Tether market dominance is diminishing rapidly. USDC + BUSD are catching up. This is good for the market, and we must educate people to avoid Tether.

Few months ago, Tether made up over 90% of the stablecoin market. However the other regulated stablecoins have gained market share, and currently Tether makes up only around 58% of the stablecoin market.

Share of Total Stablecoin Supply

Currently USDC dominance has risen to 25% while BUSD has risen to 11%. Both USDC and BUSD are much better regulated and approved by US regulatory authorities including NYDFS.

At the current pace, Tether dominance is set to drop below 50% in the coming months. The risks of using Tether have been outlined many times. However with its dominance dropping, Tether losing its peg due to a bank run event wont be as catastrophic now when compared to few months ago, when Tether cornered 90% of the stablecoin market.

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Tether's Backed By Shadow Assets

Tether is backed by a basket of instruments including cash, cash equivalents, commercial papers, and even bitcoin/metals. The risky part of their holdings are in the form of commercial papers, and Tether have not disclosed the origin/companies that have provided these papers to Tether. Hence there is a risk of default here, if these companies collapse then these bonds and papers held by Tether wont be worth anything. It is speculated that Tether holds papers from Chinese companies, including large Chinese real estate companies that are currently under stress due to the real estate market in China being under pressure.

In a well regulated market like the bond market of most countries, debt instruments like Tether have to disclose their entire holdings and calculate the NAV (net asset value) of their holdings on a daily basis - this ensures that the investors and end users of these instruments actually know what is backing the debt instruments. However Tether being the shady operator it is, has not even disclosed its full holdings, let alone calculate NAV on a daily basis. This is the source of substantial risk in holding Tether.

Loss of Peg

Imo - if Tether was to collapse, it wont collapse completely i.e to "zero". What would more likely happen is that there would be a loss of peg if it becomes clear that the companies backing the papers held by Tether start to default on their payments or go bankrupt. Given Tether is backed with some cash and cash equivalents which can be considered as safe assets, it is the commercial papers that are prone to default. One can come up with a worst case scenario - a haircut of 60c per USDT i.e. the peg would crash to 40c. This is the worst case scenario given Tether's present holding structure. If this plays out, any person holding USDT could lose 60c per dollar. This is not happening now, or scheduled to happen any time soon, but is just a risk that anyone holding Tether must be aware of.

If USDC and other stablecoins continue to grow, Tether's fallout could be contained very well without any permanent impact to the market. We will definitely see days of red in the charts, but we could be spared structural damages to the crypto markets. Hence it is extremely important that people move from Tether to any other stablecoin - there are dozens of them now that are much better that USDT.

More importantly, USDT seems to have captured the DeFi market as well. All the top DeFi protocols rely now on USDT including Aave, Compound, Curve etc. This need not be the case, and these protocols must lead the way in avoiding Tether and providing their users a much better and transparent stablecoin.

Many Venture Capitals Invest In Shitcoin

For many people, Bitcoin is synonymous with cryptocurrency, but it’s not really what cryptocurrency traders like Adam are interested in. While Bitcoin and Ethereum are known currencies, there is a strange underworld of different cryptocurrencies. They are called altcoins or shitcoins and are essentially cryptocurrencies based on penny shares. 

https://www.buyshitcoin.com/2021/08/04/many-venture-capitals-invest-in-shitcoin/

We cannot deny the insane growth of Shitcoins, but with it comes the possibility of a sudden fall in prices. Bitcoin has tripled in value, while many legacy coins explode 30, 40 or even 50 times a day. It is unlikely that the development and marketing of legacy coins will ever be considered shitcoin-slow as interest in cryptocurrencies remains high. 

The cryptocurrency industry is a growing new market, making it difficult for investors to draw parallels between real and counterfeit coins. It can be difficult for inexperienced investors to discern the authenticity of a cryptocurrency. The underlying blockchain technology used to manage cryptocurrencies is not familiar to many investors, creating room for mistreatment. 

