Saturday, March 5, 2022

Coinbetter: Looking at Bitcoin's Anti-risk Ability from the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict

In the past few days, many countries such as the United States and Europe have continued to increase economic sanctions against Russia, and Russia's economic counter-sanctions have also been continuously strengthened.

On February 26th, the White House of the United States issued a joint statement that it will join European countries to impose financial sanctions on Russia, including removing some Russian banks from the SWIFT system and restricting the Russian central bank from placing international reserves. On March 2nd, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a presidential decree aimed at stabilizing the Russian financial market. According to this order, from March 2nd, citizens are prohibited from carrying foreign currency, cash or payment instruments of the equivalent value of more than 10,000 US dollars. out of the country.

It is obvious that the financial "confrontation" between the United States and Europe and other Western countries and Russia is constantly intensifying. The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has not only brought the financial systems of the two countries to the brink of collapse, but the world economic system has also been greatly conflicted.

Driven by this series of financial backgrounds, global risk aversion pushed the price of gold higher, which was running around $1,915 an ounce, with a cumulative increase of nearly 5% during the year. Some investors believe that gold is an efficient safe-haven asset that can help investors hedge against tail risk events. At the same time, Bitcoin is also favored by market funds as an emerging safe-haven asset. The latest data shows that $260 billion has poured into cryptocurrencies in a single week. Among them, the Ukrainian hryvnia transaction volume and the number of Russian users hit record highs.

According to Coinbetter’s market data, the price of bitcoin soared from $35,000 to $44,000, and is now back around $42,381.

https://preview.redd.it/8z88ubjpzil81.png?width=886&format=png&auto=webp&s=36f4a155f7dec767a0e2ab9f3759044b284d4af4

Coinbetter experts believe that it is precisely because of the frenzied buying in a short period of time by Ukrainians and Russians under geopolitical conflict and financial sanctions that the price has risen. Because of the uncertainty of the external environment, both parties and individuals, companies and even government agencies around the world are looking for targets that can replace traditional assets, and cryptocurrencies led by Bitcoin are becoming more and more attractive to investors.

A few days ago, Barry Silbert, founder of Grayscale’s parent company Digital Currency Group (DCG), tweeted that Bitcoin looks good and we are buying.

https://preview.redd.it/95ij731rzil81.png?width=752&format=png&auto=webp&s=90b20b99c55220407d399c84243cc1f795e3d100

All of the above points to Coinbetter's speculation that the acceptance of cryptocurrencies around the world will reach a peak.

As JPMorgan pointed out in a note on March 2nd, the cryptocurrency market has more upside ahead as inflows into the stablecoin market have surged over the past week. Morgan emphasized that stablecoins’ market share in the overall cryptocurrency market has soared to an all-time high of about 10 percent, which means there will be more upside for the general cryptocurrency market, as stablecoins are “often used as fiat to crypto. The initial tool for currency conversion".

Although under various circumstances such as tightening monetary policy, geopolitical tension, and intensified economic sanctions, the crypto market around the world will suffer a setback to varying degrees, and a short-term downturn is inevitable, but in the past few days, Bitcoin’s ability to hedge against catastrophic events has surpassed other cryptocurrencies, and its share of the entire cryptocurrency market has risen to 43%.

Of course, Coinbetter still maintains a developmental perspective on Bitcoin's anti-risk capabilities. The emergence of Bitcoin has provided global investors with a new type of global safe-haven asset, and the excellent performance of the short-term market has proved its long-term strong vitality and growing global consensus. This will qualitatively improve Bitcoin's hedging ability against catastrophic events.

Finally, Coinbetter also reminds users that there are risks in the market, the uncertainty of the external environment continues to increase, and investment needs to be rational.

Is Russia going to make Bitcoin legal tender?

Given the recent events such as the collapse of the Russian Ruble, the possible SWIFT block, sanctions and so on, do you think it would be reasonable for Russia to make Bitcoin legal tender? And if so, is this good for BTC?

