Is USDTether back in the hot seat despite unwavering popularity among crypto traders?

Bitfinex, once one of the biggest crypto exchanges around, and it’s parent company iFinex, are forever in the news for some scandal or legal difficulty or the other. Most of the time it’s because of their problem child, Tether. As the foremost stable coin at the moment, far outpacing all the other newer arrivals on Binance exchange and others, Tether or USDT is quite a hive of controversy. This doesn’t seem to deter traders whatsoever. Tether still has a global market cap up at number eight in the global top ten presently, no small achievement for a stable coin pegged to a fiat currency with no chance of ever accumulating any further value. Why is Tether such a dark horse that crypto enthusiasts can’t resist riding?

Is Tether really backed 1:1 by USD? We still don’t know for sure. No official auditor has signed off their books, and all we have is the word of the Ifinex parent body. Added to that is the rumour that the price of Bitcoin is being artificially manipulated by Tether printing. Every time Tether gets printed, Bitcoin price makes a huge move, usually to the upside. This regular printing of millions more USDT every few months is looking highly suspect. Yet still Tether volume on Binance is more than all the other stable coins put together, against Bitcoin. The BTC/USDT pairing boasts a massive 457 625 577 in volume today. That almost half a billion dollars in trade. Can that even be possible? Maybe I’m not reading the figures correctly but that is a lot. Nothing comes even close in volume traded on a daily basis.

I was put off by Tether FUD a few months back when they were in the news for potential fraud, and banks were closing their accounts, but nothing happened. I moved over to trading TUSD and PAX on Binance instead, but the liquidity is so low by comparison that trading was slower and less eventful. Volume traded is insignificant by comparison, and tether is still the clear leader. Besides that, Binance has some of their IEO tokens newly released that are only paired with Tether. So despite my initial FUD, I have migrated back to trading some Tether again. After all, the FUD hardly affected the Tether market at all, so I was spooked for nothing. That’s typical resilience in USDT, despite the shady reputation of Bitfinex, the older brother project, under iFinex. Nothing seems to be able to stop them.

The problem is that this printing of masses of Tether with such uncertain backing is starting to look exactly like some central bank printing its own fiat paper currency, and thus inflating the supply and devaluing the currency as a whole for everyone. Here USDT is pegged so we don’t see the usual deflation in value, with prices usually going up to accommodate more supply or liquidity, when the Fed or central treasury prints more fiat. Normally the market will act like a sponge in a pool and prices of goods would go up to accommodate or soak up the extra fiat supply. But Tether is not designed like that. So it looks even more shady than the central banks, and those banks set a high standard in shady. It’s hard to beat them at that game. Nevertheless Tether is giving them a run for their money, and it’s not a bank run. It’s a print run. Can you imagine all that Tether suddenly flooding the market only to be used to buy up extra Bitcoin by the million. Someone is making a fortune here by the sounds of it, selling their fabricated unbacked USDT and getting – in exchange – some “hard money” in the form of Bitcoin. What could go wrong?

Well in recent days Tether seems to have met its match in the New York Attorney General. A case of fraud against USDT and Bitfinex is being evaluated, saying they defrauded customers by pulling $850 million of their supposed UST dollar backing, and using it to get themselves out of trouble in another department of the corporation. New York has some of the toughest financial laws and Ifinex and USDT are under ongoing investigation for alleged fraud. It’s either that or massive fines for them. I would keep a wide berth for the moment, just in case Tether suddenly goes off line, or should I say off chain. That would send ripples through the market for retailer, institutional and long term investor alike.

Nobody likes to see fraud or cheating in the crypto markets. We took to crypto precisely to get away from the central banks and now we are faced with an internal token just like the currency we are trying to avoid. This is very dubious. The problem is though that we don’t want it to succeed but we can’t afford for it to fail either. The collapse of USDT might have ripple effects in the Bitcoin price itself, sending it tumbling down to retest earlier lows. And it would take all the alts down with it, just at the time when we are awaiting the altcoins season with bated breath. It’s just not as forthcoming this season for some reason. Maybe I’m impatient.

“The crypto industry needs to realize that in order for crypto to go mainstream there needs to be integrity in the market. That integrity will either be forced upon the industry by regulators and legal actions, or will require standardization and best practices to eliminate activities like commingling customer and exchange funds.” Aaron Kaplan, former lawyer and now CEO of NY trading platform Prometheum.

Let’s remember that Tether is tied to the US dollar, which in itself is an inflationary currency which is gradually losing – if not apparent value – then certainly purchasing power. The value of the dollar appears strong by global standards, but the prices of goods keep going up, and this is the hidden inflationary spiral.

