Cryptocurrencies (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc.)

[Pam Cummings 9654]

I bought etherium, polygon, cardano, and cosmos like 3 years ago. All worth way more than they have been in the last 3 years. Might sell it off.

[Cum Rocket 136]

No CR but some pretty bullish statements by one of the presidential candidates on CNBC this am. 

[Captainant 27723]

1 hour ago, Cum Rocket said:

No CR but some pretty bullish statements by one of the presidential candidates on CNBC this am. 

LMAO you can just say "trump says he likes bitcoin". I would also accept "convicted rapist says he likes bitcoin"

[Nice Guy Eddie 13519]

On 2/26/2024 at 9:49 PM, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Yep. As of Friday, iShares’ etf owned close to 0.7% of all bitcoin. Wouldn’t shock me if they get close to 1% this week or next. At some point, these etfs will struggle to find sellers if they keep attracting so much money from investors/gamblers.  It’s not impossible that some big whales will sell off some bitcoin to lock in profits but that would just pause the rise.

I wasn't far off with my prediction by Mar. 8th.

As of close Friday, IBIT reports owning 0.997% of all bitcoins. Of course, they still trail GBTC but quickly GBTC is selling bitcoins quickly as investors leave that ETF. 

note: Let's keep presidential politics out of this.

Edited March 11 by Nice Guy Eddie

[Tailgate 3022]

[Blotto 23565]

Someone explain Microstrategy to me. At this point, if you buy or hold the stock, it has to be as a proxy for BTC as their legacy business hasnt grown in 10 years and cant be worth all that much. As of Feb, they hold 190K BTC which is worth ~$13.7B. Their market cap is approx twice that. Here's the relative performance of MSTR vs BTC over the last year.

Is there anything behind this behavior other than your run of the mill irrational market exuberance?  With the new avenues for exposure to BTC in the market, I am curious why people would still be piling into MSTR with that premium to NAV. 

[Captainant 27723]

1 hour ago, Blotto said:

Is there anything behind this behavior other than your run of the mill irrational market exuberance?

Bro do you even NGU and FOMO?

[Cum Rocket 136]

6 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I wasn't far off with my prediction by Mar. 8th.

As of close Friday, IBIT reports owning 0.997% of all bitcoins. Of course, they still trail GBTC but quickly GBTC is selling bitcoins quickly as investors leave that ETF. 

note: Let's keep presidential politics out of this.

He can’t. 
 

5 hours ago, Blotto said:

Someone explain Microstrategy to me. At this point, if you buy or hold the stock, it has to be as a proxy for BTC as their legacy business hasnt grown in 10 years and cant be worth all that much. As of Feb, they hold 190K BTC which is worth ~$13.7B. Their market cap is approx twice that. Here's the relative performance of MSTR vs BTC over the last year.

Is there anything behind this behavior other than your run of the mill irrational market exuberance?  With the new avenues for exposure to BTC in the market, I am curious why people would still be piling into MSTR with that premium to NAV. 

Of all the days to have a big excursion day, had to be BTC ATH day. I’ve been jonesing to check things out. 
 

Some good Saylor content here. 
 

The premium is pretty big obviously but the way Saylor has been structuring the debt offerings, the amount of BTC per share has been increasing slightly over time. He discusses that in interview.  There’s also idiot shorts covering.

 

Could also be front running S&P inclusion.  

Edited March 11 by Cum Rocket

[Cum Rocket 136]

Look I found our friend the Captain 

 

[Cum Rocket 136]

4 hours ago, Captainant said:

Bro do you even NGU and FOMO?

Yeah I hate NGU. That’s the worst. 

[Guest]

What is wrong with bitcoin? It's been like 12 hours at $72K.

[Guest]

On 3/11/2024 at 10:51 AM, Blotto said:

Someone explain Microstrategy to me. At this point, if you buy or hold the stock, it has to be as a proxy for BTC as their legacy business hasnt grown in 10 years and cant be worth all that much. As of Feb, they hold 190K BTC which is worth ~$13.7B. Their market cap is approx twice that. Here's the relative performance of MSTR vs BTC over the last year.

Is there anything behind this behavior other than your run of the mill irrational market exuberance?  With the new avenues for exposure to BTC in the market, I am curious why people would still be piling into MSTR with that premium to NAV. 

