These are the people making price predictions and yapping the most for some reason…I’m fucking dead

https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1ci4xlb

My thoughts on early access

I have been a fan of games like this forever. Most recently Farthest Frontier was my only real option. Heard the hype, and figured I would try it out. Here are my thoughts on a playthrough, and some stuff I learned to make it easier.

TL/DR: it is EA. Stuff is not complete. So far it seems amazing, and the love and craft is evident. Happy I bought it early, and plan to continue to play/learn as it grows. If you don't want that,then don't buy it.

Things I found that you might feel helpful.

-Apples don't seem to ever get to the Marketplace, I will skip them for now (yes I waited 3 years, and they show up in the house, they just never seem to get picked up for Market)

-For Carrots, try for lot size of about .2 Morgen. Extra family space, and workshop space (obv).

-For artisans, I AVOID the extra space. I did not see if productivity goes up with more people, and this just locks 2 Families into one job, that you might want to pause at some point anyway, so they then contribute nothing.

-Only Carrots seem to care about lot size (apples might, but they don't work) so for everything else keep lot to min that gets you a workshop.

-I like the extra family space for everything but Artisans. Don't always build until needed, but the option is there. Again, no idea if it makes anything more productive, but avoiding sprawl helps with market access. Still not sure if I am right on this approach.

-Unless you turn off the Baron, you need to be killing bandit camps early. Militia with starting weapons is ok, even better to get Manor, so you have retinue. Bandits are the only (real) source of Influence. Tithe is too slow, and I found keeping up on food too hard to afford this tax. After killing their mans, make sure you go loot their base. This is your source of Treasury for Mercs or Retinue. Doing this strengthens you, and stops Baron claiming everything.

-You can add to retinue by clicking customize on the retinue BEFORE rally, and then it lets you buy more. Garrison tower boosts from 12-24. Retinue is super strong.

-Something weird happens with Hitching Posts . Be really careful. I had a dead ox, but it still used a stable slot. I tried deleting and moving, but it did not work. Reloading a save eventually got rid of it. Also weird is assigning oxen to Lumber or Farm. I am just going to avoid this assignment for now, for farms it does not help. For Lumber I think it is better to just have an unassigned one close.

-Farms only need people to plow, sow and harvest. I found 3 fields, with rotation so one is always fallow, +++ fertility works ok. Just fully assign the farmhouse for the key events in Fall (Harvest/Plow/Sow/Thresh) and have them do other stuff the rest of year. Set Thresh priority to low until the other stuff is done.

-Trade is essential. First purchases of an extra Ox and Carrots will tap you out. You need more. The Trade Development points up to Better Deal are almost mandatory in most of my plays. Surplus firewood will eventually get you to 25 so you can buy a trade route. Leather is typically easy to sell. I found Medieval Bitcoin (aka wooden parts) are the best longer term good. They take the same planks as shields, but produce much faster. You need a Joiner for shields anyway, and wooden parts mines money for you.

-Lots of micro is needed early for seasonal work. Eventually it gets better, but farms need a lot of micro so no avoiding overall

Make sure you enjoy the views and walk around in first person. I really enjoy the music and wandering around to appreciate what has been done.

Coinbase will Moon after Q1 Earnings. (chart included)

https://i.redd.it/32tct52sgpxc1.jpeg

Reminder for holders of QBTC, QBTC.U - redeem for cash before May 15, 2024 and switch to an ETF

I have a friend who bought the BTC fund (QBTC, QBTC.U) before there was an ETF and still hasn't gotten around to making the switch to an ETF, so I did some research for them I thought I could share with you all. QBTC is not an ETF and has a high management fee which is no longer justifiable because there are ETFs available, however, if you simply sell the shares and make the change today you will lose about 2% because it trades at a discount.

You have two options if you don't want to lose the discount:

1. Annual redemption is June 17th, for 100% cash value of the underlying NAV, but you must make the request through your broker and that must be processed in time for the May 15th cutoff date. (Check with your broker that they can do redemptions. I can confirm Questrade does redemptions.)
2. You can wait for the discount to shrink and trade them at that time, looking at prior years, people try to arbitrage the discount by buying the shares just before redemption and then doing a redemption, oftentimes resulting in the discount being completely eliminated. Do note, the discount will shoot back up after May 15th once the arbitrage opportunity closes.

If you are going with the second option, you need to look up the BTC per share ratio and do the math yourself to determine the discount. They do have data on their main page you can also look at that shows the NAV and market price at 4:00pm (market close) on trading days, but I don't know how that varies intra-day.

Please note, this a taxable event if you hold it in a taxable account, even if doing the redemption route.

