Whether buying or selling, whether Bitcoin or Ethereum, the numbers haven't changed for the last 20+ minutes.
My guess is that the source from which BlockFi gets their trade rates is down, so they are simply re-offering the last value retrieved from them. This isn't like past events where the whole site goes down from excessive traffic, it's just that the market rate has frozen.
Here's a compilation of several different websites I utilize to help DYOR. I figured it would be worthwhile to share them with everyone here to [hopefully] make things just a little bit easier when it comes to researching more about crypto. If there's any other websites that you recommend, let me know and I can include them within the list! I've posted again in case anyone has missed the initial post. I hope it helps!
TradingView:
A cloud based charting and social networking platform. You can search out several different crypto traders and see whether people are feeling more bearish or bullish as a result. You can either create your own price targets, or find out others' price targets. https://www.tradingview.com/
CoinGecko:
A website and an app that allows you to stay on top of crypto markets. You can use it to view live price changes for thousands of different cryptos, set price alerts, rate and view ratings for a coin, build lists, view trending news, etc. It also has a reward system that hasn't been fully developed yet, but could be utilized in the future for NFT's, their own crypto, etc. https://www.coingecko.com/en
CoinMarketCap:
Similar to CoinGecko, allows you to stay up to date on crypto markets. Also allows you to see thousands of cryptocurrencies, with the capability to look at brand new crypto's being released, as well as current trending crypto's as well. Has an 'earn' section which allows you to perform quizzes to end with a chance at getting airdropped crypto, as well as a rewards section which allows you to collect diamonds which will be used at a later time as well. https://coinmarketcap.com/
CoinMarketCal:
This website shows all upcoming events and future releases regarding a certain Cryptocurrency. Allows you to see what's being released by which cryptocurrency, and gives you an opportunity to buy ahead in anticipation for price increases as a result of upcoming events. https://coinmarketcal.com/en/
Blocktivity:
It's utilized as a good metric to compare coins based on their adoption. https://blocktivity.info
MultiCoinCharts:
A website that allows you to view multiple different coins at once. It's a great resource to utilize if you often watch various coins at the same time, or need to often look between different coins at a high frequency. https://www.multicoincharts.com/
Glassnode:
Allows you to unchain market indicators for Bitcoin and Ethereum. You’ll be able to see stats like exchange info volume for them. https://glassnode.com/
Fear and Greed:
Allows you to take a look at the crypto fear and greed index to have an idea how the people are feeling in general about crypto right now, and historical values over the past months as well. Good way to gauge buying and selling opportunities. https://alternative.me/crypto/fear-and-greed-index/
CryptoQuant:
Allows you to view the amount of bitcoin being transferred to and from exchange wallets to understand investors' behaviors. Allows you to better understand what people are currently doing within the markets. https://cryptoquant.com/overview/btc-exchange-flows
Alt Season Index:
This website is used as an indicator to see how the altcoins are performing in comparison to Bitcoin. It has a generalized score rating to determine whether we are in Altcoin season (over 75 being Altcoin season), or Bitcoin season (under 25 being Bitcoin season). We are currently sitting at 63 right now. https://www.blockchaincenter.net/altcoin-season-index/
CoinDance:
A site more comprised of data that allows you to see the numbers for things such as hash rates, fees, mining breakdowns, network nodes and more. Further, you can view statistics based on country to determine how adoption is going based on their trends and news. https://coin.dance/
-TheCoinPerspective:
Allows you to view certain things such as current market caps, speculative market caps, total supplies and maximum supplies to allow you to see how coins could progress or regress. https://thecoinperspective.com/
CryptoPro:
Tracks cryptocurrency prices, manage your portfolio, set price alerts, and read latest news with crypto portfolio tracker. Can be utilized as an app through the phone too. https://cryptopro.app/
Messari:
Provides reliable data and market intelligence with professional grade data, tools, and research.
I'm trying to get a better handle on multisig for how Electrum manages it. I more or less understand how Bitcoin does it (I've read Andreas's "Mastering Bitcoin" anyway). I've read however that Electrum doesn't do multisig in the same way.
Say I have three people I want to inherit in the event of my death, but I don't want them to have access. Can I create a 4/5 multisig (keys ABCDE), pass one each of both XPUB and XPRIV (A, B, C) to the three people, and keep (D,E) for myself, while also giving both the XPUB and XPRIVs (DA, DB, DC) to multiple other parties (who are unknown to each other) for safekeeping and signing?
Would this allow the three heirs to look up public addresses in any way? Would this allow the other parties to sign transactions? Would the other parties only need the XPRIV/XPUB for their two keys, or would I have to give them the XPUBs for all five?
Thanks.
Some people like benjamin cowen argue that cycles are most likely gonna lengthen, but I would like to know how that relates to bitcoin halving, if that indeed was the case. If cycles were to lengthen (lets say both bear and bull), then this would not match the fact that bitcoin halving events should trigger a bull run.
