Bitcoin Funding Rates Remain Negative But Open Interest Tells Another Story

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Bitcoin funding rates have been dropping over the last couple of weeks. Even as the price of the digital asset had plummeted, causing some to call it being on ‘discount’, these funding rates have refused to move out of the negative territory. The past week has proven to be no different given that funding rates have exited the neutral territory entirely and remain low.

Funding Rates Refuse To Budge Coming out of the last week has been a hard one for the crypto market. The bloodbath had sent the majority of the coins in the crypto market into the red and bitcoin had touched the $20,000 level for the first time since December 2020. Through this has come panic across investors and the funding rates have reflected this panic.

Related Reading | Exchange Inflows Ramp Up As Crypto Investors Clamor To Exit Market

The past week had come to a close with funding rates sitting well below neutral. This follows the trend for the 7-day period where the funding rate had trended below neutral each day. It sat at 0.013% as of Tuesday. Not the lowest point so far but it marked the second-lowest point for the month of June.

This decline in funding rates follows what Arcane Research refers to as an orderly sell-off in the derivatives markets. It is no surprise given the liquidation volumes that rocked the market on Monday and Tuesday, touching above $1 billion in a 24-hour period and setting a new daily liquidation event record.

Funding rates remain low | Source: Arcane Research The research and analysis firm also notes that investors are approaching the market with caution. This is due to the “current market structure with increased contagion risks related to Celsius and the pressuring macro backdrop.” This caution comes as no surprise given that investor sentiment now resides in extreme fear, meaning there is no room for careless abandon in a market such as this.

Bitcoin Open Interest Turns The Other Way Even with the funding rates low, other metrics are surprisingly not doing as bad. One of these is the bitcoin’s open interest in the perpetual markets. This metric remains high even though the price of bitcoin has plummeted close to 2017 highs.

Historically, BTC-denominated open interest has been known to decline in line with the market. This has not been the case with the most recent bitcoin crash. Instead of falling, open interest had hit multiple new all-time highs even as the sell-offs had continued. This suggests that some investors had believed that the bottom was in and tried to take advantage of it. But this was not the case.

Open interest on the rise | Source: Arcane Research Nevertheless, open interest in perpetuals was at 298,500 BTC as of Tuesday. It is in stark contrast to the last major market crash that took place back in December, where open interest in perps had declined to 190,000 BTC as the price of the digital asset had fallen.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Crash Sends Institutional Investors Running For The Hills

This increase in open interest suggests that if the bitcoin bottom is not in already, then it may very well be reached soon. Although it is important to keep in mind that a metric like this on its own cannot give a full picture of when the bitcoin bottom will be reached.

BTC drops to $21,000 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com Featured image from Arabian Business, charts from Arcane Reseach and TradingView.com Follow Best Owie on Twitter for market insights, updates, and the occasional funny tweet…

I am on the border of giving up.

Hey Reddit, I am running out of strength, I will start from the latest events to the oldest, some may think this is not that hard and to man up, but I am literally planning my departure from this earth.

I am just a simple 34 years old man, living paycheck to paycheck, it took me 14 months to find the job I currently have, and it is the best pay I have ever gotten, I am basically a freelancer, no benefits, no protection, 40 hrs a week for the last 9 months.

They could "end" my contract and that is it, jobless again, lately I feel like one of the managers has been highly nitpicking, and it looks like she is on the top of the pyramid because two other managers always reach out to me in a very kind manner and sometimes kind of jokingly about whatever it is the lady is going say in a wide company email about whatever it is I did "wrong".

I am anxious all the time, as soon as a manager says hi my heart skips a beat, I triple-check all I am about to type or email before sending it out, and I am trying to keep the lowest profile possible, and that kind of backfire because the client I am assigned to, hasn't been very active, and one of the "friendly" managers asked me why I have not been trying to help the rest of the team.

Since I have been here, the lady who hired me quit, the guy who trained me quit, and two coworkers that held my same position quit, and they have not really been "replaced", people have been moved around, and I feel like my name is next on the list of people that "quit".

The next thing is, my wife and I got lucky and the place we rent was extremely cheap to what the country average is, and we have been living here for almost 4 years, literally one-third of the price for rent everywhere, but all good things must come to an end, and the landlady has asked us to move out since the owner is coming back to the country and wants to live here. Looking for a new place has made me realize that I will lose the extra weight I have.

