In this week's edition of DDDD (Data-driven DD), I'll be going over the real reason why we have been seeing a rally for the past few weeks, defying all logic and fundamentals - retail investors. We'll look into several data sets to see how retail interest in stock markets have reached record levels in the past few weeks, how this affected stock prices, and why we've most likely seen the top at this point, unless we see one of the "positive catalysts" that I mentioned in my previous post, which is unlikely (except for more news about Remdesivir).
Disclaimer - This is not financial advice, and a lot of the content below is my personal opinion. In fact, the numbers, facts, or explanations presented below could be wrong and be made up. Don't buy random options because some person on the internet says so; look at what happened to all the SPY 220p 4/17 bag holders. Do your own research and come to your own conclusions on what you should do with your own money, and how levered you want to be based on your personal risk tolerance.
Inspiration
Most people who know me personally know that I spend an unhealthy amount of my free time in finance and trading as a hobby, even competing in paper options trading competitions when I was in high school. A few weeks ago, I had a friend ask if he could call me because he just installed Robinhood and wanted to buy SPY puts after seeing everyone on wallstreetbets post gains posts from all the tendies they’ve made from their SPY puts. The problem was, he actually didn’t understand how options worked at all, and needed a thorough explanation about how options are priced, what strike prices and expiration dates mean, and what the right strategy to buying options are. That’s how I knew we were at the euphoria stage of buying SPY puts - it’s when dumb money starts to pour in, and people start buying securities because they see everyone else making money and they want in, even if they have no idea what they’re buying, and price becomes dislocated from fundementals. Sure enough, less than a week later, we started the bull rally that we are currently in. Bubbles are formed when people buy something not because of logic or even gut feeling, but when people who previously weren’t involved see their dumb neighbors make tons of money from it, and they don’t want to miss out.
A few days ago, I started getting questions from other friends about what stocks they should buy and if I thought something was a good investment. That inspired me to dig a bit deeper to see how many other people are thinking the same thing.
Data
Ever since March, we’ve seen an unprecedented amount of money pour into the stock market from retail investors.
Google Search Trends
\"what stock should I buy\" Google Trends 2004 - 2020
\"what stock should I buy\" Google Trends 12 months
\"stocks\" Google Trends 2004 - 2020
\"stocks\" Google Trends 12 months
Brokerage data
Robinhood SPY holders
\"Robinhood\" Google Trends 12 months
wallstreetbets' favorite broker Google Trends 12 months
Excerpt from E*Trade earnings statement
Excerpt from Schwab earnings statement
TD Ameritrade Excerpt
Media
cnbc.com Alexa rank
CNBC viewership & rankings
wallstreetbets comments / day
​
investing comments / day
Analysis
What we can see from Reddit numbers, Google Trends, and CNBC stats is that in between the first week of March and first week of April, we see a massive inflow of retail interest in the stock market. Not only that, but this inflow of interest is coming from all age cohorts, from internet-using Zoomers to TV-watching Boomers. Robinhood SPY holdings and earnings reports from E*Trade, TD Ameritrade, and Schwab have also all confirmed record numbers of new clients, number of trades, and assets. There’s something interesting going on if you look closer at the numbers. The numbers growth in brokers for designed for “less sophisticated” investors (i.e. Robinhood and E*Trade) are much larger than for real brokers (i.e. Schwab and Ameritrade). This implies that the record number of new users and trade volume is coming from dumb money. The numbers shown here only really apply to the US and Canada, but there’s also data to suggest that there’s also record numbers of foreign investors pouring money into the US stock market as well.
However, after the third week of March, we see the interest start to slowly decline and plateau, indicating that we probably have seen most of those new investors who wanted to have a long position in the market do so.
SPX daily
Rationale
Pretty much everything past this point is purely speculation, and isn’t really backed up by any solid data so take whatever I say here with a cup of salt. We could see from the graph that new investor interest started with the first bull trap we saw in the initial decline from early March, and peaking right after the end of the crash in March. So it would be fair to guess that we’re seeing a record amount of interest in the stock market from a “buy the dip” mentality, especially from Robinhood-using Millennials. Here’s a few points on my rationalization of this behavior, based on very weak anecdotal evidence

• They missed out of their chance of getting in the stock market at the start of the bull market that happened at the end of 2009
• They’ve all seen the stock market make record gains throughout their adult lives, but believing that the market might be overheated, they were waiting for a crash
• Most of them have gotten towards the stage of their lives where they actually have some savings and can finally put some money aside for investments
• This stock market crash seems like their once-in-a-decade opportunity that they’ve been waiting for, so everyone jumped in
• Everyone’s stuck at their homes with vast amounts of unexpected free time on their hands

