Do Ethereum Gas Fees Vary by Time and Day of Week? (CoinMetrics): There’s one way of saving money on sky-high Ethereum fees: make your Ethereum transactions when the network is less congested.

Investor Takeaway: You will save money if you make Ethereum transactions between midnight to 8:00 am ET, or on Sundays. This goes for anything on Ethereum, including most DeFi and NFTs.

Your Money is Growing

Here’s the data on Ethereum gas fees: usage peaks around noon ET, so that’s when it’s most expensive. (Courtesy CoinMetrics.)

Investor takeaway: To save money on gas, stick to overnights and weekends.

Block Market Daily with Mati Greenspan

We have nothing to fear but fear itself. And I know that what I’m about to say may not jive with many crypto enthusiasts, but inflation is not the end of the world.

Certainly, hyperinflation of immense proportions can have a devastating impact on an economy, as we’ve recently seen with Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

However, there are far more examples of countries that have lived with high levels of inflation for many years and have yet to fall off the planet.

Our readers in South Africa no doubt know what I mean. They’ve been surviving a steadily depreciating South African rand for several decades now, and the nation’s economy GDP has grown during this time.

My sneaking suspicion is that most would probably not list inflation as their number one problem right now. It’s more like a symptom.

Larping lira

In Turkey today, the central bank cut its key interest rate for a third straight month, sending the lira to a fresh, all-time low of 11.69 versus the U.S. dollar.

To the causal observer, taking the interest rate down from 16% to 15% might not seem such a drastic move.

Indeed, how many investors are really cutting their margins so thin that a single percentage point above 15 would force them to rework their business models?

One might factor in that the new rate brings us further away from the almost 20% inflation that the country is seeing, but what seems to be a focus of many media outlets is that the rate cut was ordered by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as part of his “economic war of independence.”

See, this is less about rational business decisions and more about political perceptions and how they impact the economy.

When people lose confidence in the government’s ability to control its own money, that’s when the problems start happening.

Illusion of money

See, money is all an illusion. The magician needs to be constantly in focus, or else the crowd will see right through his act.

In the United States, President Joe Biden has done the levelheaded thing by nominating Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for another term.

Even though we know that this means the loose dollar policy is likely to continue, it’s about as sturdy a move as the U.S. government can make to maintain confidence in the greenback.

With bitcoin’s sharp rise lately and retail providers starting to offer payments in cryptocurrency, the U.S. dollar needs all the support it can get.

For bitcoin, monetary policy is a nonissue. The rate of issuance was predetermined by Satoshi Nakamoto even before the first bitcoin was ever spent. The code is the law, and that is something that instills confidence.

Still, it does need to scale, and that’s why analyst Jason Deane has put together this research piece, highlighting the benefits of the recent Taproot upgrade.

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I do! I do!

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El Salvador Plans First ‘Bitcoin City,’ Backed by Bitcoin Bonds (Reuters): President Nayib Bukele, who made bitcoin legal tender in El Salvador earlier this year, is doubling down. The plan is almost too weird to be true: a tax-free city, powered by volcano energy, planned in a circle, with a bitcoin logo in the center.

Investor takeaway: The big news for investors is how Bitcoin City will be financed. He is proposing a $1 billion bitcoin bond that will earn a 6.5% yield for investors. About $500 million will go into building the city, with the remaining $500 million to be invested in bitcoin. We’ve been believers in bitcoin bonds, so it’s exciting to see them finally happening.

Your Money is Growing

Here’s El Salvador President Nayib Bukele (with the ballcap) with the specs on El Salvador’s new Bitcoin Bond. (Samson Mow via Twitter)

Investor takeaway: Earning 6.5% interest on the 10-year Bitcoin Bond looks a lot better than 1.5% interest on a 10-year U.S. Treasury bond. However, both El Salvador and bitcoin are risky investments; the U.S. government generally is not. Will you invest in Bitcoin City?

Block Market Daily with Mati Greenspan

From the name alone, one might be compelled to think that they’re building a city out of bitcoin, but alas, digital currency is confined to virtual space.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the government of El Salvador from announcing plans to build the world’s first…Bitcoin City.

The prospect of a city with no taxes (aside from a value added tax) sounds extremely enticing even without bitcoin, but can it really work?