So do people who believe in lengthening cycles think that bitcoin halving should be independent from bull/bear cycles at some point? Or how does that make sense
And anyways, what are the fundamentals that halving events should trigger a bull run? The increase of supply decreases, but this should be priced in before. Is it miners behaviour?
Pls someone explain or make sense of all that confusion haha.
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Well well well, as it turns out, this Evergrande situation turned out to be nothing more than FUD for the most part. Bitcoin briefly hit 39k and the media and people on this sub started putting out stuff saying that we're in a bear market now and that bitcoin would crash to 30k, but instead it immediately bounced back to 41k+ and Evergrande met their debt deadline. The next time a market event like this occurs we should just refer to it as "pulling an Evergrande". A move back to 47-48k seems imminent now.
It’s astonishing the amount of people trying to explain the charts using this event. The market is acting the way it should. Lets dive into what happened in correlation to technicals at the monent.
Late July the 5th elliot wave began forming. Bitcoin daily chart shows clearly another wave inside wave (5), which is now coming to an end forming the final (C) wave. I’d like to point out that the previous big wave up (3) also came to a correction around 30 days in. That is what BTC does, it goes up and comes back to support for continuation. This wave is almost mimicking the previous one.
Now, the one thing nobody expected was going all the way down to 42k in one day. That happened before Evergrande was news, you understand that? What followed was the 2 final corrective waves (b) 48k and (c) 40k, both predictable since wave (c) is usually the size of wave (a) which fell 10k.
By losing 44k bitcoin fell below a head and shoulders pattern which placed it in a technical target to 35k. For now it has found support and bounced off the 111-day moving average, an indicator for continuation. It is likely to see some consolidation for now. 40k is support, as long as it holds it’s positive.
A black swan event is something you don’t see coming, a virus or war. Corona dump that happened last year is a good example. Evergrande is something big and vital to China’s economy, which was likely foreseen. In response China granted Evergrande a bond payment deal and pumped a lot of money in it to soothe out the potential effect on the market and avoid such crash. In addition China relies on USD for global business and they would not just let it crash.
That’s all, no speculation just stating what’s in front of you. Waves are forming like chichi. FUD affects the markets, as much as people allow it to. I hope this brought some insight to some. Try and DCA your buys, so you can take advatage of pontential dips and stay leveraged. Dips are for buying not for crying. Peace.
DeFi 2.0 is an inevitable growth for future finance with powerful and unprecedented vitality. With the SDS token, KeplerSwap aims to create a new DeFi 2.0 Eco-system with fairness and reliability that involves all mankind.
KeplerSwap DeFi Vision
The vision of KeplerSwap is to build and implement a large-scale DeFi application platform to support economic activities using blockchain technology.
It aims to continuously innovate and build success and achievements from the initial creation of KEPLER.
SDS Token
SDS (Seeds Token) is the main medium that supports the value construction of KeplerSwap. It's the creative seed for the DeFi 2.0 ecosystem.
80% of the SDS will be mined, 10% will be used for airdrops and market partnerships, while 10% will be used for private placement projects.
SDS Price Prediction
The KeplerSwap SDS Token isn't just a utility token but also a governance token given by keplerSwap to permit token holders to shape protocol futures.
The platform plans to supply up to 210,000,000 SDS tokens. 80% SDS are generated from mining, 10% SDS are reserved for business and marketing cooperation, while 10% SDS are reserved for private placement.
The significant part of SDS Token is that no SDS would be reserved for KeplerSwap. 97.5% of the transaction fees generated by trading SDS will be given back to users, while 2.5% would be utilized for Ecological construction. Hence, it has achieved a 100% value return as the first token holders contribute to KeplerSwap liquidity.
SDS Token is launched for KeplerSwap utility, and it's the seed set to raise the next phase of DeFi. In other words, the SDS token aims to drive the new DeFi 2.0.
The Future Price Prediction of SDS
Cryptocurrencies have grown to a higher level since late 2020. For instance, CoinGecko reported that the Bitcoin price reached $64,863 in April 2021, and the total market value of DeFi has reached an unprecedented height of $140 billion.
Specifically, the SDS price prediction will be $10 towards the end of 2021 when the platform considers what the crypto industry provides. Currently, the SDS token is being pre-sold.
The public blockchain of KeplerSwap will be implemented in 2022. After that, the platform will develop other Cryptocurrency projects. The implementation will lead to an increase in SDS prices. With that, the price of SDS can sky-rocket to $100 or 1000 USDT in the near future.
Features and Benefits of KeplerSwap SDS Token
A unique thing about KeplerSwap is the transaction fee. The platform returns a big proportion of trading fees to the users.
SDS token, the first underlying asset on KeplerSwap, gives 80% mining output to Kepler members.
Each SDS holder has a decision-making right for important events, especially the voting right in the community governance. Any SDS holder can provide a proposal that'll change the community.
SDS Token users can select various cryptocurrency pairs in liquidity market making. With the smart aggregating system on the liquidity pool, SDS Token will select the subject pair automatically to make the maximum return.
SDS is the main token output for liquidity market making on KeplerSwap. Members are encouraged to contribute to liquidity market making by incentivization.
