Daily Archives: February 4, 2021

It was a Saturday morning and Adam was feeling bold.

He'd made thousands of dollars on a single trade the night before, and was feeling lucky. But Adam wasn't trading on the Dow, pumping GameStop stocks or investing in a startup. He was about to sink $2,500 into a cryptocurrency called DeTrade.

It seemed safe. Adam had investigated the coin's development team on LinkedIn, and watched a video of its CEO laying out a roadmap for the coin's future. A newswire piece published on Yahoo touted DeTrade's technology as advanced enough to disrupt cryptocurrency.

Thanks to Bitcoin hitting an all-time high valuation of $40,000, almost tripling its value in two months, cryptocurrency is very much back in the zeitgeist. But while for many people Bitcoin is synonymous with cryptocurrency, it's not what crypto traders like Adam are interested in. Beneath Bitcoin and Ethereum, the second-best-known currency, is a strange underworld of different cryptocurrencies.

Called altcoins or, sometimes, "shitcoins," these are essentially penny-stock cryptocurrencies. And they're crazy. Bitcoin tripled its value recently, but many altcoins explode 30, 40 or 50 times over within days. Arguably the most famous is Dogecoin, which recently shot up thanks to a potent combination of Reddit and Elon Musk, but there are thousands of altcoins, forming an Indiana Jones-esque Cave of Crypto Wonders. The spoils can be life-changing, but there are traps around each corner. Fortunes can be made and lost in seconds. Cons and fraudsters are everywhere, with traders vulnerable to scams at each step of the process.

Case in point: Adam's foray into DeTrade. The touted technology behind it wasn't real. Nothing about the project was. DeTrade, for all intents and purposes, didn't exist. The LinkedIn profiles were fake, and the video of its CEO was a deepfake created with AI. It was a scam. Those behind it, operating in the unregulated world of crypto, vanished. Adam lost his $2,500, but he got off easy. In total, those behind the scam took in around $2 million.

Just a regular day playing with altcoins, says Adam.

Adam got into cryptocurrency in September. When we spoke, it felt like he'd crammed years of trading into two months. He put in $4,000 and lost it in days. Then he turned $3,000 into $90,000. After withdrawing a third of that and then losing just over another third, he now had around $20,000 in crypto.

Adam had seen some tempestuous trading in recent weeks. One person managed to flip $2,000 into over $40,000 on two different occasions, but lost it all to scams both times. Another put $150 in a coin and doubled his money in 15 minutes. Decent result, but his $150 would've turned into $28,000 if he'd waited only one more day.

But despite the community's enthusiasm, there's a small problem. Right now cryptocurrencies don't really do anything.

Bitcoin nearly tripled in price, from $15,000 to over $40,000, in two months. If you invested $1,000 in early November, you could have taken out $2,600 two months later.

Investing in a stock means ascertaining its value -- based on factors like competition, risks and, above all, profit generation -- and then putting money into ones that are undervalued. Once the market realizes the value of that stock, you see gains.

Speculation is naturally part of this: The Dot-com Bubble was all about pouring money into "pre-profit" companies in the hopes they'd make money someday. Cryptocurrency, however, takes speculation into the stratosphere. For the most part, cryptocurrency is pure speculation. People are investing in technology that produces nothing, and has no practical application. As I write this, a coin called Meme is selling for $517. That's a little over four times the price of an Apple share. Doge, a coin marketed after the internet slang for "dog,"doubled in value earlier this month after a pornstar tweeted about it. After the price settled, it then rocketed once more when Reddit wanted to make it the GameStop of cryptocurrency.

This disconnect between value and purpose has made many experts understandably skeptical.

David Gerard is one such skeptic. He became interested in Bitcoin in 2013, when it first hit $1,000, and has since written two books on cryptocurrency. His most recent focuses on Libra, Facebook's ill-fated attempt at digital currency.

"The driving force of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency is nothing to do with technology," he told me during a Skype call. "It's all about the chance that people might get rich for free. All of this is about the psychology of get-rich-quick schemes."