Totally liquid

Samson Mow, chief strategy officer of Blockstream, the company that plans to work with El Salvador to create a $1 billion bond to fund the city, made it seem like this plan cannot fail, since bitcoin’s price will continue to experience sharp gains.

Just like many of you, I myself am quite bullish on bitcoin and have most of my wealth in it, but I’m not a city, and neither are you.

When building out infrastructure that will house and employ thousands of people, it’s usually prudent to be a bit more risk-averse.

Half of the money raised from the bond, which will be issued by Bitfinex Securities, will go toward buying bitcoin, so if the flagship orange crypto does indeed moon, it will provide a nice payoff for investors.

Of course, we do know that things don’t always pan out the way we want them to. However, even if bitcoin doesn’t for any reason continue to grow as we all expect, it still leaves $500 million, which should be more than enough to build a nice city in the developing country.

To me, that’s what most people are missing here. This plan works well, even if bitcoin doesn’t go to $1 million.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s gambit to call for innovators to “invest here and make all the money you want” is the type of attitude that tends to magnetize growth, especially with a crowd that is generally averse to paying taxes to governments that are not adding value.

Bitcoin to moon?

The people of El Salvador may not need to find out what building through winter looks like though. According to analyst Maren Altman, the bottom could very well be in.

According to her assessment, the appearance of the full moon has been approximately 85% accurate in depicting a local bottom for bitcoin prices, and that’s about as accurate an indicator as I’ve ever seen.

Nevertheless, as with all indicators, technical or otherwise, past performance does not indicate future results, and even a 15% chance of something happening is still a high enough probability that it shouldn’t be ruled out.

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The post Crypto Investor News for 11/22 appeared first on Bitcoin Market Journal.

Staples Center to be Renamed Crypto.com Arena (BBC): The tipping point has arrived. Investor takeaway: Expect everyone you know to suddenly become interested in crypto investing. We’ve gone mainstream.

How India is Regulating Crypto (Economic Times): India will ban crypto for payments, ban crypto advertising, and allow crypto as investments. Investor takeaway: Overall positive news for us, as it gives a government stamp of approval on crypto investing. Thank you to India for taking the lead on thoughtful regulation.

ConsenSys is Now Worth $3.2 Billion (ConsenSys): Celebrating its latest funding round, the Ethereum development company is also celebrating 21 million users of its wallet MetaMask, which is rapidly becoming the leader in the “wallet wars” of Web3. Investor takeaway: HODL your ETH, which is the base layer ConsenSys is building on.

MetaMask Monthly Active Users (we updated it the chart for them).
Investor takeaway: The platform that people use most in MetaMask is Ethereum, which is why we buy and hold ETH for the long term.

“Half of the inflation we see today, in my belief, is temporary,” “and the other half is just misallocating resources like energy,” Kevin O’Leary recently told CNBC.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend spending three minutes now watching this clip, especially the last 40 seconds where he explains why he’s moving funds from bonds to DeFi and why.

“People with cash have to get some kind of protection against inflation. The only place they can find it is crypto. How crazy is that?”

We feel you!

Half the battle

According to O’Leary, a major cause of recent inflation is kinks in the supply chain. Indeed, we’ve heard a lot about backed-up shipping ports.

He also places half the blame on misallocation of resources, seemingly referring at least in part to President Joe Biden shooting down the Keystone Pipeline.

Today, Biden wrote a letter to Lina Khan, chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, requesting that the government organization probe high energy prices.

To be clear, OPEC has been manipulating prices in the oil market for about half a century.

So though it’s nice we’re finally investigating it, blaming inflation on energy companies does seem a bit silly, but not half as silly as the opinion of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who seems to be blaming COVID-19.

While she may be technically correct, it’s pretty clear that the pandemic is only indirectly responsible for the current high levels of inflation.

The root cause would be the money printing. Here we can see the M1 money supply since the 1960s. As we can see, the amount of dollars created in the last two years is simply unprecedented.

Today, no fewer than seven members of the Federal Open Market Committee will speak publicly. If any of them try to name a cause of inflation other than excessive money printing, don’t believe them.

We don’t mean to overuse the cliche, but yes, Bitcoin fixes this.

However, for the risk-averse who don’t have the stomach for bitcoin’s immense volatility, the DeFi market fixes this.