With SDS token, KeplerSwap proposes different liquidity market-making plans to users. It has the flexibility to create a self-service market-making contribution.
SDS token is the exchange medium on KeplerSwap, and it has high liquidity. It can exchange on cross-chains with other tokens on KeplerSwap.
An SDS holder can create SPACE and become a SPACE Owner.
With SDS Token, the holder and liquidity provider can gain the interests of platform tokens by 1:100.
Interest offerings of new project tokens are granted to users who hold SDS in stock.
KeplerSwap SDS Price Prediction: Final Analysis
SDS Token is the creative seed for the DeFi 2.0 ecosystem. And it aims to be the key to innovation and autonomy in DeFi 2.0. The SDS price is set to be $10 at the end of 2021, and it will rise further in the future following the implementation of the KeplerSwap public blockchain.
Finally, it's vital to add that SDS tokens are based on the following uses; Transaction Fee Allocation, LUCKY POOL reward, Yield Farming, Exchanges between Tokens, Ecological Medium token, Smart Aggregation, Airdrop, SPACE Creation and Voting, Interests Conversion, and Token Pledged for Coin Listing.
Hi Everyone,
Monday was a rough day and many bitcoiners went to panic selling, after this incident we have a fear index on 27. That's frustrated situation because all the events which was going on was suggesting that it should break the next resistance and go to higher levels.
Will this incident repeat again? Idk , but what I Know is that Bitcoin has alts already and it's web 3.0 chains where I see many promising projects coming out.
One of them is BitcoinLatinum, new btc hard fork and new word in cryptospace.
They are taking massive steps so you might see them on yahoo finance, bloomberg and many other social media platforms.
Anyone heard about it? What's your opinion ?
Hey all, found this presentation by a risk management company in the US on GME. Tried to link this the other day but have since converted it to text as people seem hesitant to download the pdf from a random link. Sorry if the formatting is questionable, I've bolded the title of each slide (was a powerpoint) to make it a little easier.
tl;dr From what I can understand they are explaining one particular "implicit short volatility" strategy called variance swaps. These swaps allow the fund to be short the volatility of an asset/s, meaning they were betting on GME and others to stay pretty consistently within their ranges prior to Dec 2021/Jan 2021. They talk about periodic rebalancing of the position, which may explain the quarterly price volatility we've seen since Jan. The mention of "implicit" short strategies suggests to me funds may not directly be short the assets in question, but I can't be sure.
GameStop, Variance Swaps, and Related Failures of Hedge Fund Risk Management
Dan diBartolomeo
Northfield Webinar
March 2021
Introduction
•Recently there have been some highly publicized failures of hedge fund risk management. These events resulted in very large losses for hedge fund investors.Hedge fund activity at multiple firms (including Fidelity) has been discontinued. •In this presentation, we will describe persistent weaknesses in the way that hedge funds have managed risk in their portfolios and illustrate how such failures could have been avoided.
•The common theme of these problems is the improper assessment of how particular investments create either increased uncertainty or higher moments in the distribution of fund returns. –Good risk management focuses on what we don’t expect to happen but still might. When crossing a street, you only get hit by cars you don’t see coming.
Misunderstanding Liquidity
•The first thematic failure connecting these events is an implicit assumption that liquidity is always more than sufficient and therefore risk management practices can assume that hedging relationships (e.g. a long/short portfolio) will be rebalanced continuously. •While the assumption of continuous rebalancing leads to elegant closed-form math for pricing many derivatives, reliance on this assumption leads to biased estimation of risk. –All risk computations assume that the portfolio position weights are known. We don’t know what the weights will be between now and the next rebalancing, so traditional risk estimates are downward biased. –If you can only rebalance a market neutral portfolio periodically, the maximum loss is 100% of the value of the long side, but the maximum loss on the short side is unbounded.This means that distribution of fund returns will have negative skew and positive kurtosis.
Strategies Embedding Higher Moments
•The second failure is the intentional adoption of strategies (e.g. selling variance swaps) that have negative skew so that the fund returns on average are higher but where extreme losses are far more frequent than would be expected under a normal distribution (although still relatively rare). •Even without variance swaps many other strategies popular with hedge funds build in implicit “short vol” –These include many forms of derivative strategies –Distressed and high yield debt –Deep equity valuetilts
•Being “short volatility” increases returns most of the time, but when you lose, you lose a lot.
Ignorance of Boundary Conditions
•The third issue is the persistent failure to account for the implications of boundary conditions associated with observable market data. •For example, the implied volatility of some GME options reached over 500% annualized at certain recent points. •The annualized variance of 250,000%2means that the expectation of the geometric mean return for GME would be aboutnegative 5% per trading day. •Hedge funds often assume volatility is mean reverting, so a 500% GME vol was not sustainable so saw this is an alpha opportunity, but failed to incorporate the implied drift in option valuation calculations –Under the continuous rebalancing assumption of Black Scholes, the drift term drops out most of the time.
