Horizon Kinetics, one of the best-performing fund managers in the US this year, chooses Bitcoin (BTC) as one medium to protect its investors against currency debasement.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Peter Doyle, one of the co-founders of the US$7 billion investment company, expressed concern over rapidly growing debt fuelled by government response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Doyle fears this will eventually result in global inflation, which is why investors need to protect their portfolios.
There is no turning back after the pandemic and globally there is a debt problem, and it means either default or currency debasement.
Peter Doyle, Horizon Kinetics
Horizon Bets on Bitcoin and Property
Horizon Kinetics is betting on property and Bitcoin to protect its investors, according to the Financial Times article. Bitcoin has a limited supply of 21 million, and therefore it is bound to be scarce.
People should have exposure to the asset class.
Peter Doyle
Having reportedly invested one percent of its Paradigm fund to Grayscale Bitcoin Trust in 2016, today Horizon’s Bitcoin investment represents a tenth of the fund. The company offers investors exposure to Bitcoin via the fund, which as of July 26 had gained 47.76 percent despite the recent market crash.
Bitcoin has garnered lots of attention, especially from institutional investors, for the sole purpose of hedging against inflation. This is the same reason that drew MicroStrategy to Bitcoin, and it is currently the largest corporate BTC investor. US Senator Cynthia Lummis also believes in Bitcoin as a safe haven and hopes to bring BTC to the “national conversation”.
Over the 12 months to the June 2021 quarter, the official Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) inflation metric, the consumer price index (CPI), rose 3.8 percent year-on-year. This news comes as Bitcoin, which is argued to be a hedge against inflation, has bounced back from its 2021 lows.
The latest ABS CPI figures are materially higher than the 12 months to the March 2021 quarter, which measured 1.1 percent.
“Not to worry”, according to John Hawkins, senior lecturer in Politics, Economics and Society at the University of Canberra. He argues that the jump is only temporary as a result of several one-offs.
As the Reserve Bank told us back in May, a main cause is that in the depths of Covid lockdowns last year, the government heavily subsidised childcare, pushing the effective price to near zero. With removal of those subsidies the price has bounced back. This is a one-off – it can’t be repeated.
John Hawkins, School of Politics, Economics and Society, University of Canberra
Reasons Not To Worry
Hawkins cites a number of reasons not to be concerned:
Petrol prices collapsed as cities locked down last year, and have since returned to pre-Covid levels – a one-off that won’t be repeated.
Big jumps in the prices of some fruit and some vegetables due to a shortage of pickers and heavy rainfall are also viewed as one-offs.
The “trimmed mean” measure of so-called underlying inflation used by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) to see through transient influences was only 1.6 percent and is “a better guide to what is going on”.
The RBA has echoed the sentiments of other countries that the increase in inflation is likely temporary, and it expects inflation to be below 2 percent by the end of the year, reducing to 1.5 percent by 2022. In addition, most economists and traders forecast inflation to average around 2 percent.
Too Much Money Printing?
Hawkins downplayed concerns of “too much money printing” and criticised cryptocurrencies for pushing the narrative in the form of memes such as “Money printer go brrr”.
Further, he argued that the same was said after the 2008 crisis, yet nothing happened.
Hawkins doesn’t mention that the scale of the latest quantitative easing (QE) programs around the globe dwarf those of 2008. In addition, most developed countries around the world have reached record levels of debt-to-GDP as central bank balance sheets have piled the debt on over the past 18 months. And when you have unprecedented levels of debt, there are only a few ways out:
2/ Currently there is too much debt. $255 Trillion globally.
With debt, from a systemic point of view you have 3 options. #1 – Default on the debt. #2 – Pay off the debt. #3 – Debase what the debt is denominated in (either create more debt or print money).
Default is rarely a possibility, so currency debasement in the form of increased money supply and consequent inflation is typically the route chosen to reduce national debt.
Bitcoin Bounces Back
While Hawkins recommends inflation-adjusted bonds as an inflation hedge, those in the crypto community would say Bitcoin:
The dollar is designed to debase in perpetuity. #Bitcoin is engineered to become harder to produce quadrennially for the next 120 years, programmatically.
After a lacklustre quarter, Bitcoin has bounced back over the past week, up close to 20 percent over the month.