In his years working as an IT systems administrator, Gerard's job has been to examine new technology and discern what's useful and what's not. Cryptocurrency, he told me, is not.

"Bitcoin burns a whole country's worth of electricity for the most inefficient payment network in human history," he said.

After launching at around $8 in August, the obscure Meme coin briefly reached a valuation of over $1,750 in September. If, with fantastic luck, you invested $1,000 at $8 and sold at $1,750, you'd be up $217,000. This is the allure of "shitcoins."

That's no exaggeration. Cryptocurrencies are mined using powerful computers, and many enterprising types put together farms of computers used solely for the purpose of mining Bitcoin. As a result, Bitcoin is responsible for more energy consumption than Switzerland.

Gerard says the only thing you can do with Bitcoin is buy it and sell it. He's even harsher on altcoins.

"They're absolutely useless objects. Even by the standards of Bitcoin, altcoins are useless," he said.

This is precisely what makes them so fascinating. Seemingly, all they can do is get internet punters to bet on their success. But this enables average people to become rich. That Meme coin I mentioned before? It was listed at $2.72 and a month later hit an all-time-high price of over $2,000.

Imagine becoming a millionaire from a joke internet coin.

Crypto Spider has made millions with altcoins. Crypto Spider isn't his real name. Like most people in the cryptocurrency community, he goes by a pseudonym.

He's gained renown in some Telegram groups over the past few months thanks to a "2K to 1M" challenge, where he endeavored to see how quickly, and with how few trades, he could turn the first number into the second. In cryptocurrency, you can follow someone's portfolio if you have their wallet number, so the community was able to watch this challenge play out in real time.

Within two months, that $2,000 was over $2 million. Much of that money was made off one trade: He chucked $50,000 into a project which, in the space of around a week, magnified 35 times in value, netting him $1.75 million.

"You won't ever see that type of explosive growth if you don't trade in altcoins," he told me, though he also said "95% of these coins are going to be nonexistent in the future."

Like Adam, Crypto Spider has no background in finance or trading. He lists college courses in game theory, basic algorithmics and some economics as useful to his crypto exploits -- but in essence he's a self-taught amateur. He declined to tell me his specific age, only that he was "20ish" when he first got into cryptocurrency in 2017.

He admits he was attracted by the "pretty numbers," by seeing coins magnify in value 30, 40 and 50 times within a short period. He was enthusiastic enough to start a university club around cryptocurrencies, and how they'd be used in the future.

Crypto Spider says cryptocurrency will play a "major part in the future of finance," and speaks with the passion of a believer. He breathlessly transitions from how cryptocurrency is a part of the internet's evolution to the possible use cases of blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin, in the next 10 years. But despite his enthusiasm, I couldn't help but notice how chunks of what he said echoed Gerard.

Cryptocurrencies are mined using powerful computers. More emissions are produced by global Bitcoin miners than by the entire country of Switzerland.

For one thing, he looks back at all the projects he was excited about in 2017 and realizes most were almost entirely vaporware, technology that's advertised but never delivered.

Gerard calls the cryptocurrency community a pool of scammers. Spider notes that people often invest in altcoins they know don't have a function, because there's enough hype around the project to make money. "It's a bubble," he said, "we're literally swapping money from each other. I somehow was able to game all the other people."

Spider says his performance is 60% luck. He first approached cryptocurrnecy trading with the mentality of, "I'm young, I'm dumb, I can lose all my money and it'll be OK."

Again, it reminded me of something Gerard said: "If you're rich enough that your money is your own problem, fine. If you know zero is a number your investment could go to, fine."

"But a lot of people are being ripped off, and that's really bad."

People really are getting ripped off. Difficult to regulate and subsisting largely on hype, cryptocurrencies are particularly prone to scams.

Take OneCoin, a company that, through a presale for a cryptocurrency that didn't exist, stole $4 billion from people around the world before its founder disappeared. Then there's BitConnect, a coin that reached a $2.6 billion valuation by promising a 1% return on investment every day. It was eventually designated a Ponzi scheme by various authorities around the globe, causing it to lose 96% of its value before getting shut down months later.

