I thought it would be really cool to have an ultimate guide for those new to crypto currencies and the terms used. I made this mostly for beginner’s and veterans alike. I’m not sure how much use you will get out of this. Stuff gets lost on Reddit quite easily so I hope this finds its way to you. Included in this list, I have included most of the terms used in crypto-communities. I have compiled this list from a multitude of sources. The list is in alphabetical order and may include some words/terms not exclusive to the crypto world but may be helpful regardless.
2FA
Two factor authentication. I highly advise that you use it.
51% Attack:
A situation where a single malicious individual or group gains control of more than half of a cryptocurrency network’s computing power. Theoretically, it could allow perpetrators to manipulate the system and spend the same coin multiple times, stop other users from completing blocks and make conflicting transactions to a chain that could harm the network.
Address (or Addy):
A unique string of numbers and letters (both upper and lower case) used to send, receive or store cryptocurrency on the network. It is also the public key in a pair of keys needed to sign a digital transaction. Addresses can be shared publicly as a text or in the form of a scannable QR code. They differ between cryptocurrencies. You can’t send Bitcoin to an Ethereum address, for example.
Altcoin (alternative coin): Any digital currency other than Bitcoin. These other currencies are alternatives to Bitcoin regarding features and functionalities (e.g. faster confirmation time, lower price, improved mining algorithm, higher total coin supply). There are hundreds of altcoins, including Ether, Ripple, Litecoin and many many others.
AIRDROP:
An event where the investors/participants are able to receive free tokens or coins into their digital wallet.
AML: Defines Anti-Money Laundering laws**.**
ARBITRAGE:
Getting risk-free profits by trading (simultaneous buying and selling of the cryptocurrency) on two different exchanges which have different prices for the same asset.
Ashdraked:
Being Ashdraked is essentially a more detailed version of being Zhoutonged. It is when you lose all of your invested capital, but you do so specifically by shorting Bitcoin. The expression “Ashdraked” comes from a story of a Romanian cryptocurrency investor who insisted upon shorting BTC, as he had done so successfully in the past. When the price of BTC rose from USD 300 to USD 500, the Romanian investor lost all of his money.
ATH (All Time High):
The highest price ever achieved by a cryptocurrency in its entire history. Alternatively, ATL is all time low
Bearish:
A tendency of prices to fall; a pessimistic expectation that the value of a coin is going to drop.
Bear trap:
A manipulation of a stock or commodity by investors.
Bitcoin:
The very first, and the highest ever valued, mass-market open source and decentralized cryptocurrency and digital payment system that runs on a worldwide peer to peer network. It operates independently of any centralized authorities
Bitconnect:
One of the biggest scams in the crypto world. it was made popular in the meme world by screaming idiot Carlos Matos, who infamously proclaimed," hey hey heeeey” and “what's a what's a what's up wasssssssssuuuuuuuuuuuuup, BitConneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeect!”. He is now in the mentally ill meme hall of fame.
Block:
A package of permanently recorded data about transactions occurring every time period (typically about 10 minutes) on the blockchain network. Once a record has been completed and verified, it goes into a blockchain and gives way to the next block. Each block also contains a complex mathematical puzzle with a unique answer, without which new blocks can’t be added to the chain.
Blockchain:
An unchangeable digital record of all transactions ever made in a particular cryptocurrency and shared across thousands of computers worldwide. It has no central authority governing it. Records, or blocks, are chained to each other using a cryptographic signature. They are stored publicly and chronologically, from the genesis block to the latest block, hence the term blockchain. Anyone can have access to the database and yet it remains incredibly difficult to hack.
Bullish:
A tendency of prices to rise; an optimistic expectation that a specific cryptocurrency will do well and its value is going to increase.
BTFD:
Buy the fucking dip. This advise was bestowed upon us by the gods themselves. It is the iron code to crypto enthusiasts.
Bull market:
A market that Cryptos are going up.
Consensus:
An agreement among blockchain participants on the validity of data. Consensus is reached when the majority of nodes on the network verify that the transaction is 100% valid.
Crypto bubble:
The instability of cryptocurrencies in terms of price value
Cryptocurrency:
A type of digital currency, secured by strong computer code (cryptography), that operates independently of any middlemen or central authoritie
Cryptography:
The art of converting sensitive data into a format unreadable for unauthorized users, which when decoded would result in a meaningful statement.
Cryptojacking:
The use of someone else’s device and profiting from its computational power to mine cryptocurrency without their knowledge and consent.
Crypto-Valhalla:
When HODLers(holders) eventually cash out they go to a place called crypto-Valhalla. The strong will be separated from the weak and the strong will then be given lambos.
DAO:
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations. It defines A blockchain technology inspired organization or corporation that exists and operates without human intervention.
Dapp (decentralized application):
An open-source application that runs and stores its data on a blockchain network (instead of a central server) to prevent a single failure point. This software is not controlled by the single body – information comes from people providing other people with data or computing power.
Decentralized:
A system with no fundamental control authority that governs the network. Instead, it is jointly managed by all users to the system.
Desktop wallet:
A wallet that stores the private keys on your computer, which allow the spending and management of your bitcoins.
DILDO:
Long red or green candles. This is a crypto signal that tells you that it is not favorable to trade at the moment. Found on candlestick charts.
Digital Signature:
An encrypted digital code attached to an electronic document to prove that the sender is who they say they are and confirm that a transaction is valid and should be accepted by the network.
Double Spending:
An attack on the blockchain where a malicious user manipulates the network by sending digital money to two different recipients at exactly the same time.
DYOR:
Means do your own research.
Encryption:
Converting data into code to protect it from unauthorized access, so that only the intended recipient(s) can decode it.
Eskrow:
the practice of having a third party act as an intermediary in a transaction. This third party holds the funds on and sends them off when the transaction is completed.
Ethereum:
Ethereum is an open source, public, blockchain-based platform that runs smart contracts and allows you to build dapps on it. Ethereum is fueled by the cryptocurrency Ether.
Exchange:
A platform (centralized or decentralized) for exchanging (trading) different forms of cryptocurrencies. These exchanges allow you to exchange cryptos for local currency. Some popular exchanges are Coinbase, Bittrex, Kraken and more.
Faucet:
A website which gives away free cryptocurrencies.
Fiat money:
Fiat currency is legal tender whose value is backed by the government that issued it, such as the US dollar or UK pound.
Fork:
A split in the blockchain, resulting in two separate branches, an original and a new alternate version of the cryptocurrency. As a single blockchain forks into two, they will both run simultaneously on different parts of the network. For example, Bitcoin Cash is a Bitcoin fork.
FOMO:
Fear of missing out.
Frictionless:
A system is frictionless when there are zero transaction costs or trading retraints.
FUD:
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt regarding the crypto market.
Gas:
A fee paid to run transactions, dapps and smart contracts on Ethereum.
Halving:
A 50% decrease in block reward after the mining of a pre-specified number of blocks. Every 4 years, the “reward” for successfully mining a block of bitcoin is reduced by half. This is referred to as “Halving”.
Hardware wallet:
Physical wallet devices that can securely store cryptocurrency maximally. Some examples are Ledger Nano S**,** Digital Bitbox and more**.**
Hash:
The process that takes input data of varying sizes, performs an operation on it and converts it into a fixed size output. It cannot be reversed.
Hashing:
The process by which you mine bitcoin or similar cryptocurrency, by trying to solve the mathematical problem within it, using cryptographic hash functions.
HODL:
A Bitcoin enthusiast once accidentally misspelled the word HOLD and it is now part of the bitcoin legend. It can also mean hold on for dear life.
ICO (Initial Coin Offering):
A blockchain-based fundraising mechanism, or a public crowd sale of a new digital coin, used to raise capital from supporters for an early stage crypto venture. Beware of these as there have been quite a few scams in the past.
John mcAfee:
A man who will one day eat his balls on live television for falsely predicting bitcoin going to 100k. He has also become a small meme within the crypto community for his outlandish claims.
JOMO:
Joy of missing out. For those who are so depressed about missing out their sadness becomes joy.
KYC:
Know your customer(alternatively consumer).
Lambo:
This stands for Lamborghini. A small meme within the investing community where the moment someone gets rich they spend their earnings on a lambo. One day we will all have lambos in crypto-valhalla.
Ledger:
Away from Blockchain, it is a book of financial transactions and balances. In the world of crypto, the blockchain functions as a ledger. A digital currency’s ledger records all transactions which took place on a certain block chain network.
Leverage:
Trading with borrowed capital (margin) in order to increase the potential return of an investment.
Liquidity:
The availability of an asset to be bought and sold easily, without affecting its market price.
of the coins.
Margin trading:
The trading of assets or securities bought with borrowed money.
Market cap/MCAP:
A short-term for Market Capitalization. Market Capitalization refers to the market value of a particular cryptocurrency. It is computed by multiplying the Price of an individual unit of coins by the total circulating supply.
Miner:
A computer participating in any cryptocurrency network performing proof of work. This is usually done to receive block rewards.
Mining:
The act of solving a complex math equation to validate a blockchain transaction using computer processing power and specialized hardware.
Mining contract:
A method of investing in bitcoin mining hardware, allowing anyone to rent out a pre-specified amount of hashing power, for an agreed amount of time. The mining service takes care of hardware maintenance, hosting and electricity costs, making it simpler for investors.
Mining rig:
A computer specially designed for mining cryptocurrencies.
Mooning:
A situation the price of a coin rapidly increases in value. Can also be used as: “I hope bitcoin goes to the moon”
Node:
Any computing device that connects to the blockchain network.
Open source:
The practice of sharing the source code for a piece of computer software, allowing it to be distributed and altered by anyone.
OTC:
Over the counter. Trading is done directly between parties.
P2P (Peer to Peer):
A type of network connection where participants interact directly with each other rather than through a centralized third party. The system allows the exchange of resources from A to B, without having to go through a separate server.
Paper wallet:
A form of “cold storage” where the private keys are printed onto a piece of paper and stored offline. Considered as one of the safest crypto wallets, the truth is that it majors in sweeping coins from your wallets.
Pre mining:
The mining of a cryptocurrency by its developers before it is released to the public.
Proof of stake (POS):
A consensus distribution algorithm which essentially rewards you based upon the amount of the coin that you own. In other words, more investment in the coin will leads to more gain when you mine with this protocol In Proof of Stake, the resource held by the “miner” is their stake in the currency.
PROOF OF WORK (POW) :
The competition of computers competing to solve a tough crypto math problem. The first computer that does this is allowed to create new blocks and record information.” The miner is then usually rewarded via transaction fees.
Protocol:
A standardized set of rules for formatting and processing data.
Public key / private key:
A cryptographic code that allows a user to receive cryptocurrencies into an account. The public key is made available to everyone via a publicly accessible directory, and the private key remains confidential to its respective owner. Because the key pair is mathematically related, whatever is encrypted with a public key may only be decrypted by its corresponding private key.
Pump and dump:
Massive buying and selling activity of cryptocurrencies (sometimes organized and to one’s benefit) which essentially result in a phenomenon where the significant surge in the value of coin followed by a huge crash take place in a short time frame.
Recovery phrase:
A set of phrases you are given whereby you can regain or access your wallet should you lose the private key to your wallets — paper, mobile, desktop, and hardware wallet. These phrases are some random 12–24 words. A recovery Phrase can also be called as Recovery seed, Seed Key, Recovery Key, or Seed Phrase.
REKT:
Referring to the word “wrecked”. It defines a situation whereby an investor or trader who has been ruined utterly following the massive losses suffered in crypto industry.
Ripple:
An alternative payment network to Bitcoin based on similar cryptography. The ripple network uses XRP as currency and is capable of sending any asset type.
ROI:
Return on investment.
Safu:
A crypto term for safe popularized by the Bizonnaci YouTube channel after the CEO of Binance tweeted
“Funds are safe."
“the exchage I use got hacked!”“Oh no, are your funds safu?”
“My coins better be safu!”
​
​
Sats/Satoshi:
The smallest fraction of a bitcoin is called a “satoshi” or “sat”. It represents one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin and is named after Satoshi Nakamoto.
Satoshi Nakamoto:
This was the pseudonym for the mysterious creator of Bitcoin.
Scalability:
The ability of a cryptocurrency to contain the massive use of its Blockchain.
Sharding:
A scaling solution for the Blockchain. It is generally a method that allows nodes to have partial copies of the complete blockchain in order to increase overall network performance and consensus speeds.
Shitcoin:
Coin with little potential or future prospects.
Shill:
Spreading buzz by heavily promoting a particular coin in the community to create awareness.
Short position:
Selling of a specific cryptocurrency with an expectation that it will drop in value.
Silk road:
The online marketplace where drugs and other illicit items were traded for Bitcoin. This marketplace is using accessed through “TOR”, and VPNs. In October 2013, a Silk Road was shut down in by the FBI.
Smart Contract:
Certain computational benchmarks or barriers that have to be met in turn for money or data to be deposited or even be used to verify things such as land rights.
Software Wallet:
A crypto wallet that exists purely as software files on a computer. Usually, software wallets can be generated for free from a variety of sources.
Solidity:
A contract-oriented coding language for implementing smart contracts on Ethereum. Its syntax is similar to that of JavaScript.
Stable coin:
A cryptocoin with an extremely low volatility that can be used to trade against the overall market.
Staking:
Staking is the process of actively participating in transaction validation (similar to mining) on a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. On these blockchains, anyone with a minimum-required balance of a specific cryptocurrency can validate transactions and earn Staking rewards.
Surge:
When a crypto currency appreciates or goes up in price.
Tank:
The opposite of mooning. When a coin tanks it can also be described as crashing.
Tendies
For traders , the chief prize is “tendies” (chicken tenders, the treat an overgrown man-child receives for being a “Good Boy”) .
Token:
A unit of value that represents a digital asset built on a blockchain system. A token is usually considered as a “coin” of a cryptocurrency, but it really has a wider functionality.
TOR: “The Onion Router” is a free web browser designed to protect users’ anonymity and resist censorship. Tor is usually used surfing the web anonymously and access sites on the “Darkweb”.
Transaction fee:
An amount of money users are charged from their transaction when sending cryptocurrencies.
Volatility:
A measure of fluctuations in the price of a financial instrument over time. High volatility in bitcoin is seen as risky since its shifting value discourages people from spending or accepting it.
Wallet:
A file that stores all your private keys and communicates with the blockchain to perform transactions. It allows you to send and receive bitcoins securely as well as view your balance and transaction history.
Whale:
An investor that holds a tremendous amount of cryptocurrency. Their extraordinary large holdings allow them to control prices and manipulate the market.
Whitepaper:
​
A comprehensive report or guide made to understand an issue or help decision making. It is also seen as a technical write up that most cryptocurrencies provide to take a deep look into the structure and plan of the cryptocurrency/Blockchain project. Satoshi Nakamoto was the first to release a whitepaper on Bitcoin, titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” in late 2008.
And with that I finally complete my odyssey. I sincerely hope that this helped you and if you are new, I welcome you to crypto. If you read all of that I hope it increased, you in knowledge.
my final definition:
Crypto-Family:
A collection of all the HODLers and crypto fanatics. A place where all people alike unite over a love for crypto.
We are all in this together as we pioneer the new world that is crypto currency. I wish you a great day and Happy HODLing.
-u/flacciduck
feel free to comment words or terms that you feel should be included or about any errors I made.
Edit1:some fixes were made and added words.