Friday, March 4, 2022

Swiss City of Lugano to Make Bitcoin and Tether 'De Facto' Legal Tender

The municipality wants businesses to accept crypto in everyday transactions.

Aiming to become Europe's Bitcoin capital, Lugano, Switzerland, has formed a partnership with stablecoin issuer Tether to establish bitcoin, Tether and Lugano's own LVGA Points token as essentially legal tender in the city.

The move goes far beyond the actions of a number of other Swiss localities that for some time have been accepting crypto for tax payments.

Somewhat similar to El Salvador, Lugano – in addition to allowing crypto for taxes – is aiming to have all of its businesses seamlessly use crypto for everyday transactions (in El Salvador, only bitcoin qualifies).

At Thursday's "Plan B" event, which was hosted by Lugano's mayor, Michele Foletti, the move was described as a "de facto" legalization, as the Swiss franc will surely remain the actual legal tender in Lugano and elsewhere in Switzerland. This means that residents can seamlessly copy trades from highly performing traders on Tycoon.io

Also announced at Plan B were plans for the Bitcoin World Forum to be held in Lugano on Oct. 26-28.

Fake giveaway scams and how to avoid them

https://preview.redd.it/xma2blc6ail81.png?width=823&format=png&auto=webp&s=364fb6b23925540536cc06348c4a6cf1331761e5

Fake giveaway scam is a situation, when fraudster impersonates some celebrity and promises to "give away" a lot of crypto in an exchange for small donation.

It's a popular form of social engineering attack, where message is spread via social media (Telegram, Twitter, Youtube, etc.). The only goal here is to convince you to send crypto to scammers.

Typical victim story

"There was a link to a new event below, so I clicked on it and saw that he was giving away Bitcoin!"

Sebastian double-checked the verification logo next to Elon Musk's name, and then decided to send 10 Bitcoin. He waited for the prize to land in his Bitcoin wallet. But timer on website ran down to zero.

"I realised then that it was a big fake.

I threw my head on to the sofa cushions and my heart was beating so hard. I thought I'd just thrown away the gamechanger for my family, my early retirement fund and all the upcoming holidays with my kids. I went upstairs and sat on the edge of the bed to tell my wife. I woke her up and told her that I'd made a big mistake, a really big mistake."

Source

How it works

In this scam fraudsters produce fake social accounts, fill them with bots and make it look like, as if there is a giveaway of crypto by some famous person:

https://preview.redd.it/vvibce38yhl81.jpg?width=444&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a91e6323ad9977674d36277cea49dead877d4abe

https://preview.redd.it/cy9sbj8ayhl81.jpg?width=498&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cbdf2a31f40145086f2f8afc8f76a73e226978c1

Sometimes it's just a plain photoshop. Usually it's fake accounts.

In rare cases it's hacks of true accounts:

In every situation scammer asks you to send some crypto on an advertised address to participate in the giveaway:

https://preview.redd.it/0pbtkcr7ail81.png?width=894&format=png&auto=webp&s=c0f23d81fddf7c11498cfdd1970c99de076cbf3b

https://preview.redd.it/8yg50mm8ail81.png?width=768&format=png&auto=webp&s=9fe1c6ea6547b7dc5a0d6eb561998f7dd5da6e13

Needless to tell, the only giveaway that will happen - is you giving away your money to the scammer. You won't get anything in return. And you won't get anything back.

How to avoid it

Investigate examples above and additional examples here: Fake Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Cardano, Ripple and Shiba Inu Giveaways Proliferate on YouTube LiveMost giveaway scams have similar websites / strategies. If you've seen 10 of them - you'll easily recognize a new one.
Don't expect anyone in crypto to give you anything for free.
Check promoted website at CryptoScamsDB (and report it there if you're a victim)

https://preview.redd.it/75fyws2aail81.png?width=1140&format=png&auto=webp&s=160107a7dbd6351dbf330e507b8ee3132c9f9095

report scammers on Youtube, Twitter, Telegram and other social networks where you see the fake giveaway message:

https://preview.redd.it/t8xo6ovf6il81.png?width=435&format=png&auto=webp&s=e3eeb018d2b35d1c32927d85f03f0ab85b8244a5

My Problems With RH

I’ve been in Hex for some time, and I love this project. However, I genuinely believe Richard has lost touch with marketing.

