Bitcoin/cryptocurrency thread

[Albus Bulbasaur]

 

Edited May 16, 2022 by Albus Bulbasaur

[vikingTON]

13 hours ago, beefybake said:

Ideally no.  However, not for nothing was Robespierre's role in the French Revolution called 'The Terror'...., whereby all avenues for the accused to defend themselves were removed.  He himself was executed because , in the end, he scared everyone, and had lost the support of the public.

It was called 'the Terror' to reflect the fears of post-Restoration Europe that nothing like it should ever happen again - while the absolutist tyrannies of the Bourbons, Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns and Romanovs were presented as the natural order of things. In any case, the Republican Terror had little to do with Robespierre because Paris was not even remotely its main centre of activity. 

Robespierre's regime was brought down by a narrow conspiracy of more conservative leaders who set up the Directory; not by the people. The sans-culottes masses were consistently more radical than the Jacobin leadership: which is why they produced Marat, Hebert and Gracchus Babeuf in turn - all the way to proto-communism. 

[topcat(The most tip top)]

It was called 'the Terror' to reflect the fears of post-Restoration Europe that nothing like it should ever happen again - while the absolutist tyrannies of the Bourbons, Habsburgs, Hohenzollerns and Romanovs were presented as the natural order of things. In any case, the Republican Terror had little to do with Robespierre because Paris was not even remotely its main centre of activity. 

“la terreur” seems to be common in the revolutionary rhetoric of the time so the name didn’t come from nowhere

Of course the fears of post reformation Europe probably explain why the label has “stuck”

But we may be drifting off topic

[Sortmeout]

Just a reminder that a few sports stars and other entertainment sorts have requested all or part of their salary/compensation in BTC over the last couple of years.

[welshbairn]

1 hour ago, Sortmeout said:

Just a reminder that a few sports stars and other entertainment sorts have requested all or part of their salary/compensation in BTC over the last couple of years.

To avoid paying tax presumably, nothing stopping them converting fiat into bitcoin.

[Sortmeout]

13 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

To avoid paying tax presumably, nothing stopping them converting fiat into bitcoin.

Oh I didn’t really think of the tax side of it, I was aiming more at the fact they’ve just dropped a massive percentage of their salary (assuming it’s not all paid up front and they haven’t sold already).

[SuperSaints1877]

Highly paid celebrities and footballers have been down similar routes before with various tax avoidance schemes. I’m sure a fair few have gone bankrupt when those schemes collapsed.

[DiegoDiego]

6)It adds no tangible value to society.

Mastercard adds nothing tangible to society either, other than millions of plastic oblongs.

[DiegoDiego]

 
Not sure why you are engaging in false equivalency.

How is that false equivalency?

[gaz5]

The All Time High was fake and achieved due to spoof orders with a 98.1% cancellation rate.
 

[emoji1787]

Tell us you don't know how markets work without telling us you don't know how markets work.

This made me near shit laughing. [emoji1787]

[gaz5]

On 15/05/2022 at 10:43, Fraser Fyvie said:

Pretty funny that people see “crypto” as one thing and can’t differentiate between Bitcoin and something like Luna. BTC is down 57% from all time high which means it’s holding up better then Netflix, PayPal, Spotify and plenty other tech stocks which are getting hammered. Stood the test of time for 13 years, never been hacked, 99.99% uptime, controlled by nobody. BTC remains king

"Crypto Bad". Is what it is, those with a closed mind wont have that mind changed. It's just a shame that their influence will have others believing some of the nonsense. TBH it does their valid concerns, of which their are actually many, no favours.

 

Just as something of an aside on the LUNA debacle: A top 10 Crypto Market asset with a market cap of around $50 Billion dropped to essentially zero in a day due to a technical flaw in the project that left them open to a death spiral attack. Bitcoin dropped about 30% (because that death spiral involved the LUNA algorithm selling BTC, their asset that backed the $ peg, to try to maintain the peg) in a spell where traditional markets are already going down on inflation prints, the rest of the market crashed between 30%-50% to account for it, but its still going, no outside contamination, no bailouts, nothing else required.

 

In 2008 Lehman had a market cap of $60 Billion and its demise over a day or two on the cross contamination of a flaw in sub prime lending practice led to the near collapse of the entire financial system, had Governments around the world bailing out their banking competitors at the cost of the public in order to avoid Armageddon and led to a huge selloff in traditional markets.

 

Which asset class held up better and impacted both those involved but, more importantly, those not involved more?

 

I dont like Bitcoin, personally. I dont think it (or any other Crypto) will EVER be a currency, for many, many reasons. And the BoE thinks the same (I was at their Digital Pound Foundation event talking about CBDC's and integration with Blockchain). But in terms of a test of the network, Bitcoin held up better than the traditional financial network did during their respective "events" with similar sums from a similar sized player wiped in a short space of time.

Edited May 20, 2022 by gaz5

[DiegoDiego]

Just for starters why don't you go and have a look at the strict financial regulations that Mastercard have to operate under.
Then do the same for crypto.
When you've done that, come back and try and persuade us that you haven't indulged in false equivalency.

I'm talking about creating value for society, not regulation. Brazen goalpost shifting from you there.

My point is that of course blockchain doesn't create tangible value for society because software isn't tangible.

[Detournement]

2 hours ago, gaz5 said:

Tell us you don't know how markets work without telling us you don't know how markets work.

This made me near shit laughing.

Explain please?

It has been acknowledged that spoof orders are an issue in crypto markets for years.

