Do not believe that it is very much of an advance to do the unnecessary three times as fast.
—Peter Drucker
Weekly Bulletin
Hello folks!
The delay in today’s newsletter is brought to you by the 1.5Mbps internet connection I have over here in Mississippi.
I should be getting back to NYC in about a week or so (and I’ll be shipping the t-shirts you folks keep harassing me for).
YouTube
Also, If you’re interested in whatever it is I’m doing, subscribe to this YouTube page.
I’m planning on releasing some crypto-related videos that you folks might like.
Youtube: Click here, and then click subscribe
(It costs you nothing, but will motivate me to produce more content for ya’ll)
And now moving on to the crypo happenings of last week…
Bitcoin ETF filing has been withdrawn
As of January 22nd, the Cboe VanEck SolidX ETF proposal has been withdrawn (Source).
In a CNBC interview, VanEck's founder and CEO Jan van Eck said the following about pulling the proposal:
"Techncially, the SEC is affected by the shutdown. So, we were engaged in discussion with the SEC about the Bitcoin-related issues—custody, market manipulation, prices—and that had to stop, and so instead of trying to slip through or something, we just had the application pulled, and we will re-file and re-engage in the discussions when the SEC gets going again."
Brb, checking my notes for prepared canned responses.
>ETF Approved: MOON! LAMBO! MOON!
>ETF NOT Approved: ETFs aren’t even important? Lord Antonopoulos said ETF’s are bad so we don’t even need an ETF.
(Lord Antonopoulos pictured above)
What we can deduce from this withdrawal and Jan van Eck’s statement is that they expected a rejection.
We can also deduce that the SEC has not made its decision before the shutdown started.
So it looks like the government shutdown gave VanEck a perfect excuse to save face and voluntarily delay its ETF launch.
In Bakkt news…
There was this tweet that had some traction:
But as a nice twitter person pointed out:
So nothing has changed.
Bakkt is still pending full regulatory approval.
Q4 2018 XRP Markets Report
It’s that time of year again when we take a look at how much XRP was sold this quarter (source).
Let’s take a look.
It looks like Ripple sold $129.03 million worth of XRP in Q4 2018.
That brings the total to $535.56 million for the full 2018 year.
I’ve said it time and time again, the actual business plan for Ripple is to dump their shitty bags on plebs.
I understand that people will orchestrate the most spectacular displays of mental gymnastics in order to defend their “investment.”
But what does it say about us when a company is transparent in their pilfering, and we simply look the other way (this is the 9th quarterly report released by Ripple).
I have noticed more folks talking about this (as compared to a year ago), so I guess things are moving in the right direction, at their own pace.
Market Sentiment
Technicals
Bitcoin (Daily Overview)
So this is interesting.
In hindsight it’s easy to say that no one expected a Q1 Bitcoin ETF, and that this event was priced in.
This lack of price action makes me think that we’ve actually seen the worst of capitulation and we’re beginning to enter a year’ish-long period of accumulation.
Bitcoin (4h Support/Resistance Levels)
Resistance 2: ~3,875
Resistance 1: ~3,700
Pivot point: ~3,590
Support 1: ~3,420
Support 2: ~3,310
Bitcoin (4h Volume)
Bitcoin (Macro Overview)
Below are the 3 most common bottom scenarios.
Option 1: Fractals analysis bottom (2,300 - 2,600)
Option 2: Fib extension bottom (1,700 - 1,900)
Option 3: Retest support of 2017 rally bottom (900 - 1,200)
As of Jan 27, 2019 my confidence level are:
A bottom between 1,700 and 2,600 = about 70% (down from 80%).
We've already bottomed = about 25% (up from 15%).
Retest 900-1,200 = About 5% chance.
Recommended Readings
Evaluating Bitcoin forks with network data
New research from coinmetrics.
In this post, we introduced several new measures to determine how active, vibrant, and dispersed new forks are: in particular the notions of uptake, active supply, and addresses with a balance. Together, these metrics give observers a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the vibrancy or morbidity of a given fork of Bitcoin. While no metric is individually sufficient to analyze the uptake and success of a fork, taken together, a pattern of evidence can be built. The notion of uptake in particular challenges market cap, suggesting that large fractions of the troubled metric are entirely illusory. We believe that these metrics can be powerful tools for entities which require hard-to-forge quantitative measures of enthusiasm and usage for major forks.
You can read it here.
Grin and the Mythical Fair Launch
Few folks have asked about Grin. I’m not super interested in Grin.
But you can read about it here.
The end
If you think something important happened last week and we missed it, let us know!
Continue the discussion in our Telegram group.
That’s all for now.
See you later space Cowboy