BTC performance over the past month. Source: Coinbase
Most in developed nations have no experience of hyper-inflation, unlike those in developing nations. In countries such as Argentina, for example, the case for Bitcoin is self-evident for large swathes of the population.
Glen Oaks Escrow has made its first bitcoin-backed refinance loan for a property in San Diego, US. The Californian company is excited about the future of crypto in the real estate industry with the increase of firms accepting crypto.
Having previously only facilitated transactions where the buyer uses bitcoin as payment, the company is excited about the growing use of cryptocurrency in the real estate industry.
Seeing a lender use cryptocurrency for a refinance shows us that this payment method is continuing to grow in how it’s used and who it’s used by.
Glen Oaks Escrow began accepting bitcoin as payment in 2018 and since then has facilitated a number of transactions.
Seeing someone other than the homebuyer use bitcoin in a real estate transaction tells us that this technology has the potential to continue becoming more prominent […] We look forward to supporting many more cryptocurrency transactions in the future and are very proud that we’ve pioneered the way to implement the systems and processes that allow us to accept it,
Joe Curtis, COO, Glen Oaks Escrow
A bitcoin-backed loan is similar to any other loan, except you can borrow cryptocurrency and use your existing bitcoin as collateral. For more on how it’s done, Binance also has facilities that allow for crypto loans.
Australian millionaires are popping up all over the place and it’s mostly thanks to Bitcoin. The king of cryptocurrency has been around for over 10 years now, and recently we have seen a growing number of savvy investors who have transformed themselves into self-made millionaires.
Disclaimer: Before you continue reading, this is a list of publicly available information collated to you for free entertainment purposes. Unless stated, we do not have any proof that these people made millions from Bitcoin so if you think any information is wrong, please let us know. Crypto News also has tried to make contact with everyone on the list to verify the details.
Now that institutions are hopping on the Bitcoin bandwagon, it’s the retail investors who are reaping the rewards from the best performing asset of all time. As the conservative go unconventional and alternative investments become mainstream, the Bitcoin millionaire phenomenon is growing at a sensational rate – who is next?
Here are some of the wealthy Australians who made their millions by investing in Bitcoin early: our list of 10 Australian BitcoinMillionaires.
Kain Warwick
Kain is a blockchain enthusiast and founder of Synthetix, a decentralised synthetic asset platform that supports multiple fiat currencies and commodities. Originally named Havven, it was a stablecoin project through an initial coin offering in February 2018. Havven rebranded itself to Synthetix in March 2020 and quickly became a prominent player in the decentralised finance market, with currently over $2 billion SNX marketcap. Before creating Synthetix, Warwick also co-founded Blueshyft – a cash payment gateway that supports over-the-counter Bitcoin purchases. He is an advisory council member of Blockchain Australia, promoting the adoption of blockchain technology in Australia. Back in the day, he was a tennis coach and also a touring musician with his band The Lie Society, based in Boston. Kain is from Sydney, where he now lives. According to realestate.com.au Warwick bought his parents a house for a whopping $12.2 million, and has over $34 million invested in other house deals. You can follow Warwick on Twitter: @kaiynne
Sergei Sergienko
Featured on 60 Minutes Australia “Crazy Rich”, Sergei Sergienko is a Russian-born self-declared Australian Bitcoin multimillionaire. He reckons he is worth a whopping $100 million! It is a dream come true, only possible thanks to the digital gold rush of Bitcoin, buying BTC from as low as $6, and Sergei has been accumulating and trading it ever since, taking his profits into the millions. According to the interview, Sergei took a punt when he secured a bank loan and invested into BTC. Being an early cryptocurrency pioneer has certainly paid off as Sergei continues to trade and invest in crypto and runs a handful of businesses. He is the founder and CEO of Chrono.tech, a global blockchain startup headquartered in Sydney; co-founder of MHC Digital Finance, a digital asset fund also based in Sydney; and the co-founder and director of Edway Group, one of Australia’s biggest recruitment companies. You can follow Sergei Sergienko on Twitter: @svsergienko.