I lost it all (this my old rogerver bcashy troll account btw)
I don’t even know how to start but as of yesterday I’m officially broke, I ruined my life and future.
I’m a 23yrs guy, my journey with Bitcoin started in 2014. I bought it to actually use it not sure if people do that nowadays? but The HODL journey didn’t start until the beginning of 2017 as I notice the $ value in my blockchain wallet steadily increasing didn’t even know how or why it was increasing I thought it was a glitch making me free money for this reason I decided to go ALL IN I dumped my life saving into Bitcoin. price was around 1-2K $ and I was able to get 11 BTC in total. Unfortunately before the Bullrun start I lost around 4 coin due to ICO"s scams and just buying shitcooins in poloniex with zero trading knowledge(had a great time with the trollbox).
​
After my loss I took my coins out of the exchange and held in a cold wallet, Fast forwards September 2017 the price kept going up I couldn’t even believe it specially after it broke past 10k I was so euphoric matter fact I was chilling in here, in this subreddit celebrating with everyone posting memes etc.. When BTC hit 20k my greedy asss still didnt wanna sell I didn’t have a price target I though it will keep going up forever. It was going so quick I couldn’t even process what was happening I told my siblings I was rich they told me to sell this bubble but I said "HELL NO! I was part of the moonboy gang we don’t sell we HOODL" I was 19 at the time. seeing this type of money was unreal I had more than 6 fucking figures in my wallet. Eventually we topped out at 20k I didn’t sell although the price kept going down and down and Depression started to hit after we dropped below 10k specially when it went down more near the 3k level I started to regret everything kicking my self for not listening to my siblings when they told me sell.
​
Nonetheless I still had faith in Bitcoin and knew one day we will recover but I needed to accepted the fact that it might take months maybe years to get back to ath. for this reason I disconnected from the crypto community I had to forget about Bitcoin so I shifted my focus somewhere else luckily I stumbled across this popular game called “Fortnite” it took all my time and distraction away from my crypto for a good year or two I barely even noticed the peak of 2019.
​
Anyways mid-late 2019 I got heavy in the stock market I started to see all these guru make insane amount of money just day trading. I was more of an investor type guy but I consumed so much information about day trading and how the psychological aspect is so important, I guess I mastered a bit of that by holding Bitcoin throughout the bear market. Anyways recently in August during the Bitcoin rally I though I had enough skills and decided it was finally time for me to trade Bitcoin specially because it was tradable 24/7 I wanted to start increasing my money and stop sitting on my coins I've had enough of the bear market I thought it was gonna be another P&D episode specially after I started to get deeper in the Crypto community and understood how price moves. I used to be Bitcoin maximalist but then I started to notice the suspicious activity around bitcoin, I came to realize that bitcoin was not the same as it was before, these toxic unregulated entities have turned bitcoin into a giant ponzi playground with everyone being brainwashed by these crypto twitter advocates who are nothing but CZ binance acting puppets. I know it sound crazy but it’s true, the receipt it out to the public, the price is manipulated by Tetther Mafia and these scam exchange. I don’t believe in conspiracy but neither do I believe in coincidence, I witnessed this fraud my own eyes, Whale-alert notified me every time Tetther printed new money and sent it to exchanges and next thing you the price went up. Ever since they added derivative I assume they manipulate the price in spot to liquidate future traders. This whole rally was propt by Tetther mafia using the overall condition in the market as an excuse to attempt artificial FOMO and bring real liquidity in this fake liquidity pool. As the fraud was getting more obvious I started to despise Bitcoin and traded the ponzi based off emotions I neglected the technicals I didn’t have risk management and eventually got liquidated.
​
This is my 3yr+ journey went from 11 btc to 0.. I feel horrible,sad, hopeless and disappointed this was my whole networth vanished in 1-2month. I deprived myself from so many things these last few years hoping my investment grows enough to fund my future. My family still think I’m holding Bitcoins I feel so bad I let them down not sure I'll be able to recover from this.
Ps: for those saying Tetther is an old conspiracy trust me this time is different and incomparable to the previous years, the fraud is fully transparent now. Their activity has been very suspicious and concerning lately I’m sensing a major exit-scam. this will impact the whole crypto space because this unbacked counterfeit USD holds most if not all the order book liquidity.