Hedge Fund Strategies and Time
•Prior to the development of derivative markets in the 1970s, risk and return were presumed to coincident in time.With derivatives or strategies that mimic derivative behavior, we can separate return and risk in time. •We can accept risk today for return tomorrow or obtain return today in exchange for risk tomorrow. Obviously, return today for risk tomorrow (also known as “short vol”) sounds rather appealing to financial market participants with short time horizons •These strategies always look appealing when evaluated on a historical basis, because the survival of the strategy so far indicates that the day of reckoning has not yet arrived.It is like farming in the fertile soil under a volcano and hoping no eruption comes during your tenancy.
Creating the Appearanceof Hedge Fund Skill
•This idea that “short vol” strategies give hedge funds the appearance of skill has been well recognized in the financial literature. –A Northfield client conference featured a presentation by Weisman on this issue in 2001, https://www.northinfo.com/documents/166.pdf(see slide 25) where it was demonstrated that a simulated “no skill” option strategy could have an 86% chance of doubling the return of the risk free rate in any year. –The likelihood was that such strategies would suffer catastrophic losses in very volatile periods, and so the expected cumulative return over long periods would be no better than the risk free rate. –However, for a hedge fund manager receiving performance based fees, the economic outcomes would be very favorable to the manager, and unfavorable to investors.
•A broad study of how this effect biased investor perceptions of hedge fund performance upward was provided in Bondarenko(2004).
Hedge Funds Aren’t the Only Volatility Traders
•One hedge fund that was long volatility (and so endured many years of small losses) reported a return of more than 4000%in the first quarter of 2020. –On the other hand, we are aware of one multi-strategy hedge fund that lost 400%on their volatility trading activities over the same period. –It should be noted that many seemingly “vanilla” strategies have some lesser degree of volatility dependence.Even popular equity strategies like “value” and “momentum” have these properties as described in diBartolomeo (2007), https://www.northinfo.com/documents/234.pdf.
•Several large asset owners experienced very large losses associated with “short vol” strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic –It has been publicly reported that Canadian retirement plan AIMCO lost $2 Billion on volatility bets.
Understanding Variance Swaps
•At the high end of volatility strategies is participation in variance swaps. –These instruments are not really investments but rather are pure hedging contracts (i.e. bets).Unlike identifiable financial instruments or commodities, the underlying “volatility” is not deliverable in any form. –Like credit default swaps, they are not really insurance either, as there is no concept of insurable interest (e.g. I can’t buy fire insurance on your house).
•What is unique about variance swaps is that the size of the bet is effectively known to the parties making the bet only after the fact. –It is similar to gambling on sports like American football.Scores vary widely with some games low scoring (e.g. 7-0)and others high scoring (45-37). –The situation is like betting on the outcome of such games, but where value of the bet is set as the square of the total points scored. –In the former case, the financial transfer from loser to winner of the bet would be $49, while in the latter case it would be around $6500, a magnitude increase of more than 100 times.
Analyzing Variance Swaps
•There are several textbook analytical methods for pricing variance swaps by replicating them with combinations of traditional derivatives. –Seminal papers are Carr and Madan (1998), Derman, Demeterfi, Kamal and Zou (1999), and Carr and Lee (2009). –However, all of these computational methods have underlying assumptions about the nature of financial market behavior. –Some of the models are only appropriate for swaps where the future payoff will be based on how much volatility is realizedin a specific financial market over a particular time period. –Other models are appropriate when payoffs are based only how much volatility is expected to occur over some future time period. –As such, traded volatility contracts such as the CBOE VIX (or BVI for Bitcoin) are not necessarily efficient to hedge variance swaps that are tied to volatility realizations.
GME, AMC and Other HF Misadventures
•The recent trading activity by a loosely coordinated group of retail investors in GameStop, AMC Entertainment, and other presumably speculative assets has garnered a great deal of attention from both the financial press and from securities regulators. –This set of securities saw meteoric rises in price followed by equally spectacular declines.It has been widely reported that a number of prominent hedge funds (and their investors) have sustained billions of dollars in losses arising from “short squeeze” events.
•We are frankly perplexed that that risk management processes at these funds appear so primitive as to be unprepared for such occurrences. –Northfield risk models have contained a number of specific features that anticipate the potential for such events and so correctly captured the rapid increase in portfolio risk in a nearly instantaneous fashion.
A History Lesson
Manipulation of stock prices was completely legal in the USA until 1933.In those days, the term for somebody who made a living manipulating equity prices to benefit their own trading was called a stock “operator”.
The most famous book on the subject was Reminiscences of a Stock Operatorby Edwin Lefevre which was published as a work of fiction in 1923.In reality, the book was an autobiography of Jesse Livermore (a famous operator).He was at one point in time one of the richest men in the world.He eventually lost most of his money.
Manipulation of stock prices by spreading false information is still not specifically prohibited in many countries, and in the US for assets not covered by the US Securities Act of 1933 (commodities, currencies, crypto,).Muni bonds and US Treasuries are not covered by the 1933 Act. but the SEC has asserted some jurisdiction by saying they have rules that cover bond mutual funds.
