Stock and Crypto Market Values https://unsplash.com/photos/fiXLQXAhCfk
Among many Twitter threads of investors showing their recent gains on the crypto market, a cautionary tale has recently stood out.
Although the growth of various cryptocurrencies since late 2020 has given many traders an unforeseen boost, a Twitter user has come forward to explain how unfortunate trades cost him no less than $185k.
A thread on how I went from $185K to $0 in exactly 3 weeks.
For rgr_park (the Twitter user behind the tragic story), things seemed to go pretty well at the beginning of April 2020, “holding top projects with solid fundamentals” and reporting a crypto portfolio worth around $185k.
The desire for quick profits then led to different decisions.
Then $btc started dumping but I was too busy overtrading on @Uniswap, buying tops and selling bottoms. By April 20th, I had lost over 50% overtrading shitcoins. pic.twitter.com/14TTuVacug
Not taking profits and risking even more brought the story to its end.
I felt good about holding $micro and went into work. After a few hours, I decides to check @DEXToolsApp and saw the massive drop. Checked twitter and confirmed rug. Was able to salvage .8eth as liquidity was luckily locked. Moral of the story: Don't be a dumbass.
Stories like this are a reminder of the risks involved in trading cryptocurrencies and their volatility, like recently demonstrated by DOGE and SAFEMOON dropping by 50% or TurtleDex pulling a $2.5 million exit scam.
As reported by Business Insider Australia, the ASX could launch a cryptocurrency-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) as soon as this year.
Although they have not specified exactly when it will go live or which companies are applying as providers, they have confirmed that they have been “spending an enormous amount of time” focusing on the digital assets space.
Huge Demand for Crypto In Australia
According to Max Cunningham – Executive General Manager at ASX – recent developments in Canada, Europe and elsewhere have compelled the ASX to look into the creation of a local ETF for cryptos
I think there’s an inherent obligation for us and the regulator and other key decision-makers to ensure that, if these assets are broadly being sought by retail investors, that we not only have the safeguards in place but that we have good transparent and low-cost mechanisms for them to access it.
Max Cunningham, Executive General Manager at ASX
ASX General Manager of Listings Max Cunningham – source
Cunningham wouldn’t be drawn on the issue, but would say that the huge demand for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum meant that Australians were going to buy it one way or another.
Business Insider Australia
The ASX is Turning Pro Crypto
Mr Cunningham also stated that the commonly held opinion of the ASX having a negative view of cryptocurrencies is false.
Because we were turning down a number of spurious offerings five or six years ago, there’s a perception that we have banned this asset class, and we have categorically not got a ban on it.
Max Cunningham, Executive General Manager at ASX
Joke Coins Will Not Make the Cut
He also went on to say certain cryptocurrencies bring concerns for price manipulation. Certain “coins being established as jokes” that show great volatility “just by someone putting a tweet out” seem therefore unlikely to make the cut to get listed.
Despite the forms and spreadsheets to be filled before an Aussie crypto ETF can be established, it looks like investors might be able to buy cryptos from sources other than the usual exchanges in a not distant future.
What is a Crypto ETF?
An exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a type of investment fund. […] An ETF holds assets such as stocks, bonds, currencies, and/or commodities. […] Most ETFs are index funds, that is, they hold the same securities in the same proportions as a certain stock market index or bond market index.
Bitcoin ETFs are exchange-traded funds that track the value of Bitcoin and trade on traditional market exchanges rather than cryptocurrency exchanges. They allow investors to invest in bitcoin without having to go through the hassle of using a cryptocurrency exchange while providing leverage to its price.
Using pooled investment funds, the funds purchase the actual bitcoins and hold them in “cold storage” — an offline destination that can’t easily be hacked or breached. The ETFs then track the performance of bitcoin in US dollars (or such) on a specific index.
Further Benefits of buying Bitcoin through an ETF include:
Mark Cuban told Ellen that he accepts the Dogecoin cryptocurrency as payment for his Mav’s basketball team merchandise and suggested she should do the same for her Ellen shop.
“Should I buy some Dogecoin?” is possibly the most popular question coming from the mouths of noobs looking to get into crypto over the past several weeks and months. And with Mark Cuban telling the 2.6 million viewers on the Ellen show to go buy DOGE, will surely help its poularity grow.