Those are two of the biggest instances of crypto-fraud. But millions of dollars are scammed from cryptocurrency markets every day in less dramatic ways. Coins are suddenly discontinued, with owners taking all the money with them in what the community calls "rug pulls." Some have investment contracts, ignored like terms-of-service agreements, that prohibit you from taking your money out of a project. Other times, entire cryptocurrency exchanges -- which sell coins like a stock exchange sells stocks -- vanish.

"I think I've been scammed over 100 times," Crypto Spider said, adding that he lost $250,000 through fraud in December. "Who knows who creates these projects. A lot of people are taking on pseudonyms, because they're almost all money grabs."

But the deepfake used to scam $2 million adds a new vector. Coming into wider use in recent years, deepfakes are mostly used for pornographic purposes, but as the DeTrade scam shows, deepfakes can also be used in financial scams.

OneCoin founder Ruja Ignatova at an event for the "revolutionary" cryptocurrency. Ignatova disappeared around the time OneCoin was discovered to be a fraud: The cryptocurrency the company sold didn't actually exist. It's reported to have scammed over $4 billion from people around the world. Ignatova has yet to be found.

Gerard says he's never seen a deepfake used as part of a scam before. Crypto Spider says he's seen it just once.

"We didn't have that problem in 2017, where people would use deepfakes and rug pull like this," he said. "The internet is evolving, but the scammers are also evolving."

Deepfake technology "is being democratized, and that may not be a good thing," said Julie Inman-Grant. Now commissioner of the Australian government's eSafety Commission, Inman-Grant formerly led public policy teams at Microsoft, Adobe and Twitter.

"This kind of takes the art out of social engineering," she explained, referring to the techniques usually used by scammers to get you to click a fraudulent link or hand over credit card details. "If they're delivering a video of someone you respect and you really have no way of telling by the naked eye or ear if it's fake or not, the potential for misuse could be devastating."

Ironically, it's blockchain, the behind-the-scenes technology, that could be the solution to the burgeoning deepfake problem. In cryptocurrency, the blockchain is an unalterable ledger that tracks every transaction. Once it's on the ledger, it can't be altered. That same technology can be used to track anything -- like the creation and distribution of a video, from studio to iPhone screen. There are already startups working toward this, like Truepic.

When I asked about blockchain's ability to neutralize deepfakes, Inman-Grant wasn't entirely optimistic.

"It's definitely an arms race, but it's not an arms race we're winning right now."

When Bitcoin hit $40,000 in December, it was confirmation to enthusiasts that cryptocurrency is the future. For skeptics, a higher peak just means a more precipitous fall.

"I think they'll become increasingly regulated and less and less interesting," Gerard said of cryptocurrency. That means less of the "pretty numbers" Crypto Spider was attracted to, but hopefully fewer scams.

For Adam, DeTrade actually had a happy ending. One aggrieved victim of the scam analyzed the metadata of the deepfake, which he used to track down the perpetrators. After some naming and shaming across Telegram, the money was returned.

That unexpected $2,500 return was a big deal, equivalent to a few weeks pay. Good timing too: By the time Adam got it, a bad trade saw his crypto portfolio diminish from $10,000 to $2,000.

Just another day trading altcoins, Adam told me.

Correction, 1:30 p.m. PT:Removed incorrect statement that Netflix had yet to turn a profit.

Read this article:
Forget Bitcoin: Inside the insane world of altcoin cryptocurrency trading - CNET

BitMEX incorporated in the Seychelles, a move that allowed the start-up to move fast and minimize its tax exposure while Western governments struggled to even understandmuch less create a way to governthe newfangled financial instruments and market that BitMEX was building. In a 2015 investor presentation, Hayes made the point that Bitcoin derivatives are completely unregulated worldwide. Regulators are still trying to tackle the exchanging of fiat and Bitcoin.

That might have been magical thinking. There were no rules in the beginning, and [governments] werent interested in articulating the rules, Chu remembered. You would go to [them] and ask for guidance and get nothing. Is this illegal? No answer. It was only after the fact, he said, that cryptic strictures emerged to police cryptousually in response to some infraction that had not been previously articulated by regulators. But where Chu saw chaos, Hayes saw opportunity.