I have been here for many previous altcoin seasons (2013,2017 etc) and wanted to share knowedle. It's a LOOONG article.
The evaluation of altcoins (i.e not Bitcoin) is one of the most difficult and profitable exercises. Here I will outline my methodology and thinking but we have to take some things as a given. The first is that the whole market is going up or down with forces that we can't predict or control. Bitcoin is correlated with economic environments, money supply increases, safe havens such as Gold, hype and country regulations. This is an impossible mix to analyze and almost everyone fails at it. That's why you see people valuing Bitcoin from $100 to $500k frequently. Although I am bullish on the prospects of Bitcoin and decentralization and smart contract platforms, this is not the game I will be describing. I am talking about a game where you try to maximize your BTC holdings by investing in altcoins. We win this game even if we are at a loss in fiat currency value. To put it another way:

If you are not bullish in general on cryptocurrencies you have no place in investing or trading cryptocurrencies since it's always a losing proposition to trade in bubbles, a scientifically proven fact. If on the other hand you are then your goal is to grow your portfolio more than you would if holding BTC/ETH for example.

Bitcoin is the big boy

How the market works is not easily identifiable if you haven't graduated from the 2017 crypto university. When there is a bull market everything seems amazingly profitable and things keep going up outgrowing Bitcoin by orders of magnitude and you are a genius. The problem with this is that it only works while Bitcoin is going up a little bit or trades sideways. When it decides to move big then altcoins lose value both on the way up and on the way down. The second part is obvious and proven since all altcoins from 2017 are at a fraction of their BTC value (usually in the range of 80% or more down). Also, when BTC is making a big move upwards everyone exits altcoins to ride the wave. It is possible that the altcoin market behaves as an inversed leveraged ETF with leakage where in a certain period while Bitcoin starts at 10k and ends at 10k for example, altcoins have lost a lot of value because of the above things happening.

We are doing it anyway champ!