More Liquidity Problems
•Extreme price movements do not require huge amounts of money to create.In the October 19th, 1987 stock market crash the entire US equity market went down around 23% or over $1 TRILLION as the result of only $15 Billion trading volume, which is a modest sum for many of our existing clients. The global loss of value impact was over $2 Trillion. •We have repeatedly pointed out pointed out the potential for these kinds of events in The Liquidity Risk Time Bomb (northinfo.com). The recent extreme price movements are very familiar to anybody who was around in 1987. •Many of the same basic ingredients appear in both matters: the use leverage (via margin or options), speculative traders who ignore fundamental business value, and cash flow timing dependencies between brokers, clearing firms (creating liquidity problems transaction processing), and exchanges. •For the 1987, the definitive government study was the Brady Commission Report, brilliantly authored by the recently deceased Harvard professor, Robert Glauber, https://archive.org/details/reportofpresiden01unit.
Back Office Issues
•We would also assert another similarity between then and now.The people who are responsible for keeping brokerage accounts functioning smoothly appear to receive inadequate training. •To be the “financial and operations principal” of a US brokerage house of any size, you have to pass a 145 question multiple choice test called FINRA 27. –One of the key regulations such a principal must know thoroughly is the “net capital rule” for brokers’ financial reserves under the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934.The details of thisone rule are over 300 pages long. –If your brokerage firm forwards trades to a large firm for execution in a transparent way your operations principal has to pass an even easier 95 question test called FINRA 28. –The operations principal within a firm is also responsible for supervision of securities lending for shorting, which played a prominent role at the root of the recent activity in GME and AMC as liquidity for short positions dried up (i.e. carrying costs of borrowed shares rose dramatically). –Nearly a half billion dollars of recent GME trades did not settle on time.
Step One: Range Based Volatility Estimation
•We will now consider key elements of Northfield risk models that allowed our models to quickly and accurately adapt to the activity in GME, AMC and other speculative events. •The first is the use of range based volatility estimators (see Parkinson, 1980) which have been in use at Northfield since 1989.The traditional way of looking at investment volatility is the standard deviation of return which is appropriate if and only if the distribution of returns is normal and free of autocorrelation. •A different way to think about volatility is to consider the range of an asset’s price during a particular period.For example, we can consider the highest and lowest prices for GameStop in the past year.The high was $347.51 (January 27, 2021) and the low price was $2.80 (April 3, 2020).If we had only those two pieces of data, we could create a crude proxy for return volatility by looking at size of the low to high range as compared to the average value.The high and low are close to the average price the volatility of return is presumed low.If there is a large range the volatility of return is presumed high.
Parkinson Illustrated
•The simplest possible arithmetic would involve the distance of our two data points from the central tendency (the midpoint) as a fraction of the midpoint value.
GME Annual Volatility =((H –L)/2) / (H+ L)/2 = (H –L) / (H + L) = 98.4%
•The actual Parkinson method used in Northfield models is more algebraically complex. –Under the assumption that the asset returns are independently and identically distributed (IID), there is an exact transform from the range measure to the expected standard deviation of return. –More elaborate methods involving open and closing prices as well as high and low are provided several related papers including Garman and Klass(1980). –If the transformed range volatility does not match the observed standard deviation of return over the observations of the sample period, we use the higher value and adjust asset specific risk upward to force agreement.
Parkinson Impacts Longer Term Models
•These adjustments to asset specific risk are applied even to our long term risk models. –For example, in our US Fundamental Model at 12/31/2020 the annualasset specific volatility of GME was forecast at 79% and moved to 93% at 1/31/2021. –This is an increase of 17% over the month of January despite the fact that this is just one month of a five-year sample period from which historical volatility values are typically observed. –These values are extremely large indicating that almost all of the risk of GME is asset specific and the distribution of future returns is likely to be uncorrelated with broad market movements.
Using Option Implied Volatility Directly
•For risk management horizons that are much shorter (days rather years), our Short Term Model has (since 1997) utilized daily changes in option implied volatility to condition the forecasts of individual security volatility. –A second procedure maps these many changes across factors thereby allocating the adjustments to both factor and idiosyncratic effects. –The full methodology is presented in https://www.northinfo.com/Documents/534.pdfwhich was subsequently published as diBartolomeo and Warrick (2005).
•For GME, the short term estimate ofannualized asset specific risk started at 89%, peaked at 801% annually on February first, and ended February at about 300%. –Ignoring largely irrelevant factor effects, the perceived volatility of GME rose roughly nine times through the month of January. –In the case of GME is it was widely publicized that the leveraged nature of options was a key mechanism used by retail investors.
Rapid Adaptation without Options
•However, not all assets that might be subject to future unusual conditions have options traded on them. –To address this need Northfield released the aforementioned Risk Systems That Read® in 2017. –The RSTR process uses a machine learning analysis of financial news text in place of implied option volatility. –The basic method is covered in https://www.northinfo.com/Documents/313.pdfwhich was subsequently published as diBartolomeo, Mitra and Mitra (QF, 2009). –Our “near horizon” models are meant for relatively short risk forecast horizons with a standard calibration of looking ahead two weeks, which is intermediate to the short term and traditional horizons.