As with the stock market, there are good and bad investment opportunities, and the same goes for cryptocurrencies. Many Shitcoins were created and capitalized by people who jumped on the crypto bandwagon without doing any research. Many people have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars with shitcoins. 

Luckily for us, Reddit came to the rescue with a guide to detecting shitcoin currencies. The catch is that shitcoins and currencies are considered bad investments because their prices are based on speculation. Everyone has heard stories of contessoto shopping cheaply, also known as crypto-temping.  

Shitcoin is a cryptocurrency that, in a subjective sense, is a bad investment decision. The term “shitcoin” refers to any cryptocurrency that has little value as a digital currency with no immediate or discernible purpose. Conversations on forums and social media tend to keep the wording short because it takes a long time to write about which coins are bad investments. 

Key Takeaways Shitcoin is a cryptocurrency with little or no value, or a digital currency with no immediately discernible purpose. The reduced value of Shitcoins is due to investor speculative interest, because Shitcoins were not created in good faith and the price of the currency is based on speculation. The term “shitcoin” is a pejorative term for legacy coins, cryptocurrencies that developed after Bitcoin became popular. 

A shitcoin is often referred to as a fraudulent cryptocurrency and is described as a bad investment decision. The coin has no use, and in some cases its value increases dramatically. However, the price can also fall, causing investors who buy their coins at a high price to incur massive losses.

Once upon a time there was a random guy in his basement who created a coin and got millions of investors. Investors showed little interest in these coins due to their low risk of participation. If the coin had its true value, it would attract new investors and rise over time.

Investors invest their capital in digital assets driven by a solid ROI. The intrinsic value is the monetary value of a real asset with a steady cash flow. In behavioral economics, the more risk involved in investing in digital assets, the less potential it has, and the less likely it is that investors will want to capitalize on it, because solid RoI does not guarantee risk (by definition, risk is the most likely outcome). 

Some people compare thousands of shit coins to penny shares or small public companies trading for less than $5 a share, but the difference is that most of them were created with a real business model and purpose in mind. Each coin has a unique infrastructure and a different market capitalization. They are called “Altcoins” because they are translated as “alternative coins” and were developed before the famous BTC launch in 2008. 

Coins like Dogecoin offer no real value and thus create the meme that characterizes Shitcoins. Due to the lack of regulation in the cryptocurrency market, fraudulent coins with no real value are used as marketing measures to attract new investors and profit from their greed. In fact, investors call them coin money even if they do not make money, but this is a little ridiculous as they play an important role in the project itself and are not subject to large price fluctuations. 

One should pay attention to how the price of a particular cryptocurrency develops in the last days, months, or years. The value of old coins can vary according to small gestures or events on the market. Whether it is a kind of pump-and-dump cryptocurrency or has a low market capitalization, its price can be manipulated by other investors, and we are talking about several hundred percent increments and discounts. 

Savvy investors are diversifying their crypto portfolios with a range of different assets and products. Instead of investing all of their money in one cryptocurrency, they hedge risks by investing in multiple assets to lower the value of a coin. There is a growing call for investors to consider venturing into cryptocurrencies to be warned about fake traders. 

In the past I have seen several Shitcoins that made it onto the market by being confused with real coins. Dogecoin, for example, what people call an old coin or other shit coin, began as a joke and was almost forgotten for a few months until Internet cryptocurrency number one (also known as Elon Musk) decided to start big. As a result, it is now worth an astonishing $50 billion, more than the value of Ford Motor Company. 