OK so we understand the risks and just wanna gambol with our money right? I get it. Why do that? Because finding the ideal scenario and period can be extremely profitable. In 2017 several altcoins went up 40x more than BTC. But again, if you don't chose wisely many of them have gone back to zero (the author has first hand experience in this!), they have been delisted and nobody remembers them. The actual mentality to have is very important and resembles poker and other speculative games:
A certain altcoin can go up in value indefinitely but can only lose it's starting investment. Think about it. You either lose 1 metric or gain many many more. Now that sounds amazing but firstly as we said we have the goal to outperform our benchmark (BTC) and secondly that going up in value a lot means that the probability is quite low. There is this notion of Expected Value (EV) that poker players apply in these kind of situations and it goes like that. If you think that a certain coin has a probability let's say 10% to go up 10X and 90% probability it goes to zero it's an even bet. If you think that probability is 11% then it's a good bet, a profitable bet and you should take it. You get the point right? It's not that it can only go 10X or 0X, there is a whole range of probability outcomes that are too mathematical to explain here and it doesn't help so much because nobody can do such analysis with altcoins. See below on how we can approximate it.

How to evaluate altcoins

A range of different things to take into account outlined below will form our decision making. Not a single one of them should dictate 100% of our strategy.

Basics

It's all about market cap. Repeat after me. The price of a coin doesn't mean anything. Say it 10 times until you believe it. I can't remember how many times I had conversations with people that were comparing coins using their coin price instead of their market cap. To make this easy to get.

If I decide because the sky is blue to make my coin supply 100 Trillion FoolCoins with a price of $0.001 and there is another WiseCoin with a supply of 100 Million and price of $1 then FoolCoins are more expensive. - Alex Fin's Cap Law

Fundamental analysis

This is done usually in the stock world and it means that each company has some fundamental value that includes it's assets, customers, growth prospects, sector prospects and leadership competence but mostly centered in financial measures such as P/E ratios etc. Valuation is a proper economic discipline by itself taught in universities. OK, now throw everything out of the window!.
This kind of analysis is impossible in vague concepts and innovations that are currently cryptocurrencies. Ethereum was frequently priced at the fictional price of gas when all financial systems on earth run on the platform after decades (a bit of exaggeration here). No project is currently profitable enough to justify a valuation multiple that is usually equal to P/E in the thousands or more. As such we need to take other things into account. What I do is included in the list below:

• Check Github. You need to make sure there is active development for the platform and it's a very bad sign if the project is either keeping the code closed source or even worse there is simply no development. No projects are "complete".
• Check Website. If the website is written in bad English the Chinese google translate type it means that they are not serious enough to produce an unbreakable decentralized project. If you can't write English you can't change the world, period. That's a deal breaker.
• Check Team's Linkedin. Numerous projects have either fake Linkedin accounts or the team is comprised mainly by unexperienced employees that are even shown to be working in other companies currently.
• Check backers. Projects that have Binance, Coinbase or Silicon Valley VC funds backing them are way more legit but way more overpriced too!

Relative valuation

One of my favorite ways to value altcoins that is based on the same principle in the stock market is to look at peers and decide what is the maximum cap it can grow to. As an example you take a second layer Ethereum solution that has an ICO and you want to decide if you will enter or not. You can take a look at other coins that are in the same business and compare their market caps. Thinking that your coin will outperform by a lot the top coins currently is overly optimistic so I usually take a lower valuation as a target price. If the initial offering is directly implying a valuation that is more than that then there is no room to grow according to my analysis and I skip it. Many times this has proven me wrong because it's a game theory problem where if many people think irrationally in a market it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But since there is opportunity cost involved, in the long run, getting in initial offerings that have a lot of room to grow will pay off as a strategy.

Sector prospects

In 2017 the sexiest sector was platforms and then coins including privacy ones. Platforms are obviously still a highly rated sector because everything is being built on them, but privacy is not as hot as it used to be. In 2018 DEXes were all they hype but still people are massively using centralized exchanges. In 2020 Defi is the hottest sector and it includes platforms, oracles and Defi projects. What I am saying is that a project gets extra points if it's a Defi one in 2020 and minus points if it's a payment system that will conquer the world as it was in 2017 because that's old news. This is closely related to the next section.

Hype

Needless to say that the crypto market is a worse FOMO type of inexperienced trigger happy yolo investors , much worse than the Robinhood crowd that drove a bankrupt company's stock 1200% after they declared bankruptcy. The result is that there are numerous projects that are basically either vaporware or just so overhyped that their valuation has no connection to reality. Should we avoid those kind of projects? No and I will explain why. There are many very good technically projects that had zero hype potential due to incompetent marketing departments that made them tank. An example (without shilling because I sold out a while back) is Quantum Resistant Ledger. This project has amazing quantum resistant blockchain, the only one running now, has a platform that people can build tokens and messaging systems and other magnificent stuff. Just check how they fared up to now and you will get the point. A project *needs* to have a hype factor because you cannot judge it as normal stocks that you can do value investing like Warren Buffet does where a company will inevitable post sales and profitability numbers and investors will get dividends. Actually the last sentence is the most important: No dividends. Even projects that give you tokens or coins as dividends are not real dividends because if the coin tanks the value of the dividend tanks. This is NOT the case with company stocks where you get dollars even if the company stock tanks. All that being said, I would advice against betting on projects that have a lot of hype but little substance (but that should be obvious!).

How to construct your portfolio

My strategy and philosophy in investing is that risk should be proportional to investment capital. That means that if you are investing 100K in the crypto market your portfolio should be very different than someone investing 1K because 10% annual gains are nothing in the latter while they are very significant in the former. Starting from this principle each individual needs to construct a portfolio according to how much risk he wants to take. I will emphasize two important concepts that play well with what I said. In the first instance of a big portfolio you should concentrate on this mantra: "Diversification is the only free meal in finance". In the case of a small portfolio then this mantra is more important: "Concentrate to create wealth, diversify to maintain wealth". Usually in a big portfolio you would want to hold some big coins such as BTC and ETH to weather the ups and downs explained in previous paragraphs while generating profits and keep progressively smaller parts of your portfolio for riskier investments. Maybe 50% of this portfolio could be big caps and 10% very risky initial offerings. Adapting risk progressively to smaller portfolios makes sense but I think it would be irrational to keep more than 30% of a portfolio no matter what tied to one coin due to the very high risk of bankruptcy.

Conclusion

The altseason is supposedly coming every 3 months. Truth is that nobody can predict it but altcoins can be profitable no matter what. Forget about maximalists who are stuck in their dogmas. Altcoins deliver different value propositions and it makes sense because we are very far from a situation where some project offers everything like Amazon and we wouldn't even want that in the first place since we are talking about decentralization and not a winner takes all and becomes a monster kind of scenario! Some last minute advice:

• Stay out of paid telegram/discord pump groups. They are deadly for your wallet.
• Avoid jumping on overhyped coins that have pumped massively during the last days without any very important news.
• Don't keep coins in obscure exchanges for too long or you will get burned with certainty.
• Stop thinking that your coin will 1000x and overtake Bitcoin!