Mimi Ho
According to a Financial Review interview, 36-year-old Mimi Ho, from Brisbane, started investing nine years ago, initially as a hobby, although she was prepared to put some coin behind it. She began investing $10,000 into Bitcoin and some other major altcoins and has continued to use her profits to build the portfolio into seven-digit figures. When she started out, she was a part-owner of an IT company, but says she is now turning over more cash than when she was running the business. Ms Ho believes crypto is the way of the future and that it has been her best investment to date. In the past nine years, she has amassed almost $8 million. You can follow Mimi Ho’s trading on Etoro’s copy trading.
Chris O’Shea
According to a Nine News interview, Chris O’Shea is a “self-made” millennial millionaire who has accumulated a fortune of around $20 million. O’Shea, 30, has totally transformed his life, initially investing $10,000 in 2013, much to the disbelief of friends and family who thought he’d gone mad. The former pub manager from Mount Druitt in Sydney’s west now enjoys a lavish lifestyle driving Range Rovers and cruising luxury yachts; sounds like the lifestyle.
Daniel Maegaard
According to an interview with The Hustle, Daniel Maegaard, a 30-year-old from Brisbane, has made a crypto fortune – not once, but twice. First when he was only 22, as he speculated $4k into Bitcoin in 2013 when it was worth around $150 per coin. After learning more about it, he said he was certain Bitcoin’s scarcity would lead to it increasing in price. He caught the crypto bug and got into other altcoins such as Ripple early, and is now also making a fortune in NFTs. From just a few thousand dollars eight years ago, Daniel now claims to be a happy crypto self-made millionaire, with approximately $10 million to his name. You can follow Daniel Maegaard on Twitter: @seedphrase
Craig Wright
Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright is the man who claims to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Though this has been debunked pretty heavily, he is, however, a Bitcoin millionaire. Craig now lives in a big house in London and is continuing his infamous ongoing court battle over the Bitcoin whitepaper copyright ownership. He has yet to provide any verifiable evidence of his authorship of the original Satoshi whitepaper or collaboration with known early developers. He also refuses, or is unable, to provide the one piece of evidence that would prove his claim: you guessed it – the original Satoshi Nakamoto private key. If he is Satoshi, then he is sitting on a 1,000,000 BTC fortune.
Craig Cobb
Craig Cobb is an experienced trader based in Sydney, Australia who first got into crypto in 2017 after a mate told him he needed to check it out. He found there was a gap in the market for quality courses on trading, so started to offer courses on Udemy and later founded Trader Cobb to teach his personal technical trading strategies to others, specialising in checklist-based trading. According to Udemy, he has not only made himself a millionaire, but he has also helped many others become millionaires too. Craig has a podcast called The Trader Cobb Crypto Podcast and an excellent library of video training resources on his YouTube channel. Aside from trading, he loves to surf and is an active volunteer lifesaver, currently patrolling Tamarama beach in Sydney’s east. You can follow Craig Cobb on Twitter: @tradercobb
Sam Karagiozis
Sam Karagiozis’s knuckles famously bear the tattooed words “self made” because up until his 2019 incarceration, he was usually pictured with luxury cars; he owned a Lamborghini and a Bentley with personalised plates that read, “MR BTC”. Sam founded a Bitcoin ATM startup called Auscoin Group and attempted to start the digital currency for Australia, but it failed. He was arrested for allegedly importing more than 100 packages of drugs through the mail in 2016 and 2017. In 2019 he was granted bail and is now fighting to regain control over his chain of souvlaki stores and his Bitcoin empire. According to news.com.au, police allege he was the boss of the Melbourne drug ring that used the dark web and Bitcoin accounts to source, buy and distribute drugs as part of a multimillion-dollar importation operation.