What winter?

For those of you wondering about what’s been going on with the prices of digital assets lately, perhaps we shouldn’t be looking to mainstream media outlets for answers.

This article, for example, was a bit of a shock for our team this morning. …

Come on, MarketWatch. Bitcoin dipped a total of 17% from the all time high and is currently trading more than $14,000 above its 200-day moving average.

A crypto winter implies a prolonged industry-wide bear market. This is more like a sour Tuesday.

Many short-term traders are already out buying the dip, and most long-term hodlers probably didn’t even feel it.

It really has been an amazing year so far for the proliferation of crypto assets.

You bet!

Don’t get ducked over.
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The post Crypto Investor News for 11/17 appeared first on Bitcoin Market Journal.

Your Crypto Rights (Binance): A manifesto for how the crypto industry needs to evolve, with a priority on your rights as an investor.

Investor Takeaway: Binance, which makes up part of our Future Winners portfolio, is once again leading the charge with a future-focused take on crypto regulation. We agree with all ten points. Read them.

A six-minute explainer video on DeFi, courtesy of Wall Street Journal.
Investor takeaway: Remember, the platform that most DeFi is built upon is Ethereum, which is why we buy and hold ETH for the long term.

One of the many hallmarks that define this specific period of time is the high propensity of everyday people to be involved in the financial markets.

Pandemic lockdown restrictions have inspired millions of people to earn a living from home, and memories of the great financial crisis have solidified an invaluable lesson that every person needs to have a working knowledge of financial assets, lest they end up the proverbial small fish.

As you probably recall, this came to a head in January, when fresh retail traders dreamed for just a moment that they would be able to stick it to the man and get back at Wall Street by buying GameStop shares that were being heavily shorted by several hedge funds.

However, they quickly learned that you can’t beat the devil at his own game.

Since then, there have been many stocks that have soared beyond reasonable value because of gangs of traders dubbing them memestocks for various reasons.

Among these gangs are the AMC ape squad, who seem quite convinced that the illegal practice of naked shorting, in which traders are selling stocks short without first borrowing the necessary supply, is the root of rampant price manipulation.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of joining a unique Twitter Spaces call in which a simple solution was proposed for further inspection by the community, and yes it involves blockchain.

The proposal

As we know, naked shorts are the exact kind of problem that the transparency created by open ledger technology could easily solve.

These days, it’s far more common to see young projects raising money from the public by creating a new coin rather than through following the traditional means of financing.

However, for legacy corporations who were born before the proliferation of Satoshi Nakamoto’s innovation, it’s far more difficult to migrate to an open source model.

The call yesterday featured a venture capitalist named Marc Cohodes, who invested in Overstock, which happens to have built the tZero exchange for regulated digital assets.

The proposal involved giving investors one digital token on tZero for every common share of AMC stock.

These new tokens would need to be imbued with some sort of utility, such as a free movie viewing or even an AMC discount in order to avoid being classified as unregistered securities.

Adam Aron, the president, CEO and chairman of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Inc., who has a reputation for being open-minded and has recently embraced crypto payments for movie tickets, would need to propose the idea to shareholders, who would then vote on the proposal. If they voted to approve the idea, the tokens would be airdropped to all AMC holders.

The idea is that any short sellers who did not actually borrow the stock would not have access to these tokens, and therefore when their options expired, their nakedness would be revealed.

In short, when their debts are recalled by the broker, they would have no choice but to pony up the new security tokens, which they would then need to purchase from the open market in order to make good on their debt.

Of course, being who they are, the diamond hands community would likely demand such a high price for these new tokens that it could literally bankrupt the alleged perpetrators.

Alternatively, it could vindicate them in the event of their innocence, but either way, it would put this entire saga to bed.

But will it work?

To me, this sounds like a rather brilliant solution that could essentially hasten the migration to fully tokenized and fairer financial markets, something we have been dreaming of for nearly a decade.

If implemented, we may finally see the spirit of the GameStop movement finally realized, because although you can’t beat Wall Street at their own game, crypto in fact is an open arena on neutral ground with a level playing field.

For his part and mine, Cohodes did express interest in hearing honest feedback on why this may or may not work, and for this reason, I’d love to open it up to you, our readers, at least those of you who’ve made it this far, to weigh in with your thoughts.