Most of these new investors got their first taste in the market near the bottom, and probably made some nice returns. Of course, since they didn’t know what they were doing, they probably put a very small amount of money at first, but after seeing a 10% return over one week, validating that maybe they do know something, they decide to slowly pour in more and more of their life savings. That’s what’s been fueling this bull market.
Sentiment & Magic Crayons
As I mentioned previously, this bull rally will keep going until enough bears convert to bulls. Markets go up when the amount of new bullish positions outnumber the amount of new bearish positions, and vice versa. Record amounts of new investors, who previously never held a position in the market before, fueled the bullish side of this equation, despite all the negative data that has come out and dislocating the price from fundamentals. All the smart money that was shorting the markets saw this happening, and flipped to become bulls because you don’t fight the trend, even if the trend doesn’t reflect reality.
From the data shown above, we can see new investor interest growth has started declining since mid March and started stagnating in early April. The declining volume in SPY since mid-March confirms this. That means, once the sentiment of the new retail investors starts to turn bearish, and everyone figures out how much the stocks they’re holding are really worth, another sell-off will begin. I’ve seen something very similar to this a few years ago with Bitcoin. Near the end of 2017, Bitcoin started to become mainstream and saw a flood of retail investors suddenly signing up for Coinbase (i.e. Robinhood) accounts and buying Bitcoin without actually understanding what it is and how it works. Suddenly everyone, from co-workers to grandparents, starts talking about Bitcoin and might have thrown a few thousand dollars into it. This appears to be a very similar parallel to what’s going on right now. Of course there’s differences here in that equities have an intrinsic value, although many of them have gone way above what they should be intrinsically worth, and the vast majority of retail investors don’t understand how to value companies. Then, during December, when people started thinking that the market was getting a bit overheated, some started taking their profits, and that’s when the prices crashed violently. This flip in sentiment now look like it has started with equities.
SPY daily
Technical Analysis, or magic crayons, is a discipline in finance that uses statistical analysis to predict market trends based on market sentiment. Of course, a lot of this is hand-wavy and is very subjective; two people doing TA on the same price history can end up getting opposite results, so TA should always be taken with a grain of salt and ideally be backed with underlying justification and not be blindly followed. In fact, I’ve since corrected the ascending wedge I had on SPY since my last post since this new wedge is a better fit for the new trading data.
There’s a few things going on in this chart. The entire bull rally we’ve had since the lows can be modelled using a rising wedge. This is a pattern where there is a convergence of a rising support and resistance trendline, along with falling volume. This indicates a slow decline in net bullish sentiment with investors, with smaller and smaller upside after each bounce off the support until it hits a resistance. The smaller the bounces, the less bullish investors are. When the bearish sentiment takes over across investors, the price breaks below this wedge - a breakdown, and indicates a start of another downtrend.
This happened when the wedge hit resistance at around 293, which is around the same price as the 200 day moving average, the 62% retracement (considered to be the upper bound of a bull trap), and a price level that acted as a support and resistance throughout 2019. The fact that it gapped down to break this wedge is also a strong signal, indicating a sudden swing in investor sentiment overnight. The volume of the break down also broke the downwards trend of volume we’ve had since the beginning of the bull rally, indicating a sudden surge of people selling their shares. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we will go straight from here, and I personally think that we will see the completion of a heads-and-shoulders pattern complete before SPY goes below 274, which in itself is a strong support level. In other words, SPY might go from 282 -> 274 -> 284 -> 274 before breaking the 274 support level.
VIX Daily
Doing TA is already sketchy, and doing TA on something like VIX is even more sketchy, but I found this interesting so I’ll mention it. Since the start of the bull rally, we’ve had VIX inside a descending channel. With the breakdown we had in SPY yesterday, VIX has also gapped up to have a breakout from this channel, indicating that we may see future volatility in the next week or so.
Putting Everything Together
Finally, we get to my thesis. This entire bull rally has been fueled by new retail investors buying the dip, bringing the stock price to euphoric levels. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been seeing the people waiting at the sidelines for years to get into the stock market slowly FOMO into the rally in smaller and smaller volumes, while the smart money have been locking in their profits at an even slower rate - hence an ascending wedge. As the amount of new retail interest in the stock market started slowed down, the amount of new bulls started to decline. It looks like Friday might have been the start of the bearish sentiment taking over, meaning it’s likely that 293 was the top, unless any significant bullish events happen in the next two weeks like a fourth round of stimulus, in which case we might see 300. This doesn’t mean we’ll instantly go back to circuit breakers on Monday, and we might see 282 -> 274 -> 284 -> 274 happen before panic, this time by the first-time investors, eventually bringing us down towards SPY 180.
tldr; we've reached the top
EDIT - I'll keep a my live thoughts here as we move throughout this week in case anyone's still reading this and interested.
5/4 8PM - /ES was red last night but steadily climbed, which was expected since 1h RSI was borderline oversold, leaving us to a slightly green day. /ES looks like it has momentum going up, but is approaching towards overbought territory now. Expecting it to go towards 284 (possibly where we'll open tomorrow) and bouncing back down from that price level
5/5 Market Open - Well there goes my price target. I guess at this point it might go up to 293 again, but will need a lot of momentum to push back there to 300. Seems like this is being driven by oil prices skyrocketing.
5/5 3:50PM - Volume for the upwards price action had very little volume behind it. Seeing a selloff EOD today, could go either way although I have a bearish bias. Going to hold cash until it goes towards one end of the 274-293 channel (see last week's thesis). Still believe that we will see it drop below 274 next week, but we might be moving sideways in the channel this week and a bit of next week before that happens. Plan for tomorrow is buy short dated puts if open < 285. Otherwise, wait till it goes to 293 before buying those puts
5/5 6PM - What we saw today could be a false breakout above 284. Need tomorrow to open below 285 for that to be confirmed. If so, my original thesis of it going back down to 274 before bouncing back up will still be in play.
5/6 EOD - Wasn't a false breakout. Looks like it's still forming the head-and-shoulders pattern mentioned before, but 288 instead of 284 as the level. Still not sure yet so I'm personally going to be holding cash and waiting this out for the next few days. Will enter into short positions if we either go near 293 again or drop below 270. Might look into VIX calls if VIX goes down near 30.
5/7 Market Open - Still waiting. If we break 289 we're probably heading to 293. I'll make my entry to short positions when we hit that a second time. There's very little bullish momentum left (see MACD 1D), so if we hit 293 and then drop back down, we'll have a MACD crossover event which many traders and algos use as a sell signal. Oil is doing some weird shit.
5/7 Noon - Looks like we're headed to 293. Picked up VIX 32.5c 5/27 since VIX is near 30.
5/7 11PM - /ES is hovering right above 2910, with 4h and 1h charts are bullish from MACD and 1h is almost overbought in RSI. Unless something dramatic happens we'll probably hit near 293 tomorrow, which is where I'll get some SPY puts. We might drop down before ever touching it, or go all the way to 295 (like last time) during the day, but expecting it to close at or below 293. After that I'm expecting a gap down Monday as we start the final leg down next week towards 274. Expecting 1D MACD to crossover in the final leg down, which will be a signal for bears to take over and institutions / day traders will start selling again
5/8 Market Open - Plan is to wait till a good entry today, either when technicals looks good or we hit 293, and then buy some SPY June 285p and July 275p
5/8 Noon - Everything still going according to plan. Most likely going to slowly inch towards 293 by EOD. Will probably pick up SPY puts and more VIX calls at power hour (3 - 4PM). Monday will probably gap down, although there's a small chance of one more green / sideways day before that happens if we have bullish catalysts on the weekend.
5/8 3:55PM - SPY at 292.60. This is probably going to be the closest we get to 293. Bought SPY 290-260 6/19 debit spreads and 292-272 5/15 debit spreads, as well as doubling down on VIX calls from yesterday, decreasing my cost basis. Still looks like there's room for one more green day on Monday, so I left some money on the side to double down if that's the case, although it's more likely than not we won't get there.
5/8 EOD - Looks like we barely touched 293 exactly AH before rebounding down. Too bad you can't buy options AH, but more convinced we'll see a gap down on Monday. Going to work on another post over the weekend and do my updates there. Have a great weekend everyone!

Bitcoin options are breaking records, and exchanges are competing for this segment. We will tell you what these tools are and how they work
The cryptocurrency market is constantly evolving, integrating with the traditional and inheriting complex financial products such as futures and options.
Some types of fixed-term contracts are already firmly established in the bitcoin industry. This is noticeable by the activity of traders on the CME.
However, the situation with options is somewhat different. These derivatives are difficult to understand among ordinary market participants and are not yet so popular.
Nevertheless, there is a demand for such tools, as evidenced by the growth dynamics of this market segment and interest from platforms such as Binance and Bitfinex.
Bitcoin options have already been offered on CME, LedgerX and Bakkt, which are regulated and oriented primarily on whales. Among the unregulated sites, the leader is Deribit, followed by FTX and OKEx.
ForkLog magazine figured out what options are and what types of options are. We will talk about the features of these tools and the current state of affairs in the segment. In this article you will also find comments by leading market experts on the role of options in the industry.

What are options and how do they work?

An option is a financial contract concluded between two parties — the holder and the seller. The first receives the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a certain amount of the underlying asset at the strike price (strike price) on a specific date (expiration date).
The seller undertakes to buy or sell the asset at the request of the option holder. The latter pays the seller at the time of purchase of the contract a certain amount of money — the so-called premium.
The rights and obligations of the holder and seller differ significantly. The former has the right to choose whether to exercise the option or not. The seller is obliged to fulfill the terms of the contract at the request of the holder.
Parameters such as the type of underlying asset, expiration date, strike price are fixed at the time of issue of the contract, after which they cannot be changed.
Like futures, options are derivative financial instruments and derivatives. This means that they can be based on various underlying assets (BA) — stocks, indices or cryptocurrencies.
“Like the options already existing in traditional finance for all major assets, there are contracts based on BTC and ETH on the cryptocurrency market. They are very interesting financial products“, said Su Zhu, head of Three Arrows Capital, in a conversation with ForkLog.
Options are used both for hedging risks and for speculative trading. For example, a speculator confident in the growth of the underlying asset buys a call option. If the BA price rises above the strike, the trader can use his contract to buy a discounted asset.
“Derivatives such as options allow users to hedge risks and generate revenue. Derivatives play a key role in the traditional financial market. These tools are needed so that the cryptocurrency market continues to grow and develop, being filled with new participants“, said Aaron Gong, vice president of Binance Futures.