Kingsley Advani
Kingsley Advani became a Bitcoin millionaire at age 24, back in 2017 when he sold all his worldly possessions and emptied thousands of dollars from his bank account to seek the once-in-a-lifetime returns potential of Bitcoin. According to a CEO Magazine article, Advani invested $34,000 into Bitcoin and other emerging blockchains. His net worth ballooned into seven figures within six months. Technically, Advani is British and not Australian, but he did study for a Bachelor’s degree in Finance and Economics at the University of Melbourne. You can follow Kingsley Advani on Twitter: @kadvani
Fred Schebesta
Fred Schebesta, 26, is one of the youngest Australian self-made millionaires, best known for co-founding the comparison website finder.com. While it’s not clear that his first millions were made in Bitcoin, he is a crypto evangelist, hosting a ‘daily crypto talk show’ from the offices of Finder. In February 2018, he and co-founder Frank Restuccia launched an Over-The-Counter (OTC) crypto exchange called HiveX, which facilitates trades between $50k to $100 million. He is currently focused on creating the very first crypto bank in Australia and launching Finder Crypto Mobile App. You can follow Fred Schebesta on Twitter: @Schebesta
A Bitcoin whale has moved 2 percent of Bitcoin’s total supply, worth US$15.3 billion, in a record single transaction, pushing the price up 8 percent to break through the key resistance level of US$40k for the first time in over a month.
The one-of-a-kind transaction of 400,519.2286 BTC was processed as an entire block on the Bitcoin network. It was recorded on Blockchain.com as Block692828: “This block was mined on July 27, 2021 at 11:58 AM GMT+10 by Poolin – it currently has 205 confirmations on the Bitcoin blockchain.”
Documenting Bitcoin confirmed the milestone transaction on Twitter:
— Documenting Bitcoin 📄 (@DocumentingBTC) July 27, 2021
How Bitcoin Blocks Work
The blockchain is a shared public ledger on which the entire Bitcoin network relies. All confirmed transactions are included in the blockchain. It allows wallets to calculate their spendable balance so that new transactions can be verified, ensuring they’re actually owned by the spender. For more, watch how blockchain technology works here.
In a year of ups, downs and unprecedented levels of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD), more than half of bitcoins in circulation haven’t moved. Bitcoiners have once again proved their conviction in a year full of challenges.
Illustration showing percentage of BTC that hasn’t moved in a year. Source: Pete Humiston
What is the Significance?
The fact that more than half of HODLers haven’t shifted their coins in a year offers a few possible interpretations:
high levels of conviction in the asset (ie diamond hands)
growing levels of long-term investment, rather than trading of the asset
belief that a bull market is under way and the top is not yet in
bitcoins being taken off exchanges and put into cold storage in growing numbers
On-chain analytics and, more specifically, HODL waves highlighted by such data provide useful indications of market trends such as those identified above. Crypto News Australiareported earlier this year on the relationship between HODL waves and bull markets and is certainly worth a read for those keen to learn more.
While Bitcoin sceptics often highlight the asset’s volatility as a weakness, history has shown that those who have the stomach to withstand the ups and downs tend to be rewarded in the long run with exponential returns.
It’s thus far been a bumpy ride for Bitcoin HODLers. After a strong start to 2021, Q2 posted the worst returns in over eight years. Regulatory and environmental concerns have provided the greatest headwinds, in addition to the after-effects of China banning bitcoin mining.
What is a bull market and bear market? Whether talking about cryptocurrencies, equity, or real estate, all markets have periods where we can categorise them as either “bearish” or “bullish”. These terms refer to market conditions where a joint situation occurs over a medium or long-term period, usually lasting 1 year or more.
What is a Bull Market?
A bull market is where most assets surge in price gradually. Supply is big and investors are buying more as demand rises. We can say that the market is bullish when most assets of a specific market are in an uptrend.
When investors say they’re bullish on a market, they expect prices to rise for a long period. However, no one knows exactly how much a bull run can last, but they are usually longer than bearish markets and are less volatile.
How to Identify a Bull Market Trend
Trends are never straightforward, they have periods of fluctuation and price drops categorised as higher highs and higher lows.
It’s reasonable for a trader to follow the trend and not go against it. This is why it’s important to pay attention to price declines or consolidations when they appear. They don’t usually break the current trend (unless a big event occurs that completely flips it) but they can give you a window of opportunity to enter the market.
What Factors Can Create a Bull Market?
Several forces drive demand up or down. Take for example how the COVID-19 pandemic boosted the crypto market and practically shut down the global economy. What did happen during that time of crisis? Well, to name a few things:
Small, mid-size businesses started closing and unemployment rates skyrocketed.
Governments started sending relief packs embedded as monthly checks and injected trillions of dollars trying to help their citizens in the time of crisis.
Global central banks started printing trillions of dollars to help stabilise their respective countries.