For nearly a year after its launch, BitMEXs business was flat. Some days we had no trades, Hayes remembered. No one bought or sold. The fees from trading on the platform barely covered the server bill, which Reed paid with his credit card. While Hayes and Delo stayed in Hong Kong, Reed got married and moved back to the States, settling in Milwaukee, where he operated out of coworking space. The time zone difference, however, worked in their favor: Reed and Delo, in signature start-up fashion, took turns being on call, addressing customer support issues 24/7.

The companys fortunes changed when, in late 2015, it started offering customers 100xfive times as much leverage as its closest competitor. Political volatility the following year, with Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, increased cryptos trading volume. Come 2017, BitMEX had to bring on 30 employees to cope with the explosion in trading. The firm moved into new office space, which it would soon outgrow.

By 2018, BitMEX had become a high-stakes bazaar, moving billions every day. During one of our meetings, Hayes commented, We are the biggest trading platform in the world, by volume. Thats anyone who trades a crypto product. BitMEX, he said, was one of the most liquid exchange[s] in the world, regardless of asset class. By that measure it was in the same league as the NASDAQ as well as the New York, London, and Tokyo stock exchanges. Within four short years Hayess scrappy casino had become, in gambling terms, the house. (Since the indictment was unsealed in October, BitMEX has taken a huge hit; its market share and trading volume have dropped precipitously.)

In May 2018, on the opening day of Consensusthe crypto worlds equivalent of the Consumer Electronics ShowHayes pulled up to the Hilton in midtown Manhattan in an orange Lamborghini and tweeted: Did you see my ride today at #Consensus2018 ?

A close friend insisted he was simply lampooning the thousands of attendees gathered inside the hotelinvestors who talked a big game about cashing in on crypto, but who had really only succeeded in burning through millions in venture capital on harebrained schemes and ICOs (initial coin offerings). Still, looking back, the Lambo gambit might well have been the moment, more than any other, when Hayes painted a bulls-eye on his back.

True, the firms partners had differing approaches to their images and their booming business. Hayes, who didnt mind ruffling feathers, reveled in the role of financial renegade. Sam Reed kept an extremely low profile, a secret billionaire (on paper) walking the streets of Milwaukee. Ben Delo, however, seemed to hunger for mainstream acceptance. When BitMEX was declared the worlds largest cryptocurrency exchange in 2018, a string of British newspapers dubbed him the U.K.s youngest self-made billionaire. That October he donated 5 million to Oxfords Worcester College and a few months later signed the Giving Pledge, designed by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett as an open invitation for billionaires...to publicly commit to giving the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. In a letter explaining his decision, he wrote, As a schoolboy in Britain aged 16, I was asked to list my ambitions for the future. I answered concisely: Computer programmer. Internet entrepreneur. Millionaire. I have been incredibly fortunate to exceed those goals, and Im grateful to be in a position to sign this pledge.

Two years ago BitMEX leased the 45th floor of Cheung Kong Center, the most expensive real estate in Hong Kong and home to Goldman Sachs, Barclays, Bloomberg, and Bank of America. Hayes, Delo, and Reed were literally moving in on the establishment. But ever eager to make a statement, BitMEX kitted out its office with an accessory none of those stodgy legacy companies had: a large aquarium inhabited, appropriately enough, by live sharks.

By the summer of 2019, the amount of money moving through BitMEX was staggering. On June 27, the company announced it had set a new daily record, trading $16 billion. Two days later Hayes tweeted: One Trillion Dollars traded in a year; the stats dont lie. BitMEX aint nothing to fucking [sic] with. @Nouriel Ill see you on Wednesday.

The man he was tweeting at was Nouriel Roubini, a respected NYU economics professorand BitMEXs fiercest critic. Dubbed Dr. Doom, Roubini sat on President Clintons Council of Economic Advisers and served at the Treasury Department, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. In other words, he was about as establishment as Hayes was contrarian. On July 3, the pair faced off onstage at the Asia Blockchain Summit in what was publicized as the Tangle in Taipei, taking their seats as the theme from Rocky blared overhead.