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Hello and sorry all its been about a month since serious post. So what has happened this week? 1. Kucoin exchange was hacked for over $150 Million in Bitcoin. Bitfinex and Tether freezes $33 Million of stolen funds. Over this past week we have seen many cryptocurrencies on the exchange be released from the freeze. However, users are still waiting on the main cryptos to be released as KuCoin is working on their security of their platform to make sure it does not happen again. The hacker itself tried to dump his tokens over Binance... Good try lol https://news.bitcoin.com/kucoin-hack-17m-laundered-via-decentralized-exchanges-blockchain-analysis-firm-claims-this-can-still-be-traced/ (HOLY MOLY) https://news.bitcoin.com/kucoin-ceo-says-exchange-hack-suspects-found-204-million-recovered/ 2. Bitcoin outperforms Gold, Nasdaq, 10 year treasury and S&P 500. not surprising at all for us but still very interesting, Bitcoin is up 48% since the start of the year. It appears more people are becoming interested in cryptocurrency as Bitcoin continues to be the best performing asset not just in the past 10 years but of all time. On a more personal note, I was at a small gathering today (within covid restrictions) and I was just saying how i was really interested in cryptocurrency. For the first time ever everyone around me was really interested in what it was and how it worked also talked to a lot of my stock market friends and almost all have pulled out or thinking of pulling out. related: https://dailyhodl.com/2020/10/01/report-details-unprecedented-levels-of-wall-street-interest-in-bitcoin-and-cryptocurrency/ https://dailyhodl.com/2020/10/02/former-goldman-institutional-trader-says-large-investors-now-buying-bitcoin-and-gold-at-same-pace-heres-why/ 3. CBDC news - US federal reserve is actively working on the a digital dollar. From a previous post we know that the European Union is working on a Digital Euro and China is working on their own digital dollar. For me this is a bit of a worrying issue and seems like an upgrade for their own outdated systems completely removing the idea of decentralisation. In addition to this, I find it interesting that in Australia all cryptocurrency tax laws were written in late 2017/2018 and continues to be adapted. In Russia their are harsh penalties for unreported cryptocurrency holdings. In my controversial view I think the technology of blockchain can actually be used to recreate and rewrite a much better future through its innate abilities. we can avoid things like this: https://news.bitcoin.com/jpmorgan-fraud-billion-dollar-settlement/ 4. Highlights on cryptojacking - if you dont know what this is it is when a script or code runs on a computer to mine cryptocurrency using your computer resources. You can block these using other programs or scripts and being safe over the internet. 5. World economic forum names XRP as crypto asset most relevant in central bank digital currency space. Many partnerships in the space plus flare coming later. https://dailyhodl.com/2020/09/30/ripple-matchmaking-effort-discovered-featuring-170-financial-institutions-is-xrp-front-and-cente i definitely have a love hate relationship with XRP. 6. https://dailyhodl.com/2020/09/28/defi-movement-shatters-11000000000-in-total-crypto-assets-locked/ https://news.bitcoin.com/uniswap-captures-2-billion-locked-dex-volume-outpaces-second-largest-centralized-exchange/ 7. https://www.ey.com/en_au/blockchain/blockchain-platforms 8. https://dailyhodl.com/2020/09/29/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-says-bitcoin-and-blockchain-will-fuel-financial-freedom-and-transform-future-of-content-delivery/ 9. https://news.bitcoin.com/easily-spend-your-bitcoin-via-prepaid-debit-card-or-a-paypal-account-with-bitcoin-of-americas-easy-to-use-trading-platform/ 10. https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-com-exchange-to-list-aspire-and-aspire-gas-as-newest-digital-asset-creation-platform-comes-to-market/ 11. https://news.bitcoin.com/onecoin-victims-petition-establishment-european-crypto-fraud-compensation-fund/ 12. https://news.bitcoin.com/atari-announces-ieo-collaboration-and-listing-of-the-atari-token-with-bitcoin-com-exchange/ Atari also partners with Cryptocurrency project ULTRA. Don't sleep on NFT projects, they may be a niche but they help with organisation, collectability and simplifies processes. 13. https://news.bitcoin.com/aurus-disrupts-the-gold-industry-today-its-ecosystem-lists-at-a-value-of-75m/ 14. https://dailyhodl.com/2020/10/01/irs-deploying-two-firms-to-track-crypto-transactions-in-million-dollar-deal/ 15. https://dailyhodl.com/2020/10/01/number-of-crypto-users-shatters-100000000-worldwide-cambridge-study/ https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-posts-a-66-day-consecutive-streak-above-the-10k-price-range/ 16. https://news.bitcoin.com/cryptocurrency-exchange-diginex-trading-nasdaq/ 17. https://news.bitcoin.com/smart-contract-protocol-rsk-attempts-to-bring-defi-to-the-bitcoin-network/ 18. Bitmex news: https://news.bitcoin.com/bitmex-criminal-charges-prison/ well this happened. https://news.bitcoin.com/open-interest-on-bitmex-drops-16-investors-withdraw-37000-btc-in-less-than-24-hours/ https://dailyhodl.com/2020/10/02/bitmex-fires-back-after-us-accuses-crypto-exchange-of-failing-to-prevent-money-fraud/ https://dailyhodl.com/2020/10/03/440000000-in-bitcoin-exits-bitmex-as-crypto-traders-respond-to-cftc-allegations/ 19. Contract to break monero privacy: https://news.bitcoin.com/chainalysis-and-integra-win-1-25-million-irs-contract-to-break-monero/ 20. https://news.bitcoin.com/stacking-satoshis-leveraging-defi-applications-to-earn-more-bitcoin/ 21. https://dailyhodl.com/2020/10/02/bitcoin-whale-issues-big-warning-to-traders-heres-why-he-believes-group-of-crypto-assets-are-at-risk-from-regulators/ 22. https://news.bitcoin.com/venezuelas-state-run-defi-crypto-exchange-goes-live-after-maduros-anti-blockade-speech/ 23. https://news.bitcoin.com/crypto-exchange-coinbase-hands-over-customer-data-to-uk-tax-authority/ 24. https://news.bitcoin.com/jeff-booth-bitcoin-price-of-tomorrow/

25. https://news.bitcoin.com/eth-volumes-top-125-billion-in-q3-high-risk-dapps-dominate-tron-network/ 

Here is a small cross post for price movement: https://dailyhodl.com/2020/09/30/bitcoin-btc-tezos-xtz-cardano-ada-etoro-crypto-roundup/
Seems like everyone is bullish on bitcoin and leading crypto projects to make big gains over the next year, sooner rather than later. Bitcoin also holds above $10.5K with over 1Million wallets. Bitcoin interest is gaining throughout the world as many parts are hit by economic crisis.
Ethereum 2.0 roadmap updated, plans to exponentially increase scalability! VERY BULLISH. https://dailyhodl.com/2020/10/03/vitalik-buterin-updates-ethereum-2-0-roadmap-details-plans-to-exponentially-increase-scalability/

The QDAO DeFi community is helping us push the project to global success! The development of the platform continues, participants accrue daily income and new products are under development. Let’s share some important updates from last week.

