He is right on all counts about Bitcoins, Tethers, Lightning and so on, but I still wouldn't short crypto today. Irrationality is still building up and opinions of crypto adepts are "buy". At least I think so by reading forums. If I had to guess crypto will require a large external event to crash - Taiwan annexation, Zeta variant of Covid, Russia invading Eastern Block etc. Something which will prompt one or more large players to get out first, and then it will start falling down like a house of cards because of Tethers (and now USDC are suspect too).
Shorting Bitcoin
291–300 of 334 posts
Re: Shorting Bitcoin
#292All personal opinion-
Puts are speculative gambling if no current position and a hedge if in a current position to the downside.
You can still hold your beliefs without putting on a trade. Why do you want to put on a trade that is inflexible on timing?
Bitcoin can be manipulated by tweets, incoming regulation, news, whales, etc. If you are not privileged to have this info then know you are in a game where you are disadvantaged.
Curious how others are shorting crypto.
Re: Shorting Bitcoin
#293let's go over beliefs: > high proportion of all Bitcoins are owned by insiders same as any other asset in the world, think pareto distribution - vast majority is owned by few entities. so since this point applies to everything pretty much equally - it can be discarded. > Bitcoin is not usable as a currency because the transaction costs and latency are both too high. (Yes, I know about the Lightning network.) mentions…
So lets imagine bank run on the tether toilet paper happens. You are quite correct that it will be exchanged for BTC at first because zero exchanges allow to trade USDT for USD (and Kraken will "suddenly" start maintenance in such event).
But do you think it will stop like that? :) World realizes that there are 80 billions of cut paper and BTC will just stay in green? No way, on select exchanges people will immediately start exchanging all crypto, including BTC into money until they can. BTC will tank like brick on exchanges with fiat and market will crash altogether. I can't even start predicting what will happen, but I'm sure "it will be good for bitcoin" (c) :)
Re: Shorting Bitcoin
#294The arguments outlined are not particularly strong unless you are already predisposed to not liking Bitcoin (which is fine, not liking a particular security is a perfect reason not to invest in it - however it's a bad reason to bet against it) 1: BTC is not controlled by insiders. Sure it's a great headline but once you account for the fact that a BTC wallet owned by an exchange that pools large amount of customer fu…
USDC is not audited, it issues attestations, which is much less important stuff. It more like a self report which is verified somehow.
Anyway, tethers are enough to crash market without other help.
Re: Shorting Bitcoin
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin, like tesla stock is better predicted by treating it as a religion than a rational investment. So how long are people going to believe a kid who said a god knocked her up to avoid getting stoned?
Tesla has a ton of ip, Bitcoin is pretty cloneable
Being open source it is not a characteristic for value. There are multiple positive and negative examples of things that are open source and (un)valuable
Re: Shorting Bitcoin
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're relying on a nation state to behave in a certain way. This never works out in the long term. The winds of politics change on a whim. That's just history for you. With Bitcoin you instead rely on the intrinsic properties of the protocol. No ifs or buts.
you still need a way to turn that BTC into cash you can use daily, and that requires an on/off ramp. For any large amount, P2P is out of the question. You will need to go through an exchange which will have to comply with the local laws of the nation state.
On ramps yes, many bitcoin holders are waiting for the day where it's spendable and accepted by more merchants and that's going to take decades.
Re: Shorting Bitcoin
#297let's go over beliefs: > high proportion of all Bitcoins are owned by insiders same as any other asset in the world, think pareto distribution - vast majority is owned by few entities. so since this point applies to everything pretty much equally - it can be discarded. > Bitcoin is not usable as a currency because the transaction costs and latency are both too high. (Yes, I know about the Lightning network.) mentions…
So lets imagine bank run on the tether toilet paper happens. You are quite correct that it will be exchanged for BTC at first because zero exchanges allow to trade USDT for USD (and Kraken will "suddenly" start maintenance in such event). But do you think it will stop like that? :) World realizes that there are 80 billions of cut paper and BTC will just stay in green? No way, on select exchanges people will immediate…
USDT crash will hurt USDT holders. If BTC was propped up like it’s hypothesized, it would have dropped long ago because this theory is alive for at least 5 years and has lived through two big crashes already. There is plenty other on ramps for crypto, the times when it was mostly USDT are long past.
Re: Shorting Bitcoin
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
My thesis for longing/shorting BTC at this point is purely Elon Musk's tweets
Sure he tweets every time he pumps it up but are you confident he’ll give you (and all the rest of his followers) a heads up before he dumps it? I wouldn’t be. And for that reason alone it’s a fatally flawed investment strategy.
he just has to tweet something remotely bearish and the market craters
The last time he cracked a joke about BTC maxis and sure enough, the market dumped. When he talked about BTC's eco impact, it dumped hard as well. You can trace the pumps/dumps to the exact moment of his bearish/bullish tweets.
It's unreal
Re: Shorting Bitcoin
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
you still need a way to turn that BTC into cash you can use daily, and that requires an on/off ramp. For any large amount, P2P is out of the question. You will need to go through an exchange which will have to comply with the local laws of the nation state.
On ramps yes, many bitcoin holders are waiting for the day where it's spendable and accepted by more merchants and that's going to take decades.
The core problem is that no mature economy will have any need to accept BTC payments. Their native currency will likely be stable and they'll also have infrastructure to support fast, cheap payments via legacy means.
There is really no incentive to accept crpyto for any large merchant. In fact, the number of online merchants I've seen who accept crypto has actually gone down over the last few years.
Re: Shorting Bitcoin
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
because $MSTR will go to $0 a share if BTC loses another 50%
Your answer only rephrases the question. The only way for it to hit $0 is if nobody is willing to buy the stock. This seems unlikely, given that the Bitcoin they're holding, even at 50% of present value, is still worth significantly more than $0.
Microstrategy's average cost of bitcoin is $26,080.
If the price of Bitcoin fell 50% from today's price of $36,404 it would be at $18,202.
They would be down $7878 on their cost per bitcoin, under 30% loss on their total investment.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/21/microstrategy-owns-over-3-bi...