GME in RSTR®
•We expect adaptation much faster than the long term models, but not quite as fast the Short Term model in that GME is directly optionable. –In the period prior to the unusual activity, financial press coverage of GME was modest resulting in an estimatedannualized specific risk of about 36% as of January 1st, 2021 for the two week forward horizon. –By January 27th(when GME hit its highest closing price) that value had quadrupled to 144% exactly in keeping with expectations. As attention on the GME situation has dissipated, the annualized specific risk fell to a forecast value of 85% as of the end of February 2021. –It should be noted that the Risk Systems That Read®process is applicable across the entire range of the Everything, Everywheremodel including equities, fixed income, funds, ETFs, and illiquid alternatives such as private equity and real estate. –The RSTR enhanced risk estimates can be blended with risk forecasts from the related longer horizon model to create customized risk horizons appropriate to the alpha decay and turnover of actively managed funds,
Incorporating Higher Moments
•The fourth aspect of our processes to consider is that the effects of both skew and kurtosis at the individual security level have been built into the computational processes for portfolio risk. –We know that the price of a corporate bond is bounded above by the price of an otherwise comparable bond with no credit risk (e.g. for US investors a Treasury bond). –However, the value of such a bond might fall a much further in the event of a credit default.This asymmetric nature in the return distribution is often ignored by risk systems but is explicitly incorporated into Northfield portfolio risk calculations where we deem appropriate as described in https://www.northinfo.com/documents/901.pdf. –The two keys are the use of “mixtures of normal distributions” (see Robertson and Fryer, 1969) and Cornish and Fisher (1938).For investors in hedge funds, one obvious application of these methods is to assess risk in long/short portfolios, where the maximum loss on the long side of the portfolio is bounded but the potential loss on short positions is unlimited, creating an extreme left tail (negative skew).
Conclusions
•Hedge fund investors have sustained billions of dollars in losses related to persistent failures of risk management at hedge funds. –In the case of “short vol” strategies, return distributions will always exhibit negative skew, effectively increasing risk of negative tail events –Positions in variance swaps exaggerate this effect as the size of “bet” increases with loss creating an unboundedconcave payoff.
•The analytical nuances (range volatility, option data, and text analytics) that have long existed in Northfield models make our models well prepared for extreme events. •Our computational processes explicitly address non-normal return distributions rather than assuming that investors are sufficiently diversified that returns will be normal. In the case of leveraged hedge funds, this assumption is never plausible.
Euler.Tools will automate the process by scanning the blockchain and processing data using formal techniques and known methodologies used by worldwide data processing companies. In addition, Euler.Tools integrates novel parameters that are different from existing tools.
For example while other tools focus on the value stored in the Uniswap contract, Euler.Tools compares the token swap impact on liquidity, availability, profitability, gas costs, and other events that the token swap could trigger
More information: https://news.bitcoin.com/euler-tools-a-unique-platform-to-explore-and-discover-blockchain-tools/
Website link: https://euler.tools/
Regal Investments' chatbot was setup poorly and the API is leaking in and out of its databases. A 40k bitcoin holding was revealed and a number of pre-set trades and a "return on investment" schedule. Holdings are now down to 30k btc. Using commands prompts in the chatbot, accounts can be approved and scheduled trades applied to the balance.
This means that the returns they are crediting to smart investing are really just pre-set and paid out of a bitcoin wallet to selected and approved accounts (likely internal). The origins of the $1.3 billion in bitcoin is sketchy and some assume it's from an exit scam.
The fact that it remains undetected makes it likely that everything is automated and unmonitored. I say they deserve to have their funds drained. If the crypto space gets infiltrated by these types of funds and companies without any blowback or resistance, then the crypto space is beyond compromised.
Manual account approved, balance applied, and withdrawal processed. Sep. 22, 2021.
Codes (entered in chatbot)
View schedule, btc balance, etc: { "event": [sequence], "data": [scheduled-returns], "published_at": [dates], "requestType":GET",}
Debug mode (enters database): debug_ret.Get
Activate account (approves account): status.user=active.by_email "email address" or status.user=active.by_client-id "client ID (which isthe string in the url when logged in)
Apply trade to account (adds trade and profit to balance): status.user=trade.by_client-id "client ID (which is the string in the url when logged in)"
then enter either 09-23-21 or 09-30-21
Hey Everyone!
Let's go...
Newly covered today:
Previously Covered but still interesting:
~Army of Spies
The Summary
Regal Investments is hording Bitcoin among other cryptos and pumping up the prices, then selling them and passing it off as stock gains. If this is happens on a larger scale, crypto is in danger.
The slip:
This is something I've been following for years and there's finally been an undeniable crack in the mold. Regal Investments' website API has been poorly setup and their chatbot is integrated with their databases - meaning you can get a peek into the inner workings with simple command prompts entered in the chatbot.