If you were an unscrupulous whale, could you not buy calls on MicroStrategy, and then buy a slug of bitcoin to get the price moving and then cash in on the bigger swing in MSTR overall and the call options in particular?

[bernorange 8363]

Spot BTC ETFs saw over $1B of inflows yesterday. 

Quote

BlackRock has opened a new filing with the SEC to purchase more Bitcoin ETFs, according to new filing records by the commission. BlackRock intends to use the new Bitcoin ETFs for its Global Allocation Fund.
...
The latest filing reads: “The Fund may acquire shares in exchange-traded products (“ETPs”) that seek to reflect generally the performance of the price of bitcoin by directly holding bitcoin (“Bitcoin ETPs”), including shares of a Bitcoin ETP sponsored by an affiliate of BlackRock.” It adds, “The Fund will only invest in Bitcoin ETPs that are listed and traded on national securities exchanges.”
...
At the beginning of the week, BlackRock also applied with the SEC to purchase more Bitcoin ETFs for its Strategic Income Opportunities Fund. ...

The SEC has yet to accept BlackRock’s initial request for more ETFs for its SIO Fund. It is up to the commission to approve the latest request for more ETFs.

https://watcher.guru/news/blackrock-files-to-purchase-bitcoin-etfs-for-global-allocation-fund

Quote

Bernstein analysts said on Monday that they were now more convinced about bitcoin (BTC) hitting $150,000 by mid-2025 after the largest digital asset rallied to reach a new all-time high this year.

The analysts also predicted that bitcoin will ‘break out’ after the next halving event ...

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/03/11/bernstein-is-now-more-convinced-that-bitcoin-will-hit-150k-after-massive-rally/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=rss&utm_campaign=headlines

 

[Cum Rocket 136]

On 3/12/2024 at 10:55 AM, FirstTimeCaller said:

If you were an unscrupulous whale, could you not buy calls on MicroStrategy, and then buy a slug of bitcoin to get the price moving and then cash in on the bigger swing in MSTR overall and the call options in particular?

Yeah that seems like that might be possible. I don't think there's a lot of liquidity in MSTR calls though. 

 

Been thinking a bit about MSTR. It's by far my largest holding in 401k. Trying to assess how long this lasts.  Actually looked at numbers and it’s still one of the most shorted stocks in market. 18% of float is short. Fuel for even more pumping above Btc. Decided today to sell some other holdings and rotate more into MSTR. I don't see how this thing isn't substantially higher in 12-18 months. 

 

20 minutes ago, bernorange said:

Spot BTC ETFs saw over $1B of inflows yesterday. 

https://watcher.guru/news/blackrock-files-to-purchase-bitcoin-etfs-for-global-allocation-fund

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/03/11/bernstein-is-now-more-convinced-that-bitcoin-will-hit-150k-after-massive-rally/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=rss&utm_campaign=headlines

 

Enjoy the ride everybody. Can't say you weren't warned. 

[Captainant 27723]

On 3/12/2024 at 10:55 AM, FirstTimeCaller said:

If you were an unscrupulous whale, could you not buy calls on MicroStrategy, and then buy a slug of bitcoin to get the price moving and then cash in on the bigger swing in MSTR overall and the call options in particular?

Gee, it's almost like much of the cryptocurrency market is extremely prone, and actively under the influence of, extreme price manipulation.

https://fortune.com/2023/02/02/bitcoin-manipulation-price-outlook/

 

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Gee, it's almost like much of the cryptocurrency market is extremely prone, and actively under the influence of, extreme price manipulation.

https://fortune.com/2023/02/02/bitcoin-manipulation-price-outlook/

 

Paywalld

 

[bernorange 8363]

16 minutes ago, Captainant said:

Gee, it's almost like much of the cryptocurrency market is extremely prone, and actively under the influence of, extreme price manipulation.

FWIW:

 

 

[Captainant 27723]

16 minutes ago, FirstTimeCaller said:

Paywalld

my JS blocker lets me read it, here's the first chunk of the article

Quote

Back in 2017, John Griffin, a professor of finance at the University of Texas McCombs School of Business, noticed something strange. Griffin follows a totally different beat from typical business school finance profs who explore, say, how business cycles influence commodity prices or Fed policy sways the term structure of interest rates. The 6-foot-2 former high school football star views himself as a crusader for good, a moral sleuth who, as he tells Fortune, “looks to expose financial evil, to shed light on the world and expose dark things in the markets.” After the Great Financial Crisis, Griffin became a devout Christian. He has since dedicated his distinguished career to righteous forensic digging that’s unearthed abuses ranging from insider trading to mortgage fraud to the doctoring of bond ratings during the financial crisis.