A good example of this phenomenon is the impressive increase in value of XVG, a privacy coin that many people consider Shitcoin. In a very short time (1-2 months) the value of XVG rose to over $8,000, making a small number of believers very rich. Unfortunately, XVG was a product of exaggeration, and its price fell well below its original value.

https://www.buyshitcoin.com/2021/08/04/many-venture-capitals-invest-in-shitcoin/

Let's discuss possible deflation and what it means for crypto

So, inflation is all the talk right now. Which is understandable in our current macroeconomic environment. But what if we expand our frame of reference to 5, 10 years and beyond?
I've stumbled upon an analysis of a metric on YouTube comparing inflation / deflation after world changing events of either world war or pandemic type.
What was interesting was that the recovery consequences were opposite in both cases. After a war, there's a spike in deflation which after a couple of years turns into rapid inflation, and in the post-pandemic case, there's a spike in inflation which turns into deflation after the same amount - 3 to 7 years and going stronger for possiblity decades.
What does that mean for assets? Of course in an inflationary economy, cash is trash and assets are king, whereas in a deflation value of assets all around is suppressed and cash trumps the return on assets which grow slowly, while purchasing power of cash is rising due to falling prices.
We've seen already how inversely correlated the $dxy (dollar strength index) and bitcoin are, how does one imagine a reality where hard cash is orders of magnitude higher than now?
Or is this time different, since the current amount of money printing is unprecedented?
What do you think? No shitposting here please, I'd like a grounded discussion that'll reveal both bull and bear cases for these eventualities.

Buy the rumor, sell the news.

Give me a chart and I'll give you news to fit it.

Past 2 weeks price movement on Bitcoin may have been due to ethereum price action. Amazon news/Amazon news shut down and binance news prob contributed but in my opinion less.

Crypto usually follow each other. The usual leader is bitcoin. However on rare occasions ethereum leads the charge. Historically ethereum hard forks have caused significant price action on ethereum couple weeks leading up to the fork. And as a result making other cryptos follow. I type this thinking in large part to Byzantium hard fork in October 2017. This is very much supported on the current chart. Though Ethereum volume is not exceeding bitcoin, it's very close and much higher than "normal". And compared to bitcoin from the local low, ethereum have had a much bigger pump % to the local high.

The above is stating the obvious. The prediction following is...... dump coming.

Depending on what chart you are looking at bitcoin had a 10 day green. Ethereum had a 13 consecutive green day. Ethereum Hard fork is launching on the mainnet today/tomorrow depending on where u live. Historically price should have already dumped before the launch (the tiny drop is not what I consider a dump) .

This isn't like the release of a positive earnings report. Even if the launch is successful (which it generally is) price should dump in this time frame significantly. So in the next 72 hours or so I'm predicting a significant price drop. Looking at recent supports price should drop from just over $2500 (current price) to sub $2200 to $1800.

I don't know the fundamental reason. I'm assuming its is because hardfork event is priced in now, after event catalyst is gone people will take profit thinking everyone else will take profit and dump the price as per history.

If this plays out this should have a carry on effect on bitcoin taking its price to sub 33k to sub 30k.

Famous Bitcoin Addresses and Transactions

These are pieces of history anyone can view, stored forever on the most secure network in the world. One of the coolest part about the blockchain being an open, decentralized and immutable ledger is that you can look back into the past at snapshots of very special moments. Here are some famous bitcoin addresses and transactions that involve turning points in the evolution of the currency, or are related to important people or events:

• The Genesis Block - The first ever Bitcoin block, mined by Satoshi on Jan 9, 2009. Hundreds of Bitcoin enthusiasts continue to show their appreciation by transferring small amounts of BTC to the same address. As of Aug 19, 2020, there was a total of 68.33526331 BTC logged at the address.

• Satoshi's only transaction - This, as far as we know, is the only known address Satoshi ever spent coins from and sent 10 BTC to Hal Finney.

• The "Bitcoin Pizza" transaction - On May 22 every year, crypto enthusiasts all over the world celebrate the anniversary of “Bitcoin Pizza Day” by eating pizza? The trend began when Laszlo Hanyecz ordered and paid for two pizzas with 10,000 BTC. This was the first Bitcoin transaction in the real world. Based on the Aug 3, 2021 BTC value of approx. $38,000, that single pizza would be worth around $382 million!