The meme coin that started off as a joke, has performed insanely well, much to the surprise of the more serious crypto investor. Dogecoin has climbed into the top cryptocurrencies on CoinGecko, currently sitting at #7 under well known majors; Bitcoin, Ethereum, Binance coin, Ripple and Cardano.
It went from being a crypto currency joke, to now becoming something that’s becoming a digital currency.
Mark Cuban
Dogecoin was created in 2013 by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, as a payment system free from traditional banking fees. Since, it has gained a huge online following and made headlines again recently by hitting it’s all time high of 0.40c per coin, rising over a whopping 450% in value over just one week.
Cryptocurrency is just an asset to invest in. Bitcoin is like a digital version of Gold, Ethereum is a digital version of a currency and then you’ve got Dogecoin… which is just fun!
Mark Cuban
Is Dogecoin a Good Investment?
Because Dogecoin started as a joke and has limited utility, some might say it’s not even an investment at all. However, it certainly has strong branding and provides a great way to introduce new people into the cryptocurrency space.
We’re seeing some shops have starting accepting DOGE as payment, such as merchandise on the Dallas Maverick Store, owned by Mark Cuban. And with such a strong meme presence and an army of famous ambassadors such as Elon Musk and Snoop Dogg shilling the project on social media, love it or hate it; Dogecoin is here to stay.
In an interview with Time Magazine, Dan Schulman – the CEO of PayPal – talked about his experience running the company, as well as the demand for crypto on his payment platform.
Exponential Demand
With over 15.4 billion transactions carried out, it’s safe to say PayPal had a good run last year. Their move into crypto also seems to have supported the bull run Bitcoin has been on since late autumn of 2020.
When PayPal announced its plans for cryptocurrency adoption, a small shortage of Bitcoin supply occurred due to the unexpected demand.
Although the supply of Bitcoin didn’t dry up (and everything returned to normal within a few days) it seems PayPal still didn’t expect as many new crypto customers as they should have. In the interview, despite not giving out specific figures, Mr Schulman stated that the demand for digital assets exceeded their expectations “multiple-fold”, and that the enthusiasm surrounding the decision was also a welcome surprise.
Crypto user experience on Paypal mobile app
Schulman also spoke about the decline of paper money and predicted that not only would it be slowly phased out – but the role of banks in the payment landscape will also probably decline. According to Schulman, in the future the majority of transactions will be carried out through “super-apps”.
When all of those things start to happen, then central banks need to rethink monetary policy as well because you can’t just issue more paper money into the system because people aren’t using paper money. In the next 5 to 10 years, you’re going to see more change in the financial system than you have over the past 10 to 20 years.
Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal
Of course, this isn’t to say fiat will disappear overnight – plenty of people prefer to use cash. However, Schulman may be right: in countries like the Netherlands, there are already shops that don’t accept cash anymore.
In any case, Schulman’s interview seems to indicate that PayPal believe they made a good decision moving into the crypto world, and it looks like they plan to be staying in it for a while.
Two cryptocurrencies that have been widely discussed in recent months are Dogecoin (DOGE) and the much more recent Safemoon, a token which purportedly protects everyday investors from whales dumping a few months after buying in at low prices – a move which has left over 1000 cryptocurrencies more or less dead in the water so far.
The company behind Safemoon attempts to do this by putting in place a steep 10-12% fee for selling or trading the token, half of which is redistributed to remaining holders.
Dogecoin, on the other hand, was created as a joke – but it’s popularity has skyrocketed in the past few months due to promotion by high-profile figures like Elon Musk and Snoop Dogg.
Both cryptos, however, have taken a tumble recently.
Market Cap Bogged Down By Bearish Traders
During a bearish swing that wiped nearly half a trillion USD off of the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies combined, the market caps of these 2 “internet darlings” suffered their fare share of losses.
According to Susannah Streeter – a senior investment and market analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown – predicting the moment whales decide to cash out and leave you holding the bag is quite difficult.
Much of the demand has come from traders hoping to benefit from future price rises rather than using the coins or tokens as a means of exchange. Predicting the point at which demand subsides and prices begin to fall is very difficult, if not impossible, and people risk getting their fingers seriously burnt.