 

As Griffin and Amin Shams, then a doctoral candidate at McCombs who’s joined Griffin in several gumshoe investigations, screened for misdeeds in 2017, they were fascinated to see that a little-known token that’s supposed to be backed one-for-one to the dollar was getting printed in large quantities. That clue led the pair to another: When new batches appeared, the price of Bitcoin seemed to jump. It looked like someone, or a group, was using that freshly printed “free money” to inflate Bitcoin’s price for their own profit. He and his coauthor Shams sifted through an incredible 200 gigabytes of trading data, equal to the troves that the Smithsonian Institution collects in two years, and followed sales and purchases from 2.5 million separate wallets.

In 2018, they coauthored a groundbreaking study showing that a single, still unidentified, Bitcoin “whale” almost singlehandedly drove the token’s giant run-up in late 2017 and early 2018 by distorting the trading in the token.

Toward the end of 2022, another mystifying trend caught Griffin’s eye. Despite the crypto crash and myriad other negative forces, every time Bitcoin briefly breached the $16,000 floor, it bounced above that level and kept stubbornly trading between $16,000 and $17,000. Almost unbelievably, as the crypto market has continued to unravel into 2023, Bitcoin has gone in the opposite direction, trading up 35% since Jan. 7 to $23,000.

“It’s very suspicious,” Griffin told Fortune. “The same mechanism we saw in 2017 could be at play now in the still unreal Bitcoin market.”

For Griffin, the way normally super-volatile Bitcoin went calm and stable in the stormiest of times for crypto fits a scenario where boosters are uniting to support and juice its price. “If you’re a crypto manipulator, you want to set a floor under the price of your coin,” added Griffin. “In a period of highly negative sentiment, we’ve seen suspiciously solid floors under Bitcoin.”

 

11 minutes ago, bernorange said:

FWIW:

 

 

lulz linking me to a bitcoin maxi who's mad at because someone called his baby ugly isn't terribly convincing. He's trying to claim anything by these guys is false because "tether had the money when they needed to!!!!" Nevermind the constant liquidity crisis that Bitfinex was under, and the intermingling of multiple buckets of money to paper over an $850M shortfall (page 4 of the signed court order).

It's the same shit as a few pages back where GRUhorn was telling me that as long as people get their margins and their money back, it's not fraud to lie in your financial filings.

Edited March 13 by Captainant

[Cum Rocket 136]

Lulz. Tether truthers. 

[Cum Rocket 136]

16 minutes ago, Captainant said:

my JS blocker lets me read it, here's the first chunk of the article

 

lulz linking me to a bitcoin maxi who's mad at because someone called his baby ugly isn't terribly convincing. He's trying to claim anything by these guys is false because "tether had the money when they needed to!!!!" Nevermind the constant liquidity crisis that Bitfinex was under, and the intermingling of multiple buckets of money to paper over an $850M shortfall (page 4 of the signed court order).

It's the same shit as a few pages back where GRUhorn was telling me that as long as people get their margins and their money back, it's not fraud to lie in your financial filings.

Lol he puts this pretty well. Congrats Captain et al. They serve it up. Y’all gulp it down. No better use of this gif. 

 

 

 

Your dedication to being wrong, to your own detriment, is truly impressive.  

[Cum Rocket 136]

Buying more. Wtf. 

 

[Captainant 27723]

32 minutes ago, Cum Rocket said:

Lol he puts this pretty well. Congrats Captain et al. They serve it up. Y’all gulp it down. No better use of this gif. 

 

 

 

Your dedication to being wrong, to your own detriment, is truly impressive.  

You're doing that thing again where you're mistaking your opinion for a fact, and then spiking the football and saying "pwned". Just because you insist on repeating your alternative reality does not make it so. 

 

I would be less dismissive if you would ever directly reply to what I've written, rather than linking me to someone else's thoughts that you heard on a podcast. I know I'm never gonna change your mind until the ponzi ends, but enjoy the ride I guess

[Snake Diggity 4627]

Has another currency or a stock or a precious metal or really anything at all ever experienced this kind of price increase based solely on speculative inflows?

