Today you’re going to see what happens when liquidity disappears. When you can no longer close a position. When participants stop trusting one another.
USDT printing was good while it lasted. Now Bitcoin is on it’s own. Just overleveraged bagholders trying to sell to one another.
When subprime mortgages started defaulting en masse in April/May 2007, and it was clear subprime ABSs were toast, banks initially pumped the price of those ABSs on the markets, to entice more investors to buy, and offload their bags.
Still wonder why Bitcoin pumped to new ATHs?
The writing was on the wall for a long time. Regulation of crypto coupled with Tether being a fraudster's den.
You had warning shots: STABLE act, self-hosted wallet KYC, NYAG lawsuit. You had bombshell revelations of money laundering.
NOBODY LISTENED BECAUSE NUMBER WAS GOING UP.
It was always that simple. Crypto attracted unsophisticated investors. Institutional money was anecdotal at best. A few smart guys who just wanted to also sheer some muppets while the going was good.
Retail just watched number go up and went all in. No research, no common sense.
There's nothing behind Bitcoin. It's database entries that represent nothing. Most of on-chain volume is paper shuffling. It was never going to be money. As for store of value, it burns billions of dollars every year just for the sake of it, because it was designed to burn money.

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More from @Tr0llyTr0llFace

21 Jan
Watch out for the 1st blowup. With inter-exchange arbitrage bots awash with Tether liquidity, spreads have been ultra tight. The first exchange that gets in trouble (BTCUSDT dumping) will attract a shitload of USDT as bots rush in. This USDT will be trapped as exchange collapses.
The reverse might be true, of course, with BTC being trapped.
The bots will then be turned off as their operators panic, and inter-exchange spreads will blow up.
I'm not making this up. This is what happened during the 2007 credit crunch, only much faster because it's crypto.
Because there was so much USDT liquidity, all credit risk had seemingly disappeared from the system. If you could get cheaper Bitcoin somewhere, you bought it, and sold it off where it was more expensive. Inter-exchange spreads went to zero - not to mention derivative products.
Read 6 tweets
21 Jan
My yesterday's post about Grayscale and BlockFi got some interesting and valid criticism, and it's really worth taking a deeper dive into the GBTC premium arbitrage trade.
The main counter-argument is, "there's a premium for valid reasons, and people are taking advantage of it".
There are indeed good reasons for a premium. GBTC allows to get exposure to BTC while saving on taxes because you can put it into your IRA. It's much easier than buying Bitcoin on exchanges (although Paypal has changed that equation). So people accept to buy $BTC at 20% premium.
My exact argument was, you can't take advantage of the premium because there's no liquidity - the moment you try to cash out your shares witch you got by subscribing at NAV, the premium collapses. The counter-argument is, "really A LOT of people buying GBTC so there's liquidity".
Read 15 tweets
20 Jan
About the "Greyscale is buying up all the Bitcoin" meme.
(shoutout to @fidelitas_lex for pointing this out).

Most of Greyscale's new subscriptions are in-kind - nobody's buying anything with real cash. People are transferring their Bitcoins to GS, and getting shares in return.
Why would anyone do that, knowing that GS charges a 2% yearly management fee? What happened to "be your own bank"?
The answer is simple: GS shares are trading at a premium, so by transferring your Bitcoins in exchange for shares you're making an instant paper gain.
BlockFi is one of the biggest holders of GS shares. BlockFi is also one of the go-to guys if you want to "earn interest on your Bitcoin" - as high as 8%. Where does that 8% interest come from? From the Greyscale share premium. You lend Bitcoin to BF, they exchange for GS shares.
Read 6 tweets
19 Jan
On the importance of leverage for the crypto ecosystem.
A long time ago, BNP Paribas bought a retail forex exchange, because they thought they'd get an insight into forex trading flows and positions. What they quickly discovered, is that the website was a muppet slaughterhouse.
People would get stopped out ALL THE TIME because they used too much leverage. Over 90% of them lost money in a consistent way. Those are worse than even casino odds.
That's why around 2005, you had so many forex trading websites popping up. They would offer up to 500x leverage.
The higher the leverage, the better (for the website).
This became such a huge trend that regulators stepped in, and introduced maximum leverage rules. Something like x30 for forex, if I remember correctly. All of a sudden, all the ads and Premier League sponsorships vanished.
Read 12 tweets
17 Jan
I'd like to help all Tether FUD deniers who are announcing they've proven the FUDsters wrong, by listing the actual FUD items, so that they can base their denying on something. The "it's been proven many times before so I won't detail it here" seriously lacks entertainment value.
First, I'll play the devil's advocate, & list all the FUD that's wrong.
1. There's proof USDT prints correlate with Bitcoin pumps.
Bad FUD. Even if that was the case, USDTs could be legit, with real buyers coming in. Also, Tether could be hiding the pumps by printing in advance.
Finally, some USDTs could be minted to pump Bitcoin, while others would be minted for other activities (arbitrage, money laundering, paying for Chinese prostitutes), and you'd never have any correlation.
2. USDTs are minted on weekends, Tether can't receive wires on weekends!!!
Read 14 tweets
2 May 20
Allow me to present the only piece of news in crypto that's worth your while. It's about what's really backing Tether's stablecoin.
It's not dollars.
It's not Bitcoin either - not entirely, at least.
It's loans to miners, backed by Bitcoin.

Follow my train of thought on this.
We all know miners need real cash to pay their electricity bills. They could sell their rewards on exchanges - which someone (cough Tether cough) would have to buy, to prevent $BTC from crashing. But when everyone knows that everyone knows, something different happens.
Tether has real money, because Bitfinex has real money from sheering muppets dumb enough to trade on its exchange. But why would they buy miners' Bitcoins, when they can LOAN them the money instead, and get a death grip on their balls?
Tether is secured by these loans, not cash.
Read 10 tweets

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