Practical use of options

Consider the simplest example of options hedging. Suppose there is a company manufacturing tomato paste, sauces and ketchups. There is a farmer supplying this company with tomatoes. He acts in conditions of fierce competition, close to perfect.
It is extremely important for a company to buy raw materials cheaper to minimize production costs and remain profitable. The farmer, in turn, hopes for a long-term cooperation with the company so as not to lose a major client.
The company offers the farmer an option, assuming the right to buy 10 tons of tomatoes of the next year’s crop at the current price — say, $1,000 per ton. To exercise this right, the company pays the farmer an option premium of 3% of the total transaction amount of $10,000, that is, $300.
The farmer will have to, at the request of the company, sell the appropriate quantity of goods at the above price and at a specified time.
A year later, the crop was high, which led to a decrease in the market value of tomatoes to $800 per ton. The company decides not to exercise its right to purchase raw materials for $10,000, as other farmers can buy the same 10 tons of tomatoes for only $8,000.
Thus, having lost only $300 as a premium on an option, the company is insured against price risk. Buying raw materials at a significantly lower market price is more than worth the price of the option contract.
Let’s imagine another scenario: the crop turned out to be unimportant and the price of scarce tomatoes jumped to $1200 per ton. Then the company will certainly take advantage of the right to purchase tomatoes for $1000. Thus, the result is any case.
It is easy to guess that the options can be used by miners to hedge the risks of adverse changes in the price of the extracted asset. For example, expecting a decrease in the price of BTC, miners can use options that give them the right to sell cryptocurrency in the future at a price higher than the breakeven point.
“Miners are already very active in options markets. And, probably, they will remain active“, Su Zhu said.
Su Zhu is confident that in the long term, options will make the cryptocurrency spot market more liquid and attractive to a wide range of participants. He added that the growing popularity of such contracts among miners could significantly reduce sales pressure.
“Options give miners the opportunity to fix the price of coins mined in the future. Miners can better manage their production costs and protect themselves from market volatility“, said Aaron Gong, expressing confidence that the popularity of options will continue to grow.
According to him, such tools open up new opportunities and may be of interest to speculators, funds and long-term cryptocurrency holders.
“Institutional investors are also showing growing interest in options and other derivatives. Last week it was reported that the famous Wall Street trader Paul Tudor Jones allocated a few percent from his Tudor BVI fund for bitcoin futures. This is a positive signal, which means that more and more institutions are interested in the cryptocurrency market“, Gong added.
However, option strategies are not suitable for every market participant — effective work with these tools requires certain experience, Co-founder of CoinIndex.agency Julia Sporysh is sure:
“Of course, in order to use this effectively, the miner must have an experienced trader (option strategies are some of the most difficult on the market) — or they will have to unite and work through specialized trading companies. This market exists, although it is not for the general public.”
Also, according to her, options may be of interest to funds and retail traders who have gained a hand in speculative trading.
“Options are an independent and good speculative tool. And if you have positions in futures or in the spot market, it’s just the time to explore new opportunities“, added Yulia Sporysh.

Types of options

There are two main types of options — option call and option put. The first gives the right to the contract holder to purchase a certain amount of the underlying asset from the seller (they also say — the inscription) at the strike price on a certain date in the future. This type of option was used in the tomato example.
The put option, on the contrary, gives the buyer of the contract the right to sell the underlying asset at a fixed price. The latter may be higher than the market at the time of expiration, which is beneficial to the trader.
Market participants use the call, predicting an increase in the price of BA, and put — expecting it to decline.
More complex strategies use combinations of these two types of contracts.
There is also the term “covered option”. For example, an option call is covered if the seller has the amount of the underlying asset corresponding to the terms of the contract.
Options may also differ in the style of execution — American or European.
European-style options require the holder to execute the contract exclusively on the expiration date. Such options, in particular, are presented at CME and Bakkt.
American style implies the possibility of contract execution at any time prior to the date of expiration. Options of both styles are traded all over the world, their names have no relation to geographic location.
There are less standardized, exotic options. However, the popularity and importance of such instruments in the financial market is not so great.
Parameters and conditions for trading certain options are described in the specifications for them, which indicate the expiration date, strike price and other elements of the contract.

Premium, strike price and cash option

The option premium is the amount of money paid by the buyer to the seller. The premium is equal to the value of the contract and, in fact, represents a fee for the risk of adverse changes in the value of the underlying asset.
The option premium is formed by two components:
• Intrinsic value — the amount that the buyer would receive if the contract were currently executed. It depends on the ratio of the price of the underlying asset and the strike.
• Time value — depends on the time remaining until expiration. Usually, the less time it takes to execute a contract, the lower the premium.
As a rule, high price volatility contributes to premium growth, and vice versa. A deal with a close strike price in relation to the current one has much greater chances of closing in profit and, therefore, the premium for such an option will be relatively high.
The strike price is the price fixed in the option at which the buyer of the call option can buy (or sell, if this is a put option) the underlying asset. In turn, the seller of the contract is obliged to sell or buy BA.
Money is an indicator of the ability to receive funds from the exercise of the right to exercise a derivative. In the context of options, cash can be calculated by comparing the spot price of the BA and the strike price of the option. Thus, three options are possible:
• “in the money” option: in the case of a call — if the spot price is higher than the strike (then the intrinsic value of the contract is positive), in the case of a put, on the contrary, if the BA price is lower than the strike;
• option “on money” (or “with one’s own”) — equal strike to current stock quotes, intrinsic value equal to 0;
• the option “out of money” (“without money”) — the exercise of the option is not economically feasible; in such a situation, the current price of the underlying asset is lower than the strike price of the call option or, conversely, the spot price of the BA is higher than the strike price in the case of a put.

Option strategies

There are many option trading strategies. Four basic approaches can be distinguished.
Long call — buying a call option, the investor expects an increase in the price of the underlying asset above the strike on the expiration date of the contract. Then he will be able to buy an asset at a discount to the market price and thus earn on the difference. If the price drops below the strike, the buyer risks only the premium paid for the option.
Long put — is a kind of alternative to a short position in the spot market. The buyer of the put option hopes to make money, assuming that the price of the BA falls below the strike at the time of expiration. In this scenario, the investor may sell the asset at a higher price than the market price.
Also, through a put option, an investor can limit the risk of a fall in the price of an asset that has a long position open. According to Su Zhu, miners may use the “protective put” strategy, in whose activity a substantial and prolonged drop in the price of mined cryptocurrency is undesirable. Through such tools, miners can provide profitable or even break-even activity.
Short call — the investor acts as the seller of the contract, counting on a decrease in the price of BA below the strike on the date of expiration. However, the higher the price of the asset, the more losses the inscription bears. Thus, the risk of the seller of the contract is unlimited, and the profit potential is limited by the premium on the sale of the call.
Short put — the seller of such an option expects a premium on it, being firmly convinced that the price of the BA will be higher than the strike.
Combinations of these basic strategies may underlie more sophisticated options trading approaches, such as:
• protective put — purchase of a put option for an available asset;
• covered (secured) call — an investor sells a call option to an existing BA or which will be acquired simultaneously with the sale of the option; the strategy reduces the risk of owning an asset, since a fall in its price is partially offset by a premium;
• straddle — a kind of bet on volatility, which implies the purchase of a call and put option on the same asset with the same expiration date and the same strike price;
• strangle — almost the same as straddle, differs only in different strike prices.