A lot of his opinions have become more and more contradictory, I’ll elaborate.

Do note: he has created a great product, and I believe Hex will bounce back. This is not a post screaming that the sky is falling, like others on this subreddit.

Now, back to RH.

If you’ve seen many of his streams, you’ll notice he loves to say how successful a project is by its current price. Example: when BTC or Eth are brought up, he’ll claim “How’s that price chart looking?”

Yet when it comes to his own coin, the default is “90% dips in crypto are normal”. I agree, yet it does become a bit played out when he only jokes about the rest of the market for their price and ignores his own - because “that’s what crypto does”

As many others have noted: this Gucci / LV craze has had a mixed vibe. Many are down for it, while others aren’t.

It’s good in the sense that it does bring in new users, which is true. The numbers do reflect this, even if the increase in followers may actually come from how the project is 2 years old (and that’s when the most traction comes).

I’m not here to decipher who came from where.

However,

People may pay attention to brands, instead of him streaming against a white, blank wall. However, the “luxury” branding emphasis he has put on himself doesn’t really seem to portray him as the intelligent person he is.

Imagine if this amount of money was put toward relevant campaigns. Example: donations to Ukraine he can post about, giving back in certain viral ways, etc.

It might be childish to compare: yet think of Mr Beast.

The hype and love doesn’t come from showing money, it comes from giving money. Isn’t that why Hex gained traction in the first place? By showing how much money was given to the OG Hexicans?

In my marketing experience, this would carry more vitality than stumbling across a man with an LV bag and thinking he’s a god. Most of the time it’s laughable.

Now, I’ll clarify. I do understand being associated with brands does bring more eyeballs. People like brands and luxury goods. I do not believe these are genuinely the type of people though who favour investments.

Although Hex helps their type of market to find out what “delaying gratification” is (instead of buying said brands), I don’t believe they’d be the type of people to stake for years on end.

People who buy these products are impulsive in nature, and will buy Hex. Yet you’ll see from many of the new wallets, they don’t stake for more than a few months - as it’s a completely different type of investment to them (where they get nothing in return immediately. No branded handbag, nothing to show off, etc.) This is what that market is used to.

Separate point: Richard Heart knows about marketing. He knows that he’s made a lot of OG’s rich. Yet he does seem to leave the marketing to the community.

This works if everyone was getting a fair share of profit (which usually is the case, except for recent events of the price decreasing).

Therefore, word of mouth should work.

However, it becomes very hindered if your pool of investors are more new than old.

Example: out of 100 people, say 80 are new. 20 are OG’s Even though they have more money (and therefore ‘marketing budget’ - albeit if many don’t even use it because it’s locked up); the 80 new investors would have more word of mouth to spread the word about Hex.

It outweighs.

But what about ETH? At the start, the later adopters still outweighed OG’s and the price went up.

Yes, that’s correct. Yet Ethereum did not have a system which can continuously benefit the OG’s (who aren’t miners) - even in a bear market (giving even more sell pressure).

In my eyes: the more Hex grows, the more difficult it is to leave word of mouth marketing to new adopters, as they will face harsher and harsher dips than those before them.

To finish it off, a quick opinion about debates. Richard is a killer and he knows it. Everyone talks about how he leaves a trail of dead bodies. The newcomers haven’t seen this unless they watch old streams of RH looking like the of Jesus himself (thank god there were hairdressers available).

With new streams; most have been the same regurgitated information. - called the top on the day (it gives him authority, sure. But do newcomers even know what this means? How does it benefit them?) - used to mine bitcoin - trading recks people

It would be great to see him discuss new topics with more new people He has the followers & brand where he can reach out to public figures and arrange these. Yet he leaves it to the public over and over.