[bernorange 8363]

NVDA?

[Cum Rocket 136]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

You're doing that thing again where you're mistaking your opinion for a fact, and then spiking the football and saying "pwned". Just because you insist on repeating your alternative reality does not make it so. 

 

I would be less dismissive if you would ever directly reply to what I've written, rather than linking me to someone else's thoughts that you heard on a podcast. I know I'm never gonna change your mind until the ponzi ends, but enjoy the ride I guess

You want a reply to the Tether truther? Please keep holding your breath on the great Tether White Whale. 

 

Or some study that “shows” exactly how things are manipulated? If it's so certain, how come non authorities or other investors have seized on it?

 

I love how he displays disbelief that there was a stable floor at 16k. What causes a lot of the volatility? Leverage. At the bottom of each cycle leverage is wiped out. There's no more sellers. Hodlers continue to slowly buy and they set the floor. There I solved one of the mysteries for him, and you. 

1 hour ago, Snake Diggity said:

Has another currency or a stock or a precious metal or really anything at all ever experienced this kind of price increase based solely on speculative inflows?

I’m not sure of your answer, but the reason the price rises so much is the supply is inelastic. In oil or gold or whatever booms, the supply mined or procured increases in response to the price increase via investment in response to the boom. Not possible with Bitcoin. 

1 minute ago, bernorange said:

NVDA?

Equities can and do issue more shares in response to demand. 

[Cum Rocket 136]

 

 

[Captainant 27723]

The same irrationality and circular logic that drove up CDO's and other rubber dog shit during the 08 crash are the same forces driving up the BTC price. It just pure optimistic speculation.

"The number goes up because people are investing in Bitcoin!"

...

"People are investing in Bitcoin because the number goes up!"

 

 

The funniest thing is gonna be when large banks and financial institutions end up being the majority holders of cryptos through these ETFs, and you no longer have a decentralized currency and are back to trusting and dealing with the banks

[Nice Guy Eddie 13519]

47 minutes ago, Captainant said:

The same irrationality and circular logic that drove up CDO's and other rubber dog shit during the 08 crash are the same forces driving up the BTC price. It just pure optimistic speculation.

"The number goes up because people are investing in Bitcoin!"

...

"People are investing in Bitcoin because the number goes up!"

 

 

The funniest thing is gonna be when large banks and financial institutions end up being the majority holders of cryptos through these ETFs, and you no longer have a decentralized currency and are back to trusting and dealing with the banks

I’ve wondered about that last item.  Likely that banks and other institutions may end up owning a large percent of bitcoin but that doesn’t make it less decentralized. It’s the network that’s decentralized not the bitcoin holders.  But still institutions today may own larger percents of corporations but that doesn’t mean they get up to the high 90 percentile of ownership. There will always be individual ownership especially with a coin/share that’s divisible to 8 decimal places.

and if the price drops because lack of buyers, then institutions will sell because their shareholders will want out. The price and institution ownership will find a balance. And that balance will periodically shift.

[Cum Rocket 136]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

The funniest thing is gonna be when large banks and financial institutions end up being the majority holders of cryptos through these ETFs, and you no longer have a decentralized currency and are back to trusting and dealing with the banks

I agree that it's not the ideal way for people to own Bitcoin. But it’s a better intro than nothing. Some will learn and make the switch to self custody over time.  Also somewhere/somehow one of the ETFs will rug some investors. And more will learn that way. 

 

Also, wrt potential Eth ETF

 

[Cum Rocket 136]

Other lessons will come as well to push people to Bitcoin and self custody. The bank runs are not over. Btfp suspended by Fed. FDIC low on funds. That whole situation will resurface. 

[Cum Rocket 136]

This is interesting. One of the biggest criticism of these big hodlers like Microstrategy and El Salvador is they don't hold their own coins. Looks like ES is going for self custody. 

 

 

[Captainant 27723]

2 hours ago, Cum Rocket said:

I agree that it's not the ideal way for people to own Bitcoin. But it’s a better intro than nothing. Some will learn and make the switch to self custody over time.  Also somewhere/somehow one of the ETFs will rug some investors. And more will learn that way. 

Your casual acceptance of almost certain fraud in a market instrument animated solely by BTC speaks volumes. As long as line keeps going up it doesn't matter if the new money gets screwed right?