Susannah Streeter [The Sun]
Worth around $0.054 on the 1st of April – which is still a massive increase compared to the price Dogecoin had at the beginning of the year – DOGE’s price increased nearly tenfold to $0.407 on the 19th of April before hitting a low point of $0.215, 4 days later. In the meantime, the price of DOGE has started slowly climbing again.
The same cannot be said of Safemoon though. After peaking at $0.000014 per token early last week, the price of Safemoon hit 0.000004 on the 23rd of April. The price then showed signs of recovery for 2 days, before starting to drop again.
Although cryptocurrencies have always been “high risk/high reward”, the drop of these two cryptocurrencies should remind us all to take the time to research the cryptocurrencies we intend to invest in, regardless of how much praise they get by internet forum users.
Bitcoin.org — one of many websites that host the original Bitcoin whitepaper — is allegedly managed by someone who goes by the codename Cøbra. London legislators have allowed Craig Wright, who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, to file a copyright lawsuit against them.
A new round of Cøbra vs Wright?
Craig Wright is the chief scientist of blockchain firm nChain and he has claimed to be Satoshi multiple times. He attempted to have the Bitcoin whitepaper taken down by websites hosting it, even though this goes against the original ethos of the Bitcoin project.
When the takedown request came, the staff at Bitcoin.org (among others) publicly stated their refusal to comply. Besides, Satoshi’s PGP key is well-known: this could be used to prove the authenticity of the claim, which Craig Wright has never done.
We will continue hosting the Bitcoin whitepaper and won’t be silenced or intimidated. Others hosting the whitepaper should follow our lead in resisting these false allegations. We believe these claims are without merit, and refuse to [take it down].
Cøbra, domain owner of Bitcoin.org
It’s worth stressing that the court has not ruled in favour of Mr Wright in any way. The decision only allows the lawsuit to be filed — against an Internet pseudonym.
Furthermore, Cøbra has already expressed their disdain for the ruling, stating that they will not allow themselves to be bullied into compliance with Mr Wright’s demands. However, they have also stated that if they must give up their anonymity in order to fight to keep the whitepaper online, they are ready to do so.
You're wrong if you think you can bully me you creepy loser. If I have to give up my pseudonymity to defend Satoshi's whitepaper, arguably the most important paper of the 21st century, then so be it. https://t.co/YpqXlD8DlP
The Bitcoin whitepaper itself was published under a free and permissive MIT licence in 2008 and it has been hosted by numerous Internet activists, as well as governments.
Although in the past when resistance levels looked less than auspicious, bulls returned and kept the price of Bitcoin flying high. Now, JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou seems worried about the future of Bitcoin, according to a note published by him and fellow strategists.
Price Must Go Back Above The 60K Level
According to Panigirtzoglou, Bitcoin futures markets have largely been liquidated in the past few days, similar to the middle of previous months – and he foresees momentum stalling, if not quite fizzling out.
“Over the past few days, Bitcoin futures markets experienced a steep liquidation in a similar fashion to the middle of last February, middle of last January or the end of last November. Momentum signals will naturally decay from here for several months, given their still elevated level. Whether we see a repeat of those previous episodes in the current conjuncture remains to be seen.”
Although the price of Bitcoin soared to around AUD 83,700 around the time Coinbase was listed by NASDAQ, 1 BTC is currently worth around AUD 71,200 (at the time this article was written).
Some bearish traders allegedly predict that the lack of momentum may push the price even further back down to around AUD 64,500.
However, even if this scenario plays out – and it’s quite possible that it will – Bitcoin’s overall growth throughout 2020 and 2021 so far has been spectacular – and small nosedives happen all the time, after which prices tend to continue steadily climbing.
The note is not completely gloomy, however: it also notes that the hash rate seems to have recovered, and that going forward the amount of BTC liquidity should increase – and remain high.
Australian fintech company Living Room Of Satoshi released a service allowing its users to automatically set aside a portion of their salary as Bitcoin savings.
With Living Room of Satoshi Wages, you can select any percentage of your current wage to be paid directly to your @walletofsatoshi Bitcoin Lightning Wallet!