• Largest transaction ever - apparantly the single largest transaction ever (550,000 BTC)

• Silk Road seized hot wallet coins - The address of the seized hot wallet coins belonging to the users of the infamous Silk Road dark net marketplace.

• Ross Ulbricht (DreadPirateRoberts) personal BTC stash - The personal stash of the infamous Silk Road dark net marketplace founder Ross Ulbricht. Now seized by the FBI.

• MT.GOX "proof of assets" transaction - When bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox was struggling to stay afloat prior to their infamous collapse, then CEO Mark Karpeles wanted to prove that Mt.Gox was financially sound. To do so, he performed one of the biggest and most risky bitcoin transactions ever. The transaction was from Mt.Gox to Mt.Gox, but regardless it was sent over the bitcoin network to the tune of 442,000 bitcoins.

• December 6, 2013: Bitcoin accepted as payment for Tesla Model S - According to a news report about Lamborghini Newport Beach car dealership in California, they sold a Tesla Model S electric car for 91.4 bitcoins, or $103,000 at the time of purchase. The transaction was handled by payment processor BitPay, said Cedric Davy, marketing director for the Costa Mesa, California based dealership. The dealership has never accepted bitcoin directly, but BitPay’s merchant processing service allowed the buyer to use bitcoin as a form of payment, which was converted into USD once the transaction was complete.

• One of the richest entities - This transaction links 9 addresses each holding 66,000+ BTC that most definitely belong to the same entity (lets hope not a single person) and the 10th address in the blockchain with the same characteristics is likely part of that. This would imply that a single entity holds over 660,000 Bitcoins.

• The U.S. Marshal’s Auction - When the online black market Silk Road was shut down, the U.S. government seized roughly 144,000 bitcoins. In what was a three-part auction, the first auction of coins was sold to venture capitalist and entrepreneur Tim Draper which was for 30,000 bitcoins, worth $19 million USD at the time.

• Very old Bitcoins - This address holds almost 80,000 Bitcoins and has never been touched since the deposit in early 2011

Have I missed any important transactions? If you know any that I failed to mention please comment it on this thread! Hope you enjoy this little peak into history.

I have learned the long term trends of the crypto market so you don't have to; the post I needed when I first got into crypto.

This is the monthly chart of bitcoin since inception, what patterns we can spot from this graph that help us predict what can happen next?

• Bitcoin goes through cycles, in which bitcoin have phases where prices go parabolic (bull-runs), then it is followed by a correction (bear market).
• As you can see, Bitcoin grow logarithmically with time.

Bitcoin cycles since inception

• Cycles tend to extend over time, meaning that each cycle will take more time than the previous cycle.

Bitcoin cycles extend through time

• Bitcoin return on investment decrease over time.

Bitcoin ROI from market cycle bottom

If you think about it, it actually make sense to have diminishing returns and lengthening cycles. It takes more time and money to move bitcoin from 10k-100k than it takes to move bitcoin from 10$-100$ although it is the same increase in percentage.

What triggers a bull-run?

Usually, the bitcoin halving event triggers increase in price over a long time frame due to the scarcity of the available asset. However, There is a "Golden Cross" that triggers a bull-market. Which is when the 50-day exponential moving average cross over the 200-day exponential moving average. That is usually a bullish signal when given that these exponential moving averages holds as support.

2012 Golden Cross

2015 Golden Cross

2020 Golden Cross

Most of these information I learned through YouTube, specifically a guy named Benjamin Cowen. You guys can search him up his channel is really helpful. All credits to him.

This post is to state the long term trends of the crypto asset class, previous trend doesn't guarantee the continuation of these trends. it is not a financial advice.

This Is What You Sound Like: A Corrupt Politician's Guide to FUDing Crypto

These days, whether you're a hypocritical politician or just an oil baron trying to preserve a net worth with three commas, it's hard to lobby against the availability of deflationary decentralized assets to the masses without sounding like an asshole. It just doesn't seem fair that only the poor billions under your boot should be aware of how hypocritical you sound. Fortunately, using science, I've prepared the following translations, a guide, if you will, so that YOU TOO can understand your own dumbshittery:

YOU SAY: "Crypto is primarily used by criminals for money laundering and extortion."