When my wife and I started living together, we had a very rough beginning economically, we both got into deep credit card debt, I had loans I was not able to pay, and we both dig up our hole as deep as the banks allowed us. Once we reached the bottom, there was no option other than to start slowly climbing. Where I live, the banks sue you, then you get your bank account sized, your cars, properties, etc, so we did not have a thing under our names but our IDs. It took years, but we decided that since she had less debt than I, we will work to pay off hers first to get access to bank services, be able to request services, and start building some credit, she is now out of overdue debt. In my case, I still have nothing but my ID under my name.

We have been together for 11 years and lived together for 9, she was kicked from her mom's house, then from her grandmom's house when we had less than a year of "dating" I bought her to my parent's home without asking permission, we used to walk everywhere because we did not have money for transportation, we had it rough, but we went through it. We have only had 2 screaming fights, and a few don't talk to me right now moments.

For the last 2 years, we grow apart at the beginning it was for sure my fault, we never had it easy, and I used the internet and video games to escape from the world, I noticed, and try to make it right, and was kind of successful, then covid hit, things happened, got two jobs due to being afraid of the stability of my job at the time, got stupid lucky, and used all my "extra" money to buy bitcoin and that is how I took care of my responsibilities for most of those 14 months without a job.

During the time I had two jobs and was learning about crypto, everything was closing, zero quality time, covid panic everywhere, you know, I notice she was super bored and sad, so I thought, I will get her a PC, so she can play, and socialize on the internet, and I did, and it worked, she found friends, joined discord groups, chat, play, she did not need my attention as much anymore, good I thought. Long story short, lost both jobs, and bitcoin saved me a$$, but we grow apart, even more, her online friends took the spot and I could not get it back.

About a month ago, she told me that we act like just roommates and that she did not want to be my partner anymore, law here says everything inside the house belongs to the wife, so if she decides to keep it all, there is nothing I can do, anyway, all of it was bought under her name since I do not have any bank history due to my debt. I have been heartbroken, I do all I can to distract my mind, can't go for a walk, or I think about this and break down, my soul is in pieces, and I think I am having panic attacks, I must keep my mind numb, watch whatever I can get my hands on.

We are not fighting, and we have "talked" about the situation, I think she has a lawyer already, honestly, I do not see the point anymore, no one depends on me for survival other than myself, I have a job that looks like want to give me the boot, I have to leave this home anyway, does not look like I can afford a decent place to live, and live for what, the person I love and wanted to live with does not want me around anymore, the future looks like shit, why would I want to stick around alone for it?

Interesting post from /r/UKPersonalFinance: "Let the crypto crash be a reminder to us all"

Read this on /r/UKPersonalFinance yesterday.

Thought the advice was pretty good, and should be shared here:

From browsing this sub for the last couple of years, whenever there is a post asking for advice on what to do with a windfall etc, there have always been responses along the lines of:

‘Bitcoin will be 100k by the end of the year’ ‘Stick it all in crypto you can’t go wrong’

To anyone witnessing the recent events, this is why people would say to only put in what you can afford to lose/a small percentage of your portfolio.

Yes, of course you can get rich in Crypto and people have. But there’s also a number of people who would have gone in too heavy and now don’t have an easy way out.

So next time there is another risky asset that people are pumping, use this a reminder as to why people say to limit your exposure!

Credit to /u/UnderCover428/ for the post.

Link to the original post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/comments/vcymmu/let_the_crypto_crash_be_a_reminder_to_us_all/

And remember:

Always. Do. Your. Research.

A token of Gratitude - Intro - Part 3

​

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We sometimes see the WWW represented as a 🌐 spherical network or a network globe, but just like the founding fathers started off America, the internet was founded and expanded by greedy corporations. So, due to the hierarchical nature of corporations, it became a 🔺 pyramid, not a unified 🌎 biosphere as it was meant to become.

The WWW is founded from greed and it ignorantly sustains the 6th great extinction event. It is time for our species to evolve to a Biosphere Web that connects everything from gratitude to ∞ infinity.

You see, the pyramid is a symbol that represents division, as opposed to a biosphere that represents unification or unity. The pyramid is a knife that cuts, it can never be an agent of unification.

Today, the 🔺 WWW divides the world while the 🌎 Biosphere Web truly spans across the planet and unifies our world, our biosphere.