I recall RH wanted to hire someone to arrange all his interviews / debates. Yet it hasn’t happened. He has the money to set this up very easily. This means he’s shooting himself in the foot; as the type of videos that get the most traction (debates) are only scheduled either by someone external or when he can has time (he’s a busy man, so this just doesn’t work).

I believe he needs to be more active with setting up marketing; and for a man who has run such successful marketing companies in the past - why would you leave this to a community who aren’t specialised in that field? They’ll waste money, and he gets annoyed. He has the money to hire agencies, get PR, etc. yet is not active enough in the scene.

There are a few opinions there - none are facts. They’re all my opinion.

I’ve made money with Hex, and I am by no means hating on the project

I only believe Richard could do a better job at his marketing.

Lighthouse and dynamic loot has completely destroyed the uniqueness of every map in the game

With the addition of Lighthouse there is no real reason to play any other map in the game.

Prior to the dynamic loot changes and Lighthouse each map had a unique feel to it that brought players to them.

Customs - the map every new player learns the basics on, great for pvp and marked room contained high value loot with a chance to get very rare items - labs cards, containers, valuable tech spawns. Reshala and the boys are a good challenge for new players.

Now: marked room key has no cool containers, the labs cards are gone. Hardly ever find good loot here. Customs raids consist of questing Timmys and bored Chads. The good loot is gone. You only come here to shit on SKS paca boys with your Mutant.

Factory: PVP heaven, fuck all for loot here but its fun to fuck on.

Now: People are here to begrudgingly get early quests done and drop Labs access cards to their friends and get out ‘cause you can’t flea ‘em anymore. Occasionally you’ll run into the ASH12 rat looking for Tagil—nevermind. Dead to naked with a cheap shotgun and flechette. Again.

Shoreline: Sick Resort PVP with tons of good loot behind locked doors. Lots of frustrated Customs mains reluctantly doing PMC runs doing quests and looking for Sanitar.

Now: Cheese the shitty AI at night to get cultist loot. The GPUs and LEDX are gone. At least the labs cards still spawn here. But where the fuck did the loot go? Guess I’ll just loot these same med bags and PC blocks that are on every other map. A group run at Resort barely gets 1 PMC loaded bow. Oh, Sanitar and the boys are hacker.exe. Hope you cheesed em when the Christmas event was going on and got your quest done.

Labs: Hackers, chads, dank keycard loot, raiders. RAIDER. LOOT.

Now: Gated behind Lv4 Therapist and scav mains who have a keycard holder full of labs access cards they’re afraid to use due to flea changes. The loose loot (LEDXs…) is pretty amazing here now but theres nothing here that isnt already on all the other maps, especially Lighthouse. Labs is in a decent place this wipe actually if it wasn’t for the fact that Red card room loot is FUCKING ATROCIOUS. I find better loot inside the bunkroom on Customs. COME ON.

Interchange: Fast and furious rush to the tech stores for GPUs. Killa’s somewhere in there but he’s farmable and has that sick helmet and chest armor thats fun to use. Make sure to get out with the secret underground exit with a moonshine maybe a bitcoin to avoid those dogshit extract campers.

Now: Where the fuck is Killa? Like seriously, where is he? Good thing I have a quest to kill him ONE HUNDRED TIMES. He’s cracked out like the droves of aimbotting TOZ scavs btw. BTW, the tech stores don’t have good loot anymore. Enjoy your CPUs, lightbulbs and occasional Tetriz. You have better luck randomly finding a GPU in all the PC blocks that are on every other map. Gotta play like a rat and scurry around the dark back offices near Idea Goshan and Oli to find GPUs cause they sure as shit ain’t at Tech Light no mo. Oh btw Ultra Med, one of the rarest keys in the game. No high value spawns there anymore. Kiba’s alright, but make sure to take the 11SR exit and grab your horse figurine on your way out to avoid all of the vacuum loot cheaters running around on this map. Interchange is in a fucking sorry state. Fucks sake.