Whether or not Ifinex has shifted its funds from one account to the other to cover its bases is uncertain. Nevertheless the sentiment against Tether has grown and sentiment is one of the biggest movers in the price of Bitcoin generally, more so than technical analysis and fundamentals sometimes. So with this Tether uncertainty, we can only hope that if they do crash and burn, the rest of the stable coins will take up the slack among traders on the major exchanges. Besides that, I will probably stay out of holding any more USDT once more and trade my BTC back into TUSD when I sell the highs on a swing basis. Better safe than sorry and having come to the end of my Tether, I feel the need for some PAX of mind or something True to back my USD. DAI anyone? Let me know what your preferences are if you are a crypto trader.

Why is Binance cryptocurrency exchange closing its doors to US customers?

Binance is one of the biggest Bitcoin and crypto exchanges in the world. Poloniex used to be the top place to trade, and then Bittmex came along. But by 2017 Binance launched and became a major platform for traders globally. It remains one of the top places for traders because it has the most volume generally, and without volume it’s very difficult to find buyers or sellers to meet your price.

There are other exchanges globally but their volume is far less. Fewer people use them to trade, so what happens is your trade sits there unfilled for a lot longer. This sluggish action makes trading difficult and boring. Also there are sometimes premium prices or higher prices compared to other more liquid exchanges where the spread between buyer and seller is far less. Binance has really used good marketing as well as clever economic strategies like the famous IEO or Initial Exchange Offering. This is the new ICO and a place where the exchange itself launches the new tokens to retailers. Binance is having one every month nowadays and people seem to take to it because they like and trust exchanges far more than some random company or startup launching a white paper and a new token. ICOs got a bad rap in 2018 with the numerous scams around but exchanges like Binance and others seem safer. Not that they don’t also get up to shady business like wash trading and inflated fake volume too.

So it makes sense that Binance is now so popular. They are even launching their decentralized exchange presently, a particularly promising and much sought after place to trade in the new cryptocurrency industry. The Dex, as it’s called, is a safer place with more privacy for the discerning trader. All of these aspects have made Binance very popular and also very rich. Their profit was huge even in the bear market of 2018, in the billions of dollars. That’s where all your trading fees go for each trade you make. Also the Binance token BNB has also gone from strength to strength. In fact BNB has outperformed Bitcoin lately and Bitcoin has outperformed everyone in the mainstream conventional finance sector, like fiat and gold.

But something concerning has just occurred in the recent revelation that Binance is closing its doors to US customers. Now all American traders have 90 days to sell up and leave the exchange for good. Their are other exchanges of course, but as I said, their volume is low and trading is sluggish. The interesting thing is that the old US traders will be looking for a place to trade and may just take their business to the other platforms, like Bitmex, Coinbase and others.

By September 12 Americans will be off the exchange. What will this do to Binance for the rest of us? Many US traders are there to make up the Bitcoin and crypto trade volume and their departure may lead to a slump in volume of sorts. It may cause the end of the BNB pump…or will it? And added to that it looks like Americans will be banned form other platforms like Bittrex too this year. What is going on? Presumably it revolves around the SEC and the laws and regulation from the US government that label many of the tokens traded as securities, and so they are clamping down.

Let us know in the comments if you have any information regarding the upcoming closure of Binance and other exchanges to American traders. There go all the dollars. I presume Binance are not too worried that this will affect their bottom line. They have so many other strategies going on that CZ the CEO is probably one of the biggest wealth earners in the world a the moment, among the top achievers in finance, like a Bill Gates or Warren Buffet of cryptocurrency.

I’m not a US citizen so will carry on using Binance. The trading fees are very low, at 0.075% per buy or sell, equalling 0.15% in total added to the price of your profit made on the complete transaction. And if I can achieve even a 2-4% profit on most of my trades, doing day trading and scalping, I don’t mind paying 0.15% in BNB token each time. My actual Bitcoin holdings are down since the start of the year but my overall dollar holdings or worth is up from my Binance exchange trading over the past six months.

This is because I have moved away form accumulating Satoshis or Bitcoin directly and have focussed on accumulating dollars. I trade in and out of stable coins like TUSD or PAXOS and occasionally USDT if I have to, though I am wary of it, with all their continued printing by the million every few weeks. The bear market last year really ate away at my original investments on Binance. It was also my first year learning how to trade, so I made a few careless mistakes and took a few losses along the way. Nevertheless, I’m refining my strategy all the time and now working on reacquiring my lost value, a few percent at a time.

One concern with the block to US citizens is that it may prevent them from accessing numerous of the tokens available on Binance which may not be found much on other exchanges. What will happen to the volume of those coins for the rest of us and for the companies involved? This could be a game changer for smaller tokens. Hopefully they will be available on other exchanges like Kucoin, which has numerous smaller tokens, some of which were on Binance, and more.