Bitcoin Halving Year and Pulsara Airdrops

I just had a thought looking at the descending price of CORE. I realized after studying the tokenomics of Bitcoin’s deflationary system by halving the rewards for miners every four years that people are probably selling out and buying bitcoin as a short term speculation trade.

So I can’t help but wonder if it’s no coincidence that the pulsara airdrops are happening this year at the same time, because the key requirement for continuing to receive the airdrops this year comes down to actually holding above 90% of your initial holdings. So basically people have to either choose SARA/CORE for the long term or Bitcoin for the short term. Plus anyone selling out means we get a higher percentage of the airdrops.

And if that is by design and not just happenstance, I’m actually feeling excited about the developments in store for 2024 and 2025. As Bitcoin goes up in price and alt season comes around for the bull run, I think integration with exchanges like crypto.com and wallet apps are going to come pouring in. After all the main driver for upward price action is adoption, and who doesn’t want to transact for minuscule gas fees compared to ethereum? Solana is great and viable the larger your transactions are, but with CORE at least people will be able to transact in smaller more frequent volumes which will grease the wheels for crypto trading, especially for arbitrage traders!

Let me know your thoughts. I’m on the lookout for adoption events this year and next.

Purchasing with Bitcoin

If I want to use Lightning or any other method to pay for something with BTC, I'm creating a taxable event every time. If that's the case, where does the medium of exchange come in?

I want us to be there, but until it's the global standard, I don't want to pay an extra XX% to buy toilet paper.

How to navigate this besides using 0% Bitcoin backed loans like Sovryn?

Trading today - summary and see ya.

I know sometimes comments disappear, but no worries, I got you covered: Chocobob and darts2

As for my response to you both and many others - all I will say is: good night.

For those who don't know - I figured I'll walk myself and maybe others who are interested in actual trading through a trade I often took over the years. Here's the trade setup: https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1cfprvx/daily_discussion_monday_april_29_2024/l1r0c48/

You can see the trade walkthrough here, lots of comments, but I had the place to myself today and felt sedentary, thought it would be educational to some of you. Sorry for bloating the daily thread - my bad, I figured it would be safe as child comments of the setup: https://old.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1cfprvx/daily_discussion_monday_april_29_2024/l1r5ryg/

The nonsense worked out exactly as I laid it out at around 6am UTC. Now 63.7 hit, my short filled, I'm fairly sure it will print. It was my alternative target to 64.5 which might still actually hit too. We'll see if there's a drop, nothing tells me otherwise.

But it doesn't have to hit the price exactly, this is not an exact science measured with micrometer scales, even if I got it on the nose, boohoo, you will not see me gloat. I mentioned in my entries that downvotes work as confirmation of my bias and they sure worked again today, but there's no hard feelings.

I get it. Nobody wants to hear that the thing they potentially bought on the pricey side is now going to lose some value for some time.
Believe me - I'm an old hodler (figuratively and I guess literally) and want this to go high as much as the next guy, wouldn't mind a breakout within the next 2-3 years, but I also know how tops work, I know that a slight blip outside the range (like the 73k ATH) is not a new paradigm, it's a rejection wick. I know it's better to build momentum slowly in the middle of the range than bounce around the extremes and ultimately not go anywhere. And I also spot price manipulation this behaviour invites and perpetuates - from a mile away.

And I can only do so much to convince someone from my own experience trading. I try to drop small hints, small packets of information around the time that bull runs start winding down, so maybe some fortunate souls get intrigued and connect the dots on their own time, maybe they will convince themselves using the available data and a mind open to new concepts.

If I just come out straight with an opposing view like 'bull run over', people get entrenched and I become the nonsense clown - believe me, I don't mind that last part - it's human. I would hope I somehow get one person on the right tracks who acted irresponsibly and borrowed money to buy the top to maybe think it over. I did probably become more transparent later in the day as I realised it's likely to play out.

I might have made a mistake thinking this sub will mostly be traders familiar with some of the concepts when in reality it's probably mostly hodlers, so it all fell on deaf ears anyway, but the guys who indeed are going to make it are here, just separated and alone, feeling guilty for - checks notes - feeling bearish in a downtrend. Guys, you're doing ok - use the pushback as confirmation of your setups. And drop the TA, know it, but don't use it. Know that if you have the volume that can stop a candle for what feels like eternity you can make any indicator, any EMA cross, glow, ping any time and any place you want.

As for my predictions today, I'm not from the future, I didn't game the reddit server clock - you can go to any minute candle and check the time and see when I call the action before it happens, when the breakout will occur, when there will be a stop hunt, where a W formation will be formed (using no indicators other than vector candles - and EMAs to read into TA minds). You can see where in places TA would have screamed in your face 'sell, sell, sell, the triangle has fallen' and I knew it was a shake-out the moment I saw it forming. Big red candle just hanging in mid-air below the "support" line for what seems like minutes to then draw you a nice pin down five seconds before close, this is not naturally occurring behaviour, believe me.