So do feel free to reply to this message, or hit me up on social media with any questions, comments or insights, because I’d love to hear them.

In the meantime, I want to take this opportunity to present you a unique bit of research produced by analyst Gerald Votta. In this piece, the author takes a fresh look at the mystery of who created bitcoin, adding another candidate to a short list.

We are proud of you too!

Life’s too short to take this stuff seriously.
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The post Crypto Investor News for 11/16 appeared first on Bitcoin Market Journal.

Not Everyone has a Thousand Dollars to Invest (Reddit): An inspiring post from one Reddit crypto investor who started with just $20. Investor takeaway: Start with what you can afford; no amount is too small.

This week’s DeFi rates are paying 125 times the average savings account. Investor takeaway: consider “saving” more money in DeFi. (Click here for current rates.)

“Piling every proof-of-work quorum system in the world into one dataset doesn’t scale,” Satoshi Nakamoto stated Dec. 10, 2010.

The quote involved a crypto-related domain name service called BitDNS, which has since been renamed Namecoin.

It’s very similar to the Ethereum Name Service we discussed last week, but it was initially intended to run on Bitcoin.

Nakamoto, however, felt that we should limit the amount of projects that are built on top of the legacy cryptocurrency in order to save space on the main chain.

It’s curious then that Bitcoin’s new upgrade, known as Taproot, is being hailed by many as one that will bring smart contract capabilities to Bitcoin. You have to admit that the optics aren’t great.

After spending years of distancing themselves from things like DeFi, questionable altcoins, and NFTs, bitcoin maximalists are now taking a huge risk to try and catch up with the rest of the industry.

Why would they take such huge risks to go against the will of Bitcoin’s creator in order to bring these sort of added features where they’re not needed?

Same same

Perhaps bitcoin should consider firing its public relations manager, because many of the articles written about the Taproot have gotten out of hand with wild inaccuracies.

Now, I’m not a coder, but I did have the pleasure of being on a Twitter Space call last night called “Is Taproot a Scam?” with some extremely intelligent Bitcoin personalities who managed to put things into perspective for me.

First off, we need to understand that the term “smart contract” refers to coding that is neither smart nor a contract. The term was first coined by Nick Szabo in 1994, before Bitcoin or Ethereum ever existed.

In their simplest form, smart contracts have always been a part of Bitcoin’s protocol. So, whoever first started saying that Taproot would introduce these contracts to Bitcoin may have either been misinformed or they were simply exaggerating for the benefit of publicity.

In reality, as I now understand, the Taproot upgrade was rather incremental by design. The main benefits include a modest reduction in fees and load on the network per transaction and slightly improved privacy features and abilities to implement things like multisignature wallets.

Further, Taproot enhances the Bitcoin network’s smart contracts, allowing for more intricate versions of these if-then agreements and helping conceal their details.

So after all, Bitcoin may not end up being the Ethereum killer some seem to be making it out to be.

Like SegWit, most of us will hopefully never feel the effects of this upgrade. For advanced coders, Taproot is nothing more than a schnorr (sorry, bit of programmer humor).

But different

So my friends, Bitcoin and Ethereum get to retain their important differences but there is one way in which they’re the same, and that’s the price correlations of their digital tokens.

In his latest article, analyst Jason Deane explores the past price correlations between bitcoin and ether and how this data can help investors manage a healthy portfolio.

At any rate, it’s an interesting read, and I hope you enjoy it.

This is just the latest sign that crypto is taking over!

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The post Crypto Investor News for 11/15 appeared first on Bitcoin Market Journal.

The 2021 Bull Run Exit Strategy (r/cryptocurrency): One Reddit user’s opinion on why the crypto market is overvalued, and a possible exit strategy.

Investor Takeaway: Be ready for the long haul. If you’re not, consider cashing crypto into stablecoins, and being content with earning interest.

Top decentralized apps, by revenue generated over the last year.
Investor takeaway: These are the dapps making money.
(Courtesy Token Terminal)

So, I have a kind of dirty confession to share with you all today.

Even though I’ve done my best to minimize Meta Platforms, Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg or “Zuck” from my life by deleting Instagram and minimizing my presence on Facebook and WhatsApp, I actually did purchase an Oculus Quest a couple months ago and have since sunk more than 50 hours into Meta-created virtual reality.