Conclusions

Options are complex financial instruments, their mechanism of work is unlikely to be mastered immediately by most novice traders. Nevertheless, these derivatives may seem interesting to experienced market participants and, in particular, to miners.
The following advantages and disadvantages of options can be distinguished. Of the advantages of these contracts, we note:
- flexibility of use in speculative trading;
- the ability to use many combinations and trading strategies;
- a good tool for hedging risks;
- the ability to use in any trend — upward, downward, sideways.
Disadvantages:
- the difficulty of understanding the mechanism of work, especially for novice market participants;
- asymmetric conditions and, accordingly, risks for the buyer and seller;
- the complexity of trading strategies;
- the volatility of an option premium, which depends on the proximity of the expiration date and price dynamics in the spot market;
- low liquidity.
Different industry players have different cryptocurrency options. Some consider them promising tools useful for miners, funds, retail traders and the market as a whole. Others are convinced that such derivatives are archaism.
Nevertheless, options are gradually taking root in the cryptocurrency market. This is evident in the dynamics of trading volume and open interest. In addition, more and more exchanges are trying to add support for these contracts, which contributes to increased competition and further development of the industry.
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[Today's Hot Tips]
1. [Senior Japanese Officials: The current lack of Japanese digital asset tax policy may lead to capital outflows]
Shun Otokita, a representative of the Reformed Party, a senior official of the Japanese government, said that the current national tax system cannot yet accept digital asset declarations, which may lead to capital outflows, and pointed out the importance of market research on taxation of cryptocurrencies separately. Otokita acknowledged that it is difficult to quickly modify the tax law to apply to digital assets, but pointed out that it is necessary to conduct market research to determine which changes are necessary.
2. [BB: The global macro environment is jointly highlighting the value of encryption]
On April 7, Brendan Blumer, CEO of Block.One, tweeted that the global macro environment has never been as prominent in the value of encryption as it is now, and it will be the same for the next 24 months.
3. [The Central Bank continues to promote the development of legal digital currency]
According to the People ’s Daily news on April 6, the People ’s Bank of China ’s video and telephone conference on 2020 national currency, gold, silver and security work was recently held in Beijing. The conference made plans for the key work in 2020, and proposed to unswervingly advance the research and development of legal digital currency, systematically promote the reform of cash issuance and return systems, and accelerate the promotion of banknote processing business, issuance of warehouse guards, and issuance of fund escort transformation.
4. [Binance is subject to a class action in the United States]
Binance was subject to a class action in the United States, and lawyers said the case was unlikely to be rejected.
The Southern District Court of New York received a series of class action and the lawsuits targeting the top companies and projects in the crypto industry such as Binance. The news was first disclosed by Offshore Alert. It is reported that at least 10 similar class-action lawsuits were filed in the Southern District Court of New York, accusing Binance and other crypto companies of selling unregistered securities products to US investors. It is reported that the lawsuit was initiated by the US law firm Roche Cyrulnik Freedman, and the prosecution also included many executives such as Zhao Changpeng, CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. It is worth mentioning that the law firm had also represented Craig Wright in the multi-billion-dollar Bitcoin lawsuit.
[Today's market analysis]
Bitcoin (BTC)
https://preview.redd.it/nkur97xeqcr41.png?width=554&format=png&auto=webp&s=d636b554e0f939600291dda992dbe2c4a3268b93
BTC continued to rise from around $ 7070 early this morning, and rose to around $ 7300 at around 3:45. Now, BTC has returned to $ 7250 sideways. The mainstream currencies followed the consolidation and generally rose sideways. BTC is currently reported at $ 7288.06 at LOEx Global, an increase of 2.09% in the day.
The recent market has basically maintained a volatile trend around 7200 points, and there has been no surge or decline. Looking at the short line, the bulls have been relatively strong recently. On Saturday and Sunday, they did not choose to go down but oscillate to repair. Seeing that the rebound has recovered half of the decline, it is necessary to be cautious here, because after all, the previous currency disaster did not recover so quickly, just like a sudden illness, how can it recover so quickly. So now is a good time to sell high and sell low. Do not blindly bullish.
The real bottom is found afterwards and it was caused by funds. Every time I see it, the trend from the left to the right reverses the process. As an ordinary investor, if there is no more than 100 million in funds, you can see the right and enter the market, getting rid of the downward channel and turning to the right, there is a process of stabilization. At the same time, the trend of the pattern also has characteristic signals, such as the appearance of a single-day surge, red soldier and other signals. Then it will soon get rid of the downward channel, and the turnaround will slowly take shape. On the contrary, it is the same when you reach the top, for example, three crows, bearish engulfing, and other combinations. Thoroughly fundamental research on industries and varieties, quantified to actual operation, the test is more strategy, psychology, experience. In fact, it is necessary to analyze various different types of products. Mainstream coins and value coins, blue chip, white horse and technology stocks have different ways of playing. Different volatility will naturally have different operating methods. In principle, looking at industry trend opportunities from top to bottom, and then looking at specific varieties and trading points from bottom to top, they interact to understand the art of investment more deeply, and the unity of knowing and doing, in fact, everyone can do better.
Operation suggestions:
Support level: the first support level is 7200 points, the second support level is 7000 integers;
Resistance level: the first resistance level is 7400 points, the second resistance level is 7700 points.
LOEx is registered in Seychelles. It is a global one-stop digital asset service platform with business distribution nodes in 20 regions around the world. It has been exempted from Seychelles and Singapore Monetary Authority (MAS) digital currency trading services. Provide services and secure encrypted digital currency trading environment for 1 million community members in 24 hours.

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The basics of crypto-trading: indicators, charts and trend lines
Halving on the Bitcoin network has become one of the key events in the cryptocurrency market, which has fueled the interest not only of long-standing players, but also has caused the release of new ones. This is evidenced by recent data on the growing demand for crypto assets on top cryptocurrency exchanges such as Bithumb Global. For those who are just getting acquainted with the crypto-market and want to try their hand at trading a new class of assets, we will tell you what tools crypto-exchanges offer and how to use them in crypto-trading.
To start trading cryptocurrencies, you must first select:
• Crypto-wallet — there are several types of crypto-wallets: hot, cold, desktop, mobile and paper. All of them provide different levels of security and convenience. At the same time, the best option for storing cryptocurrencies is the use of two different wallets — hot and cold. So do most large companies working with digital assets.
• Crypto-exchange is a trading platform that will allow you to exchange, buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Such platforms can be centralized (CEX), decentralized (DEX) or hybrid, combining the qualities of CEX and DEX.
• A crypto-portfolio is a collection of crypto-assets collected for profit. It is best to form it in three stages: part of the currency for long-term storage (from 1 year and longer), another part — a medium-term deposit (up to six months) and a deposit for trading for several days or a week. When starting crypto trading, it is advisable to diversify your investment in a deposit for trading, paying attention not only to the potential of a particular coin, but also to the ways of earning that the cryptocurrency market offers. Experts advise at the initial stages to choose assets from the top 10 rating by capitalization.

Terminology

• Order — a trader’s request for a cryptocurrency transaction. Orders are divided into market orders — for purchase (Buy) or sale (Sell), and pending — requests for a transaction at a non-market price, waiting for it to be at the right level. Pending orders include:
⁃ Limit — for sale / purchase at a price higher / lower than the current market price
⁃ Stop loss — orders to limit the loss
⁃ Take Profit — Take Profit Order
• Market maker and market taker are market participants who create and accept orders. The market maker creates a new transaction request, increases the turnover of the exchange and raises the liquidity of the crypto asset, while the receiving market taker takes the asset out of circulation, lowering its liquidity. In this connection, different commissions are introduced on some crypto exchanges for makers and takers.
• Exchange Cup or Order Book — a table with limit orders, which displays the closest sellers and buyers, where sellers’ orders are marked in red, and buyers are marked in green. The columns of the table show the number of cryptocurrencies and the price at which they intend to sell or buy. At the junction of these tables, a spread is formed — the difference in the price of supply and demand. The lower the spread, the more liquid the cryptocurrency. The analysis of the stock market is a leading indicator of the state of the market, since it allows you to predict changes before they happen.
• Long and short positions (Long and Short) — the usual “mode” of trading. In the case of a long position, we buy cheaper and sell more. It is believed that the growth of assets in the market is a long process, therefore, work in this direction is also called long. The second option means a short position, that is, a game for a fall. The market believes that the decline in the value of assets occurs quickly, that is, in a short time. Therefore, this position is called “short.”
• Exchange chart — shows the change in the price of cryptocurrency over time and is the most important tool for technical analysis. Charts display price changes with a line, bar and candlestick.
• Bulls and bears — in the market so-called buyers and sellers. There is an analogy with the nature of animals: buyers always push the price up, creating a demand for something, and it turns out that the price seems to be pushed by horns. In this connection, bulls are optimists, they believe that the prices of the shares they bought will rise, and someday they will sell the asset more expensive than they bought. The bulls in the market are overwhelming (by approximate estimates, up to 80%), long investments are kept on them, and the bull trend means stable growth of stocks and general welfare. Bears, in turn, are sellers who have learned to capitalize on a falling market: they usually try to sell cryptocurrencies faster, often lowering the price of an asset. Concluding a contract for the sale, they fix its value, and then wait until the goods fall in price, close the deal and put the proceeds in their pocket. Bears are interested in a constant reduction in prices and achieve their goal, provoking an increase in supply: open short positions and sell until the price drops to the desired level.
• Technical analysis is a set of tools for market forecasting of prices based on the movement of value in the past. In technical analysis, the same tools can be used for different markets and trading pairs with a slight adjustment of indicators. Also, technical tools are equally successfully used on any timeframes — from a minute to a year.
• Fundamental analysis — this type of analysis is based on the consideration of financial and production market indicators that may affect the price of a traded instrument. The mood of market players, current and growing trends, indicators of production activity — all this information can give an extensive idea of the potential of the investment object in question. The main disadvantage of the fundamental analysis is that the information provided by him is insufficient to predict the movement of prices in some local areas. It is possible to determine a potentially good company that has excellent financial performance and has real prospects, but it will be impossible to determine the moment of entering a short-term profitable trade with a good indicator of risk to profit ratio.
• Pattern — behavioral model / trading setup / market pattern. Patterns are one of the most common methods for analyzing price movements. Each pattern is always based on a certain idea, the simplest and most understandable. There are a lot of trading models, but all of them are derived from the classical model of breakdown or rebound from certain significant price levels.