Cryptocurrencies and DeFi coins market analysis

The situation in the crypto market has changed dramatically over the last week. It’s correction time! Market capitalization dropped to the $320 billion mark by losing almost 20% of its value. The reason is clear – a storm in the US stock markets.
Bitcoin lost 11.54% of its price and is now trading around the $10,050 mark. The breaking of $10,000 will be a strong signal for the whole community and could cause panic. The decline will continue towards lower figures.
The DeFi market reacted to the global sinking. In just one week, the total value locked in DeFi services dropped from the $9.5 billion height to $8 billion. Further decline is possible. Here are the week’s results of some popular DeFi coins:

• Chainlink: -26.65%
• Compound: -31.31%
• Aave: -24.53%
• yearn.finance: -31.88%

Now, the crypto market is vulnerable to the events in the traditional financial markets. If the crisis continues, we can expect a further decline.

DeFi news

The DeFi Market took a short break before the next race but remains in the spotlight of news outlets. Here are the most important news feeds of the week:

• SushiSwap got slammed! The highly anticipated project SushiSwap found itself crashed after a sharp increase in popularity. The project has been handed over to FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. The decision happened after SUSHI fell from $9.5 to $1.13 in just five days.
• Binance enters the DeFi race. One of the biggest exchanges, Binance is launching an automated market maker called Binance Liquid Swap.
• Chinese users demand their DeFi freedom! Local Chinese DeFi exchanges cannot withstand the onslaught of customers. DeFi is one of the most demanded search queries – 900,000 daily!

QDAO DeFi updates

The QDAO DeFi team is working hard to ensure the wealth of the community. Only consistency and users’ support will help our project achieve global success.
We added a series of useful tutorials on our YouTube channel. You can learn many things about popular DeFi platforms, crypto wallets and the DeFi market:

• How to deposit stablecoins into the Curve platform: https://youtu.be/NP6a8Jb3brc
• Balancer tutorial for newbies, how to swap ETH for BAL: https://youtu.be/2801F2lkeGs
• Introductions for Uniswap – the automated liquidity protocol: https://youtu.be/7Z0Pc_VPsqg
• How to create a Metamask wallet and purchase Ethereum (ETH): https://youtu.be/5RuVhk4lSnI
• An Interview with Mr. Mohammed Naquib on the potential of the DeFi market (Part 1): https://youtu.be/hQgaF7_U46w

QDAO DeFi’s blog is full of crucial information. We launched a series of educational articles with one main purpose – to help you earn and share the knowledge! Recently, we added some articles of great value, check them out to improve your investor’s experience:

• How to use yield farming in 2020 wisely: https://qdefi.io/en/blog/post/placing-your-crypto-eggs-eng
• Why stablecoins are not so safe and how to protect your assets: https://qdefi.io/en/blog/post/stablecoins-article-eng
• An interview with Mr. Mohammed Naquib on the potential of the DeFi market (Part 1): https://qdefi.io/en/blog/post/defi-special-guest-part-1-eng
• Who the DeFi leaders are and how to earn using their services: https://qdefi.io/en/blog/post/who-the-defi-leaders-are-eng
• Yield Farming is evolution of DeFi or a bubble? https://qdefi.io/en/blog/post/yield-farming-en

The latest stats from QDAO DeFi PULSE

Number of active users — 7894
Total amount of users’ funds:
2691818.1984 XRP
885.110144209 ETH
201.37511519 BTC
12952411.606 ADA
…and more.
Current users’ interest balance:
70510.0591 XRP
16.0863086 ETH
2.85178881 BTC
123353.165 ADA
…and more.
Number of withdrawals made: 5769
Want to be the first to hear QDAO DeFi news and updates? Visit our website and stay in touch with us on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and LINE (for the Japanese-speaking community).

Market News
The economic impact of the global lockdown continues to be felt around the world. A further 5.2 million Americans filed for unemployment, according to the US Labour Department, taking the total to just over 22 million for the month and wiping out a decade of employment gains.
Bitcoin dropped to a two week low as the price neared $6400, with many speculating that it would breach the $6,000 level. However, bears were left disappointed as Bitcoin surged and almost reached $7,200. We will be watching the price for an upside break to $7,400. As expected, due to their high correlations other cryptoassets followed suit, with Ethereum, Chainlink and Binance Coin staging strong rebounds.
The price of gold reached a 7-year high as the price peaked to over $1,740 before falling again to the $1,680 region. The sharp pullback in prices came as the dollar was firmly higher, providing some resistance to the asset’s recent climb. Bulls’ next upside price objective will be a close in June futures above the solid resistance level of $1,750. Meanwhile, the price of oil continues to face severe pressure. Crude oil once again found itself beneath the $20 level, which placed additional stress on the stock market.
The S&P 500, which gained more than 12% last week, has shown relative inconsistency as prices surged and fell throughout this week. Markets closed on Thursday partially higher than the week prior. U.S. futures on Friday will be heavily influenced by President Trump’s announcement as he details plans to reopen the U.S. economy.
Industry News

• Stocks Have Best Week Since 1938 After $2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Bill
• Singapore Court Locks Crypto Exchange KuCoin’s Web Domain
• Gold futures mark lowest settlement in a week

Other News

• Read the IML Q1-20 Report here.
• Invictus Article: Why Gold and its Tokenization is as Relevant as Ever.
• Invictus in the Press: CEO Daniel Schwartzkopff Interview with Talent Land.
• The soft cap for the Invictus Gold Plus Fund has been reached, with over $250,000 raised so far. Read more here.

Market News
The economic impact of the global lockdown continues to be felt around the world. A further 5.2 million Americans filed for unemployment, according to the US Labour Department, taking the total to just over 22 million for the month and wiping out a decade of employment gains.
Bitcoin dropped to a two week low as the price neared $6400, with many speculating that it would breach the $6,000 level. However, bears were left disappointed as Bitcoin surged and almost reached $7,200. We will be watching the price for an upside break to $7,400. As expected, due to their high correlations other cryptoassets followed suit, with Ethereum, Chainlink and Binance Coin staging strong rebounds.
The price of gold reached a 7-year high as the price peaked to over $1,740 before falling again to the $1,680 region. The sharp pullback in prices came as the dollar was firmly higher, providing some resistance to the asset’s recent climb. Bulls’ next upside price objective will be a close in June futures above the solid resistance level of $1,750. Meanwhile, the price of oil continues to face severe pressure. Crude oil once again found itself beneath the $20 level, which placed additional stress on the stock market.
The S&P 500, which gained more than 12% last week, has shown relative inconsistency as prices surged and fell throughout this week. Markets closed on Thursday partially higher than the week prior. U.S. futures on Friday will be heavily influenced by President Trump’s announcement as he details plans to reopen the U.S. economy.
Industry News

• Stocks Have Best Week Since 1938 After $2 Trillion Coronavirus Stimulus Bill
• Singapore Court Locks Crypto Exchange KuCoin’s Web Domain
• Gold futures mark lowest settlement in a week

Other News

• Read the IML Q1-20 Report here.
• Invictus Article: Why Gold and its Tokenization is as Relevant as Ever.
• Invictus in the Press: CEO Daniel Schwartzkopff Interview with Talent Land.
• The soft cap for the Invictus Gold Plus Fund has been reached, with over $250,000 raised so far. Read more here.