[...] Continue reading our white paper here: www.gratitudetoken.world/white-paper

Useful Links

GitHub | Discord | Reddit | Media Release Kit

“Social” Media

Twitter | TikTok | Instagram | YouTube | Facebook

Read the White Paper:

White Paper

#gratitude #gratitudetoken #tokenofgratitude #grat #blockchain #bitcoin #marketfear #token #crypto #decentralization #opensource #monetarysystem #currencysystem #personalinformation #privacy #identity #biosphere

[Depth] Analysis of stETH's Prisoner's Dilemma and Celsius run from the perspective of on-chain and financial security

Celsius was revealed to have lost 35,000 ETH on June 7th. The ETH liquidity ecology, and even the entire cryptocurrency market, have become trapped in a liquidity prisoner's dilemma centered on stETH. This has resulted in a run on cryptocurrency "banks" like Celsius.

SharkTeam will start from the origin of the incident, which means to analyze the incident from the perspective of the formation of the ETH pledge ecology, on-chain analysis and financial security.

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1. Celsius Project Overview

Celsius' founder Mashinsky was born in Ukraine. Celsius is a well-known star CeFi in the UK and the US, with over 1.7 million users and a maximum asset management of more than 30 billion US dollars.

In terms of business model, Celsius is no different than a "bank." It absorbs "encrypted deposits" from depositors on the liability side; on the asset side, it uses a large amount of precipitation funds to earn income through loans and other forms. Celsius profits from the difference in interest rates between the two ends.

Celsius attracts users in a simple way, similar to UST: deposit cryptocurrencies to earn an annualized rate of return of up to 18%, with weekly dividends. In terms of overall yield, on Celsius, Bitcoin is around 3% to 8%, Ethereum is 4% to 8%, and USDT is 9% to 11%, so where does the high risk-free yield come from?

Lending is Celsius' main external business. Obviously, lending is a rather stable business model. Faced with the issue of capital efficiency, however, not all funds are matched to generate income. Low capital much used to a relatively low percentage yield (APY), which has an impact on liabilities. end of the expansion (suction and storage).

So an unspoken rule of the industry is that they tend to look elsewhere for yield and use increasingly exotic and riskier financial instruments in addition to borrowing. For example, the Anchor Protocol of Terra Ecology, Celsius is the super whale on Anchor, sending hundreds of millions of dollars in encrypted assets to Anchor before the UST thunderstorm has become one of the last straws to crush UST.

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Celsius promises to give depositors up to 8% of the deposit income of Ethereum. In order to achieve this income, Celsius also chooses to exchange a large amount of ETH for ETH2.0 derivatives such as stETH, so as to obtain pledge income. According to on-chain statistics, Celsius holds about $1.5 billion in stETH positions, which paved the way for today’s liquidity crisis.

In addition, as a cryptoasset mortgage loan platform, users can mortgage a variety of cryptocurrencies on Celsius to lend stablecoins and cash, and the loan interest rate is as low as 5-10%, and if they use their own issued CEL tokens, they can enjoy better discounts low interest rate policy.The CEL token is introduced here. It is mentioned in the white paper published by Celsius that Celsius pre-sold CEL tokens at a price of $0.20 per token (40% of the total number of CEL tokens), followed by a price of 0.30 per token. The price in USD was crowdfunded (10% of the total number of CEL tokens). This means that CEL holders can apply for US dollar loans at Celsius and enjoy better discounts when paying loan interest. This forms a cycle, attracting more users to get cash by staking CEL, and while stimulating the demand for CEL, it also pushes up the price of CEL, allowing Celsius to spend more budget on marketing and advertising to attract users’ attention.

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However, after Celsius announced a withdrawal freeze, CEL plummeted by 60%, with a minimum drop of 19 cents, which also led to huge losses for users who used CEL tokens as collateral.

2. Lido Project Overview

PoS networks still have high barriers to entry and opportunity costs for potential users (e.g. Ethereum requires a minimum of 32 ETH), including huge capital investment, technical complexity of the verification process, and long lock-up periods (locked until after the merger).The "staking-as-a-service" track was born, and these platforms provide holders with simple, flexible and capital-efficient staking services. The leader in this industry is Lido.

Lido is a non-custodial liquid staking protocol for Ethereum, Solana, Kusama, Polygon, and Polkadot. Lido not only makes the access conditions of Pos more democratic, but also enables a more secure decentralized PoS network as the Lido roadmap is gradually realized. Lido is now ranked fourth among all protocol TVLs, with over a third of all ETH invested.

Currently Lido DAO manages 5 Lido liquid staking protocols. While the five supported PoS networks (including Ethereum, Solana, Kusama, Polygon, and Polkadot) differ in design, the general mechanics of their liquid staking protocols are similar.