Overall, for me trading can be fun and can lead to a skill that will make you money for life if you master it. it’s like riding a horse in that sometimes you get thrown and fall badly in the beginning but if you get the courage to climb back up on the horse with new insights and experience, you can eventually master the art and tame the beast that will take you far. There is so much free advice and education on trading that I simply teach myself online from the writing and lessons of others, along with my own personal experience, and I believe that I can learn the mistakes I need to with small amounts of cash now, so that I can have the know how when it comes to trading bigger sums in future.

There is nothing like making money while putting your feet up at home or on the beach. I choose such a fun life, with minimal endeavor, and you can too, if your mind will allow you to. Don’t give up your day job of course, but supplement it with crypto trading or investing and you will win in this year’s bull market. It can be done, don’t give up if you fail at first. Get on that horse and ride it to the moon. I will see you there.

Analysis of the Binance IEOs, notes on their Github output and code

Premise: Binance IEOs – a lot of coins per project but not many going to the public at IEO launch, sometimes only 6% of the total tokens printed.

Question: how is the Github code of these IEOs?

Fetch.AI github looks like one of the better ones, written in C++ or python, a serious development language. There is enough detail, responses were within hours to requests, and there are zero bugs, 123 lines of code

Gifto last update was Jan 2018, a long time ago, its like a ghost town, with nothing much to show in their github, disappointing.

Bittorrent is doing well price wise, but little to show in their github repository, so not much development. They may have a private repository but should release something. Justin Sun of Tron has taken over the project apparently. Every project needs some kind of updating and fixing of bugs in the computer code. May month last year was active but not much recently. The Tron founder Mr Sun hasn’t done much to add shine to the github.

Celr network, since Bankex, which they took over, they haven’t done much. It’s not their code really but the Bankex code which they took. Only 32 commits so far. But it is working as a platform. All the code is javascript, which is usually simply more to run in web browsers, not for serious application, Which seems odd for a serious piece of software. Nine bugs were detected in their code, which is not too bad but not ideal. They have problems in their code, like denial of service loopholes. Or you could put your own code into their front end to do what you want it to do. This is on their install instructions when you do the build. Javascript and html

Matic, their dev branch is being broken, its coming up red on the build process, coding on top of a broken build. Not good. Commit level detail is not great. Not too bad, two main guys working on their github. Someone from 0x and other projects, like Ethereum. Not many commits, and build is broken so they have work to do. 244 lines of javascript, not much to go on, very little compared to some which have thousands of lines of code. 244 in a sharding solution for Ethereum seems very scant. And Matic has been so shilled, pumped and promoted, on Twitter and elsewhere. They may also have a private repository but they are posting on github too a little. They are surprising in their humble github for such a big hyped coin. What does this mean? It seems doubtful. At least it’s clean code, no bugs.

Harmony looks like a decent repository for the moment, though we need to look deeper at their code, to see if it’s quality. We need to be careful because like in the ICO hustle, here in IEO era, a lot of what is being presented is minimal code and lots of hype. At least Fetch.AI came out decently in their code analysis. Overall though they are leagues away from the class and quality of Ethereum code and github presentation. There is so much detail in Ethereum that it leaves these new IEOs way behind.

We need to be careful of these Binance IEOs, their code is not great or their commit on github. They could be seen as another attempt to push pump and dump schemes to replace the ICO scams of last year. Sometimes all you have is an idea and a lot of hot air. Blocknet as a layer two scaling solution has a much busier and active github than the Binance IEOs like Celr and Matic. Also SingurityNet is much more active that Fetch.AI offering similar solutions.

CZ says he only wants good projects but the code in some of these mentioned above is quite questionable, according to an expert who inspected it. There are other projects moving ahead much faster than the Binance launchpad projects. And the way Binance gives so much of the new tokens to their BNB whales, or those holding most of the BNB Binance coins, is a bit exclusive and elitist, keeping the opportunity amongst the already rich. Only 6% of tokens to the public on initial sale is very low. The Binance exchange and the developers of the token get loads of tokens to flood onto the market, or to dump on smaller investors.

Just some thoughts on the recent projects on the market, opinion only and not investment advice. I still use Binance, though may look elsewhere, and have been lured into the IEO market in search of gains, though recommend bitcoin at this stage as a primary investment. Altcoins are short-lived high risk trades, but Bitcoin is the biggest investment in any portfolio of crypto.

The rise of the IEO on Binance Cryptocurrency exchange

Most crypto traders use Binance, probably one of the biggest and most reputable exchanges globally, run by CZ. It’ s hard to tell sometimes where these exchanges domicile, but Hong Kong, Singapore or any tax haven will do it seems.