WE HEAR: "Automobiles are primarily used as getaway vehicles in bank robberies."

You see how this works? Sure, we could get into the fact that the illegal uses of crypto represent a smaller fraction than those of fiat, or that fiat money is far more untraceable than crypto, and so forth, but we're just gonna cut to the chase. Let's move on.

YOU SAY: "Crypto has no intrinsic value."

WE HEAR: "The Mona Lisa has no intrinsic value."

Newsflash: "Value" is a property that we assign to things. It's never intrinsic. You think a rectangular piece of paper with the number 100 on it is 100 times more valuable than the same rectangular piece of paper with the number 1 on it, intrinsically? No. That's a value humans assign to it. Just like how crypto has the value assigned to it by the market.

YOU SAY: "Crypto wastes energy."

WE HEAR: "Watching reality TV wastes energy."

Stop the presses! Society uses energy! Go back to living in caves and we wouldn't use so much energy. If your problem is with coal mining, or petroleum, or natural gas, or whatever, than complain about those things. You don't get to be an environmentalist on one application of energy (which often uses renewables anyway) and ignore the actual polluting sectors they're drawing from.

YOU SAY: "Crypto is too volatile."

WE HEAR: "The weather is too volatile"

Crypto went from zero to over a trillion in a decade, so yes, there's volatility along the way, but that doesn't mean you can't draw conclusions from the trendlines. Somehow, even though daily temperatures are unpredictable, farmers manage to make use of the existence of seasons. And by the way, volatility decreases as the market caps grow.

YOU SAY: "The government will outlaw crypto."

WE HEAR: "The government will outlaw alcohol."

Governments can pass whatever laws they want, but it won't make crypto cease to exist. What do you think happens to the value of an asset when it's illegal? You think it becomes less valuable? Take a look at how marijuana prices plummeted in places it became legal, for example. In any event, when a government "bans" crypto, they're just opting out of wealth to their country. It doesn't take long for countries to realize doing so means they're just losing and reverse course.

YOU SAY: "Crypto can't scale, so it'll never be usable globally."

WE HEAR: "The internet can't scale because it's run on 56k dial-up modems."

Throw a rock in the crypto space and you'll hit a scaling-solution project. This isn't a problem that's unsolvable. We're not talking about how to invent cold-fusion here. The Wright Brothers flyer only flew 900 feet, but I doubt anyone concluded, "whelp, guess we've hit the theoretical distance a plane can fly."

YOU SAY: "Crypto is a bubble."

WE HEAR: "The mobile phone is a bubble."

It's been over a decade, crypto has had four major cycles of 1000% appreciation, each followed by drawndowns to higher prices than the previous. That's not what bubbles do. The word you're looking for is "adoption."

YOU SAY: "Crypto is controlled by China."

WE HEAR: "I have literally not read a single thing about Crypto in the last year."

Okay, we're breaking symmetry with this one, but China FUD, at this point, means you're paying zero attention. China banned bitcoin mining and what happened? the miners moved and the hashrate returned, proving that this FUD was always dumb.

YOU SAY: "Crypto is backed by Tether, which in turn is engaged in fractional banking."

WE HEAR: "Equities are backed by USD, which are issued by fractional banking."

This one is an onion of stupid, layers of stupid upon layers of stupid. I'll just make two points about it: First, if I trade a Picasso for a car, and you trade the Picasso for a house, and the next guy trades the Picasso for cash, and the Picasso turns out to be fake, that doesn't mean the car, the house, and the cash are now worthless. They are not "backed" by fake Picasso. Second, we may suspect that Tether is engaged in fractional banking, but we know that the USD is engaged in fractional banking. Your objection is to all markets, not just crypto.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this rant.