Reserve: Raiders. GLUHAR. Boxes of good ammo and nades. Guns on racks. 3 goddamn marked rooms with chances to get containers and rare tech loot. The only place to find an AESA, a big super valuable item you only need a few of. Theres tons of unique mil tech loot like Virtexes, Iridium, RFID and VPXes, MCBs, etc loose loot spawns and loot behind locked doors at dome and such. Lots of Intel and cool shit in the filing cabinets.

Now: Raiders are BROKEN and almost harder to fight than real cheaters. Good luck with Gluhar and his M1A, dude must have reupped his hacks this wipe. Dude’s cracked. Grats to anyone who gets out with his shit. So they made the fun ammo craftable and FIR only this wipe? Cool. Guess I’ll grab by PPBS 9x19, m61, m995 and igolnik at Reserve. The MILITARY base. Except… its just endless boxes of 7.62 PS and PRS rounds. Sick. The marked rooms are as depressing as Dorms marked. No Intelligence folders anywhere. Havent found a single one this wipe. The jackets and filing cabinets have fuck all in them now, especially no green batteries, so that tetriz/battery barter for Mechanic is a fuckin’ scam. Most importantly: WHERE IS ALL THE MIL TECH LOOT AT? ITS FUCKING GONE! Er wait actually its all at lighthouse. Where you can find 2-3 AESAs per raid. Theres seriously no fucking reason to run Reserve unless youre bored. Go play lighthouse. I’m convinced all the Reserve loot is at lighthouse now.

Woods: Shturmann. Cultists at night. Sniping/long range pvp. Lotsa food spawns!

Now: I gotta admit. Woods is pretty sick this wipe. But really only because its the only map “dynamic loot” seems to be working properly on simply because there really hasn’t been any reason to loot anything unless your hunting for a good double tab from ya boy Shturrman.

Lighthouse is effectively all the maps at once, but split in two halves. Its a big ass map, but the water treatment area is mostly budget kit gamers cheesing the buggy as fuck Rogue AI to get easy loot and exit the raid looking like theyre fresh out of Labs on repeat. People who don’t know how to do that may venture over there for a quest or to say hi to the cracked Rogues that beam you with MGs at 350m. For most players, Rogues are effectively just a loot delivery vehicle for no risk high reward droves of little player scavs that spawn in 0.5 sec after the raid starts to vacuum up some dumbass dead PMC’s kit and run 5 feet to the nearest scav extract, of which there are about 100 of. The other half of Lighthouse contains a RIDICULOUS amount of loot that even Labs is jealous of. ASEAs everywhere, all of the mil tech loot from Reserve, all of the GPUs lying around in random boxes. Just go in with a pistol and a huge ass bag and hope you don’t get domed by Simba camping on Pride Rock overlooking Merin car.

Fuck I hate this new map and how it’s stolen the uniqueness from all of the other maps in the game. There really is no reason to play any of the other maps. It is THE best map BY FAR for loot.

I wish Interchange stores actually had gpus

I wish Reserve was the only place to get cool unique mil tech loot like power filters and AESAs again.

I wish the bullets and nades you find here were worth picking up.

I wish Shoreline was the place to hunt for LEDXes and bitcoins and cultists

I wish Labs card rooms were worth the insane price you pay for them

I wish Dorms on Customs was actually worth fighting over again

I wish Lighthouse Rogues were not easily cheesed but at the same time fucking ridiculously challenging and un fun to fight in a conventional manner. I wish all the new items like Bulbex cutters, Pipe wrench, Military corrugated hoses, etc were the draw for this map and all the AESAs and GPUs and bitcoins that used to be so fun to find were found on the OTHER maps.