Basic cryptocurrency trading tools at Bithumb Global

Using the example of a centralized cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb Global, we will analyze the main elements that cryptotraders will encounter in the initial stages of trading. When choosing a cryptocurrency exchange, first of all, you need to pay attention to the presence of:
⁃ Convenient ways to deposit and withdraw funds
⁃ Fiat currency support
⁃ High number of trading pairs
⁃ Information on the current state of cryptocurrency rates
⁃ Cryptocurrency Rate Charts
⁃ Technical indicators
⁃ Different levels of user verification
⁃ Built-in cryptocurrency wallet
⁃ 24/7 tech support
On the Bithumb Global main page, a selection of top trading pairs is offered, where cryptocurrency tickers are listed, their price, exchange rate for the last day, daily trading volume and the asset quotes movement chart.
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Top trading pairs at Bithumb Global. Source.
If you select a pair from this list, then Bithumb Global will automatically transfer the user to the Base Version of Spot Trading. Spot trading — the terms of the transaction with cryptocurrency, in which payment is made to both parties immediately.
Here the user can get acquainted with the latest price of an asset, the volume of transactions with it, data on transactions and the minimum and maximum prices for the last day.
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Basic Version of Spot Trading on Bithumb Global. Source.
You can select another trading pair in the top menu by hovering over the corresponding button, but the easiest way is to find the desired pair through the search. At the same time, the Professional Version of Spot Trading opens up a wider set of tools for the user, which will be discussed later.

Trading Tools Professional Version Bithumb Global

On the Professional Version, users can use price charts in the form of Candles, which look like a series of vertical lines and display price changes, where the upper point shows the maximum that the price has reached and the lower one — the minimum. If the closing price is lower than the opening, then the candle will be painted red or black, and if higher, then green or white. Knowing the direction of the price movement (body color of the candle), we can say exactly where the closing and opening prices are.
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Price chart in the form of Candles at Bithumb Global. Source.
Also in this version of Spot Trading, a price chart is available to users in the form of a Glass, where sellers ‘bids are marked in red and buyers’ bids are marked in green. The analysis of the stock market is a leading indicator of the state of the market, since it allows you to predict changes before they happen. If, for example, a large congestion of sales requests at the upper price limit can be noted, then as soon as the market reaches this limit, a recession will provoke, triggered by a large number of sales.
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Price chart in the form of a Glass on Bithumb Global. Source.
Price charts also have different timeframes — from 1 minute to 1 week, which allows you to conduct a more in-depth analysis of the movement of quotes of the selected asset.
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Bithumb Global price chart timeframes. Source.
Also in this version of Bithumb Global, various Indicators are available to traders. In total, the cryptocurrency exchange provides about 80 different indicators that will help in the technical analysis of the movement of crypto asset quotes.
Let’s analyze the main indicators available on Bithumb Global:
• Volume — allows you to track the number of transactions completed by traders over a specific time interval. Green and red bars are indicators of the volume of transactions: red signals a decrease in volume, green — its growth. By analyzing the volume of transactions against the background of the price movement chart, you can confirm the strength of the trend or reveal its weakness and predict a price reversal. If prices rise and trading volume rises, we observe a bullish trend. An increase in trading volume in the event of a decline in prices indicates a bearish trend.
• Moving Average (MA) is just as popular a tool as volume is. The indicator function analyzes the average prices for the selected time interval, which gives a relative idea of the general price trends. If the actual price of cryptocurrency for a long time keeps above the moving average, we can assume that it will continue to grow. Accordingly, a fall below MA is a signal to lower the price of an asset. For more accurate forecasts, it is advisable to use several moving averages based on different time intervals. Moreover, in case of disagreement, it is customary to consider the value of the average based on a longer period of time. If the signals from several moving averages coincide, we can talk about a fairly accurate forecast.
• MACD (Moving Average Convergence Divergence) — having trained on one moving average, we will move on to a comprehensive analysis of this indicator. The MACD tool analyzes the convergence and divergence of three moving averages and can signal the beginning of a new trend. MACD also works well on different timeframes and is a fairly simple and popular indicator of technical analysis.
• Zig Zag is an auxiliary indicator that analyzes the highest and lowest points of the cryptocurrency exchange rate and allows you to determine the correct entry points into the market. The plus of the indicator is that it eliminates the noise that can distort the forecast of the trend behavior. Minor fluctuations are simply not taken into account: lines connect the highest and lowest points of the price chart directly. The zigzag shows global market movements, but at the same time it only captures these changes in the past, without giving forecasts on the price behavior in the future.
• Relative Strength Index (RSI) — shows the greatest efficiency in a sideways trend. With active course dynamics, RSI may produce incorrect data. Such indicators of technical analysis are called oscillators, and they must be used with caution. The indicator’s algorithms analyze price changes and allow you to evaluate the oversold or overbought status of an asset and, therefore, predict the occurrence of a bull or bear trend.
• CCI (Commodity Channel Index) — The CCI or Commodity Channel Index, as well as the Relative Strength Index (RSI), helps evaluate overbought or oversold assets. This chart with values from minus 100 to plus 100 is displayed under the current price chart and can be applied on any timeframes. A CCI of more than a hundred means that the asset is overbought, and the price is about to fall, and on the contrary, a CCI below minus one hundred indicates the oversoldness of the asset and the likely increase in its price. This tool also refers to oscillators and is used during a lateral trend when there is no clear idea of how the price will behave in the near future.
• ADC and DI — the index of the average direction and direction of movement, signals a change in trend. It looks like three lines on the chart: red — bears, green — bulls, blue (there may be other colors on different platforms) — the strength of the trend. This indicator is fairly reliable on four-hour and day frames. If the trend strength line is within 10−20 points, this indicates that the trend is gaining strength, but if the indicators reach 60−80 points, you should wait for the trend correction. The green and red lines will show who sets the market mood — bulls or bears. If the green line crosses the red line, the trend becomes bullish, and vice versa.
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Indicators at Bithumb Global. Source.
Another useful tool available on the Professional Version of Bithumb Global is Trend Lines. It allows you to demonstrate in which direction the price of an asset is moving. The Dow theory, which is the basis of all technical analysis, suggests that no matter how the price behaves, it will always be in a particular trend. If the price behaves relatively evenly and stays in the same range without showing either growth or decline, such a trend is called a side or flat trend.
A growing (“bullish”) trend is characterized by the appearance of a series of ascending highs, with each new peak must be higher than the previous one. Accordingly, the “bearish” downtrend shows points of failure (price low), each subsequent of which will be lower than the previous one.
A trend line can be built on two points of a minimum or maximum, and a third confirming one is mandatory. The more points form a trend line, the more confident and stable the trend itself. The construction points should not be too close to each other in the time frame, otherwise the direction of the trend will not be completely correct. Please note that the uptrend line is plotted below the chart, and the downtrend is above it. The slope on the trend line should also be taken into account — its constancy indicates the stability of the trend. The change in the angle of the trend line is called the acceleration or deceleration of the price movement. The larger the angle, the faster the trend.
A line through price lows is called a support line. As soon as the price reaches it, it finds market support there and, pushing off, again strives upward. The line connecting price highs is called the resistance line.This is the level above which the value of the asset has not yet risen. If the price breaks the support or resistance line, this is a clear signal for a trend violation and a change in trading tactics.
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Trendlines at Bithumb Global. Source.

