A 75 tweets long tweetstorm by @VitalikButerin on Casper. Interesting at many levels. Timing is providential. $ETH needs its community to rally and pull together to stop & reverse the sell-off. PoS would be bullish for prices by creating a new use for existing coins. #Ethereum
Another providential appearance from a key player of the Ethereum community: @ConsenSys. From yesterday. Seems key stakeholders are just as worried as other holders, and acting on it. This is good. Communicating with the marketplace is crucial. #Ethereum
Lot's of talk about Tether & Bitfinex, some even mentioning "exit scam". Crypto pairs in Bitfinex are trading at 0.75%-1% premium over spot exchanges. However, same can be observed in Tether exchanges. e.g. prices in Binance same as in Bitfinex =>this is not a Bitfinex issue.
A couple of red flags aside, I don't think there is reason to be particularly concerned. Selling of Tether for other asset-backed stable coins is to be expected.
Now anyone operating in an exchange exposed to Tether or one that performs no KYC is always exposed to some sort of tail risk. Only way around that is moving to crypto-fiat regulated exchanges, which have higher operational costs (KYC is expensive) and charge higher trading fees.
Narrative: "My top priority has always been our social mission of connecting people and bringing the world together" ~ Zuck.
Reality: "People ... I don't know why. They "trust me". Dumb fucks." ~ Zuck.
His top priority is using people to sell targeted ads. #deletefacebook
It all started with Facebook's Timeline, an intrusive interface designed to push ads. Other things followed: recording phone logs, hacks, 3rd party apps snooping, discriminating users, nudging for users to provide more and more and more information, etc.
Brazil stocks +5% today in USD terms, strictly on political news. Chart locks great for longs. 1st round Presidential elections Oct/7. The two most voted candidates go onto a 2nd round on Oct/28.
Chart aside, what one trades is the elections: Bolsonaro (right-wing populist wildcard, similar to Trump, initially despised by markets, now seen positively as much better than the alternative) vs. Haddad (left-wing candidate, Lula's party). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian…
- Fed tightening: rising rates, balance sheet reduction, USD funding squeeze. Fed expects three more hikes in 2019.
- US economy overheating. Fiscal cuts in action, US profit margins at all time highs, unemployment at lowest level since 2000.
2/
- US treasury curve inverting, pointing towards incoming recession.
- Oil spiking in response to demand shocks and low spare capacity could lead to increased inflation and tightening.
- Ballooned public and corporate debt levels.
3/
- Trade wars: US tariffs would result in China's GDP dropping 75bps. Worldwide spillover effects.
- To compensate, China looking to reflate domestic economy via spending & monetary easing.
- EM at risk from Fed tightening and strong USD; are these already priced in?
Chart shares one of my signals which I call the Volume Thrust. It's a high volume/volatility breakouts signal. Can be applied to multiple time frames i.e. five minute charts or daily charts. Sharing it to illustrate price action concepts.
Understanding this is useful for investors as well who want to enter positions only with the trend. It's also helpful to any trader who is fearful of buying a top. Buying a top or selling a bottom sometimes represents good decision making.
First, when there is a high volume push in one direction, a trader generally wants to go in the direction of the push. Second, when push fails and price reverses in full beyond origin point, that's a trap, trader wants to reverse position (or at least exit prior position if any).
This could happen to crypto exchanges offering trading of security tokens and security token derivatives. If $XRP were to be defined as a security it would jeopardize exchanges such as Bitmex. Binance is at risk regardless. Lots of security tokens there.
Just yesterday I was reading about how 1broker had started offering CFDs on cannabis stocks, offering traders to open an account with an email address, fund it with bitcoin, and hit it with 50x leverage.