Edited May 20, 2022 by Detournement

[DiegoDiego]

It's a false equivalency from whatever angle you want to look at it. [emoji23]

I'm sorry, I really don't follow your argument, but perhaps that's because I'm not explaining mine very well. Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency has created benefits for society (i.e. value).

[ICTChris]

What is the blockchain used for other than Bitcoin etc?

[gaz5]

23 minutes ago, Detournement said:

Explain please?

It has been acknowledged that spoof orders are an issue in crypto markets for years.

Sure.

Your initial comment was:

Quote

The All Time High was fake and achieved due to spoof orders with a 98.1% cancellation rate.

Firstly, you seem to be confusing yourself by saying it was both "Fake" and "Achieved", which in itself is an oxymoron. But I know what you were trying to say.

From a technical perspective:

• "Spoof" orders can only be Limit orders (orders that are placed on the order book waiting for price to reach a particular level that entice buyers/sellers in but are then cancelled)
• Limit orders are "Market Maker" orders, in that those who place them are not taking instantly from the market, they are "making" the market
• Limit orders are "Passive" and sit on the on the BID side of the BID/ASK
• In order for price to move upwards, you need aggressive buyers (buyers who wont wait and want their order to fill now at any price, they will just smash the "Market buy" button)
• Market orders are "Market Taker" orders
• They sit on the ASK side of the BID/ASK

So, in summary, passive Limit buy orders don't move a market, whether they are executed or not, because they're on the wrong side of the BID/ASK. They can't "achieve" any sort of high, "fake" in your view or otherwise, their only intent is to entice unaware retail liquidity into the ASK.

Order block manipulation happens in EVERY market, not just Crypto. You see block orders added by Algo's all the time and then disappear before they get filled, it's how HFT bots essentially work.

Order Block manipulation is only illegal in traditional markets if you have multiple smaller orders hidden on the other side of the book and you're baiting other people to push the price up (or down) in order to fill your real positions. In this instance, you'd have buy blocks on the book to entice retail to FOMO in when they see the orders only for you to get a higher fill on your short orders on the other side of the spread. You're essentially baiting them to sell to you for a better price. 

This is very easy to do playing both sides in Crypto because there's no regulation, agreed, but it in no way makes the high "Fake". Price still went there, its just a liquidity grab.

Furthermore, the exact same tactic is used in traditional markets (liquidity grab), they just don't use orders on both sides of the book at the same time to do it, because this is barred. But the Algo's have other ways to achieve the same outcome (and I can show you charts from both Forex and Equities that show you it in action if you want, because this is the exact scenario I trade in all markets - I'll drop one in below from yesterday). *

Essentially they will create price action during the day that entices retail into a direction and creates a liquidity pool using either buy or sell stops as their grab. In a long scenario, they will, for example, create a daily high then a daily low (setting the range), then bring price slowly up to that daily high again without breaching it, creating a "Double Top", which retail will jump on to short. They place their stop losses above the first high within a 10 to 20 pip range and price pulls away and they think they're golden. This is just one example (and why drawing patterns on a chart is a nonsense that gets retail rekt).

Then later in the day the Algo, having built long positions beneath equilibrium of the range, will push price up to take trailing stops out and use them as fuel to take all that buy side liquidity in the zone they created above.

So:

• Is spoof trading/order blocking rife in Crypto: Yes
• Does it create "Fake" highs: No, the highs absolutely happen
• Does it only create tops and bottoms: No, its used (along with other techniques) on every high and low on every timeframe, the purpose is to take liquidity from retail, same as it is on every market
• Is it overly important: No (less than 15% of the volume in Crypto, like Forex and Equities, is retail traders, the rest is institutional, its just markets)
• Does this price manipulation to grab retail liquidity happen in every market: Yes
• Is price manipulation illegal: No (though spoof trading as a method specifically is in traditionals).

 

I've added an example from yesterday (as I happened to trade this yesterday on the S&P Mini Futures). Have annotated it with the manipulation just to show how its done. This happens over and over and over and over again across markets. Its all done by bots.

 

* Note to add that its hugely unusual for an Institution to use Limit orders in the first place to move price aggressively. They use Market order for that as it takes a tiny fraction of the capital to just start price going their way. Generally limit orders are used to build positions slowly and quietly, rather than explosively off a high. You generally find them more often at midpoints of trending moves, during a re-accumulation (or re-distribution for shorts).

[Detournement]

Aye the highs happen but since Crypto is a wholly speculative intangible asset the spoof orders can have a huge impact on pumping the price. 

"The purpose is to take liquidity from retail"

That's the entire point of Crypto. 

Edited May 20, 2022 by Detournement

[gaz5]

1 minute ago, Detournement said:

Aye the highs happen but since Crypto is a wholly speculative intangible asset the spoof orders can have a huge impact on pumping the price. 

"The purpose is to take liquidity from retail"

That's the entire point of Crypto. 

I can see your question was disingenuous, you weren't actually interested in the answer, not that you can in any way dispute it.

Taking liquidity from retail is the entire point of ALL markets. ALL markets are speculative.

Honestly, I really don't get what you guys don't understand about this. The underlying asset itself is completely irrelevant. I've shown examples of this multiple times. I couldn't give a flying f*ck if its Bitcoin or, as above, the S&P futures, or Chevron, or GBPUSD.

Markets are markets.

Detach your hatred for Crypto from how markets operate, you might actually learn something.

[gaz5]

32 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

What is the blockchain used for other than Bitcoin etc?

Do you really want to know or are you just baiting like everyone else?

[ICTChris]

2 minutes ago, gaz5 said:

Do you really want to know or are you just baiting like everyone else?

I am interested to know.