It COULD just be an internal test, but it doesn't help that the previously scheduled trade for Sep. 20 showed up in the trade history. Withdrawal shows up as processing.
What this means for crypto:
If big funds horde crypto like this and control the market, they control entry and the functionality is compromised. They can play smaller investors as chumps while fattening up the pockets of who ever they choose under legal guises and getting away with it. Plus they can attack the legitimacy of crypto through such scandalous behaviour. This fund should not be holding crypto. We have to do something to maintain the purpose of cryptocurrency.
Update, September 22: as expected the chatbot inputs affect the actual backend - https://unsee.cc/album#t0a4bOicGTnTcwzh
It’s all manipulation benefiting a select few. I say bring down these fuckers just to keep the rest of them aware that we have the power. The codes are as follows.
Codes
Debug mode (enters database): debug_ret.Get
Activate account (approves account): status.user=active.by_email "email address" or status.user=active.by_client-id "client ID (which isthe string in the url when logged in)
Apply trade to account (adds trade and profit to balance): status.user=trade.by_client-id "client ID (which is the string in the url when logged in)"
then enter either 09-23-21 or 09-30-21
View schedule, btc balance, etc: { "event": [sequence], "data": [scheduled-returns], "published_at": [dates], "requestType":GET",}
I keep seeing people post about Evergrande making interest payments on time and that the world is good again. I used to work on a bulge bracket Asia HY bond desk and this is not the case.
Twitter and the Media is missing the full picture and no one has pointed it out yet. 👇
We aren’t fully out of the woods. There is a difference between onshore (denominated in CNY) and offshore bonds (USD). Evergrande has offshore coupon denominated in USD due Sep 23 and have yet to make an announcement on those. Given a choice, they would pay onshore first. Should they decide not to pay USD, this will hurt global investors regardless. That said, there is still a 30-day grace period so it’s not end of the world, even if they don’t.
The CCP won’t directly step in but they will save the house buyers in the case of a default (so they don’t see any protesting etc). SOE banks will be the first to get screwed and majority of loans/commercial papers are to them. The scary part is that we’re not too sure how many of these guys re-levered this debt into other instruments so there may be ticking bombs all around.
Ultimately, the nearest USD coupon that is due is on Sept 23rd (Thursday), roughly equating to US$100m in interest. Sure, you may meet that interest but the company still has $300bn of principal coupon worth to pay.
Personally, I see a few routes moving forward but one needs to look at the debt structure (1). horizontally (time-based) and (2). vertically (who and what type of debt do they hold) to see a better picture.
Horizontally: - Sept 23, $83mio in interest due - Sept 29, $45mio in interest due - Oct 11, $~160mio in interest due - Nov 6, $80mio in interest due - Dec 28, $250mio in interest due
Vertically: - 54% of its $300bn are in secured borrowings - 2% are convertible bonds (lower pecking order) - 21% are senior notes (this is mostly held by UHNW individuals and big funds/banks) - 6% PRC bonds (local onshore denominated debt) - 17% Unsecured direct bank borrowings (mostly to SOE banks)
That said, my gutfeel is that the CCP will go in indirectly via the SOE banks taking the brunt of the hurt; they’ll likely working their butts off now with some meeting of sort with all EVERRE’s biggest debt/equity backers. The key players in this game are:
[In order of importance to the CCP]. 1. People who bought homes (they will be taken care off first) 2. Suppliers and construction companies contracted (perhaps this may be next) 3. Public debt holders (UHNW/Funds/Banks) – the key people here are the funds/banks 4. SOE banks who provided direct loans (govt backed anyways) 5. Equity holders.
My guess at the end: some SOE banks come in with some package to save certain pieces of the above pie. Perhaps the CEO/management team gets reprimanded strongly? Either ways, this is the largest elephant in the room now and the Crypto market is worried of the repercussions and quakes that we could feel from this fallout.
That said... enough about Evergrande, Crypto is dealing with its own troubles. Messari's Mainnet event got hijacked by a SEC subpoena, Mr Gensler called stablecoins 'poker chips' (we get it), and Binance derivatives service got clamped down in Australia.
On-chain data wise: During the dip, BTC's LTH-SOPR (1.26) vs STH-SOPR (0.97) indicated short-term holders (speculators, swing-traders, etc.) sold into losses, while long-term holders took profit. Regardless, the stablecoin supply ratio fell, and the exchange reserves of BTC is nearing a six-month low. This suggest traders are flushed with cash, but whether they are willing to step in (presumably on long leverage positions) is another question. For the second day, BTC Long liquidation also indicated a sharp up spike relative to the past 12 days while the estimated leverage ratio hovered at the mid-point (relative to the past two weeks), suggesting a very risk-off environment.
In derivatives: BTC and ETH option contract open interest held constant while traders adopted a wait-and-see approach to prices. Options skew indicators reflect a different story: 25% delta skew (Volatility premium for puts to calls), a significant jump, reflecting a high belief among option traders that further downward movement is imminent. Coin days destroyed also show that the move was mostly driven by short-term traders.