Finally

The above are the basic trading tools available to traders of the Professional Version of the Bithumb Global crypto-exchange. They will help you figure out how to properly analyze the key metrics of cryptocurrency assets so that you can build the most advanced trading strategy. However, this is not the whole range of tools available to Bithumb Global traders. Follow DeCenter materials to learn about the intricacies of cryptocurrency trading on the advanced cryptocurrency exchange.
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I tried my best to be as accurate as possible, but if there are any errors, please let me know so I can fix. I believe this talk is important for all Bitcoin Cash supporters, and I wanted to provide it in written form so people can read it as well as watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOv0nmOe1_o For me, this was the first time I felt like I understood the issues Amaury's been trying to communicate, and I hope that reading this presentation might help others understand as well.
Bitcoin Cash’s Culture
“Okay. Hello? Can you hear me? The microphone is good, yeah?
Ok, so after that introduction, I’m going to do the only thing that I can do now, which is disappoint you, because well, that was quite something.
So usually I make technical talks and this time it’s going to be a bit different. I’m going to talk about culture in the Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. So first let’s talk about culture, like what is it? It’s ‘the social behaviors and norms found in human society.’
So we as the Bitcoin Cash community, we are a human society, or at least we look like it. You’re all humans as far as I know, and we have social behaviors and norms, and those social behaviors and norms have a huge impact on the project.
And the reason why I want to focus on that point very specifically is because we have better fundamentals and we have a better product and we are more useful than most other cryptos out there. And I think that’s a true statement, and I think this is a testimony of the success of BCH. But also, we are only just 3% of BTC’s value. So clearly there is something that we are not doing right, and clearly it’s not fundamental, it’s not product, it’s not usefulness. It’s something else, and I think this can be found somewhat in our culture.
So I have this quote here, from Naval Ravikant. I don’t know if you guys know him but he’s a fairly well known speaker and thinker, and he said, “Never trust anyone who does not annoy you from time to time, because it means that they are only telling you what you want to hear.”
And so today I am going to annoy you a bit, in addition to disappointing you, so yeah, it’s going to be very bad, but I feel like we kind of need to do it.
So there are two points, mainly, that I think our culture is not doing the right thing. And those are gonna be infrastructure and game theory. And so I’m going to talk a little bit about infrastructure and game theory.
Right, so, I think there are a few misconceptions by people that are not used to working in software infrastructure in general, but basically, it works like any other kind of infrastructure. So basically all kinds of infrastructure decay, and we are under the assumption that technology always gets better and better and better and never decays. But in terms of that, it actually decays all the time, and we have just a bunch of engineers working at many many companies that keep working at making it better and fighting that decay.
I’m going to take a few examples, alright. Right now if you want to buy a cathode ray tube television or monitor for your computer (I’m not sure why you want to do that because we have better stuff now), but if you want to buy that, it’s actually very difficult now. There are very little manufacturers that even know how to build them. We almost forgot as a human society how to build those stuff. Because, well, there was not as high of a demand for them as there was before, and therefore nobody really worked on maintaining the knowledge or the know how, and the factories, none of that which are required to build those stuff, and therefore we don’t build them. And this is the same for vinyl discs, right? You can buy vinyl disk today if you want, but it’s actually more expensive than it used to be twenty years ago.
We used to have space shuttles. Both Russia and US used to have space shuttles. And now only the US have space shuttles, and now nobody has space shuttles anymore.
And there is an even better counter example to that. It’s that the US, right now, is refining Uranium for nuclear weapons. Like on a regular basis there are people working on that problem. Except that the US doesn’t need any new uranium to make nuclear weapons because they are decommissioning the weapons that are too old and can reuse that uranium to build the new weapon that they are building. The demand for that is actually zero, and still there are people making it and they are just basically making it and storing it forever, and it’s never used. So why is the US spending money on that? Well you would say governments are usually pretty good at spending money on stuff that are not very useful, but in that case there is a very good reason. And the good reason is that they don’t want to forget how it’s done. Because maybe one day it’s going to be useful. And acquiring the whole knowledge of working with uranium and making enriched uranium, refining uranium, it’s not obvious. It’s a very complicated process. It involves very advanced engineering and physics, a lot of that, and keeping people working on that problem ensures that knowledge is kept through time. If you don’t do that, those people are going to retire and nobody will know how to do it. Right.
So in addition to decaying infrastructure from time to time, we can have zero days in software, meaning problems in the software that are not now exploited live on the network. We can have denial of service attack, we can have various failures on the network, or whatever else, so just like any other infrastructure we need people that essentially take care of the problem and fight the decay constantly doing maintenance and also be ready to intervene whenever there is some issue. And that means that even if there is no new work to be done, you want to have a large enough group of people that are working on that everyday just making it all nice and shiny so that when something bad happens, you have people that understand how the system works. So even if for nothing else, you want a large enough set of people working on infrastructure for that to be possible.
So we’re not quite there yet, and we’re very reliant on BTC. Because the software that we’re relying on to run the network is actually a fork to the BTC codebase. And this is not specific to Bitcoin Cash. This is also true for Litecoin, and Dash, and Zcash and whatever. There are many many crypotos that are just a fork of the Bitcoin codebase. And all those crypos they actually are reliant on BTC to do some maintenance work because they have smaller teams working on the infrastructure. And as a result any rational market cannot price those other currencies higher than BTC. It would just not make sense anymore. If BTC were to disappear, or were to fail on the market, and this problem is not addressed, then all those other currencies are going to fail with it. Right? And you know that may not be what we want, but that’s kind of like where we are right now.
So if we want to go to the next level, maybe become number one in that market, we need to fix that problem because it’s not going to happen without it.
So I was mentioning the 3% number before, and it’s always very difficult to know what all the parameters are that goes into that number, but one of them is that. Just that alone, I’m sure that we are going to have a lower value than BTC always as long as we don’t fix that problem.
Okay, how do we fix that problem? What are the elements we have that prevent us from fixing that problem? Well, first we need people with very specific skill sets. And the people that have experience in those skill sets, there are not that many of them because there are not that many places where you can work on systems involving hundreds of millions, if not billions of users, that do like millions of transactions per second, that have systems that have hundreds of gigabytes per second of throughput, this kind of stuff. There are just not that many companies in the world that operate on that scale. And as a result, the number of people that have the experience of working on that scale is also pretty much limited to the people coming out of those companies. So we need to make sure that we are able to attract those people.
And we have another problem that I talked about with Justin Bons a bit yesterday, that we don’t want to leave all that to be fixed by a third party.
It may seem nice, you know, so okay, I have a big company making good money, I’m gonna pay people working on the infrastructure for everybody. I’m gonna hire some old-time cypherpunk that became famous because he made a t-shirt about ERISA and i’m going to use that to promote my company and hire a bunch of developers and take care of the infrastructure for everybody. It’s all good people, we are very competent. And indeed they are very competent, but they don’t have your best interest in mind, they have their best interest in mind. And so they should, right? It’s not evil to have your own interest in mind, but you’ve got to remember that if you delegate that to others, they have their best interest in mind, they don’t have yours. So it’s very important that you have different actors that have different interests that get involved into that game of maintaining the infrastructure. So they can keep each other in check.
And if you don’t quite understand the value proposition for you as a business who builds on top of BCH, the best way to explain that to whoever is doing the financials of your company is as an insurance policy. The point of the insurance on the building where your company is, or on the servers, is so that if everything burns down, you can get money to get your business started and don’t go under. Well this is the same thing. Your business relies on some infrastructure, and if this infrastructure ends up going down, disappearing, or being taken in a direction that doesn’t fit your business, your business is toast. And so you want to have an insurance policy there that insures that the pieces that you’re relying on are going to be there for you when you need them.
Alright let’s take an example. In this example, I purposefully did not put any name because I don’t want to blame people. I want to use this as an example of a mistake that were made. I want you to understand that many other people have done many similar mistakes in that space, and so if all you take from what I’m saying here is like those people are bad and you should blame them, this is like completely the wrong stuff. But I also think it’s useful to have a real life example.