Love them or hate them, and you have both camps nowadays, Binance are really leading the way when it comes to innovation and outright a profit-making annually. Binance exchange is making a fortune in profit so their business model must be successful. Part of it is based on the fees that they charge per trade that we do, whether buying or selling.

And another part of their amazing business model is the new concept of the Initial Exchange Offering (IEO) which took over from the Initial Coin Offering (ICO). In this latter concept, the exchange itself launches the new token onto the market for eager investors. If you want to invest at the start or launch of the coin, you need to be on the exchange at the launch time and you need to be lucky to get in. You need quick trigger fingers at sale time, like a Black Friday ninja. If you miss it in the first ten seconds, you could be out of the running.

But that style of launch was not so much appreciated, so Binance in their marketing wisdom decided upon a lottery for their latest launch. And you could only buy in if you had their BNB token, the in-house exchange token. This of course favored the exchange and pumped up the price of their token. BNB has sky-rocketed this year, thanks to the marketing genius of CZ the CEO. The only problem is that the system of getting in at IEO price hugely favors the whales. The more BNB token you own, the bigger your chances. This is also a bit flawed as a system but this is what we minnows and plankton have to deal with around the whales in the crypto market nowadays.

Take the recent launches on Binance, the new IEO tokens: you have BTT Bittorrent, which went to the moon since launching. You also have CELR, MATIC and FETCH, all pumping in synch lately, and dumping in synch too, for a while. They are all attracting FOMO investors, like there is no more bear market to be seen. Since then we have also had ATOM, PHB and now ONE or Harmony all entering the Binance exchange in recent days. Let’s not forget Theta and Theta Fuel, which launched this past week. All are traded for USDT and some for other stable coins too.

Theta has been around for a year already but just launched on Binance a week ago or so versus USDT, and it is double the price since initial launch, so there are ICOs and IEOs around to make investors some money today. It’s hard to ignore the new tokens when they pump in price and one can be forgiven for jumping in, out of FOMO, in the attempt to make some quick profits as a day trader.

However, the market is so volatile that it is hard to choose which coin on which day to focus on as the pump of the day. Some are in synch but not always. And they all have seemingly valid use cases, or solve valid problems in the tech industry. So FOMO is to be balanced with research and timing. Wait for the price to retrace back down to lower levels if you miss the initial pump and the price is already climbing. There is no use chasing a pump as you may end up buying the top.

Such is the constantly evolving nature of the crypto industry that there are new tokens and projects coming out every day of the year by the looks of it. One can’t be expected to keep up to date, unless you are a fanatic and avid crypto enthusiast who lives crypto. And some of us do. You just need to keep your finger on the pulse of the industry, keep informed of the fundamentals of each project and keep an eye on the timing of the launches of each new project.

If you are lucky you can buy in at the launch and make some healthy profits by trading the new IEOs on Binance and other exchanges. You can be a long term investor and buy based on the fundamentals of a project, or you can dismiss that and just be a day trader, buying based on technical analysis of the price charts on the day, regardless of the use of the token. As long as there is enough volume that is not fake, on an exchange with liquidity, then you can be sure of enough opportunity to sell when you desire, with your order being filled by buyers. Otherwise you will sit with an order hat doesn’t fill. That’s where an exchange like Binance is helpful. It is open 24/7 and traded in all time zones, so you will have to set and forget your buy or sell order and let the market come to you, even while you sleep.

Your order will be filled, and if not then it will just make up the order book of buyers and sellers who create the future of the market, as we await price to return to our point in the chart. As Bitcoin returns nowadays to prices last seen a year ago in May 2018, for example, we find our old buy and sell orders from back then all coming into the line of trade now. They are being filled one year later, for profit.

And all those orders were there making up the ongoing trade action that makes up the blockchain, even though they seem virtual or almost illusory in their true value, until they are filled that is. They simply sit there awaiting buyers or sellers to meet it, so bide your time and eventually your order is filled and you walk away in profit, even if it’s a year later. Sometimes that’s just the way price moves against your attempts at predicting it.

It is a gripping illusion that we follow as traders, the whimsical and illusive price of our beloved crypto. Actually our real love is profit, as we are allured by the potential gains, regardless of token. Such an illusory life, chasing profit can cause us to forget the balance if we’re not careful, so remember to keep your feet on the ground s you reach for the moon.

Bitcoin price is crashing as I write this, down $1000 in the past six hours from $9000 to $8000. And it’s taking all the other token prices down with it. The alts are following Bitcoin as usual, so regardless of your preferred token, all are under the influence of Bitcoin, so you may as well invest in Bitcoin a this stage in the bull market.