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The two main parts involved are users (stakers) and node operators (validators). Key parts of the protocol are staking smart contracts, token-staking derivatives (st assets, such as stETH), and external DeFi integrations (such as Curve).

Users deposit assets into the Lido Liquidity Staking Agreement, and will receive the corresponding pledged derivatives (for example, pledged ETH will receive stETH). Lido's tokenization of the pledge pool effectively unlocks the liquidity of user assets, and st assets exist in two forms: elastic supply (rebase) and shares (shares). Elastic supply forms (such as stETH, stKSM, stDOT) refer to the 1:1 minting of st assets based on deposited assets.

To match the underlying asset, the peg token balance changes daily with the accumulated staking rewards. Whether the st asset is acquired from Lido staking, purchased from a decentralized exchange, or acquired through transfers from other holders, the daily st asset balance will change based on cumulative rewards. stETH accounts for more than 98% of the total asset value of st in circulation. stETH is currently a pure synthetic, closed-end derivative, as it can redeem its staked ETH after the Ethereum merger. Holders who want to exchange stETH for ETH must rely on exchanges such as Curve, Uniswap, and FTX for pricing and liquidity.

The liquidity of stETH comes from the integration of decentralized exchanges (Dex) and decentralized lending (Lend):

(1) Lido DAO incentivizes Curve's stETH:ETH pool, which is currently the deepest AMM pool in DeFi. Measures to incentivize Lido DAO tokens (LDO) and CRV by increasing the pool’s APY (annualized rate of return) attract corresponding liquidity. Such pools from Curve, along with Uniswap and Balancer, give stETH holders the ability to withdraw before their staked ETH is unlocked.

(2) Although Lido stakers can hold stETH or provide low-risk liquidity to DEX (risk comes from impermanent losses), if stakers use st assets as collateral, they can obtain higher returns. For example, Aava and MakerDAO can mortgage stETH, and Solend can mortgage stSOL for loans. For example, assets on Aava that can be loaned up to 70% of the value of stETH, some people can obtain relatively high returns by circulating loans in this way and then pledge, but they also take greater risks.

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3. Analysis of stETH's Prisoner's Dilemma and How Celsius Runs Generated from an On-Chain Perspective

1) Arbitrage opportunities brought by the merger of Ethereum, the demand for stETH surged

In December 2020, the Beacon Chain was launched, which means that Ethereum has entered a new stage and began to transition to PoS, which is what we often call Ethereum 2.0. This is followed by the business model of ETH pledge, which has resulted in Defi projects like Lido, whose main source of revenue is pledge income. The Lido project has the highest lock-up volume, totaling more than $20 billion, and has continuously ranked in the top ten Defi lock-up projects.

As the merger date of ETH2.0 is getting closer and closer, pledge has gradually become the gathering point of ETH liquidity. Many institutions and individuals have begun to pledge a large amount of ETH and exchange stETH, in order to not lose ETH liquidity at the same time (stETH can be Pledging on AAVE and trading on Curve) for arbitrage, which lays a hidden danger for the generation of subsequent events.

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2) In a crypto bear market, the demand for stETH is decreasing

Starting in late May 2022, stETH:ETH has been below 0.98 for a long time, which is related to the recent bear market. The liquidity of users for encrypted assets has been greatly improved, and stETH-type certificate assets with relatively poor liquidity will no longer be able to meet user needs. , was gradually sold to the market, causing the price of stETH to be unstable. This is not a problem in itself. After the ETH2.0 merger is completed, users who hold stETH can still exchange 1:1 for ETH and complete the arbitrage.

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3) Due to security incidents such as the UST crash and Stakehound, Celsius suffered significant losses, which impacted investor confidence.

Celsius once held $535 million in Anchor Protocol and was one of the seven whale wallets that contributed to the collapse of UST. Although Celsius escaped before the UST was completely thundered, it also suffered losses and severely damaged market confidence, causing users to distrust Celsius. Since the UST de-anchored, funds began to withdraw from Celsius at an accelerated rate, with a loss of more than $750 million from May 6 to May 14.

On June 7, Celsius Network was reported to have lost at least 35,000 ETH in the event of Stakehound private key loss. Through the on-chain analysis platform ChainAegis, it was found that Celsius Network transferred 34,999.99 ETH to StakeHound Eth on February 3, 2021. 2 Depositor, meanwhile Celsius Network got 35000stETH. On February 3rd and March 4th, 2021, 10000stETH and 1200stETH were transferred to 0xDb3165 respectively.