[52-80 19224]

On 3/13/2024 at 10:34 PM, Snake Diggity said:

Has another currency or a stock or a precious metal or really anything at all ever experienced this kind of price increase based solely on speculative inflows?

how many days have you been looking at public markets?

here's natural gas over a 1 year timeframe.

fun in oil

here's a few weeks that include literally negative prices

price changes are ipso facto from differences in cumulative inflows vs outflows... how else are they supposed to change?

and almost all of trading IS speculative.  most participants are not taking deliveries or consuming the commodities or spending the currencies or actively participating in the corporation issuing the equity. 

cftc reports that <20% of positions in energy is from actual producers.  near 50% is pure 'money managers'.  you dont vote your 3 shares of the companies you own in your retirement account.  you pick the ones that you do because you speculate on price-go-up.

 

so the question is have publicly traded securities exhibited as much volatility as crypto? sure they have.

 

[Cum Rocket 136]

Sorry Sir, this is Surly. Where people only invest in companies that produce tangible goods. Warren Buffett types owning KO, PG, or JNJ.

[Captainant 27723]

3 hours ago, 52-80 said:

how many days have you been looking at public markets?

here's natural gas over a 1 year timeframe.

fun in oil

here's a few weeks that include literally negative prices

price changes are ipso facto from differences in cumulative inflows vs outflows... how else are they supposed to change?

and almost all of trading IS speculative.  most participants are not taking deliveries or consuming the commodities or spending the currencies or actively participating in the corporation issuing the equity. 

cftc reports that <20% of positions in energy is from actual producers.  near 50% is pure 'money managers'.  you dont vote your 3 shares of the companies you own in your retirement account.  you pick the ones that you do because you speculate on price-go-up.

 

so the question is have publicly traded securities exhibited as much volatility as crypto? sure they have.

 

So in response to asking about a stock or precious metal that has been as volatile as BTC, you choose natgas as your example. Natgas has historically been extremely price volatile, thanks in large part to speculation, but it's ALWAYS been volatile.

You're not really proving a good thing to say that BTC is safe because it's only as volatile as natural gas futures prices. That's gambling and speculation, not investing. And that's ok! Gambling and speculating is fine. But be honest about what you're doing, because presenting BTC as an ETF is laundering its credibility - despite the acknowledged risks of fraud for people who """invest""" in them.

Edited March 15 by Captainant

[bernorange 8363]

Quote

MetaMask, the popular cryptocurrency wallet for the Ethereum blockchain, is testing an entirely on-chain, Mastercard-branded payment card, according to promotional materials and a testing platform seen by CoinDesk.

Such a product would unite two giants of their respective fields. MetaMask is the biggest self-custody wallet with more than 30 million monthly active users, while Mastercard provides key plumbing in the conventional financial system through its credit- and debit-card network spanning the globe.

The MetaMask/Mastercard payment card would be "the first ever truly decentralized web3 payment solution," allowing users to spend their crypto "on everyday purchases, everywhere cards are accepted," according to the marketing materials.

Mastercard and its rival Visa have been quietly courting public blockchain developer communities and self-custody wallet providers of late. Mastercard has been working with hardware wallet firm Ledger as well as MetaMask, CoinDesk reported in October of last year.

Visa, meanwhile, has been working with the USDC stablecoin and the Solana blockchain on cross-border payments and smoothing out wrinkles like paying Ethereum gas fees.
...

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/03/11/with-mastercard-metamask-tests-first-blockchain-powered-payment-card/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=rss&utm_campaign=headlines

*Huge* news if it rolls out to the public.  MetaMask is free and widely used, but limited to the Ethereum blockchain (and all the ERC20 crypto that is built upon it).  If MasterCard rolls out a similar solution with Ledger, that would be even more huge as Ledger provides access to virtually every major blockchain.  

~~~

Quote

Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade went live on Wednesday, introducing a mechanism to reduce costs associated with transactions on layer 2 solutions that batch and compress transactions before sending them to the mainnet.

The latest information shows the upgrade is living up to expectations.

According to blockchain analyst Marcov’s Dune-based tracker, the average cost of transactions on scaling solution Optimism has dropped to nearly 4 cents, down significantly from the recent average of around $1.4. The average fee on Coinbase’s layer 2 solution Base fell to 3 cents from roughly $1.50, while Arbitrum’s declined to 40 cents. The average fee on zkSync and Zora also fell.
...

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/03/14/layer-2-blockchains-become-cheaper-after-ethereums-dencun-upgrade/?utm_medium=referral&utm_source=rss&utm_campaign=headlines

~~~

Stellar (XLM) development news:

Quote

Companies that operate across geographical borders face significant operational and financial challenges in paying a global workforce. Fluctuating currency rates, transacting in multiple foreign currencies, and the manual nature of payroll administration for remote workers create friction for companies like BiGGER that rely on global operations to serve their customers. As these enterprises scale, human resources and treasury managers seek tools that streamline, automate, and reconcile payroll to minimize risk and operational costs.