How Kucoin exchange is “stealing” my cryptocurrency

When I first became interested in cryptocurrency in December 2017, the bitcoin bull run was about to peak at an explosive $20 000. When I bought my first bitcoin in early December, I knew nothing about the technical or trading side of it. In fact I knew nothing at all, and was just learning to buy some bitcoin with fiat at a local exchange in my country. I was very inspired and as the price climbed that memorable month I saw my investment grow.

As I learned more, I found out that there was very little volume or liquidity on my local exchange and that there were other exchanges around the world that offered better trading opportunities as well as many more diverse cryptocurrencies or altcoins. In my eagerness to have as many coins as possible, like a kid who wants one of every sweet in the corner candy store, I eagerly worked out how to move my bitcoin to these other exchanges. One of them was Binance and the other was KUcoin exchange. I learned that it cost me quite a bit in fees to move bitcoin, ethereum and even litecoin, though the latter was slightly cheaper so I bought that and transferred it. Only later did I come across still cheaper transfer fees for coins like ADA Cardano, and apparently ther are even some with zero fees.

The Binance transfers went well enough and I still have some currency there, though have moved it into stable coins, from which I trade if I see a dip that looks like a potential profit-making opportunity. I used to use USDT Tether, but the FUD really put me off, after it transpired that Tether were never properly audited and there was so much controversy over the fact that they may not have the fiat to back the massive printing of tokens that they perform regularly, in the billions of dollars. So despite there being much more volume and liquidity on the tokens traded for Tether, I now only use TUSD and Paxos Standard as stable coins on Binance and recommend you do likewise. Tether is too risky at this stage in my opinion, and in the crypto market it is sentiment that is more important than even fundamentals and technical analysis. FUD will make or break a token in these markets. It’s all about confidence in what is otherwise just an idea in some developer’s mind.  

Now the main lesson I have learned and the main concern I have today is with KUcoin exchange, based in Singapore or Hog Kong or somewhere in Asia. It’s hard to say sometimes with the smaller fly-by-night exchanges. But at the time I knew nothing and still have a lot to learn. Well there were some inviting new tokens available on KUcoin so I moved some crypto there in order to buy them. This was the peak of the altcoin bull run in January 2018 when all the alts were at their ATH, not that I knew anything about that. Nor did anyone else really. These are the kind of things you learn in hindsight, as you look back and see the dizzy heights the tokens reached in price compared to their current dismal prices.

KUcoin exchange is still going strong and I still have a few small tokens on the exchange, but they are now worth peanuts, or miniscule fractions of what they were worth when I bought them at the ATH or peak prices. Nevertheless, I was always hopeful that the bull market would one day return and my tokens would regain their value. I would lose nothing, I thought, because they will regain their value in a year or two, perhaps three, and I would possibly even make a profit if I just HODL. That’s what keeps many of us around in the crypto industry – we are trapped here holding a bag of tokens waiting for the price to return to our buy-in range so we can at least break even. And this is not just for sh1tcoins as they are fondly called but even for bitcoin and steem, the top currencies in the market today. All of them are down around 85% from their ATH price back at the height of the bull market in January 2018.

Well I still check on my little altcoin tokens on KUcoin exchange occasionally, but to my dismay recently I have discovered that KUcoin has de-listed some of my tokens while I wasn’t watching. For example, back in January 2018 at the highest prices ever, I bought some QSP Quantstamp and some RDN Raiden Network tokens there. They were shilled as promising ICO tokens and had just been released maybe only weeks or months earlier. I was under the impression as a noob that I was buying them at low prices since they were the most recent releases. Well prices fell almost to zero this past year but worst of all, KU has delisted both tokens so that they can no longer be traded but have to be removed from the exchange or face total loss. QSP is curiously still traded on Binance, so when I went to transfer mine from the one exchange to the other, low and behold, I found that I could not even move them. They are lost forever.

The reason is this. I had bought such small amounts that they are now either all used up in the transfer fees alone, or the amount I want to move is below the minimum amount one can actually move. Admittedly when I bought 3 RDN and 38 QSP both for the price of two large pizzas each in my country – about ZAR400 for 4 pizzas – I had no idea it would come to this. I am talking about very small amounts of money in one sense but to me it was a total of 4 large pizzas, and I like pizza. And they are gone. To move the 38 QSP I have to pay 30 just for transfer fees, so that leaves me with 8 QSP, but the minimum amount you can transfer is 30 so I’m stuck. There go my QSP forever, all 38 of them which cost me ZAR218. The same applies to my 3 RDN. The minimum withdrawal amount is 4 and the transfer fee is 2, so my 3 are lost to me forever at ZAR200. Well that was a big learning curve.