Excerpt from:
The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin Billionaire Arthur Hayes - Vanity Fair

Ethereum pauses at record high, bitcoin's rally stalls, DOGE Moons

Ether (ETH) prices were lower after surging 10% on Wednesday to a new record, climbing past $1,600 for the first time.

The recent gains appeared driven by signs of growth on the cryptocurrencys underlying Ethereum blockchain network, as well as interest from institutional investors starting to venture beyond bitcoin, the oldest and largest cryptocurrency.

Ethereum is in such high demand because the asset is undergoing changes to make it even more decentralized and even more secure, said Simon Peters, an analyst for the trading platform eToro. This is attracting buyers from both the institutional and retail world.

Bitcoin (BTC) appeared to lose momentum after its steady rise over the past week from $30,000 to about $38,000.

The price level of $38,190 proved tough to pierce, according to Matt Blom, head of sales and trading for the cryptocurrency exchange firm EQUOS.

Once it hit that level, prices seem to struggle and actually just retraced lower, overtaken by massive sell orders on both spot and derivatives exchanges, Blom wrote. Stagnation in the $34K-$38K range probably cant be avoided, and eager bulls might be cooled down by relentless sellers before BTC progresses higher again.

And dogecoin (DOGE)? The digital token launched in 2013 as little more than a joke is up about 50% in just the past two days, for a market value of more than $6 billion. Elon Musk, the electric-vehicle and private-spaceflight entrepreneur whos also reportedly the worlds richest man, tweeted about it early Thursday. There was also heavy chatter about the token on social media forums, and probably a lot of speculation about the chatter.

In traditional markets, the Reddit-fueled whiplash in shares of meme stocks like GameStop (GME) appeared to subside, but the regulatory fallout might just be getting going: U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who heads the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, said Wednesday she wants Reddit user Keith DeepF***ingValue Gill to testify at a Feb. 18 hearing along with executives from the retail trading platform Robinhood and the hedge funds Melvin Capital and Citadel.

Stocks were pointing higher whilegold weakened 1.1% to $1,814 an ounce.

Visa's plans push crypto industry closer to point of no return

With 3.3 billion payment cards in use, Visa (V) is a household name. Its also one of the biggest players in the global financial infrastructure, processing some 188.1 billion transactions a year.

Thats why it was such big news for the cryptocurrency industry on Wednesday when Visa announced it is piloting a new program that will allow banks to offer bitcoin services. Previously, Visa had been focused on helping crypto companies issue bank cards and has partnered with 35 crypto firms to date, but this is the first time the company has offered crypto services to banks.

The market impact? Edward Moya, senior market analyst for the brokerage Oanda, wrote Wednesday the news may have helped to push up bitcoins price. Bitcoins acceptance continues to improve, Moya wrote.

Another takeaway might be that Visas splashy move could make it harder for U.S. lawmakers or regulators to thwart bitcoins growth. Ray Dalio, of the giant hedge fund Bridgewater, and former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein have suggested that authorities might look to crack down on the fast-emerging cryptocurrency if it really starts to take off.

Think of the operational, technological and marketing expenses involved in Visas new project. The chances are low that a big, heavily regulated financial company would push forward without some assurances that theres no turning back from crypto. Or that Visa would make this move before heavy consultations with key corporate customers, including big credit-card lenders such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America.

The more investments established companies make in the business, the less likely authorities are to force write-offs.

Ether rally spreads beyond ether. Dogecoin has nothing to do with it.

The average fee for sending a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain has climbed above $20 for the first time, in a sign of just how popular the network is becoming.

Its not just ether rallying to a new all-time high this week: Also rising were major digital tokens from the realm of decentralized finance, or DeFi, where entrepreneurs are building software-automated versions of banks and trading platforms atop decentralized, Internet-based networks, mainly the Ethereum blockchain, CoinDesks Muyao Shen reported Wednesday.

DeFi tokens including price-feed-provider Chainlinks LINK, the decentralized exchange SushiSwaps SUSHI and the DeFi lender Aaves AAVE have logged new historic highs.