In order to use the service, the customer must switch the bank account where their salary is received to the one provided by Living Room Of Satoshi. The company will then automatically deduct the indicated amount from the user’s wage, converting it to Bitcoin and placing it in their wallet. The remainder will be sent to the bank account indicated by the user.
Set Up Savings in BTC
Living Room Of Satoshi is not a new player in this space. The company has been involved in cryptos since 2014. Their focus seems to be on allowing anyone to pay their bills, expenses and credits directly with cryptocurrencies, without having to convert them to cash first.
According to Daniel Alexiuc – chief executive of Living Room Of Satoshi – the company was founded when he spotted the opportunity to build a service addressing those who would like to hold cryptocurrencies, but don’t want to spend time managing a balance in cryptos. Instead, the process works more like a “route to savings account” option, similar to what is often offered by many banks.
Bitcoin has seen its price rise astronomically in the last 6 months, which has triggered an unprecedented buy-in from institutional investors. We wanted to provide an option for regular folks in Australia to also join this burgeoning ecosystem — and the simplest and most pain-free way is to have a small percentage of your wage converted and sent to you when you get paid.
Daniel Alexiuc, CEO of Living Room Of Satoshi
The name of the company came from the idea that at the end of the day, Satoshi Nakamoto might be sitting down in his living room paying his bills using the vast amounts he mined shortly after inventing Bitcoin.
Following last week’s experiment that allowed tech YouTuber Stacksmashing to mine Bitcoin off of a Game Boy, yet another fun project that repurposes old recreational computing device for contemporary purposes has surfaced.
Maciej Witkowiak – a data scientist and old-school retro gaming enthusiast – has repurposed a Commodore 64 to mine Bitcoin.
Pushing the Boundaries of Old Systems
The Commodore 64 was a home computer and not a portable console like the Game Boy, its main purpose was also recreational. Named after its 64 KB of RAM, the PC holds the Guinness World Record for the best-selling desktop PC of all time.
Although the mining speed is likely too slow to actually net any profit, it’s still a very interesting project that will surely catch the eye of many nostalgic fans of the system. Its code is readily available on Github, in case you want to try it out – at 0.2 hashes per second, you may very well find your first block within… 337 years and 10 months.
According to Witkowiak, hash functions are hampered by the inefficiency with which the ancient PC handles 32-bit computations, which are crucial for hash functions.
The 6502 CPU in C64 runs at about 1MHz and it doesn’t handle 32-bit computations very efficiently. Just enjoy the experience.
Is this a joke? No, It really does the same thing that every other miner does […]
C64 Bitcoin miner [GitHub]
Although the chance of this mining method getting you any Bitcoin within your life is statistically insignificant, the nostalgia associated with these old systems isn’t.
So if you’ve got one collecting dust in your garage, now you can fire it up!
Zip is an Australia-based company offering customers the ability to buy a product or service at full-price on the spot, without paying the full price right away – instead, Zip pays the full price, and the end customer pays Zip the rest later on.
Companies offering these services are not new, with counterparts like Swedish firm Klarna and others providing the same service in Europe – but they may very well be the first to offer this service for cryptocurrencies, instead of clothing and the like.
Youth Targeted For “Buy now, pay later”
The company stated that they are looking at the possibility of expanding their offers to cryptocurrency as a way to liaise with their predominantly young customer base.
If the plan comes to fruition, the service would probably first be offered in the United States via QuadPay, the US branch of Zip. QuadPay seems to be bringing in a significant percentage of Zip’s revenue – more precisely, “674,000 customers in Zip’s fiscal third quarter for a total of 3.8 million customers”, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“We’re very keen [to] move on this feature and the U.S., in particular, might be further advanced than Australia. It’s probably going to be slightly different for each of the products and services we roll out.”
According to Peter Gray – the co-founder of Zip, Co – the offer would most likely first be tested on the US market due to a more advanced interest in trading. Traditional stock trading was also briefly touched upon – although Zip is allegedly less keen on offering more traditional banking services like stock trading, compared to crypto trading.
Dangerous Game
The ability to buy stocks or crypto even if slightly out of pocket might be a dangerous game for inexperienced traders who might take on too much risk than they are comfortable with. With the current instability of crypto markets, this could pay off – but it could easily go wrong if the market turns, leaving people with more debt.