And it goes on because in May last year I decided to buy the newly released Trinity TNC token, on the NEO blockchain. Admittedly I only bought 30, since it was a Trinity, and that cost me about the price of a soft drink, or literally peanuts, so no real loss. But the tragedy is that KUcoin exchange has now delisted them too. And I thought it was a sterling NEO sister project – you know from the Matrix movie – NEO and Trinity. Well at least I can move 29 of them with a transfer fee of only 1. Now I just need to find a place to move them to, like another exchange that still trades them. What a lesson. It has taught me not to invest in these risky altcoins and to stick to the king bitcoin and his main entourage, like ethereum, litecoin and steem. Even NEO has lost my respect in recent weeks and I used to enjoy getting GAS from my staking or HODLing on Binance. Now there is too much FUD even over NEO so I have let them go for stable tokens and I will buy the dip in my top tokens in coming days or weeks. Learn from my experience not to invest in these lesser known coins particularly on lesser known exchanges. About 90% of all altcoins are duds that will go to zero apparently, but the few that remain will be the “Amazon” and “Google” of the crypto stock market or the internet, once the “Myspace” and “Pets.com” fall by the wayside. Let’s see if I can rescue Trinity and get that soft drink she promised me.

Bitcoin TA 24 March 2019 – rise of the exchange tokens and fake volume at those same exchanges equals the crime of the cryptoverse?

Hi there and welcome to another edition of Bitcoin babaji where we discuss bitcoin while keeping it transcendental. The joy of 2.5hr blackouts twice a day here on the south coast of Africa is that you get ample time for meditation and self-reflection, as well as enjoying nature as an energy booster.

In bitcoin and cryptocurrency today BTC is still hovering in a tightening wedge around $4000 about to have a big breakout. It looks as if exchange tokens are the flavor of the month. Binance coin BNB has really led the pack – up 120% so far this year. In other words already one of the top ten coins at present has made over 100% profit this year alone. It certainly looks like a bull market, even Kucoin shares KCS is picking up steam, as well as Huobi token. Actually BNB is going parabolic at the moment. It turned out a clever idea to design a token that you can use to pay fees for trading on that exchange. With volume increasing lately it looks like the bull market is starting to heat up and exchanges are fueling that flame.

One of their secrets at Binance is to get involved in the new trend called IEO or initial exchange offering. The exchange has a coin release, but you can only buy the coin in exchange tokens. It looks like a money making machine to me. Look at FETCH.AI? What has happened since their recent release on Binance? Not much. And then there’s BTT Bitorrent. Any coin that promotes your illegal file sharing is morally suspect from the start. I mean share files all you want but don’t start profiting off it on the side as well.

BNB is basically replacing ETH Ethereum in these new IEO launches.

Anyway with the parabolic pump of BNB, they are sure to retrace imminently and as hard. That kind of parabolic behavior only re-enforces my desire to call CZ “Sleazy”. It just looks manipulated.

Which brings me to the other crucial news of a study just released saying 95% of reported volume for bitcoin trading is fake. This is if we go by figures released on CoinmarketCap. Being everybody’s go to place who hasn’t yet found CoinPaprika, for crypto trading data, CoinmarketCap is a very reputable place to get listed, and the higher your daily volume, the higher you get listed. And the higher you get listed the more you can charge for new coin listings as well as the more new traders you will attract.

Apparently 81 exchanges were measured by BitwiseInvest, with volume over $1 million a day on CMC. Out of all the volume, namely $6 billion on CMC, only $273 million is genuine. It makes up the ten biggest exchanges primarily, who have a trading volume of greater than $1 million each a day. Apparently exchanges deliberately inflate their figures or just engage in wash trading – selling coins back to themselves all day long – in order to make their business look more attractive.

Well all but one of the ten top exchanges are fully regulated and the only one that isn’t is Binance. Ironically the one using the most Tether, which also isn’t fully regulated, is Binance. So that parabolic BNB bull run looks way too abnormal for me to have much faith in this exchange any more. Binance has no Bitlicence and would be shut down in America but is being run from some off shore safe haven like Malta or Singapore or something. It’s not Japan because CZ was thrown out of there already. I.m considering moving my trading assets off Binance altogether.

Hash rate miners
Another matter of interest is the hash rate diversion from price. It happened just before we started moving up in price after the 2014 bear market. Currently the hash rate has really moved further apart from the price than all of the past bear market, so going by past patterns, we are due to start picking up in price.