Remote jobs became a priority for most companies globally, and people were forgetting about physical cash and paying for things using digital money on the Internet, like e-commerce websites. This reinforced and highlighted the benefits of cryptocurrencies, not only in times of financial crisis but in general.
How Did Institutional Capital Boosted the Crypto Market?
Investors knew that as central banks printed more and more money, so they wanted to hedge against fiat hyperinflation, and cryptocurrencies became an attractive alternative for them. Thus institutional capital flocked to the crypto market as more clients demanded alternative assets that could make up for a better store of value.
Investment banks like JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley; Payment Giants like Visa, Mastercard and PayPal; Hedge funds and institutional investors —the list goes on. They all at first condemned cryptocurrencies and their usefulness in real-time situations, and now most of these companies support them.
Investment banks started offering Bitcoin trading services among other crypto-related services to their clients. JP Morgan even offered job positions for Ethereum blockchain developers. PayPal allowed crypto custody and crypto-payments just like Visa and Mastercard.
News, adoption, and the overall benefits of crypto during these periods gave the crypto market and the decentralised finances (DeFi) ecosystem, which is now over US$60 million in total value locked, a dramatic boost.
Crypto Adoption is Accelerating
In January 2020, BTC was priced at over $7,000. By December, it was breaking one of the toughest psychological barriers: $20k, reaching over $24,000 that month. This is an increase of 224%. When institutional capital came into play and cryptocurrencies were all over the news, Bitcoin surpassed astronomical price records of over $40,000 in January 2021.
This doesn’t mean the market didn’t experience fluctuations during its bull run. The most notorious price corrections happened on February 21, when it dropped more than 20% between February 21 and 23, shortly after reaching a price record of US$58,322.
However, crypto adoption only accelerated with time, and now most institutional investors plan to own crypto by 2026.
What is a Bear Market?
Within a bear market, most assets are in a downward trend. Demand is low and most investors are selling their positions, further pushing the downtrend. However, most investors won’t call it a real bear market unless it loses 20% from recent highs. In essence:
Bearish periods apply to every market
Most assets move in a downtrend
Negative investors’ sentiment takes over
We all know The COVID-19 outburst shut down the entire economy and caused one of the toughest stock market crash in history. However, it accelerated Bitcoin’s rise to the eye of investors and amplified the narrative of Bitcoin as a safe store of value against the decaying purchasing power of the U.S. Dollar.
Bitcoin’s market performance in 2017 and 2020
Large price drops will trigger weak hands. This is usually called “panic selling.” There’s an interesting feature within the crypto market when this happens: most crypto holders (called HODLers) would look at this as an opportunity to buy as many coins as they can and profit from the next bull run. Interest is low and the usual buyers in these periods are miners and Bitcoin maximalists who want to stack as many BTC as they can.
And why do crypto traders do this? Because the crypto market has a finite supply in contrast to the infinite supply of fiat currency.
On the other hand, bullish crypto markets are dynamic with supply and demand in a perpetual state of flux as new participants and older HODLers compete for block-space, testing each other’s resolve to HODL in the face of parabolic price growth.
Let’s take Bitcoin as an example. While Bitcoin has surged in value over 9000% since 2015 it doesn’t mean the market hasn’t experienced bearish periods. In December 2017, it had one of the largest bearish runs that extended to mid-2019.
Bitcoin’s market performance in 2017 and 2020
Why Timeframes are Important
Using time frames properly is key to understanding the current state of the market so you trade it accordingly. Time frames can be classified as primary (longer periods), intermediate, and short-term, and each one will give you a different perspective of the market.
A rule of thumb is to always trade the primary time frame as market signals are more reliable. On shorter time frames, traders might find cluttered charts with exaggerated long spreads. However, this time frame works well for short-positions, so everything depends on the trader and the way he wants to trade.
Ideally, a trader bases his first technical analysis by studying the longer time frame to define in what direction the market is going. Bull markets usually last months or years, so to do a proper market analysis, setting a higher timeframe will help you have a better notion of what’s happening.
How Long Do Bear and Bull Markets Last?
Nobody knows how long these periods last. Usually, bull markets have greater and stronger rallies —they could last one year or exceed 10 years. On the other hand, bear markets have a shorter duration, but they come with more abrupt movements and volatility.