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However, Celsius was "secretly secretive", which caused Celsius users to lose trust in it, and began to withdraw the assets originally deposited in Celsius, forming a run. A typical example is that on June 8, wallets related to Alameda Research sold stETH in large quantities. On June 10th, a large number of 1k-2k independent addresses began to sell stETH, forming a new wave of panic selling. Amber withdraws liquidity from Curve's stETH-ETH pool.

In order to satisfy users' run redemption, Celsius connected to multiple secondary market exchanges through the address 0x4131, and was forced to sell its own stETH in the secondary market to withdraw liquidity. This address is a high-frequency user of Uniswap. Currently, the token holdings are mainly SNX, and the total token value is about 11,000 ETH.

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4) The liquidity crisis exacerbated the run even more

On June 11, the U.S. CPI in May increased by 8.6% year-on-year, exceeding expectations, hitting a new high since 1981.

Ethereum developer Tim Beiko said Ethereum is expected to further delay the merger between late August and November this year. Developers are delaying Ethereum's difficulty bomb as they are currently fixing bugs they discovered during the Ropsten merger. After the merger, the fork of the state transition also needs to wait for a period of time, which may take 6 months after the merger. There is also a limit to the amount of ETH that can be unstaken at one time, and the unstaking queue may take more than a year. The delay in stETH arbitrage opportunities has caused more and more users to be reluctant to hold.

However, more data shows that Celsius holds a total of 1 million ETH, of which only 268,000 (nearly 27%) are sufficiently liquid. Of the other 73%, 445,000 ETH are pledged in Lido and hold stETH for pledge mining. According to the current exchange rate in Curve, only 287,000 ETH can be exchanged, and the rest cannot be withdrawn within one year. At the usual rate of 50,000 ETH per week, only the liquid ETH in Celsius would be depleted within five weeks, further exacerbating the run by the loss of trust in Celsius and the insolvency of Celsius.

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5) Celsius called a large amount of funds, but still suspended all withdrawals, transactions and transfers

According to ChainAegis data, Celsius withdrew 9,500 Wrapped Bitcoin (worth about $247 million) from AAVE and transferred it to an address on the FTX exchange before announcing the suspension of user withdrawals. In addition to this, Celsius also withdrew 5,500 ETH (worth about $74.5 million) to FTX.

Celsius gained around $320 million in liquidity through the FTX exchange prior to the notice of the withdrawal ban, according to the above data. There is also evidence that Celsius has been moving substantial quantities of other cryptocurrencies, implying that the business is deep in the quagmire. Celsius banned all withdrawals, transactions, and transfers between accounts on June 13 in order to stop the run, and therefore became the subject of public criticism, and the run was a given outcome.

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6) Serial liquidations will affect the entire crypto market

According to ChainAegis data, the liquidity of stETH is gathered in the Aave lending pool. This lending pool has 1.4 million stETH with a market cap of about $2.26 billion. For a pool of more than 2 billion US dollars, the APY income is 0, and the loan utilization rate is also 0, indicating that the loan pool itself does not generate any income at all, and all funds are revolving borrowing and leverage.

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Multi-billion leveraged bets on Ethereum’s merged mainnet activation via AAVE and Lido’s stETH.

1) Stake ETH on Lido for stETH

2) Deposit stETH into AAVE and borrow ETH

3) Loop the above operations

Many ETH longs will be liquidated if the stETH/ETH peg fails. The entire stETH/ETH problem is now essentially a liquidation problem for billions of dollars of leveraged long bets, rather than a simple de-anchoring problem. If stETH/ETH continues to de-anchor and reaches Aave's liquidation line, a $2.2 billion time bomb would detonate, impacting the whole cryptocurrency market. The most terrifying feature of this time bomb is that it could not be defused. It is subject to the Ethereum main network's merger, and stETH cannot be converted for ETH.

stETH holders are in a prisoner's dilemma:

1) Selling stETH, the price of stETH will fall, accelerating the thunderstorm of the entire stETH;

2) Clear the stETH leverage and continue to hold it. Others sell stETH and bear the greater risk of stETH de-anchoring.

The only option is to take a fluke and hope that there will be no serial liquidations until Ethereum completes the merger. Once the Ethereum merger is successfully completed, stETH can be redeemed 1:1, then this time bomb is really removed.