Talking of mining, the fact that Chinese Bitmain, the biggest bitcoin miners in the world, have just invested $80 million in mining rigs looks bullish. They want to benefit from the hydroelectric power now in excess after a recent flood up north in China. I wonder if they too see a bull market coming this year? Let’s keep an eye on the horizon and on the charts. Until next time this is Bitcoin Babaji signing out.

Ref: https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitwise-tells-us-sec-that-95-of-volume-on-unregulated-crypto-exchanges-is-suspect

Cryptocurrencies that have beaten the trend since the last mini crash of November 14 on Binance

The crypto bear market is continuing in usual hibernation fashion and trading has become trickier, with prices on an overall downward trend this past one full year. However, I decided to do some research into the stats of all 146 coins listed on Binance to see just how these coins are actually doing, in Satoshi value, relative to bitcoin. And here’s what I discovered.   

You may remember that the last major price crash we had was on 14 November 2018. On that day almost every single coin on Binance fell as bitcoin fell that day and in subsequent days. Bitcoin is still way down from the $6462 area of November 14, currently languishing around the mid $3500 level today in late January 2019 as I write this. Well to do my analysis I looked at every single coin on Binance, comparing their satoshi price on November 14 to what it is today, to see if there are any exceptions to the rule that all coins follow bitcoin in relative value. Well of the 146 coins, I found a total of 46 coins that are actually climbing in price since 14 November. These coins have actually hit a bottom, like bitcoin, but they have bounced back up to the point where they have surpassed their November 14 price in sats. In other words, they have held their value much better than bitcoin, and if you had been invested in them, you would be in profit by now, whereas bitcoin is at a 50% loss since that fateful day of the last noticeable mini crash.   

It took me several hours, perhaps half a day to painstakingly check every coin’s price graph, observe and record the November 14 price, the date of the low since then, and the date of the high since then, as well as the price today. In this way I was able to locate the 46 coins that outperformed bitcoin and all the rest and that have actually improved, sitting back at the same price as they were on November 14 or higher. This implies that there are still good trades to be made and good investments to be had in this current bear market. Not all altcoins are created equal or are tied to bitcoin as was previously observed over the past months.   

Let’s look at the list. To start, with some of the obvious improvements seen are in the bigger market cap names of Ethereum, Litecoin, Tron, Cardano, Nano, Iota and Binance coin, not necessarily in that order.    

ETH and ADA are today back at the exact satoshi price they were at on November 14. 

BNB and IOTA are just above that November price.   

And the biggest gainers are:   

LTC (was at 0.0078, now at 0.0092) 

TRX (was 340sats, now 740sats) 

NANO (was 27450, now 29580sats)   

And most of them are way above their 100 day moving average price in sats. Those are the top seven big cap names that have held out well.    

Bitcoin is still way below its 100 day moving average price. In fact even the above mentioned big gainers are below their 100 EMA in actual dollar terms – except for BNB which is just at its 100 day level (though still down in dollar price), and of course, the biggest gainer TRX, which is currently way above its 100 day EMA, according to the Binance exchange charts. Only TRX Tron has actually gained in dollar cost since that fateful November 14 price crash. All the others, including BNB are down in dollar value, just like bitcoin. So TRX is the outstanding exception at the moment on all levels.   

Here is the list of other altcoins that are back up to, or even higher in satoshi price than they were on November 14. All are above their 100 day EMA or even way above in some cases. And several have had mega pumps in recent days, usually visible just for a day on the one day price chart, meaning their price may have even declined from their latest high since the November 14 crash:    

1. AGI 
2. ARK 
3. BQX 
4. BRD 
5. DLT 
6. EDO 
7. ENJ 
8. EVX 
9. HC 
10. HOT 
11. INS 
12. IOST 
13. KMD 
14. LINK 
15. LRC 
16. LUN 
17. MCO 
18. MD 
19. NEBLIO 
20. NXS 
21. OAX 
22. PIVX 
23. POWR 
24. QKC 
25. QLC 
26. QTUM 
27. RDN 
28. REP 
29. RLC 
30. SNT 
31. STEEM 
32. STRATIS 
33. THETA 
34. TNT 
35. VIBE 
36. WAVES 
37. WINGS 
38. XRP 
39. ZILLICA   

Waves, Holo (HOT), Loopring (LRC), Chainlink (LINK), Hypercash (HC), Enjincoin (ENJ), Agrello (DLT), have done particularly well or even ridiculously well since November 14 in satoshi value. So it’s an open field as far as trading crypto is concerned. There are still profits to be made, even if generally only in satoshi value against bitcoin. Of course, this is all very easy to see in hindsight, but it may give us an indicator of where prices may be going in future, or which altcoins may be potential performers worth watching as the next bull run arrives this year some time.    