BiGGER, an Australian company providing training and business planning to non-technical founders building and scaling technical startups, experienced exponential growth throughout 2023. In six months, it tripled its employee count adding a significant concentration of employees based in Argentina. In doing so, BiGGER realized there were some challenges in paying a dispersed workforce with its existing crypto payout solution. Using crypto to pay workers proved to be a faster and low-cost option for the company, but the process itself still left opportunities for improvement.

Each pay period, the staff would manually transfer funds from an operating account and issue individual payments to each employee. As the workforce grew, this manual process proved difficult to scale. New employees were required to provide their digital wallet credentials prior to their first payment in order to be added to the payroll. This was not only manual, but increased risks of user error during wallet creation and for administrators establishing a new payee.

BiGGER staff realized they needed a turnkey and intuitive solution to send cross border bulk payouts to their global workforce. Although costly and high-touch manual processing was the reality of BiGGER’s payroll administration, the release of the open-source Stellar Disbursement Platform
(SDP) enabled staff to quickly deploy an instance, sending bulk payouts with certainty and transparency in seconds. Processes that previously took 8 hours per month over multiple payroll cycles are now completed in minutes - such as reviewing payout amounts to include any withholdings, uploading a single csv file, and inviting employees to access funds. Employees can view and confirm funds immediately via Beans app, a digital wallet providing free global money transfers using stable digital assets.
...