4. Who is the next UST or Celsius

The market is now more concerned about whether Tether Limited, the issuer of the world's largest stable currency Tether, would be dragged into the ocean as well.

Tether, the leading player in the $180 billion stablecoin market, is critical in facilitating cryptocurrency transactions as well as providing a link to the mainstream financial system, akin to the currency circle's financial infrastructure.

"While Tether's portfolio does include an investment in the company (Celsius), it represents a minor fraction of our There is no correlation between own reserves and stability," Tether wrote in a blog post on Monday.

However, it is impossible to know exactly how much Tether’s assets are at risk due to the ambiguity of what Tether has disclosed, said Saleuddin of crypto media firm Blockworks. “But we do know that they hold tokens, precious metals, quite a bit of low-grade commercial paper, and they are all tied to Celsius...what does it take to run on Tether? We don’t actually know,” Saleuddin said. ."

It is true that the centralized stable currency economic model of USDT has huge risks due to the imperfect regulatory system and the opaque financial situation of its own. Shuffle.

• The UST/Luna project, the founder of South Korea, was hunted by finance in May；

• Celsius was one of seven whale wallets that contributed to the collapse of UST, dumping over $500 million in UST;

• In June, the Ukrainian founder Celsius was run on the brink of collapse. The origin of the run was stETH generated by the merger of ETH; ETH founder Vitalik Buterin is a Russian and an opinion leader in the crypto world; Ukraine and Russia are at war;

If there is also a problem with USDT, the "encryption war" has begun, otherwise it can only be said to be "the reincarnation of heaven".

About us: Our vision is to improve security globally. We believe that by building this security barrier, we can significantly improve lives around the world.SharkTeam composes of members with many years of cyber security experiences and blockchain, team members are based in Suzhou, Beijing, Nanjing and Silicon Valley, proficient in the underlying theories of blockchain and smart contracts, and we provide comprehensive services including threat modeling, smart contract auditing, emergency response, etc. SharkTeam has established strategic and long-term cooperations with key players in many areas of the blockchain ecosystem, such as Huobi Global, OKX, polygon, Polkadot, imToken, ChainIDE, etc

Bill Gates: Crypto Is 100% Based on Greater Fool Theory — 'I'm Not Involved in That'

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates says crypto is an asset class that is 100% based on the Greater Fool Theory. The billionaire also mocked Bored Ape NFTs, stating: “Obviously, expensive digital images of monkeys are going to improve the world immensely.”

Bill Gates on Crypto and NFTs

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates talked about cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) at this year’s Techcrunch Sessions: Climate 2022 event Tuesday.

Referring to the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs, Gates sarcastically said: “Obviously, expensive digital images of monkeys are going to improve the world immensely. That’s so incredible.”

He clarified, “I’m used to asset classes like a farm where they have output or a company where they make products,” describing crypto as:

An asset class that’s 100% based on some sort of Greater Fool Theory that somebody’s going to pay more for it than I do.

The Greater Fool Theory suggests that there will always be a greater fool in the market ready to pay a price based on a higher valuation for an already overvalued investment. However, eventually, when there’s no one left willing to pay a higher price, asset prices can decline sharply, leaving investors holding worthless investments.

Gates stressed that he is not getting involved in any asset that “at its heart has sort of this anonymity that you avoid taxation or any sort of government rules about kidnapping fees or things.” He emphasized:

I’m not involved in that. I’m not long or short in any of those things.

The billionaire also claimed that the digital banking efforts he supports through his philanthropic foundations are “hundreds of times more efficient” than cryptocurrencies.

The Microsoft co-founder has long been a critic of cryptocurrency and bitcoin. In May, he said during a Reddit AMA that he does not own any cryptocurrency. “I like investing in things that have valuable output,” the billionaire explained. “The value of crypto is just what some other person decides someone else will pay for it, so not adding to society like other investments.”

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bill gates, bill gates bitcoin, Bill Gates bored apes, bill gates crypto, bill gates cryptocurrency, Bill Gates nfts, microsoft co-founder, nft, NFTs

What do you think about the comments by Bill Gates? Let us know in the comments section below.

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news source : https://news.bitcoin.com/bill-gates-crypto-is-100-based-on-greater-fool-theory-im-not-involved-in-that/

Common Sense and War

What Celsius has done. What FTX is doing. What Terra, 3AC, Coinbase, a16z, Changpeng Zhao and venture capitalists the world over represent—the current financial system. Recreated, except much worse, because legacy finance with its critical flaws is still beholden to consumer protections, charters, and securities law, which took a century from the crash of 1929 until now to achieve and refine.