Personally, I like to fade such event-driven markets (but only post FOMC). Just note that conditions are primed such that if we get very positive news, people are flushed with cash for a jolt back to risk. A gentle nudge to also remember just how short-term market participant thinks, and that one only needs to look just over the ridge to stay ahead. IMO, the Evergrande fiasco is starting to look more like a very controlled detonation by the CCP - even if their offshore entity defaults (after the 30-day grace period), it won’t trigger a cross-default to its onshore entity. Finally… I actually took Gary Gensler Washington Post interview early this morning to be bullish for Crypto long term. We certainly need certain aspects of the market to be reined in to progress further. Have a good one!
I keep seeing people post about Evergrande making interest payments on time and that the world is good again. I used to work on a bulge bracket Asia HY bond desk and this is not the case.
Twitter and the Media is missing the full picture and no one has pointed it out yet. 👇
We aren’t fully out of the woods. There is a difference between onshore (denominated in CNY) and offshore bonds (USD). Evergrande has offshore coupon denominated in USD due Sep 23 and have yet to make an announcement on those. Given a choice, they would pay onshore first. Should they decide not to pay USD, this will hurt global investors regardless. That said, there is still a 30-day grace period so it’s not end of the world, even if they don’t.
The CCP won’t directly step in but they will save the house buyers in the case of a default (so they don’t see any protesting etc). SOE banks will be the first to get screwed and majority of loans/commercial papers are to them. The scary part is that we’re not too sure how many of these guys re-levered this debt into other instruments so there may be ticking bombs all around.
Ultimately, the nearest USD coupon that is due is on Sept 23rd (Thursday), roughly equating to US$100m in interest. Sure, you may meet that interest but the company still has $300bn of principal coupon worth to pay.
Personally, I see a few routes moving forward but one needs to look at the debt structure (1). horizontally (time-based) and (2). vertically (who and what type of debt do they hold) to see a better picture.
Horizontally: - Sept 23, $83mio in interest due - Sept 29, $45mio in interest due - Oct 11, $~160mio in interest due - Nov 6, $80mio in interest due - Dec 28, $250mio in interest due
Vertically: - 54% of its $300bn are in secured borrowings - 2% are convertible bonds (lower pecking order) - 21% are senior notes (this is mostly held by UHNW individuals and big funds/banks) - 6% PRC bonds (local onshore denominated debt) - 17% Unsecured direct bank borrowings (mostly to SOE banks)
That said, my gutfeel is that the CCP will go in indirectly via the SOE banks taking the brunt of the hurt; they’ll likely working their butts off now with some meeting of sort with all EVERRE’s biggest debt/equity backers. The key players in this game are:
[In order of importance to the CCP]. 1. People who bought homes (they will be taken care off first) 2. Suppliers and construction companies contracted (perhaps this may be next) 3. Public debt holders (UHNW/Funds/Banks) – the key people here are the funds/banks 4. SOE banks who provided direct loans (govt backed anyways) 5. Equity holders.
My guess at the end: some SOE banks come in with some package to save certain pieces of the above pie. Perhaps the CEO/management team gets reprimanded strongly? Either ways, this is the largest elephant in the room now and the Crypto market is worried of the repercussions and quakes that we could feel from this fallout.
That said... enough about Evergrande, Crypto is dealing with its own troubles. Messari's Mainnet event got hijacked by a SEC subpoena, Mr Gensler called stablecoins 'poker chips' (we get it), and Binance derivatives service got clamped down in Australia.
On-chain data wise: During the dip, BTC's LTH-SOPR (1.26) vs STH-SOPR (0.97) indicated short-term holders (speculators, swing-traders, etc.) sold into losses, while long-term holders took profit. Regardless, the stablecoin supply ratio fell, and the exchange reserves of BTC is nearing a six-month low. This suggest traders are flushed with cash, but whether they are willing to step in (presumably on long leverage positions) is another question. For the second day, BTC Long liquidation also indicated a sharp up spike relative to the past 12 days while the estimated leverage ratio hovered at the mid-point (relative to the past two weeks), suggesting a very risk-off environment.
In derivatives: BTC and ETH option contract open interest held constant while traders adopted a wait-and-see approach to prices. Options skew indicators reflect a different story: 25% delta skew (Volatility premium for puts to calls), a significant jump, reflecting a high belief among option traders that further downward movement is imminent. Coin days destroyed also show that the move was mostly driven by short-term traders.
Personally, I like to fade such event-driven markets (but only post FOMC). Just note that conditions are primed such that if we get very positive news, people are flushed with cash for a jolt back to risk. A gentle nudge to also remember just how short-term market participant thinks, and that one only needs to look just over the ridge to stay ahead. IMO, the Evergrande fiasco is starting to look more like a very controlled detonation by the CCP - even if their offshore entity defaults (after the 30-day grace period), it won’t trigger a cross-default to its onshore entity. Finally… I actually took Gary Gensler Washington Post interview early this morning to be bullish for Crypto long term. We certainly need certain aspects of the market to be reined in to progress further. Have a good one!