In the case of the stock market, assets don’t usually fluctuate by high points of percentage. Fiat currencies, for instance, are not stable —the degree to which they fluctuate is small and that’s why people consider them stable.
The Volatility of the Crypto Market
In contrast, the crypto market is volatile. Crypto assets can fluctuate by hundreds or thousands of points per day, and as crypto becomes mainstream and financial institutions start digging into crypto and blockchain technology, the price has been subject to harsh market corrections and explosive price surges.
News, institutional adoption, major events (like the China FUD), or even a comment from a wealthy influencer can cause powerful price surges or corrections that either boosts the market or stagger it, shrouding investors’ sentiment with pessimism or optimism.
Closing Thoughts
bull and bear markets can always be traded. Identifying what are the market conditions will help you to better manage your capital and invest more smartly.
During a bull run, most traders would follow the trend by applying their trading strategy. Traders entering the market set lower time frames after identifying the primary trend to define their next position.
During bear markets, traders are wary and try to protect themselves from larger price drops. It’s advisable to stay in cash during these periods, wait and study the market to catch an opportunity to trade it.
Digital retail behemoth Amazon will reportedly accept BTC as payment by the end of 2021. The possibility of a native token also seems to be on the cards. A job posting on Amazon’s website has sparked speculation of a big move into the crypto space.
Update July 28: Amazon have dismissed the rumours stating: “Notwithstanding our interest in the space, the speculation that has ensued around our specific plans for cryptocurrencies is not true … We remain focused on exploring what this could look like for customers shopping on Amazon.”
According to reports from an Amazon insider, the company will “definitely” be accepting BTC as payment by the end of this year with the possibility of a native token existing.
Amazon posted a job advertisement over the weekend for a “Digital Currency and Blockchain Product Lead” and wants someone who can “innovate within payments and financial system” to head up this position.
Not the First Time Amazon Has Advertised in the Crypto Field
The ad confirms recent speculation that the company will move to accept BTC and other cryptocurrencies as payment methods. An insider spoke to London business news publication City A.M. and gave a brief outline of Amazon’s plans for integrating crypto and blockchain technology.
This is not the first time that Amazon has posted a job offer in the crypto field. Twitter was abuzz with the news and this tongue in cheek job application stood out from the crowd.
According to the insider, Amazon will accept BTC payments by the end of 2021 and is not just going through the motions to set up crypto payments. The plan is an integral part of how Amazon will operate in the future.
Plans to move into crypto will start with BTC, but the company is keen to add other big cryptocurrencies once secure and fast methods of BTC payment have been established.
Should all go well with BTC, the company will then move on to accept Ethereum, Cardano, and BTC Cash before then bringing on about eight more of the world’s most popular cryptocurrencies.
The plan for adopting crypto reportedly comes from the very top of Amazon, Bezos himself.
Amazon Set to Launch Its Own Token
The involvement of a gigantic player such as Amazon will likely drive up the price of BTC and other larger alt coins. And Amazon’s plans for crypto do not stop here. It is reported that when all proposed crypto plans are integrated, the final move will be to create its own native token, reportedly by 2022.
The insider reported that after a year of experiencing crypto as a payment method, a move to tokenisation will take place.
This then becomes a multi-level infrastructure where you can pay for goods and services or earn tokens in a loyalty scheme. There’s little more to it, for now, but you can guarantee the Bitcoin plan will be monitored closely as opportunities with Amazon’s own version of a crypto will be explored.
The crypto market is becoming euphoric following the sudden increase in the price of Bitcoin. BTC reportedly touched US$40,000 on July 25 and is currently trading at US$38,632 on CoinMarketCap.
It’s been about six weeks since Bitcoin was seen above the US$39,000 price level, and this has got many bears squeezed.
Over $1 Billion in Bitcoin Shorts Liquidated in 10 Minutes
On-chain analyst Will Clemente tweeted that about US$111 million worth of Bitcoin short positions were liquidated in about 10 minutes. These are traders who got over-leveraged as BTC suddenly crossed US$38,000.
A further glance at ByBt’s liquidation data confirmed that about US$1.02 billion worth of Bitcoin shorts were liquidated in 12 hours leading up to press time, and US$1.11 billion within the previous 24 hours from nearly 100,000 crypto traders.