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The war in most minds right now is a legal war of shady lawyers, class actions, and prison sentences, which is a pyrrhic war I’d expect waged from a fiat-distorted inflationary mind.

I’m at my breaking point because bitcoiners warned about this incessantly for years and I already watched this play out with Mt. Gox, a watershed moment for bitcoiners. While I don’t credit that event with the self-custody dogma bitcoiners have (because bitcoin was born long before exchanges existed), I do credit it with the birth of hardware wallet companies and custody solutions, most of which started back then (under different names) growing into CoinKite, Ledger, Trezor.

I’m also at my breaking point because I know a salon owner who keeps all her savings with Celsius here in NYC.

“Yield,” she told me last summer, “is crypto’s killer app.”

Crypto is a scam. That’s something that waits around for bitcoin’s halving to do anything. It’s something you’ll find on a stadium's rooftop and block Twitter bots from advertising. Indeed yield is crypto’s killer app. That’s a phrase Alex Mashinsky coined himself if I’m not mistaken at the Bitcoin conference in 2021 where I first met him. Catchy. But yield is a scam in this still undeveloped space, of course a robust yield curve is coming, but it's not here yet, and I warned her against all forms of yield, because I know how DeFi works. It’s designed around dapps that try capturing your money in exchange for their speculative tokens. They hire promoters, do rounds on podcasts, pay YouTube shills, are active on social media, partner with VC’s, and the ultimate goal is to get listed on major exchanges. The money these dapps separate you from is centralized derivative monies—USDC, DAI, and WBTC. I use these three as examples because they’re the #1, #2, and #3 coins by mkt cap in the Ethereum Network behind only ETH itself. These are just centralized representations of USD and BTC though, because USD and BTC are not derivatives, and the latter (BTC) is not centralized.

But that’s just DeFi Basic. DeFi Pro adds collateralization cakes that grow more and more layered until they shadow 2008, they also lever DAO’s run by TradFi and CEX linked companies, where insider trading, manipulation, and soft rugs are the trade craft. We’re watching it live with 3AC, Lido, Celsius, etcetera.

MONEY is not tps, tx cost, or throughput. Those are all features of a blockchain. As for the largest “crypto”, which is Ethereum, ETH’s job is to ferry the centralized derivative money that we talked about above around the system. ETH is a gas token. The Ethereum Network then, is an IOU database. This is not an innovation, and I agree that PoW isn’t necessary for this, and neither is decentralization for that matter, if your network’s hardest money is centralized derivative money.

DeFi and web3 is an orgy of swaps, wraps, burns, mints, and stakes, run by centralized dapps that do nothing but optimize token interactions to keep the orgy going.

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Again, there is bitcoin, and there is crypto. Crypto as you can see from what’s happening with yield-seeking, and wobbly pegs, DeFi, illiquid vaporware, etcetera, is a scam. Crypto only exists because of VC’s, exchanges, centralized derivative money (stablecoins, WBTC), and the fact there are no securities regulations. But all these nasty scammy creatures only have relevance and power because you’ve given your money to them.

So what then is the innovation in this space?

The innovation is decentralized MONEY. The radical idea is separating MONEY from State. That’s it. Bitcoin is decentralized MONEY. Progress is where everything builds on top of decentralized money—in layers—with everything in those layers ultimately getting settled in this decentralized money. This is how an honest and transparent base layer is made. Our current economic base layer is fiat and debt. This is a dishonest base layer. Nothing built over a dishonest base layer can ever be honest. And that dishonesty leaves us here, distorted AF, because distortion in money causes distortion in information.

The salon owner said what she put into Celsius is inheritance she’ll leave to her children, calculating that at 6% interest, the amount would double after just a dozen years. Now it’s a subject to ponder wether or not she’ll have anything remaining. Alex Mashinsky is nothing new. Do Kwon was talked about in the Old Testament. Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX is an 80s junk bond desk. Coinbase is a boiler room. UniSwap is a mob casino sportsbook with its own chips. Changpeng Zhao is one of China’s top spies. A16z is selling you middlware disguised as "software that will eat the world". Ethereum isn’t a “world computer”, that’s just more VC-speak, because we already have one, it’s called the internet. Ethereum is just a derivative version of the internet, an intranet, except more expensive, less efficient, slower, and harder to use, an IOU database that ferries around centralized derivative money. So what are you?

