Blackrock. I don't want to say he's being disingenuous and mentioned it on the interview to hedge his reputation down the line, but someone as smart as he is is aware if not from his own thought analysis, from his smart advisors The crypto discussions would not be had at Blackrock but at crypto-focused investment entities I've watched a video from Winlevoss twins talking about institutional demands, sovereign wealth funds, and family offices at Latin America approaching them Raoul Pal and Dan Tapiero constantly talk about the circle of macro guys and the clients they advise that are very much interested in bitcoin NYDig says the institutional demand for their bitcoin fund is overwhelming and the projected numbers that have come out are very conservative Novogratz Galaxy fund is doing very well Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have put a lot of resources to establish a way for their institutional and uhnw clients to get into bitcoin most likely due to the demands from their clients Perhaps the most telling is a tweet from Meltem Demirrors's tweet about a wall of money just coming into their ConsenSys projects and how they fill up quickly and need to be selective and turn down money There's a rumor floating around that Walmart has put part of their treasury reserve into bitcoin and will have to be disclosed at their earnings report next month. Would be nice if it turns out to be true, but no effect if it's not These rumors come from somewhere and I posted about Tesla buying into bitcoin based on speculation before Tesla announced it But to tie it back to the original thought, these crypto adoption among the big money guys are excluding Blackrock..... and that's perfectly ok
If you look at gold in the 1980's and 90s, it was down about 80% in real terms from the peak. Stocks in several countries have had 90% drops (Greece and Iceland in 2010s, Brazil in the 90's, US during the 30's). Bonds, well, lots of bonds have become worthless in high inflation periods. Real estate also has had collapses, including a -50% hair cut in 2008/2009. IIRC in Brazil during hyperinflation the drawdown in real estate was much worse than that. So, all asset classes go through period of gigantic wealth destruction. Crypto is only doing that on fast forward because its still a young asset and needs to mature (it was also super cheap, which leads to upside volatility). But its quite possible that the maturity will arrive with the institutions, because they know that buying BTC at -80% is free money, so they will step in at -70%, -60%, -50%, etc. Its quite possible (I would even say likely) that drawdowns will be smaller from now on, and volatility lower. Vol has already came down historically, and I bet that trend continues with hedge funds playing BTC. There is no 'safe' stores of value these days, the Fed promised last year to wipe 10-20% of cash balances over 10 years through inflation, bonds wont be doing much better, gold is being disrupted by a better gold (BTC), real estate is sky high, etc, etc You have to take risk to decrease risk, sounds paradoxical but it makes sense
I will believe that these crypto institutions are 'catching the big fish' when I see it. So far, I haven't seen any big announcements
The things I've heard and read is that these institutions are secretive. Ross of NYDIG said they've always operated under stealth and they don't normally disclose information since they are not required, but their reports do get leaked out The New Zealand retirement plan was quietly discovered when it came out on a local newspaper I would think if Tesla wasn't a public company, the would not have disclosed the bitcoin purchase, same with Walmart, if they did buy, they would keep it to themselves until forced per SEC requirements Temasek, I don't think confirmed or denied Raoul Pal's claim New Zealand Fund Manager Puts 5% of Retirement Plan’s Assets Into Bitcoin: Report Israeli Pension Giant Put $100M Into Grayscale Bitcoin Trust: Report $306 Billion Sovereign Wealth Fund Temasek Buying Bitcoin since 2018: Raoul Pal
Looking at the BTC futures market, it is interesting how Binance stands out as one of the highest yielders out there. If that is a proxy for exchange risk, it doesnt look good for Binance
https://decrypt.co/66688/celsius-data-breach Looks like Celsius suffered a data breach after all. They are probably minimizing the issue ala Ledger. It remains to be seen whether the KYC data has leaked (I wouldn't trust their word on this, they are a bank after all they got incentives to lie). I wouldn't want to have my passport copy and address avaliable in the dark web...