I mean, given how hard cryptocurrencies crashed this year is it really a surprise? The only way for him to make money would probably have been to short everything continuously but seeing how irrational and easily manipulated the cryptocurrency market has been in the past that seems rather foolish. Given his pedigree you'd think he'd know better than to bet on something that's 99% pure unbridled speculation and 1% act…
> "Huge gains in production from Texas, California, and Oklahoma quickly eliminated the regional shortages of 1920 and induced a downward trend in bitcoin prices over the next decade, with bitcoin prices falling 40% between 1920 and 1926. The decline in demand associated with advent of the Great Depression in 1929 magnified the price impact of phenomenal new discoveries such as the gigantic East Texas field which beg…
Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months
91–100 of 134 posts
Re: Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
This interview[1] sounds like they called bottom at 6k and then the floor fell out: "We thought it was a bear market. I went into it thinking in the long run crypto is going to be a real structural shift in the world and I can just hedge my portfolio. And to be fair, we did a really great job not losing money the first 60 percent down. What you forget is that a market like Bitcoin that’s down 84 percent has dropped 6…
I was pretty sure $6-7k was the floor for BTC, and it’s interesting to see a high-profile fund manager made effectively the same, expensive mistake. The biggest surprise for me, though, was ETH, which given its better fundamentals, I had thought would be where the market went after Bitcoin popped – and yet, it was not only dragged down, but crushed even harder than BTC.
On the way down, this cycle works in reverse. Those ICOs don't actually hold $40M in a company bank account; they hold 33K ETH which was worth $40M at the peak. Now that ETH is down to $94, they hold more like $3M, and they're getting scared about being able to pay salaries. So every ICO that still holds ETH is trying to liquidate it for dollars, but they're fighting over the much-reduced pot of money that is coming into crypto now, which drives the price down every time somebody wants to sell.
Personally I still think we're not at the bottom yet (for either ETH or BTC), but we may be getting close. We're at the bottom when companies start going bankrupt, Solidity engineers start getting laid off, and people start going to jail. Assuming it's not all smoke and mirrors and some useful infrastructure was actually built, it'll be the buying opportunity of the lifetime then, because everyone will think this whole crypto fad will be totally over and you'll be able to buy up that infrastructure at really cheap prices.
Re: Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was pretty sure $6-7k was the floor for BTC, and it’s interesting to see a high-profile fund manager made effectively the same, expensive mistake. The biggest surprise for me, though, was ETH, which given its better fundamentals, I had thought would be where the market went after Bitcoin popped – and yet, it was not only dragged down, but crushed even harder than BTC.
What "fundamentals" exist for Eth that allow it to be valued at a specific price point? Eth has no earnings, no assets, and no liabilities. Its intrinsic value is close to 0. It could be totally wiped off the planet tommorow and almost nobody besides crypto traders would care. Crypto trading should be based on technical analysis not "fundamentals".
Re: Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
What "fundamentals" exist for Eth that allow it to be valued at a specific price point? Eth has no earnings, no assets, and no liabilities. Its intrinsic value is close to 0. It could be totally wiped off the planet tommorow and almost nobody besides crypto traders would care. Crypto trading should be based on technical analysis not "fundamentals".
Adoption and projects using it. Like any currency, ETH becomes more valuable when you can spend it on more things. It's the base currency for a whole infrastructure of distributed trust & settlement; if useful economic activity occurs on top of that infrastructure, ETH gains in value proportionally.
Re: Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
This interview[1] sounds like they called bottom at 6k and then the floor fell out: "We thought it was a bear market. I went into it thinking in the long run crypto is going to be a real structural shift in the world and I can just hedge my portfolio. And to be fair, we did a really great job not losing money the first 60 percent down. What you forget is that a market like Bitcoin that’s down 84 percent has dropped 6…
6k was the bottom and then a black swan event happened, at the worst possible time, when Bitcoin Cash forked again and the owners of the two forks had to childishly sell tons of bitcoin to fund their hashpower war. I don't think that was a predictable event.
Re: Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adoption and projects using it. Like any currency, ETH becomes more valuable when you can spend it on more things. It's the base currency for a whole infrastructure of distributed trust & settlement; if useful economic activity occurs on top of that infrastructure, ETH gains in value proportionally.
Ok, but the whole idea behind fundamental analysis is that you generate a specific value of worth based on your analysis. So what formula are you using to calculate a price point for Eth based on "adoption and projects using it"? Are you tracking all projects using it, and assigning it a dollar value based on a per project usage and cross-checking that against the number of ways you can use it? Or are you just guessi…
Still in closed beta with a very limited set of testers - I've been working on a lot of the kinks in the data acquisition, which as you could imagine is a little tricky. If you want to get on the wait list, signup is here:
Re: Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months
#97The article is missing some critical details. What does the fund do? The article suggests they do arbitrage. Those opportunities actually tend to increase when things are volatile. Also while you can lose money doing it you wouldn't expect a precipitous collapse in NAV. If you discover you're slower than everyone else you can shut down. Volumes aren't necessarily correlated to price either, so that isn't entirely con…
You need volume for liquidity which you need to execute the arb. So, for instance, cryptoA trades for $99 on exchange 1, but $101 on exchange 2. Quick, buy on exchange 1 and sell on exchange 2! Congrats you made $2 on each trade x 5 cryptos. That is hardly enough volume to make it happen. Now imagine that the volume is so thin that after you bought the first one on exchange 1, the price gap closed, and by the time yo…
Re: Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, but the whole idea behind fundamental analysis is that you generate a specific value of worth based on your analysis. So what formula are you using to calculate a price point for Eth based on "adoption and projects using it"? Are you tracking all projects using it, and assigning it a dollar value based on a per project usage and cross-checking that against the number of ways you can use it? Or are you just guessi…
I actually am, to most of those points. I'm indexing every forum & blog on the web, then cross-referencing it with a big long list of crypto projects, then using that to infer which projects have an active, involved, growing community and which are scams or dead. Sentiment, activity, and viral mentions aren't a perfect proxy for adoption, but it's pretty close, and a lot more robust data source than technical analysi…
Re: Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually am, to most of those points. I'm indexing every forum & blog on the web, then cross-referencing it with a big long list of crypto projects, then using that to infer which projects have an active, involved, growing community and which are scams or dead. Sentiment, activity, and viral mentions aren't a perfect proxy for adoption, but it's pretty close, and a lot more robust data source than technical analysi…
That's fair; props on all of the effort you've put into that! I'd imagine one of the toughest challenges is subtracting the volatile "layman demand" and gamblers to get to that fundamental value derived from actual users.
Re: Novogratz's Crypto Trading Desk Lost $136M in Nine Months
#100Not surprise anyone who came in and trade may be catching knives. Plus all the uncertainties in market participants