TL;DfuckingR: Lighthouse and dynamic loot have sucked all the fun out of the game for me. Its a shame because I LOVE the flea market changes and inertia, but the fact I feel like theres only 1 meaningful map to play on (honestly its only half a map considering the other half is aimbot AI, landmines and player scavs) … it just SUCKS man. This game sucks.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk

Thursday, March 3, 2022

Analysts say bulls will aim for $48K now that Bitcoin’s ‘accumulation phase’ has begun

BTC price appears to be consolidating below $44,000, while analysts highlight $48,000 as the next short-term bull target.

Investor sentiment across the cryptocurrency ecosystem has seen a significant shift in the positive direction over the past week, despite events in the wider world. Currently, Bitcoin (BTC) is back above $43,500 and many altcoins are also witnessing double-digit gains.

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine and recent actions taken by governments to limit access to banking services may have helped to shine a light on the value of holding cryptocurrencies, which offers some protection against uncontrollable events and what some might perceive as government overreach.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of BTC has oscillated between $43,350 and $45,400 on March 2 as the world awaits some form of resolution to the current conflicts.

Here’s what several analysts are saying about the recent price action for BTC and where it could be headed in the weeks ahead.

Bitcoin accumulation has begun

The sideways price action for Bitcoin has been largely influenced by the fact that the top cryptocurrency “has entered a volume gap” according to crypto analyst and pseudonymous Twitter user Rekt Capital, who posted the following chart highlighting the lower demand in the current price range.

Rekt Capital said,

“Volume Gaps tend to get filled entirely. Major Volume Gap resistance lies ahead at the ~$48,000 region, which happens to be the mid-range area of the macro range.”

Evidence that the price is likely to head higher was provided by Ki Young Ju, CEO of the on-chain analysis firm CryptoQuant. According to Ki, the “BTC accumulation phase” has begun.

According to Ki, “newbies who joined last year are evolving to long-term holders” as the market cap for Bitcoins that are older than six months now accounts for 52% of the total market cap of BTC as opposed to 13% at the recent cyclic top.

He said,

“Unlikely to hit the previous low ($28,000) as the newbies will wait for other newbies in the next cycle.”

Rate hikes could be the next major catalyst

A more in-depth analysis of the effect of current events on the cryptocurrency market was offered by David Lifchitz, managing partner and chief investment officer at ExoAlpha, who noted the hard bounce in BTC from $37,000 to $44,000 “in the couple of hours following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a national ban on foreign FX transfers.”

The rapid move upwards “stalled at $44,000, which coincided with the 100-day moving average,” according to Lifchitz, which is “also near the top of the $33,000-$45,000 range in which Bitcoin has been trading in for weeks.

Lifchitz sees the $45,000 resistance as holding firm for now and highlighted the “next hurdle” at $51,000 that still stands in the way before BTC can even attempt to make a run at its all-time high above $64,000.

As for what comes next for BTC in the short term, Lifchitz suggested that “BTC may go down a bit toward the middle of its $33,000–$45,000 range” and noted that “it’s difficult to see BTC breaking above $45,000 and then $51,000 without any significant catalyst.”

Lifchitz said,

“There's the FOMC meeting on March 16th where the FED decides if it hikes rates or not. Technically a rate hike "strengthens" the USD and therefore "weakens" BTC in the BTC/USD pair, so it will be interesting to see how BTC reacts then if the FED hikes rates in 2 weeks, but the impact on BTC may not be drastic.”

Vertical accumulation is a "possibility"

A final bit of insight into BTC's historical performance was provided by analyst and pseudonymous Twitter user Altcoin Sherpa, who posted the following chart showing that the current range has been a significant support and resistance zone since last May.

Altcoin Sherpa said,

“Watching $40,000 to see if we get a pullback. If this is like September then we'll see vertical accumulation and Bitcoin is not going to dip (unless on low time frames) much at all for a bit. I'm guessing I won't get this in the short term.”

The overall cryptocurrency market cap now stands at $1.924 trillion and Bitcoin’s dominance rate is 43.2%.