Hi Bitcoiners!
I’m back with the 30th monthly Bitcoin news recap.
For those unfamiliar, each day I pick out the most popularelevant/interesting stories in Bitcoin and save them. At the end of the month I release them in one batch, to give you a quick (but not necessarily the best) overview of what happened in bitcoin over the past month.
You can see recaps of the previous months on Bitcoinsnippets.com
A recap of Bitcoin in May 2019
Adoption

• A local convenience store accepting bitcoin (1 Jun)
  
• The ₿ symbol is now available on iOS, Android and Microsoft services (4 Jun)
  
• Wasabi Wallet does its first ever 100 person CoinJoin (6 Jun)
  
• Asking shops to accept bitcoins when buying online (10 Jun)
  
• South Korea gets its first bitcoin ATM (13 Jun)
  
• Bitcoin passes 1 million daily active addresses again, like in November 2017 (15 Jun)
  
• A bitcoin update from Venezuela (17 Jun)
  
• A gas station that accepts bitcoin (21 Jun)
  
• Someone receives a letter from their 88 year old father who started investing a few years earlier (25 Jun)
  
• Buying coffee through the Lightning Network at a Bitcoin conference (29 Jun)
  

Development

• Watchtowers are coming with the next big release for the Lightning Network (11 Jun)
  
• Someone who managed a bounty wallet dedicated to a scalability concept from 2012 is offering the 5.725 btc to a new scalability project (12 Jun)
  
• Lightning Labs’ non-custodial Lightning mobile app is now on mainnet (19 Jun)
  
• An overview of potential upcoming updates to Bitcoin’s consensus rules (21 Jun)
  
• Lightning Labs announces Loop In, a service that helps manage Lightning Channels (26 Jun)
  
• A list of technical improvements coming to the Lightning Network (28 Jun)
  

Security

• An overview of 9 easy ways to lose your cryptocurrency with a bonus 10th in the comments (5 Jun)
  
• A storage socket as an idea to store a physical bitcoin wallet (8 Jun)
  
• A discussion on what someone who lost access to their 9.5 bitcoins from years ago can do (11 Jun)
  
• A reminder to not store your bitcoins on any exchange (14 Jun)
  
• A warning against a support number scam for Ledger hardware wallets (14 Jun)
  
• Irish cryptocurrency exchange Bitsane exit scams its self-proclaimed 246k users (28 Jun)
  

Mining

• A reminder of a report on how 74$ of Bitcoin mining is powered by renewable energy (9 Jun)
  
• The block reward is halving again in under a year (12 Jun)
  
• A reminder that cloud mining ventures are scams (16 Jun)
  
• Bitcoin’s hashrate hits another all-time high (20 Jun)
  

Business

• Samourai Wallet receives $100k in funding (3 Jun)
  
• HodlHodl exchange enables users to buy and sell bitcoin directly from their Lightning Network wallets (5 Jun)
  
• Bitcoin Suisse ads on Zurch’s airport (11 Jun)
  
• Bitrefill raises $2M in funding to grow its team and advance its Lightning Network services (13 Jun)
  
• Bakkt will initiate user acceptance testing for its bitcoin futures in July (13 Jun)
  
• People are concerned about the ethics, censorship resistance, centralization and privacy of Facebook’s Libra project (14 Jun)
  
• Coinbase becomes one of the participants in Facebook’s Libra project (22 Jun)
  
• CashApp by Square enables bitcoin deposits (25 Jun)
  

Research

• goTenna releases a whitepaper for mobile mesh network bitcoin payments (11 Jun)
  
• Ruben Somsen explains his research on Statechains, a novel layer two protocol (16 Jun)
  

Education

• A livestream of day 1 from the Bitcoin lightning network hack day in Munich (1 Jun)
  
• A livestream of day 2 from the Bitcoin lightning network hack day in Munich (2 Jun)
  
• Setting up Lightning network channels could be an investment for the future (3 Jun)
  
• Alternatives to LocalBitcoins to buy Bitcoin privately (5 Jun)
  
• Andreas Antonopoulos on Bitcoin as the “email” of the Internet of Money (11 Jun)
  
• Carl Dong explains the Bitcoin build system security (12 Jun)
  
• A simple explainer of Erlay, a performance improvement to the Bitcoin network that reduces node traffic (16 Jun)
  
• This week’s Donald Duck children magazine in the Netherlands is about Bitcoin (21 Jun)
  
• People discuss capital gains tax on bitcoin investments and trading (21 Jun)
  
• A discussion on how many people don’t invest in Bitcoin, but use it to store their savings (24 Jun)
  
• An overview of useful information for newcomers to Bitcoin (25 Jun)
  
• A reminder of Andreas Antonopoulos testimony for the Canadian Senate in 2014 (26 Jun)
  
• Edward Snowden speaks about privacy at a Bitcoin conference (27 Jun)
  
• A reminder that a Bitcoin equals 100M satoshis and you can own less than a full bitcoin (30 Jun)
  

Regulation & Politics

• LocalBitcoins is forced to remove its cash trade option (1 Jun)
  
• The Reserve Bank of India denies involvement in a draft bill to ban cryptocurrencies (8 Jun)
  
• Binance to block users from the US (15 Jun)
  

Archeology (Financial Incumbents)

• Someone’s bank account is frozen for 4 weeks because they sold bitcoin (4 Jun)
  
• 86 years ago the US moved off of the gold standard for the people (5 Jun)
  
• Warren Buffet claimed that Bitcoin is a ‘gambling device’ with ‘a lot of frauds’ loses $340M in a Ponzi scheme (6 Jun)
  
• The European Central Bank announces its new plans to print more euros and cut interest rates (10 Jun)
  
• Warren Buffet has 40% of his stock portfolio invested in banks and credit card companies (15 Jun)
  
• Federal Chairman Jerome Powell speaks on cryptocurrency (19 Jun)
  

Price & Trading

• People discuss marketing manipulation vs a free market in bitcoin trading (4 Jun)
  
• An overview of annual minimum bitcoin prices (8 Jun)
  
• Bitcoin reaches an all-time price high in Argentine Pesos due to hyperinflation (9 Jun)
  
• Relative to this day, there were only 70 days that Bitcoin was unprofitable to buy (23 Jun)
  
• An article in the Wall Street Journal Business section on the bitcoin price (24 Jun)
  
• An animation of bitcoin’s price graph from 2009 to the present showing many hype cycles (26 Jun)
  
• A reminder of how most traders lose money (26 Jun)
  
• The $1 of free bitcoin Coinbase handed out in 2015 to new users is worth about $50 now (27 Jun)
  
• A TV interview in the Philippines on the bitcoin price (27 Jun)
  
• People talk a lot about the bitcoin price but not so much about the increase in volume (28 Jun)
  

Fun & Other

• Another Bitcoin street art painting (2 Jun)
  
• If you invested $10 per day into bitcoin starting at its peak in December 2017, you would be up 46% (3 Jun)
  
• A recommendation on the book Sapiens due to its chapter 10 on money, which reinforces the vision for Bitcoin (5 Jun)
  
• Bitpay is overcharging its users for bitcoin transactions (5 Jun)
  
• Bitcoin art on hyperinflated Venezuelan Bolivares bills (10 Jun)
  
• Forbes accurately reports that nobody knows what Bitcoin will do next (13 Jun)
  
• The launch of the FiatMarketCap website (16 Jun)
  
• A Satoshi Nakamoto impersonator has been ordered by a judge to prove his claims of being the creator of Bitcoin (17 Jun)
  
• A reminder that there will never be enough bitcoin for all of today’s existing millionaires to own one (17 Jun)
  
