I found this chart from the article quite interesting. So right around the time the number of addresses peaked, BTC price was still rising slowly, and then went sideways. So either, as you say, these guys are breaking it up into multiple addresses, or can retail have really absorbed all the selling? I think the true nature of how this all works now is much too complex and this simple relationship is perhaps now dead.
Yeah, nobody can know for sure what is going on, we can only speculate. My most likely scenario is they were advised by their custodians to split coins in many addresses because they were being tracked by the market and hence, they needed to increase privacy. But its also possible that the decline in whale address is reflecting of rebalancing (this would also explain why the price of BTC stagnated) If the former is happening, then relying on on-chain indicators will prove more and more tricky because the big money will use people's expectations to fool them, as the funds learn what is being monitored, it becames really cheap to create false signals. If its the latter, then its a sign were are in for a slow grind bull market in BTC as the days of maniacal buying and hodling from retail determining the price are over
Totally agree. I would say its quite similar to studying market depth with futures for example. I watch thick BID/ASK levels and as I've read all over the place, sometimes these act as a magnet, other times they act as support or resistance, and other times these levels trade the huge quantity on display and keep going without a hiccup. So essentially, its a coin toss. So as you point out, these big wallets will more than likely fail to provide trade direction in the future. A slow grind bull market is not bad at all to be honest. Even if it approaches 10% per year with minimal drawdown, I'd say its a win. Sadly, it will more than likely be 50% drawdown at some point, and only the guys will balls of steel will ride it back up. I just don't see BTC or any crypto turn into a stable store of wealth with decent appreciation and limited risk.
Musk tanked BTC with his reversal. And it looks like he is correct https://www.vox.com/2019/6/18/18642645/bitcoin-energy-price-renewable-china https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(19)30087-X?_returnURL=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S254243511930087X?showall=true Not that it matters much for climate, there are probably 50+ more important things that will actually impact the global emission of greenhouse gases enough to make a difference but it WILL hurt BTC's adoption as ESG investing IS a long-term trend. Just the other day the economist magazine called for Buffett's head as CEO of BRK due him not joining this ESG trend. Blackrock also is a big promoter of this and they are the largest asset manager in the world. Of course, as far I know gold is actually worse than BTC in terms of overall enviromental impact so its an improvement but the BTC community will have to deal with this if they want long-term adoption to be significant. Any ESG concious asset manager/company wont be able to adopt BTC due the risk of being called hypocrites This is actually great for Ethereum, from what I have seen the carbon footprint of ETH is less than 30% of BTC's and ETH2 will be way smaller still. ETH2 will be the most ESG friendly coin with significant network effects because it will be run by the normal computers (of which in the world there a hundreds of millions) but with sharding they become really powerful together. And Vitalik's has attacked BTC's enviromental impact before so its part of the design for ETH2 to be aware of that Having said all that, I do think that there are plenty of non-ESG aware managers and institutions for BTC to find buying support at lower levels so I dont expect this will kill the coin. It could get nasty though, BTC could go to the 30's even but then the Ray Dalios of the world should step in and buy the coins they failed to buy before
Of course, the real reason why crypto is selling off: I told a friend of mine and some relatives to buy BTC and ETH back in November and December of 2020. They did and didnt say much for quite some time, then in the last few days they finally decided to say something. My sister wanted to buy more ETH and quickly double her money and cash out because 'it went 4x since i bought it'. The friend was asking about ETC mining as he was considering making a large investment in GPUs Funny how when they come out of their caves its time for a pause in the markets
https://www.coindesk.com/tether-first-reserve-composition-report-usdt Tether is a money market fund without access to the Fed's liquidity. One day it is likely to "break the buck"
I guess this shows that once a scumbag, always a scumbag. I believe Tether (the company) pockets the interest earned by these assets so they have an incentive to reach for yield with OPM. 49% of the funds are in unspeficied commercial paper. Its the kind of thing that blows up during crises..
I received a interest payment from my USDC position on TradeStation crypto. Any USDC deposited there earns 6% a year automatically. I thought there was no earning going on because the platform was not displaying interest being accrued but its just a bug and they pay the interest just fine (monthly) I think this is a great opportunity for crypto skeptics to make some money off crypto with very little risk. That yield is backed by several layers of safety -Bitgo's insurance policy and Bitgo's balance sheet (in case they get hacked) -TradeStation's balance sheet (I believe they would save TS crypto if that were to run into trouble to avoid reputation loss) -Monex Group's balance sheet (TS parent, I believe they would help TS if they were to run into trouble, especially if the trouble wasn't very big) Plus USDC is one of the most transparent coins out there. With junk bonds yielding 4.3%, a 6% yield on USDC that can be instantly converted to USD (SIPC insured) with no fees is a completely mispriced low risk corporate bond and offer a good way to make some money in crypto taking tiny risks If anything funky happens in crypto markets, that USDC can be turned into SIPC insured funds in less than 1 minute
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/druckenmiller-vs-cramer.358718/ I like Druck but his description of his BTC trade is simply laughlable. He tried to buy $100M and failed, and settled just for $20M. then he trimmed too soon and now only has 1% of his assets there. The guy is a complete tourist with no clue on what he is doing. Saylor bought billions, Tesla $1.5B. Apparently he is too lazy or proud to learn about this space and go after information, he is friends with Novogratz for god sake. I wouldnt listen to Druckenmiller about anything when it comes to crypto. The odds that he will sell it all too soon is super high, so there is another top indicator right there: It cant be the top if Druckermiller is still long
The issue is that USDT is too entrenched into the system currently. If it blows up, it is likely crypto as a whole will selloff hard. I prefer non USDT stablecoins myself because of the risk, but USDT is for better or worse is dominant when it comes to cross exchange flows.