Obviously, I used a burner Facebook account to log in and order to prevent data tracking. What I’ve learned may come as a shock to some, but I can say definitively that this is not the metaverse we’ve been looking for.

The Oculus headset is nothing more than a glorified gaming console. It’s more like a PlayStation for your face than a portal to access the internet.

Gaming on it is quite immersive and fun, but not enjoyable for more than an hour at a time. Anything longer, and VR sickness sets in.

Dizziness, headaches and general nausea are all common side affects from using it, and although you do get used to it, my wife and kids don’t have much interest in playing anymore.

I, on the other hand, still enjoy getting a workout to Green Day songs in Beat Saber, but it’s not replacing Zoom anytime soon, or my quad-monitor trading station.

So, what is a metaverse?

It’s now been two weeks since Facebook’s great rebrand, in which the social media giant tried to muscle their way into an industry that crypto insiders have been actively building for many months.

A perfect example of this is analyst Lou Kerner’s five-part series called Assets of the Metaverse, which started in July.

However, when asking people what a metaverse is, you tend to get a range of different opinions. They mostly include. …

1. A VR space where you can have shared experiences with other people.
2. A virtual economy where you can own, trade, and display digital assets.
3. A point in time when we’ll spend more time in the digital world than we do in the physical.

Aside from the VR aspect, where I think we can all agree that the technology simply doesn’t exist yet, games like Call of Duty, Fortnight, and even RuneScape all pretty much meet these definitions, as does social media in general.

In fact, in my mind, the term metaverse is nothing more than an overhyped buzzword that basically means “the internet.”

Ready all players

Blockchain and web 3.0 will change the way we view digital assets and enable greater interoperability between various internet spaces, but drawing comparisons to Steven Spielberg’s hit movie Ready Player One may be going a bit overboard.

There’s no denying that like many of Spielberg’s classics, this was a hugely impactful film, but the first and most important distinction is that James Halliday’s Oasis was a centralized construct, possibly akin to what Zuckerberg has imagined and distinctly dystopian.

Wealth is extremely concentrated, to the point that it adversely affects the real world (within the movie) and people are living in piled up mobile homes, using the game as an escape from their sultry lives.

Our internet, on the other hand, enables opportunity for all. Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk are all perfect examples of people who came from modest backgrounds, and they have become some of the world’s wealthiest people, thanks largely to their ability to innovate.

What the blockchain is already enabling is a situation where these types of innovations can now benefit not only their creators, but also early adaptors, and produce new economic incentives in which all who join their networks receive a more equal share of the value generated.

That, my friends, is not at all dystopian. In fact, it is the opposite.

In other news, there was something about the highest inflation in 30 years… will let market analyst Evamarie Augustine unpack that one in tomorrow’s newsletter.

If so, you’re not the only one!

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The post Crypto Investor News for 11/10/21 appeared first on Bitcoin Market Journal.

Ethereum’s Inflation Rate is Now Lower Than the U.S.

(CoinMetrics): The last Ethereum upgrade allowed ETH to be burned (or removed from circulation), and the good news is that more ETH is being burned, giving it a net annual inflation of 1%. Investor takeaway: Your ETH is still subject to inflation, but now at rates lower than the U.S. dollar.

MetaMask May Be Issuing a $MASK Token

(The Defiant): Nothing’s confirmed, but ConsenSys chief Joe Lubin tweeted a teaser suggesting MetaMask might issue its own token. Investor takeaway: Consider installing and using the MetaMask browser wallet, in hopes you’ll receive an airdop of $MASK, if and when it launches.

Bullish on Humanity

(Bankless): This piece is worth sharing. It’s a positive, future-forward look at what crypto can do for our planet and our species. Investor takeaway: This just might be the most exciting time to be alive.

Ethereum’s net annual inflation is now 1%, well below the U.S. inflation rate of 5.4% (source). Consider moving some of your cash to ETH. (Courtesy CoinMetrics)

We once wondered what mass adoption might look like in practice. Today, we can see it clearly.

The talk around the metaverse today is all about blockchain based-web domains and the new Ethereum Name Service governance token ENS, which came online today and currently has a market cap of more than $500 million and a fully diluted valuation of $4.8 trillion, close to four times the size of bitcoin.