https://stellar.org/case-studies/bigger

Stellar uses a Proof of Agreement consensus model that is very fast and very cheap (gas fee) compared to most crypto.  If the smart contract platform is as robust as Ethereum and Solana, it could end up challenging them.

~~~

Quote

...
Ownership of each Chaincrib property is split across a finite number of representative tokens minted on the Cardano blockchain.

Here, you don't just own the tokenized properties as NFTs, Based on token share, owners can collect revenue from rent, and vote on property decisions.
...

https://chaincrib.com/

You will soon be able to buy fractional ownership of rental properties with crypto and collect your fractional share of rent in crypto as well.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, bernorange said:

 

https://chaincrib.com/

You will soon be able to buy fractional ownership of rental properties with crypto and collect your fractional share of rent in crypto as well.

Errr, no.

[Pam Cummings 9654]

Uh oh. My wallet is down this morning. We might be entering the "dump" phase of this cycle.

[52-80 19224]

1 hour ago, Cum Rocket said:

Sorry Sir, this is Surly. Where people only invest in companies that produce tangible goods. Warren Buffett types owning KO, PG, or JNJ.

nah, this is where people who know nothing about markets complain about how bad they are

[52-80 19224]

24 minutes ago, Pam Cummings said:

Uh oh. My wallet is down this morning. We might be entering the "dump" phase of this cycle.

equities futures market is also "dumping" right now. 

the really broad correlation between crypto and us stocks is almost remarkable.  peak in 2022.  bottom in 2023.  and now this ridiculous run up. 

its almost like theres just endless liquidity looking for a home.

[Cum Rocket 136]

 

[Cum Rocket 136]

So Block has been working on a hardware wallet for a couple years. It's called the bit key and is finally shipping. It's supposed to have great UX for noob or Uncle Jim levels. I ordered one today and will report back for the handful of people here who care. 

 

 

[Parliament 14283]

So can I swipe it at the gas station to pay for a Pepsi and Snickers?

[nycHorn 3038]

So Block has been working on a hardware wallet for a couple years. It's called the bit key and is finally shipping. It's supposed to have great UX for noob or Uncle Jim levels. I ordered one today and will report back for the handful of people here who care. 
 
 

Did you have a hardware wallet before?

[bernorange 8363]

2 hours ago, Cum Rocket said:

So Block has been working on a hardware wallet for a couple years. It's called the bit key and is finally shipping. ... I ordered one today and will report back for the handful of people here who care. 

 

I would be curious to know what, if any, advantage it offers over the Ledger or Trezor.

[Cum Rocket 136]

3 hours ago, nycHorn said:

Did you have a hardware wallet before?

Yes I've bought all the major ones. I have a ledger, trezor and cold card. 

 

1 hour ago, bernorange said:

I would be curious to know what, if any, advantage it offers over the Ledger or Trezor.

Just based off people are saying, the Ux is supposedly incredibly slick and uses Nfc to connect to your phone. Also, since it's made by Block it’s Btc only. 

 

Here’s a breakdown. 

 

https://bitkey.world/en-US/how-it-works

 

[Cum Rocket 136]

some good points here

When bitcoin hits hundreds of thousands of dollars per coin, I think it is very feasible that the conversation around bitcoin will shift from those damn speculators! to the why is it really happening. Again and bigger.

 

 

[B00M 6437]

3 hours ago, BeardIP said:

Super fascinating story about SLERF COIN (lol) from Bloomberg today: 

Bloomberg’s Muyao Shen reported last week: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-13/memecoin-trading-volume-rises-to-levels-last-seen-before-crypto-bubble-burst

The memecoin frenzy in the digital-asset market shows no signs of stopping, with trading volumes now at levels last seen just before the burst of the last crypto bubble more than two years ago.

Considered as some of the most speculative and volatile cryptocurrencies, memecoins such as Dogwifhat and Pepe are far outstripping the gains registered by market bellwether Bitcoin that has dominated the headlines. Trading volume for the top memecoins, which often trade for a fraction of a cent, reached nearly $80 billion in the past week, according to data compiled by blockchain data firm Kaiko. That’s the highest since October 2021. …

Memecoins have been a long-existing phenomenon in crypto, as small investors and promoters see the microscopic prices of memecoins as an opportunity to quick post huge returns despite the lack of traditional fundamentals. ...

A group of dogwifhat token holders announced last week a public fundraising campaign to put the dogwifhat meme on the Las Vegas Sphere. The group has already reached its target goal of $650,000 in the USDC stablecoin, based on the transaction history of the digital wallet for the fundraise. But it’s unclear whether and when the fund will be used to promote the meme in Las Vegas.

What are dogwifhat’s fundamentals? Well:

Its logo is a dog, with a hat.

If people kick in enough money, maybe they can put a picture of the dog with the hat on the Las Vegas Sphere, which might encourage more people to kick in more money.

What does the multiple-choice exam question about this look like? Or today we got the story of Slerf:

A new Solana-based memecoin, Slerf, has faced significant challenges after the project’s developer accidentally burnt a major portion of the token supply — effectively losing $10 million, or the entirety, of presale participants’ money.

"Guys I f—ed up," the project's official X account wrote. "I burned the LP and the tokens that were set aside for the airdrop. Mint authority is already revoked so I can not mint them. There is nothing I can do to fix this. I am so f—ing sorry."

The Slerf team later went to an X Spaces to elaborate further on the situation. "I'm sick to my stomach," team member Slorg said in a Space on X. "I'm literally about to throw up."

"I'm lost for words," they added. "I don't know what to do."

Poor Slorg. Basically the way crypto works is that a guy named Slorg makes up a token named Slerf, which is distinguished from other tokens by having a cartoon sloth logo. You send $10 million of Solana crypto tokens to Slorg, and he makes a note to himself that he owes you some Slerfs. Then he accidentally flushes that note down the toilet and, due to the irreversible nature of the blockchain, you get no Slerfs and your money is permanently gone, though Slorg is very sorry. 

If this were a company, and Slerf was a stock, this would all be bad: It is bad for a company to lose all of the money it raises in a stock offering. (Also, though, it would probably be reversible. If a company just lost its list of shareholders, it could probably, like, go back through its emails and reconstruct the list.)

But Slerf is not a company or a stock: It is a crypto token, so absolutely nothing matters. Except that this is all sort of funny, and attention-grabbing, so of course Slerf went up. Arnold: “This mistake was very good for attention, and attention is the true value of any memecoin. So the obvious thing happened and the new tokens that were released shot up around 5,000%.” You could spend another 10 hours and 55 minutes pondering this but I do not recommend it.

[Cum Rocket 136]

NSFW

 

[B00M 6437]

What a waste of 38 seconds