So on September 1st, at the beginning of the week, we had a wave of spam that was broadcasted on the network. Someone made like a bunch of transactions, and those were very visibly transactions that were not there to actually do transactions, they were there just to create a bunch of load on the network and try to disturb its good behavior.
And it turned out that most miners were producing blocks from 2 to 8 megabytes, while typical market demand is below half a megabyte, typically, and everything else above that was just spam, essentially. And if you ask any people that have experience in capacity planning, they are going to tell you that those limits are appropriate. The reason why, and the alternative to raising those limits that you can use to mitigate those side effects are a bit complicated and they would require a talk in and of itself to go into, so I’m going to just use an argument from authority here, but trust me, I know what I’m talking about here, and this is just like raising those limits is just not the solution. But some pool decided to increase that soft cap to 32 megs. And this has two main consequences that I want to dig in to explain what is not the right solution.
And the first one is that we have businesses that are building on BCH today. And those businesses are the ones that are providing value, they are the ones making our network valuable. Right? So we need to treat those people as first class citizens. We need to attract and value them as much as we can. And those people, they find themselves in the position where they can either dedicate their resources and their attention and their time to make their service better and more valuable for users, or maybe expand their service to more countries, to more markets, to whatever, they can do a lot of stuff, or they can spend their time and resources to make sure the system works not when you have like 10x the usual load, but also 100x the usual load. And this is something that is not providing value to them, this is something that is not providing value to us, and I would even argue that this is something that is providing negative value.
Because if those people don’t improve their service, or build new services, or expand their service to new markets, what’s going to happen is that we’re not going to do 100x. 100x happens because people provide useful services and people start using it. And if we distract those people so that they need to do random stuff that has nothing to do with their business, then we’re never going to do 100x. And so having a soft cap that is way way way above what is the usual market demand (32 megs is almost a hundred times what is the market demand for it), it’s actually a denial of service attack that you open for anyone that is building on the chain.
We were talking before, like yesterday we were asking about how do we attract developers, and one of the important stuff is that we need to value that over valuing something else. And when we take this kind of move, the signal that we send to the community, to the people working on that, is that people yelling very loudly on social media, their opinion is more valued than your work to make a useful service building on BCH. This is an extremely bad signal to send. So we don’t want to send those kind of signals anymore.
That’s the first order effect, but there’s a second order effect, and the second order effect is to scale we need people with experience in capacity planning. And as it turns out big companies like Google, and Facebook, and Amazon pay good money, they pay several 100k a year to people to do that work of capacity planning. And they wouldn’t be doing that if they just had to listen to people yelling on social media to find the answer. Right? It’s much cheaper to do the simple option, except the simple option is not very good because this is a very complex engineering problem. And not everybody is like a very competent engineer in that domain specifically. So put yourself in the shoes of some engineers who have skills in that particular area. They see that happening, and what do they see? The first thing that they see is that if they join that space, they’re going to have some level of competence, some level of skill, and it’s going to be ignored by the leaders in that space, and ignoring their skills is not the best way to value it as it turns out. And so because of that, they are less likely to join it. But there is a certain thing that they’re going to see. And that is that because they are ignored, some shit is going to happen, some stuff are going to break, some attacks are going to be made, and who is going to be called to deal with that? Well, it’s them. Right? So not only are they going to be not valued for their stuff, the fact that they are not valued for their stuff is going to put them in a situation where they have to put out a bunch of fires that they would have known to avoid in the first place. So that’s an extremely bad value proposition for them to go work for us. And if we’re going to be a world scale currency, then we need to attract those kinds of people. And so we need to have a better value proposition and a better signaling that we send to them.
Alright, so that’s the end of the first infrastructure stuff. Now I want to talk about game theory a bit, and specifically, Schelling points.
So what is a Schelling point? A Schelling point is something that we can agree on without especially talking together. And there are a bunch of Schelling points that exist already in the Bitcoin space. For instance we all follow the longest chain that have certain rules, right? And we don’t need to talk to each other. If I’m getting my wallet and I have some amount of money and I go to any one of you here and you check your wallet and you have that amount of money and those two amounts agree. We never talk to each other to come to any kind of agreement about how much each of us have in terms of money. We just know. Why? Because we have a Schelling point. We have a way to decide that without really communicating. So that’s the longest chain, but also all the consensus rules we have are Schelling points. So for instance, we accept blocks up to a certain size, and we reject blocks that are bigger than that. We don’t constantly talk to each other like, ‘Oh by the way do you accept 2 mb blocks?’ ‘Yeah I do.’ ‘Do you accept like 3 mb blocks? And tomorrow will you do that?’
We’re not doing this as different actors in the space, constantly worrying each other. We just know there is a block size that is a consensus rule that is agreed upon by almost everybody, and that’s a consensus rule. And all the other consensus rules are effectively changing Schelling points. And our role as a community is to create valuable Schelling points. Right? You want to have a set of rules that provide as much value as possible for different actors in the ecosystem. Because this is how we win. And there are two parts to that. Even though sometimes we look and it’s just one thing, but there are actually two things.
The first one is that we need to decide what is a valuable Schelling point. And I think we are pretty good at this. And this is why we have a lot of utility and we have a very strong fundamental development. We are very good at choosing what is a good Schelling point. We are very bad at actually creating it and making it strong.
So I’m going to talk about that.
How do you create a new Schelling point. For instance, there was a block size, and we wanted a new block size. So we need to create a new Schelling point. How do you create a new Schelling point that is very strong? You need a commitment strategy. That’s what it boils down to. And the typical example that is used when discussing Schelling points is nuclear warfare. So think about that a bit. You have two countries that both have nuclear weapons. And one country sends a nuke on the other country. Destroys some city, whatever, it’s bad. When you look at it from a purely rational perspective, you will assume that people are very angry, and that they want to retaliate, right? But if you put that aside, there is actually no benefit to retaliating. It’s not going to rebuild the city, it’s not going to make them money, it’s not going to give them resources to rebuild it, it’s not going to make new friends. Usually not. It’s just going to destroy some stuff in the other guy that would otherwise not change anything because the other guys already did the damage to us. So if you want nuclear warfare to actually prevent war like we’ve seen mostly happening in the past few decades with the mutually assured destruction theory, you need each of those countries to have a very credible commitment strategy, which is if you nuke me, I will nuke you, and I’m committing to that decision no matter what. I don’t care if it’s good or bad for me, if you nuke me, I will nuke you. And if you can commit to that strongly enough so that it’s credible for other people, it’s most likely that they are not going to nuke you in the first place because they don’t want to be nuked. And it’s capital to understand that this commitment strategy, it’s actually the most important part of it. It’s not the nuke, it’s not any of it, it’s the commitment strategy. You have the right commitment strategy, you can have all the nuke that you want, it’s completely useless, because you are not deterring anyone from attacking you.
There are many other examples, like private property. It’s something usually you’re going to be willing to put a little bit of effort to defend, and the effort is usually way higher than the value of the property itself. Because this is your house, this is your car, this is your whatever, and you’re pretty committed to it, and therefore you create a Schelling point over the fact that this is your house, this is your car, this is your whatever. People are willing to use violence and whatever to defend their property. This is effectively, even if you don’t do it yourself, this is what happens when you call the cops, right? The cops are like you stop violating that property or we’re going to use violence against you. So people are willing to use a very disproportionate response even in comparison to the value of the property. And this is what is creating the Schelling point that allows private property to exist.
This is the commitment strategy. And so the longest chain is a very simple example. You have miners and what miners do when they create a new block, essentially they move from one Schelling point when a bunch of people have some amount of money, to a new Schelling point where some money has moved, and we need to agree to the new Schelling point. And what they do is that they commit a certain amount of resources to it via proof of work. And this is how they get us to pay attention to the new Schelling point. And so UASF is also a very good example of that where people were like we activate segwit no matter what, like, if it doesn’t pan out, we just like busted our whole chain and we are dead.