The airdrop was announced early this morning to everyone who used the service to park a .ETH domain in a unique effort to decentralize governance of the service itself.

Over the next week, token holders will get to vote on the proposed constitution, which will outline the rules that will be used to supervise the community.

By participating, they will be ensuring their rights as members of the community and owners of the immutable web. Here we can see the breakdown of the token distribution.

One of the most fascinating aspects of this setup is that “there are no tokens allocated for investors, since there are none.”

The entire development of the platform was funded by grants from the Ethereum Foundation. Those of you familiar with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) roadblocks to adoption will no doubt realize that if there are no investors, then the Howey Test is not applicable, and no government entity can stake a claim that ENS should be deemed a security.

This is a perfect example of how technology moves at the speed of light.

Despite all apparent obstacles, we find ways to build better, more robust systems.

The great migration

In retrospect, we can understand that they were probably meaning to decentralize themselves from the get-go, but many incumbent web 2 giants also have plans to decentralize.

Earlier this year, Twitter revealed plans to migrate their operations to a more decentralized system called bluesky.

More recently, this happened. …

In this case, the headlines hardly do justice to the gravity of the situation. First off, the 500 million figure is not referring to new Reddit users. They mean that they’re gonna take their 500 million active users and onboard them onto the Ethereum blockchain.

The social media giant has been experimenting with a cryptocurrency called Moons for the last few months, in which people who gained karma points for posting content to the platform were awarded ERC-20 tokens for their efforts. Moons are only available for people who are on the r/Cryptocurrency sub.

It’s now clear that the pilot is taking off, and the crypto system is being rolled-out platform-wide.

Those of you who’ve spent time on Reddit know that there are all kinds of awards that people can grant each other, and the possibilities of tokenization here are mind-blowing.

But Rahul, whose Twitter profile describes him as an engineer at Reddit Crypto, was even hinting at the option to fork off communities using the blockchain, a particular sore spot for many who’ve ever witnessed their community split in two.

This is something that is often very messy but can now become more routine.

Unfortunately, Rahul’s tweet thread has been inexplicably deleted. We also haven’t heard any statements from official Reddit spokespeople, leaving us to only wonder what lies ahead.

Web 3 wizard

With bitcoin and ether testing new all-time highs, the headlines keep pouring in with crypto-related news from Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook, Mastercard Inc., and even Zimbabwe all in the same day.

We have a revelation for you as well, one that’s a bit more solemn but that has high transformative potential.

With this, we’d like to send warm wishes to crypto wizard Oz Sultan in his efforts to keep up the fight, and we stand in full support of his Sol Shaman initiative.

It’s good to be informed.

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The post Crypto Investor News for 11/9/21 appeared first on Bitcoin Market Journal.

Marketers Bet NFTs Can be More than Just Publicity Stunts (WSJ): What do American Eagle, McDonald’s, and Charmin all have in common? They’re all issuing NFTs, as marketers look to jump on the bandwagon.

Investor Takeaway: Most of these NFTs will not be worth anything in the future, but the smart investor buys the NFT platform (that’s Ethereum, which continues to set new all-time highs).

(Paid members can reread Friday’s How to Make Money in NFTs, and join our NFT Hands-On Workshop this Wed 11/10 at 6:30 pm ET.)

Top blockchain platforms, by revenue generated. Ethereum is green. (Courtesy Token Terminal)

Buy low, sell high. It’s practically the only way to make money from speculating on financial assets, unless you’re the creator of said assets, in which case it’s just a matter of when and how you sell.

The world’s richest person, Elon Musk, caused quite a stir over the weekend by putting out the following twitter poll and follow up tweets.

For many, the whole incident instantly brought back memories of the time Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, sold his entire stash of the digital currency just at the crest of the 2017 bull run.

Even though the move was likely made with the best intentions, and much of it was even donated rather than sold on the market, Lee still feels the effect of this decision today.

“I have a lot of haters,” he told me when I met with him at the Litecoin Summit in Las Vegas 2019. How could he have possibly known that he was selling at the top?

As we understand from his words, Lee’s decision was extremely well-intentioned, since he was not drawing a salary and he didn’t want to have a conflict of interest by being overly invested in the project. Sound familiar?