You are exit liquidity

This is war. Not like Fight Club’s project Mayhem requiring violence and demolition explosives. It’s a war of peace, a non-violent revolution:

Your first act of war:

Take self custody of your property. That means a hardware wallet. That’s your savings. That’s where the majority of your coinage stays. Your checking account with small active amounts can be anything else. Preferably non-custodial but something like CashApp etc is fine too.

Your second act of war

Do not use CEX’s (centralized exchanges) for buying or selling. STOP! Dip your toes into the DEX’s (decentralized exchanges) world. The only effective vector that blockchain forensics have to lever are CEX’s, because of the KYC. Without that, as the data set grows, identifying individuals becomes impossible without unlocked access to their physical devices, anything less wouldn’t hold up in a court of law. Here’s a list of all the non-KYC bitcoin DEX’s. I’ve used everything on this list above an 8 and they’re great.

https://kycnot.me

We need way more volume on these DEX’s. I understand Jack Dorsey’s Block (parent company of Square, CashApp, etc) is busy building what they hope to be a major global bitcoin DEX as well and will integrate it with their WEB5 plans.

Your final act of war:

Run a node or mine. Preferably a node with Lighting support. But neither are necessary, only the first two acts of war are. Running an LN node without putting in the work to understand what you’re doing won’t help the network, but make it worse. Here’s a very good article on why that is:

https://darthcoin.substack.com/p/recommendations-for-ln-users?s=r

Running LN nodes will become much easier and automated with time, but until we have full Taproot support and better BOLT spec, we are where we are.

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The salon owner called me crying out of the blue at 11 p.m, an hour after the Celsius freeze was announced on Monday night. I wasn’t sure how she had my number, but remembered I’m in her salon computer under the name “satoshi” because I’m the first person that’s ever paid her in bitcoin since she started accepting it. I took the call from my small outside balcony. I can see Mashinsky’s penthouse from where I live. The lights are on and I wonder what he’s thinking. He’s a father of six and all indications are he’s happily married to a beautiful woman. I hadn’t heard about the Celsius freeze until then, but my immediate concern was what could happen if they filed for bankruptcy protection. Celsius no longer has a business. The trust is gone. No institutions will send money there again (a Canadian pension invested $400M in 2021), fewer individuals will send money there, and opening up the withdrawals would see the platform lose everything within 24 hours. There are few securities laws around crypto, so without any retroactive enforcement by SEC, the Celsius rug will have some legal successes in places.

“Do you think it’s gone—that I’ll get it back?”

"Mashinsky has nine lives,” I said, “I’m just not sure how many he’s used; even Madoff’s victims got 80% of their losses back.”

I hated each word that came out of my mouth there. Trusting your money to a “crypto bank” violates the ethos, purpose, and escape velocity of decentralized money or decentralized finance. It’s like sending bitcoin through Western Union, or using Visa’s discrete payment network to spend your crypto. Ridiculous. If you don’t respect that ethos, then there’s no reason to hold anything but USD and use banks, because both are better than crypto and exchanges. Both are safer. Both are no less centralized and custodial than crypto and exchanges. Things only change when the money governments use, and the money everything is settled in is replaced. Using centralized derivative money, chasing yield on centralized dapps, trusting shady custodial platforms, and using VC buzzwords like unbank yourself isn’t progress.

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We have to unite under one banner. Only then can we march down the prestige of global governments, demonetize politicians, slowly disintegrate borders, and align the incentives of all people by using the same decentralized money, connected to the same decentralized network. With the Lightning Network, TARO protocol, DLC,’s, Taproot scripting and mesh networks, bitcoin will over the next two years reach the velocity of money that the internet’s velocity of information achieved in about the same timeframe (15 years from 1979). Its mining, which is 59% renewable already will subsidize flexible load energy of grids, capitalizing renewable energy infrastructure and R&D in a way that heretofore only governments have been able to achieve with manipulation of the tax code (credits, import duties, write-offs). An abundance of goods and services OUTSIDE the money can only achieve such deflation if there’s an over abundance of energy, paired with an interconnected single network allowing for global arbitrage of the global economy. And like the internet again, which created an overabundance of information outside its deflating hard drives and silicon, bitcoin will add the missing piece. The internet of money.

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The internet of money is where we win, and I hope you come for the profits, but stick around for the revolution.

The salon has a sign on it that says closed until further notice. Don’t let this happen to you or anyone you know ever again. For godssake let’s unite.