Prices for SUSHI, whose launch last year met with immediate controversy, have quadrupled already in 2021 amid bullish speculation over the future of DeFi. Based on data from the analysis firm Messari, thats the second-highest gain among digital assets with a market capitalization of at least $1 billion after dogecoin (DOGE), which offers little more than meme-y yuks to its adoring fans. (Dogecoin has nearly sextupled this year, for those keeping track.)

Also getting a lift were prices for cryptocurrencies associated with blockchains that are competing with Ethereum to become dominant platforms for decentralized computer applications. Sometimes referred to colloquially as Ethereum killers, they include Polkadots DOT token and Solanas SOL.

Ether made a significant push, and that is causing projects linked to the DeFi space to rise, said Hunain Naseer, senior content editor at crypto exchange OKEXs research unit, OKEx Insights.

One downside from the flurry of activity on the Ethereum blockchain might be elevated fees for sending transactions over the network, since the rate paid rises with increasing congestion. As reported by CoinDesks Will Foxley, the average transaction fee early Thursday climbed above $20 for the first time, reflecting growing demand for tokens launched atop the Ethereum blockchain. Those include the dollar-linked digital tokens known as stablecoins as well as DeFi-related tokens.

A catalyst for further price action might come from the Chicago-based CMEs launch of a new futures contract on ether next week. The listing should give more institutional investors a way to bet on the second-largest cryptocurrency after they took positions in bitcoinlast year.

The institutions are buying ether, Ryan Sean Adams, founder of newsletter Bankless,wrote in a tweet.And theyre just getting started.

Bond traders are increasing their expectations for inflation

So-called breakeven inflation rates, or the pace of price increases implied by U.S. government bond markets, have reached an eight-year high and are climbing fast.

The Federal Reserves mantra over the past year as the coronavirus wreaked a devastating toll on the economy is that theres no need to worry about inflation; in fact, as Chair Jerome Powell was quick to point out, recessions often lead to deflation because flagging consumer demand can prompt businesses to cut prices while elevated unemployment mutes upward pressures on wages.

Despite the assurances, big investors and corporations have piled into bitcoin over the past year, betting the cryptocurrency, whose supply is limited under the blockchain networks underlying programming, could serve as a hedge against loose monetary policy, aka near-zero interest rates and trillions of dollars of money printing.

But now there are signs another key market segment might be getting more concerned about inflation: bond traders.

The five-year breakeven inflation rate, which can be derived by examining the yields on various U.S. government bonds, is now signaling a 2.2% average rate over the next five years. Thats the highest in eight years, and its also above the Feds long-term target of 2%. Whats more, the figure appears to be rising fast: As recently as September, the breakeven inflation rate was below 1.5%.

As noted this week by First Mover, economists are already starting to sketch out how fast the economy might heat up as more people get vaccines and consumers start to get their confidence back. Bank of America estimates theres some $1.6 trillion of excess savings on consumer balance sheets, which could quickly translate to pent-up spending demand. And the economy has yet to feel the impact of the stimulus package now being debated in U.S. Congress, likely to total at least $1 trillion.

The national employment situation will become clearer on Friday when the U.S. Labor Departments Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its jobs report for the month of January. On Wednesday, Pantheon, a macroeconomic forecasting firm, revised its projection to an increase of 200,000; previously the firm was expecting a decline of 100,000 in the nonfarm payrolls. The average expectation of Wall Street economists is for an increase of 100,000, according to Bloomberg. (U.S. jobless claims were lower than expected last week, at 779,000, according to a report early Thursday.)

The reflationary trends we are seeing in markets are likely to continue throughout 2021, according to a report Wednesday from the Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

Bitcoin Watch: Increasing signs of demand from institutional investors

Although bitcoin has failed to sustainably push past the psychologically important $40,000 price level, signs continue to mount of growing interest in the cryptocurrency from big institutional buyers.

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Ethereum, DOGE on Own Journeys as Inflation Bets Fuel Bitcoin - CoinDesk - CoinDesk