Musk, however, is really begging the question. … Is paying taxes an altruistic notion?

Value

On Friday, it was reported that Tesla’s market capitalization is greater than all 21 energy companies in the S&P 500.

Valuations don’t get much richer than that. So, no matter what the reason, Musk is making the trade of his life.

There’s an old saying in the venture capital (VC) world that people shouldn’t bet against Musk, but in this case, he is clearly betting against himself, and possibly the rest of the market as well.

For now, investors seem quite content to dismiss the Federal Reserve’s efforts to reduce stimulus and even more content to pour more money into a stock market that is somewhat overvalued by historic measures.

Tesla shares on the Nasdaq are up 15,715% since the start of 2013, so a pullback here wouldn’t exactly be surprising.

To be fair though, even this explosive growth looks flat next to that of bitcoin.

Am I Late?

This is the exact subject that analyst Evamarie Augustine wrote about in her latest research piece.

Truly, I don’t intend to give any spoilers, so you’ll need to read the article for yourself at this link.

As someone who has spent most of the last few years accumulating bitcoin, I’ve actually been more focused on gradually paying off my previous debt with the traditional bank so that I can close my account there. It really is a horrible bank.

That sounds like a good idea!

It’s never too late … unless you’re a bank.
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The post Crypto Investor News for 11/8/21 appeared first on Bitcoin Market Journal.

Crypto Equities: One of the Most Overlooked Sectors (The Pomp Letter): We call them “blockstocks,” but the idea is the same. Public stocks that are tied to blockchain, such as:

• Coinbase (COIN)
• MicroStrategy (MSTR)
• Silvergate Capital (SI)
• Hut 8 Mining (HUT-CM)
• Riot Blockchain (RIOT)

Investor takeaway: Since you can’t buy bitcoin in your retirement fund, consider investing in “block stocks,” which are well-correlated with crypto markets. (Remember: diversify, diversify, diversify).

Correlation between top “Block Stocks” and overall crypto market.
(Higher = more correlated.)
From top left: COIN, MSTR, SI, MARA, HUT, RIOT, HIVE, BITF, BRPHF, ARBKF. (Courtesy The Pomp Letter)

By now we’re all pretty familiar with how phishing scams work, at least I hope we are. …

A would-be scammer creates a website that looks authentic, like an Amazon or PayPal login page, then sends the user a link telling them that a certain action is required.

Once the target enters their username and password into the fake page, they’re basically at the mercy of the hacker.

Well, it appears that built-in browser wallets such as MetaMask are also susceptible to this type of attack.

In this thread, famous tech mogul Preethi Kasireddy explains how hackers are watching Etherscan for your pending transactions and then will hit you with a pop-up telling you your transaction was rejected, only to serve you with a password request once you try the transaction again.

Since MetaMask uses your own browser to store your private keys, there seems to be any number of ways that hackers can potentially get access to them.

Indeed, in researching for today’s newsletter, I found several other similar phishing schemes that involve duping even the most advanced users.

As a general tip, I would recommend minimizing the number of open tabs on your browser while accessing any online wallets.

Any website you have open while logging into MetaMask can potentially access your private data.

Additionally, try not to store large amounts of crypto in online wallets. My personal tendency is to only store small amounts when using them for utility purposes.

Taper Time

As I write to you today, we do have a bit of breaking news from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

In short, the Federal Open Market Committee has stated that they will reduce their monthly injections into the bond market by $15 billion. Going forward, they will be buying only $105 billion per month.

They were also careful to say that they will react to the data and will increase the amount again if necessary.

Needless to say, investors were extremely impressed by these ultra-dovish tightening measures, and stocks shot to all-time highs on the announcement.

We also saw bitcoin take a dip, presumably from investors who saw the tightening but are not seasoned enough to understand the nuance of a Fed who is walking in two directions at once. Notably, bitcoin made a full recovery of the move within a few minutes of the announcement.

Here we can see the short-term reactions of bitcoin on the left and the S&P 500 stock index on the right. Each candlestick is set to one minute.

Now ether is marking a new all-time high. Simply beautiful.

For further consideration

Countries around the world are working on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The latest high-profile release involved the eNaira, which is Nigeria’s CBDC.