That doesn’t mean that the other 100 altcoins listed on Binance exchange aren’t going to perform well. It just implies that they are more closely tied to bitcoin still, and may well also pump again when BTC does. Generally though, we are looking at mid-year (July) before we reach a bottom in price and the beginning of a climb back up to the long-awaited ATH in 2021 or later – according to some experts more experienced than myself. Until then we can trade in and out of the altcoins to accumulate bitcoin as we go along. May you be blessed by the goddess of fortune and have profitable trades.  

Bitcoin was the first but Neo is the one

When I first found out about cryptocurrency it was Bitcoin and that was all. I presume it’s the same for most of us. Bitcoin is the face of crypto and blockchain technology. Then as I learned more, the second face or coin of Crypto showed itself as Ethereum, and perhaps the third was Litecoin, which is an expansion or “hard fork” of Bitcoin itself. Today I want to talk about one of the lesser known of the top 20, but still one of my favourites – Neo.

Well it turns out that at present there are between 2000 and 3000 of these cryptocurrencies or tokens as they’re called. Mind-boggling it can be to the new investor or researcher. It depends where you look on the internet as to how many tokens are listed. A great website one can use as a go-to reference is www.coinmarketcap.com. They mention 2089 active cryptocurrencies, while an equally good site – some would say even more informative – is www.coingecko.com. They mention a whopping 3068 coins/tokens, including those that are no longer traded and have probably just gone dormant or extinct. Both of these websites are great places to see the overall crypto market and all the various tokens or companies that make it up. A third is www.coinpaprika.com, if you want to compare all options. These sites are essential tools for the crypto trader or researcher, and we need both because cryptocurrency is both a revolution in finance as well as a revolution in technology. Therefore it’s doubly important and significant. Not everyone realizes this. Even if you’re not interested in economics, and are not into trading or markets, still you will find in blockchain technology – the platform or software that runs cryptocurrency – the most progressive tool in the digital world today. So it deserves some investigation.

If you look at the long list of currencies on the websites mentioned above, you can see their price, increase or decrease in value over the past hour, day, week or month, which is valuable info. You  can also see their inception date, find out about their use cases and also price history in general, like when was their ATH (all time high price), particularly on coingecko. Generally it is recommended to focus any potential investing just on the top ten. I would say personally at this stage that it is worth looking at the top fifteen. Among them you will find some real gems, like one called Neo. It is seen as the Ethereum of China, was founded by a Chinese expert in the field of blockchcain and has some extra features beyond that of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is run on a system called “proof of work” (POW) which implies that it is “mined” by computers using lots of electricity, which some say pollutes the planet and is of course expensive. A better or cleaner system is used by Neo and is called “proof of stake” (POS). Dash is another coin in the top fifteen that uses the same POS system, as do some others. So not all cryptocurrencies are created equal. There is variety, so we can’t use blanket statements about them regarding efficiency, cleanliness, speed, etc. In POS coins are not mined via power hungry computers. You can buy the pre-existing coins and stake them or hold them in your wallet or on the exchange like Binance, and Neo will actually reward you just for holding them. It’s something like earning interest by having a fixed deposit in a bank account.

 

So if you want to avoid the criticism of cryptocurrency being a pollutant to the earth via its power hungry mining system, then don’t buy Bitcoin, rather buy Neo. The name comes from the movie classic called The Matrix, which we all know, and their headquarters are even called the “City of Zion”. They have a sister coin called Trinity. Neo is brilliant because it can be used – like Ethereum – as a platform upon which one can build and run other tokens. China is big on Neo, and as China opens up their ban on cryptos now bit by bit, Neo will go far, and climb in price. Already you are earning passive income by simply holding Neo in your wallet. You are paid in another brother token called Gas which is worth quite a lot already on exchanges, so not to be sneezed at.

So as a result I have decided to sell a lot of my Bitcoin and Ethereum and buy Neo. After all, I will receive monthly deposits of Gas coin, which I can then use to buy more Neo, which will then bring me more Gas coin, and so the cycle can continue, if you know what I mean. Here I am relaxing and simply holding Neo and simultaneously earning more as a passive income without having to hussle and day trade or try to scalp profits in this current bear market. Neo is available on Binance, a leading cryptocurrency exchange (as well as others) so check it out. If you want to know more about Neo go to their website www.neo.org and read all about the darling of China who just turned two this past month. As you know there are billions of Chinese and they are mad about crypto, so if and when they enter the market, as they do in Hong Kong already, then we will see Neo reach 10x or ten times its value and we will be off to the moon. PS this is not investment advice, just my personal experience on my crypto journey. So until next time, may you see through the Matrix and find out your true identity as the one you have been waiting for.