• A discussion on bitcoin as a store of value (23 Jun)
  
• A CNBC news anchor on Facebook’s Libra project compared to Bitcoin (25 Jun)
  
• Google’s search algorithm is unaware that Bitcoin has no CEO (29 Jun)
  
• Former Vice President of the US, Al Gore, on Bitcoin (29 Jun)
  

Vulnerability refers to the property that things are vulnerable to damage when faced with fluctuations.
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb
In the face of economic fluctuations, it is disadvantageous to hold such a negative view. Every capital market has its own life cycle, which inevitably goes through a process from growth, to peak, and then to recession. Now is no exception. As we emerge from the longest bull market in history, we suddenly find ourselves in a highly vulnerable global economy facing the panicked and perplexed planet unprepared. However, the turmoil has just begun.
Newton's first law, also known as "the law of inertia", means that any object must maintain a constant linear motion or standstill until an external force forces it to change its state of motion. Although this analogy does not perfectly correspond to the capital market (because the market is always changing and developing in different directions), at least one thing is certain that under the action of the market mechanism, the market cycle always appears Trend from peak to valley.
The music box winds up, and the performance of the song sounds, and then it stops after a while. When this happens, the market structure collapses, eventually leading to huge chaos, and then falling into silence. Once external forces force the entire economy into trouble, people will realize the long-standing hidden structural defects in the economy.
Now, the world economy is on the verge of crisis again. All human beings have to face a sudden outbreak of a global epidemic and the resulting shocks in supply and demand in the market. The economies of some countries have stalled. Ironically, the effects of inertia may be prevalent in market fluctuations.
While witnessing the development of the global economy, we still find two simultaneous macro trends:
--1-- USD strong We believe that the strong US dollar is driven by three factors: Investors turn to safe assets: Despite the Fed ’s interest rate cuts and monetary stimulus policies, the market ’s increasing demand for the US dollar has pushed up the US dollar index and hit a new high in 18 years.
US Dollar Financing Issues: Cross-currency basis swaps measure that investors are more inclined to hold the US dollar than the euro or the yen.
On March 17, the euro-dollar basis swap swap premium expanded from -60 basis points to -120 basis points, the highest level since 2011. As of press time, the Euro-US dollar basis swap has rapidly dropped to about -27 basis points, while the US dollar-Japanese yen basis swap has expanded to -70 basis points. Negative basis points indicate greater pressure on the dollar and higher hedging costs for European and Japanese investors.
The reality is that U.S. banks, which are the main source of funding for the U.S. dollar, are storing large amounts of cash instead of actively issuing short-term U.S. dollar loans to foreign banks. Due to recent pressure from the balance sheet, more and more U.S. banks are beginning to reduce credit lines to retain cash. In addition, many foreign banks that lack direct access to the US dollar market can only rely on central bank liquidity swaps for financing. This week, the Fed and several other central banks opened new liquidity swap tools, providing USD 30 billion to USD 60 billion of liquidity, respectively, to ease pressure on USD financing.
Central banks in emerging market countries are taking urgent steps and lowering their benchmark interest rates: Emerging market investors are very worried about the stability of their currencies and are pouring into the dollar market. According to Bloomberg, all major emerging market currencies weakened against the US dollar on January 20, just as the new crown virus began to spread in Asia.
——2—— Treasury liquidity tightening Abnormally performing credit markets: In general, price fluctuations will prompt investors to switch from risky assets (such as stocks) to safe-haven assets (such as bonds). This was indeed the case when the new coronavirus was causing panic. However, the current despair of liquidity (especially cash) by market investors has led to a large-scale sell-off in the global bond market, falling bond prices and rising interest rates.
Repurchase market: The Federal Reserve's rescue measures have not brought the expected results. In the past week, the Federal Reserve announced three repurchases and other measures to release liquidity, hoping to ease the current state of the US Treasury market and reduce the inventory of primary dealers. However, market demand for government bonds remains sluggish.
Let's turn our eyes from the home of the macro economy to the cryptocurrency market. Although they are not necessarily related, we find that the two are closely related.
In the face of volatility, it is particularly important to develop a price action strategy. The CBOE-VIX index, an indicator that predicts the trend of the S & P 500 in the next 30 days, has surged to its highest level since the last global financial crisis. At the same time, we also saw that the 90-day implied volatility of Bitcoin options rose to 6.8% (annualized 130%), which is about 5.9% (annualized 113%) this weekend. As the "Black Thursday" on March 12th, BTC was down 40% and ETH was down 50%, some leveraged positions were forced to close. According to reports, BitMEX alone closed USD 700 million worth of long and short positions. At the same time, the sell-off of ETH dropped the value of the DeFi ecosystem by 40%. The total amount of collateral liquidation of Compound, dYdX and Maker and other lending platforms reached US $ 10 million. But in this turbulent market, not all assets perform so badly.
Although the price of BTC, like the stock market at the beginning, plummeted, falling by 60% from the high price in mid-February, it rebounded by about 50% from the price low on March 12. Over the past period, we have found a large amount of funds flowing from altcoins to BTC. With the spot premium (the spot price is higher than the futures price), the demand for bitcoin lending has increased. The effective fund interest rate also gradually returned to normal as the curve was inverted. In contrast, when futures are at a premium (the futures price is higher than the spot price), there is almost no demand for BTC's lending transactions. At present, the BTC funding rate on various lending platforms has increased from 3-5% to 8%, and the ETH funding rate has increased from 2-4% to 6%.
——3—— Floating profit stablecoin market Since February 14, the entire cryptocurrency market has experienced a large-scale sell-off, with a market value of $ 45 billion evaporated. At the same time, the market value of USDT has risen to nearly $ 5 billion. USDT has emerged from this market volatility and has become a safe-haven asset. This week, the premium rate of USDT prices in China and South Korea is as high as 7%, which is caused by the demand of payment service providers and arbitrage traders. The current over-the-counter USDT supply exceeds supply. At the same time, the market value of USDC climbed to US $ 630 million, a record high. The market value of BUSD is exceeding the US $ 150 million mark, mainly due to the surge in demand for Binance's borrowing and margin trading.
——4—— Near-term outlook We pay close attention to the changing macroeconomic trends and the successive monetary and fiscal policies implemented by governments around the world. Although we cannot predict the specific trend of the market, we still believe that cryptocurrency as an asset class will be strong. In a nutshell, we think:
● Due to the recent sell-off in the market, the value of positions has shrunk sharply, making the distribution of positions in the market clearer.
● With the exit of market makers, the spread between major exchanges has brought more market arbitrage opportunities for retail traders. In particular, the derivatives market (futures and perpetual swaps) has seen a significant discount compared to the spot market, which has pushed up BTC's lending rate.
● By hedging the spot and long futures, market participants can carry out arbitrage trading, which is completely contrary to the market situation we saw last year (the futures price is significantly higher than the spot).
● Over the past six months, trading activities in the options market have grown rapidly. We expect that trading activities in the options market will continue to grow.
● At present, on our platform, institutional clients such as hedge funds, arbitrage traders, crypto companies, etc. have all bought a lot of BTC and USDT.
Market volatility is part of investment. We believe that after a period of time, the economy will re-enter the upward trajectory, please let us work together for it.