Analyst Wonder Godzo recently interviewed the CEO of FinTech company Bitt Inc., which contributed to the development of the eNaira.

To read more about this matter, click here.

Stuff like this is why it’s crucial to do your own research.

What a good doge. Click to watch the birthday video.

The post Crypto Investor News for 11/3/21 appeared first on Bitcoin Market Journal.

U.S. Report on Stablecoins (U.S. Treasury): This is a very important report from the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, trying to get their heads around what do about stablecoins. Here’s the TL;DR:

• Incomplete or fragmented oversight: Stablecoins fall under both the SEC and/or the CFTC, so expect response to continue to be “incomplete or fragmented” (p. 15) as they try to work it out.
• FDIC-insured institutions: The winds are blowing toward only FDIC-regulated institutions (i.e., banks) to have legal authority to issue stablecoins (p. 17). This is probably good news for investors.
• Congress could help: New legislation could help deal with these new financial assets, but Congress has a lot on its plate. Perhaps better to look to the international finance community (p. 22).

Investor takeaway: Giving stablecoins banking protection will be a great step forward. It may become increasingly difficult to hold stablecoins that don’t play ball (like Tether). Stablecoins that try to play within the rules (like USDC) are a better long-term bet.

Growth of Tether (black line) vs. USDC (blue line) in 2021.
Tether still has the lead, but USDC is catching up.

Today, no flack will be doled out to the U.S. government.

In fact, we would like to applaud Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and even President Joe Biden.

They’ve done their homework and have delivered an excellent framework for how to regulate the budding stablecoin economy.

The full 25-page report advising legislators on the risks and benefits of blockchain-based U.S. dollars is at this link.

Even Bitcoin King Michael Saylor has weighed in, saying that the report should be “required reading” for anyone interested in bitcoin or crypto.

Since the early days of blockchain, we have been urging the U.S. government to set some rules of the road for would-be pioneers.

Although they are still clinging to the Howey Test and the outdated Securities Act of 1933 for most things coin-related, when it comes to digital representations of the U.S. dollar, the U.S. has now put forward a road map that will enable the fiat currency to evolve in a rapidly changing world.

Needless to say, this is insanely bullish for the entire crypto space, and we can already see prices reacting, with ether reaching a fresh, all-time high this morning and bitcoin testing her highs as well.

The beaten path

It’s not like this document represents anything set in stone. It will be up to Congress to debate and legislate, a grueling process that more often than not seems to result in stalemate.

What we can say, however, is that lawmakers have come a long way since the 2018 hearing with Mark Zuckerberg, in which they came across as being a bunch of boomer amateurs who knew nothing about computers.

Perhaps experiencing that colossal embarrassment has motivated them to get their act together.

To their credit, lawmakers have come a very long way in a very short time, and they are much better equipped to address matters of a technical nature, if only they can resolve their partisan differences.

These days, we have several senators and representatives who are staunchly pro-bitcoin and pro-blockchain, so I have a good feeling they’re gonna get this one right, and even resolve some of the issues not addressed by the President’s Working Group in the document above.

In fact, the outlook for crypto in the U.S. has never looked brighter.

Virtual explosion

As can be seen by social media metrics on LunarCrush, the hype surrounding Shiba Inu and the memecoins has largely died down since last week, though it is still quite elevated compared to what it was a month ago.

The hype cycle surrounding metaverse-related projects, however, is going strong.

Yesterday McDonalds announced that they are giving away 10 McRib NFTs, stating that interested parties could retweet this for a chance to win. I both want it and don’t want it at the same time.

There’s no doubting the historic significance of such an item, but who really wants one of the world’s unhealthiest foods in their Ethereum wallet?

Spoiler alert: I did retweet, and so should you.

What’s even more insane is that Burger King followed up with a crypto giveaway of their own, and now Nike is entering the wearable NFT scene.

If, like the brands mentioned above, you’re new to the whole crypto scene, there’s no better place to begin than the latest blog post written by analyst Alexandre Lores, which has some excellent tips to get you started on the right foot.

It’s good to see Bitcoin going toward its latest good cause!

To infinity and beyond. Click to spread on Twitter.

The post Crypto Investor News for 11/2 appeared first on Bitcoin Market Journal.