Right? This is like the ultimate commitment strategy, as far as computer stuff is involved. It’s not like they actually died or anything, but as far as you can go in the computer space, this is very strong commitment strategy.
So let me take an example that is fairly inconsequential in its consequences, but I think explains very well. The initial BCH ticker was BCC. I don’t know if people remember that. Personally I remember reading about it. It was probably when we created it with Jonald and a few other people. And so I personally was for XBC, but I went with BCC, and most people wanted BCC right? It doesn’t matter. But it turned out that Bitfinex had some Ponzi scheme already listed as BCC. It was Bitconnect, if you remember. Carlos Matos, you know, great guy, but Bitconnect was not exactly the best stuff ever, it was a Ponzi scheme. And so as a result Bitifnex decided to list Bitcoin Cash as BCH instead of BCC, and then the ball started rolling and now everybody uses BCH instead of BCC.
So it’s not all that bad. The consequences are not that very bad. And I know that many of you are thinking that right now. Why is this guy bugging us about this? We don’t care if it’s BCC or BCH. And if you’re doing that, you are exactly proving my point.
Because … there are people working for Bitcoin.com here right? Yeah, so Bitcoin.com is launching an exchange, or just has launched, it’s either out right now or it’s going to be out very soon. Well think about that. Make this thought experiment for yourself. Imagine that Bitcoin.com lists some Ponzi scheme as BTC, and then they decide to list Bitcoin as BTN. What do you think would be the reaction of the Bitcoin Core supporter? Would they be like, you know what? we don’t want to be confused with some Ponzi scheme so we’re going to change everything for BTN. No, they would torch down Roger Ver even more than they do now, they would torch down Bitcoin.com. They would insult anyone that would suggest that this was a good idea to go there. They would say that everyone that uses the stuff that is BTC that it’s a ponzi scheme, and that it’s garbage, and that if you even talk about it you are the scum of the earth. Right? They would be extremely committed to whatever they have.
And I think this is a lesson that we need to learn from them. Because even though it’s a ticker, it’s not that important, it’s that attitude that you need to be committed to that stuff if you want to create a strong Schelling point, that allows them to have a strong Schelling point, and that does not allow us to have that strong of a Schelling point.
Okay, so yesterday we had the talk by Justin Bons from Cyber Capital, and one of the first things he said in his talk, is that his company has a very strong position in BCH. And so that changed the whole tone of the talk. You gotta take him seriously because his money is where his mouth is. You know that he is not coming on the stage and telling you random stuff that comes from his mind or tries to get you to do something that he doesn’t try himself. That doesn’t mean he’s right. Maybe he’s wrong, but if he’s wrong, he’s going bankrupt. And you know just for that reason, maybe it’s worth it to listen to it a bit more than some random person saying random stuff when they have no skin in the game.
And it makes him more of a leader in the space. Okay we have some perception in this space that we have a bunch of leaders, but many of them don’t have skin in the game. And it is very important that they do. So when there is some perceived weakness from BCH, if you act as an investor, you are going to diversify. If you act as a leader, you are going to fix that weakness. Right? And so, leaders, it’s not like you can come here and decide well, I’m a leader now. Leaders are leaders because people follow them. It seems fairly obvious, but … and you are the people following the leaders, and I am as well. We decide to follow the opinion of some people more than the opinion of others. And those are the defacto leaders of our community. And we need to make sure that those leaders that we have like Justin Bons, and make sure that they have a strong commitment to whatever they are leading you to, because otherwise you end up in this situation:
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Where you got a leader, he’s getting you to go somewhere, he has some goal, he has some whatever. In this case he is not that happy with the British people. But he’s like give me freedom or give me death, and he’s going to fight the British, but at the same time he’s like you know what? Maybe this shit isn’t gonna pan out, you gotta make sure you have your backup plan together, you have your stash of British pound here. You know, many of us are going to die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
That’s not the leader that you want.
I’m going to go to two more examples and then we’re going to be done with it. So one of them is Segwit 2x. Segwit 2x came with a time where some people wanted to do UASF. And UASF was essentially people that set up a modified version of their Bitcoin node that would activate segwit on August 1, no matter what. Right? No matter what miners do, no matter what other people do, it’s going to activate segwit. And either I’m going to be on the other fork, or I’m going to be alone and bust. Well, the alternative proposal was segwit 2x. Where people would activate segwit and then increase the size of the block. And what happened was that one of the sides had a very strong commitment strategy, and the other side, instead of choosing a proportional commitment strategy, what they did was that they modified the activation of segwit 2x to be compatible with UASF. And in doing so they both validate the commitment strategy done by the opposite side, and they weaken their own commitment strategy. So if you look at that, and you understand game theory a bit, you know what’s going to happen. Like the fight hasn’t even started and UASF has already won. And when I saw that happening, it was a very important development to me, because I have some experience in game theory, a lot of that, so I understood what was happening, and this is what led me to commit to BCH, which was BCC at the time, 100%. Because I knew segwit 2x was toast, even though it had not even started, because even though they had very strong cards, they are not playing their cards right, and if you don’t play your cards right, it doesn’t matter how strong your cards are.
Okay, the second one is emergent consensus. And the reason I wanted to put those two examples here is because I think those are the two main examples that lead to the fact that BTC have small blocks and we have big blocks and we’re a minority chain. Those are like the two biggest opportunities we had to have big blocks on BTC and we blew both of them for the exact same reason.
So emergent consensus is like an interesting technology that allows you to trade your bigger block without splitting the network. Essentially, if someone starts producing blocks that are bigger than … (video skips) ,,, The network seems to be following the chain that has larger blocks, eventually they’re going to fall back on that chain, and that’s a very clevery mechanism that allows you to make the consensus rules softer in a way, right? When everybody has the same consensus rules, it still remains enforced, but if a majority of people want to move to a new point, they can do so by bringing others with them without creating a fork. That is a very good activation mechanism for changing the block size, for instance, or it can be used to activate other stuff.
There is a problem, though. This mechanism isn’t able to set a new point. It’s a way to activate a new Schelling point when you have one, but it provides no way to decide when and where or to what value or to anything to where we are going. So this whole strategy lacks the commitment aspect of it. And because it lacks the commitment aspect of it, it was unable to activate properly. It was good, but it was not sufficient in itself. It needs to be combined with a commitment strategy. And especially on that one there are some researchers that wrote a whole paper (https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/686.pdf) unpacking the whole game theory that essentially come to that conclusion that it’s not going to set a new size limit because it lacked the commitment aspect of it. But they go on like they model all the mathematics of it, they give you all the numbers, the probability, and the different scenarios that are possible. It’s a very interesting paper. If you want to see, like, because I’m kind of explaining the game theory from a hundred mile perspective, but actually you can deep dive into it and if you want to know the details, they are in there. People are doing that. This is an actual branch of mathematics.
Alright, okay so conclusion. We must avoid to weaken our commitment strategy. And that means that we need to work in a way where first there is decentralization happening. Everybody has ideas, and we fight over them, we decide where we want to go, we put them on the roadmap, and once it’s on the roadmap, we need to commit to it. Because when people want to go like, ‘Oh this is decentralized’ and we do random stuff after that, we actually end up with decentralization, not decentralization in a cooperative manner, but like in an atomization manner. You get like all the atoms everywhere, we explode, we destroy ourself.
And we must require a leader to have skin in the game, so that we make sure we have good leaders. I have a little schema to explain that. We need to have negotiations between different parties, and because there are no bugs, the negotiation can last for a long time and be tumultuous and everything, and that’s fine, that’s what decentralization is looking like at that stage, and that’s great and that makes the system strong. But then once we made a decision, we got to commit to it to create a new Schelling point. Because if we don’t, the new Schelling point is very weak, and we get decentralization in the form of disintegration. And I think we have not been very good to balance the two. Essentially what I would like for us to do going forward is encouraging as much as possible decentralization in the first form. But consider people who participate in the second form, as hostile to BCH, because their behavior is damaging to whatever we are doing. And they are often gonna tell you why we can’t do that because it’s permissionless and decentralized, and they are right, this is permissionless and decentralized, and they can do that. We don’t have to take it seriously. We can show them the door. And not a single person can do that by themself, but as a group, we can develop a culture where it’s the norm to do that. And we have to do that.”