The largest single liquidation was US$29.3 million on the Huobi exchange, according to Bybt.
Are the Bulls Back in the Paddock?
Bitcoin hasn’t made this quick a move in some weeks, if not a month. Thus many people in the market have high hopes that the bulls are back in control.
Since hitting an all-time high above US$63,000 in April, Bitcoin dropped by more than 40 percent as the bears took over the market. Some factors or developments, such as the Chinese ban on miners, may have contributed to the bearish state of the market. However, a lot of short-term holders lost confidence in the market as their positions went underwater.
This led to increased panic-sells, especially among those short-term holders. Although the current price of Bitcoin looks bullish, some traders await a US$40,000 to $42,000 price as confirmation of the presence of bulls.
Bitcoin Reacts to Bullish News
Notionally, the price of BTC has been green for most of the time after Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey discussed Bitcoin at last week’s ‘B Word’ conference. At the time, Musk revealed that he personally owns Bitcoin, including SpaceX and Tesla. He also mentioned that Tesla might reconsider accepting payments in BTC for the second time.
A Twitter storm has erupted with Australian cryptocurrency influencer Alex Saunders at its centre, other investors alleging they’ve been “scammed” to help fund a possibly fictitious stablecoin project.
After leveraging the funds, believed to run to “eight figures”, with American derivatives exchange FTX, Saunders is said to have “lost the lot”.
“It’s clear a lot of people have been scammed,” tweeted victim Ben Armstrong, aka @Bitboy_Crypto. “I’ve been holding this back but now I think it’s necessary for people to know the truth.”
Alex asked me for a 5 bitcoin [BTC] loan back in early March [the BTC price reached its peak for that month at $9,160.39 on March 7]. I gave it to him as a friend. Big mistake.
Ben Armstrong, aka Bitboy_Crypto
A lot of stuff is coming out and it’s clear a lot of people have been scammed. I’ve been holding this back, but tbh I now think it’s necessary for people to know the truth.
Another Twitter user, Richard Heart (@R.Heart), recounted a similar tale of woe, his involving 50 bitcoin (worth approximately A$2.5 million). “Alex begged me for a 50 BTC loan,” Heart tweeted, “then tried to sell me a ‘pre-allocation’ in a token. Then tried to sell me on just giving him money to talk.”
Recently, they were doing a live stream discussing Heart’s crypto project, called HEX, and Heart cut Saunders off the call abruptly after the latter claimed to have “exposed $HEX as a fraud“.
“This Is Now Over Eight Figures of Fraud”
Saunders, who has been curiously silent on social media for some weeks despite his previously high public profile, is the founder and CEO of crypto media channel Nugget’s News. He describes himself in his Twitter profile as “a post-GFC investor in Bitcoin and Ethereum”, and claims to have been involved in “crypto, finance and economics education since 2012”.
On July 23, Twitter user @DeFi_Ted voiced what some of Saunders’ alleged victims were thinking:
*Correction@SBF_Alameda This is 1 of the address in which @AlexSaundersAU managed to take funds from paying users of his community.
Would be nice to know if there is a chance of recovery for these people……..This is now over 8 figures of fraud.https://t.co/4KT6w5rKTY
Another Twitter user, JP (@JP_Technology), in a slightly more tongue-in-cheek tweet, suggested Saunders’ disappearance from the public sphere might be just the “tip of the iceberg”, hinting at a broader industry-wide issue.
I wonder if the crypto shill press will cover this scandal? I think not, they're all in on it.
Tip of the iceberg in Australia when it comes to this corrupt & ethically bankrupt industry.#Bitcoin maxis warning about this for years! pic.twitter.com/MWmmVnJKzu
Crypto News has tried to make contact with Saunders to get his comments, but he has thus far remained silent.
Ironically, Saunders has in the past been quick to blow the whistle on other scams affecting the crypto community. He reportedly lost thousands of dollars to a fake Uniswap mobile application hosted on the Google Play store last November.
And earlier this year, Saunders called Gold Coast-based retail-targeted cryptocurrency Qoin “a massive scam” and urged people to “get their money out before it collapses”. Qoin’s membership of Blockchain Australia was terminated amid the claims.