Pick a random entry today, go to the chart, check the comment time (don't trust my timestamps, hover over the comment time), see what happened on the charts. You won't see live candle movement, but 1 minute timeframe candles should give you some granularity.

I specifically did it in separate comments so that they couldn't be edited.

Maybe I just got lucky. Maybe you try playing the tokyo spread setup next week and see if the nonsense works. Or it's just some bear nocoiner voodoo.

Maybe I hoped you would indeed put in the effort to check my work, confirm I'm not making stuff up and start connecting the dots, maybe you'd consider your longs today. I know those who wrote to me specifically didn't because you insist nothing came true when everything in fact did come true, I imagine you just assumed the easiest explanation - plenty of clowns in these parts after all. Real traders are among us, it's not just maximalists and contrarians, and there are hodler traders too ;)

Other than the also human reflex to put a time horizon on things which almost always fails - I will always get burned trying to call things in hours and days - on the principle of events every other prediction other than 'when' is 100% correct

I will likely be wrong many times, first thing tomorrow I'll probably zig S&P500 when I should have zagged. Today it worked out, the short will probably print some money, nothing major, I don't want to keep it past 58 anyway, besides if there's enough greed on board it might turn around at 55 and attack 75 again next month to a predictable double top crescendo. Take profits often - there's another trick for you - every 4 years, if only, is a bit lazy in the money making business.

Few parting notes, research this stuff, it's all very simple, I promise:

1) I said it earlier, if you want a breakout, give it time, don't celebrate another 75k or 80k wick inside of 3 months, read it as what it is - it got rejected - AGAIN.

2) Fast move is fake move (it might not burn you right away, but eventually) - just look at how we got from 15k to 73k and tell me it's natural price action - it's 80% absolutely not fair value.

3) The job of a fast move is to entice you into the wrong position or out of the correct position. Doesn't mean: don't bite - but be aware that sharks are circling and up to something, it's an opportunity, try to figure out what the play is. Elevator candles are a setup for you to lose your money, do not let them take it.

4) Price of bitcoin is manipulated by market makers, how else do you think I can tell you the high of the day before the London open - 16 hours before it's hit, I know how they work. Sometimes I will miss the mark, but you can't do it too often if you are to be a profitable trader. And if it did work every time - it would not work at all.

5) You're not buying bitcoin from a guy in China and selling to a guy in Argentina on an exchange. You're buying from the market maker, he sells it to you knowing than later he will move the price down to buy it back cheaper. This is not some conspiracy or a secret, that's why they're in this business. This is done to oil, gold, currency pairs - with the understanding that the smaller the market volume the cheaper it is to move its price and less contested. It's also regulated in certain areas of the economy by relevant financial institutions - it's not like it's some shady shadow economy. Trap the longs, go down, collect liquidation margin, trap the shorts, go up, collect again. That's the business. You might wonder how is that not illegal, I'm still wondering it myself years later - if you don't know how it works and where the profit is in this business, google it. Read the trade walkthrough to understand the three levels approach to exploit this market maker activity.

6) Understand that if they can move it from 15k to 70k, they can also move it to 0, it just doesn't make financial sense to destroy your sandbox, the profit is in "A to B to A". It's not the destination (price) - it's the journey (price volatility) - at the end of the day any bitcoin left in their purse after all this price disco has now appreciated since they first bought it, ka-ching.

7) And for the love of god, next time, promise me this - stop buying every third (final) "bullish pennant" of every larger move - and selling every deep stop hunt shining bright red at the absolute bottoms of the price range. Trade only at the extremes, always buy the bottoms, always sell the tops, trading in the middle of the range is death by a thousand paper cuts.
If everyone does this, I probably lose my source of income, this system needs retail and TA hopefuls to take money from.

All this morning with 1000 dollar stop hunts and immediate pullbacks - I saw people jumping in, jumping off, jumping back in higher, it feels like you're watching someone being tortured.

Try this on paper, try it for real just once with 5 dollars, when you're just about to press the button - buy or sell, doesn't matter - do the opposite of your instinct and see what happens. You will be surprised. Next time you're next to 70k and it's soon enough so that people still hope it's any day now and the greed is still bubbling, short it. If it's some time away (I had high hopes for Autumn 2025, enough time for halving to induce supply constrain), then wait for the breakout and buy the bounce, there is always one - just wait for it.

Know you're flawed, use it to your advantage, beat your greed and fear and keep winning.

Wishing you a slow crawl along the EMAs for a full year before another ATH attempt and a nice juicy breakout of out the 70s zone into the unknown.

Best of luck, The Clown