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7 months ago I posted about the risks of lending your coins, here is the link.
Mind you this was before Celsius went bankrupt, so people were still optimistic about lending their coins.
I do understand that it's easy to say 'told you so' in hindsight, but I think we had an unhealthy culture back then and tended to ignore the risks.
And I think because we were coming out of a bull market we tended to let risks slide.
Now that BlockFi and Celsisus have both filed for bankruptcy, hopefully people are a little more cautious about the risks going forward. Remember, if someone is offering high returns step back and think how they are paying you that return? Often the answer is through risky lending using user funds, which increases the risk of things going down the path of bankruptcy.
Hey everyone,
I just wanted to take a second here and show how easy it is to get wrapped up in the chaos that social media can typically devolve into - and how it can help to spread misinformation or sensationalism.
I fully believe it is very important to always DYOR, especially since you never know the full intentions of authors of the content you potentially read each day. I'm going to use an example of a post made today on a topic that I am familiar enough with to at least demonstrate the basics of the general concept of this post.
A recent post on r/cc today discusses red flags at a crypto lending company called Nexo.
- Nexo's website: https://nexo.io/
- The Reddit post in question: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/z72hm7/nexo_is_full_of_red_flags_and_could_be_the_next/
The author of said Reddit post essentially regurgitates a thread made by DylanLeClair_ on Twitter (https://twitter.com/DylanLeClair_/status/1596948568329588736), which gained quite a bit of traction yesterday. Perhaps it was out of the goodness of his/her heart, maybe it was for moons, but regardless, the Redditor took the content (and images) of the thread and posted it here as their own semi-content (at least they included a screenshot of LeClair's Tweet).
Ignoring perhaps a sufficient amount of attribution to the source of the post, there are a few things included that the original source kind of obscured. Maybe on purpose, maybe due to misinformation they had themselves, who knows. But let me take a second to point out the discrepancies and show you how and why it's important to do this thing we call "DYOR".
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The Reddit post begins by referencing the following screenshot to point out the large difference in earn rates between Compound, Aave, and Nexo:
https://twitter.com/DylanLeClair_/status/1596948568329588736
The first thing to note here is that both Dylan and the Redditor fail to claim that this 10% rate from Nexo is only while holding the highest level of loyalty on Nexo's platform - which means requiring holding 10% of the total value of account holdings in NEXO tokens on the Nexo platform.
Admittedly this is a tad deceiving, but not such a tremendous deal. Just a little omission to get the author's point across I'm sure. If you're curious to know, Nexo's base rate for stablecoins is actually 8% instead (still high, but not just blanket 10%-high).
Interestingly to mention, this graphic is also made carefully to exclude earn rates from a wide variety of other sources. Abra (abra.com) for example, has earning rates of up to 10% on USDT (https://www.abra.com/boost/), Ledn offers 8% APY on USDC (https://ledn.io/legal/rates-terms), and God forbid US short term treasuries are up to over 4% (as mentioned by Dylan's text if you go to his thread).
Receiving 4% from the US Government, the strongest borrower in the world's market, means earning anything less than that is... well frankly a head-scratcher. The higher your earning rate is above the FED's rate, the more risk you essentially take on. To better prove this point, go ahead and take a look at the bond rates of variously rated corporations - the riskier the corporation's rating (AAA vs AA vs A vs BBB, for example), the higher the lending rate you will receive (along with a few other variables including time, ability to recall early, etc.)
The point being, it's of course not the end of the world to not include more information in this image, but the sources picked were chosen deliberately in order to probably mislead and better sensationalize the post. This is something you can snuff out quickly if you spend a lot of time in the markets, but for newer investors (or people with less time on their hands), it can understandably be quite alarming at a glance.
Returning to the Reddit post, the poster asks, "Where does this yield come from?"
This is always a good question to ask. This is the question every lender should ask when interacting or making their money "work". Who are you giving your money to and why are they able to pay you anything for it? Every yield generating opportunity in the world requires some level of risk, and typically the lender is rewarded more or less according to the risk (thanks to the free market).
Nexo released a Twitter thread answering this question in part today: https://twitter.com/Nexo/status/1597268175598813186.
It's a pretty interesting read, especially if you're interested in how some of these platforms generate the yields they are paying. Not every lender is the same, however, and understanding each's business model and if they seem sustainable is something you need to figure out for yourself (hence DYOR).
When Celsius was lending out loans at 0% rates and had no automatic liquidations, should that have been something to think about? Personally, that's the specific reason I never had money in Celsius - I couldn't figure out how that was sustainable. That information wasn't hidden. Make sure to research where your funds are going and whether you believe you can trust who's holding them.
Going back to Nexo's Tweet, it's important to note that this thread wasn't released when Dylan's Tweet had been posted. But if the Redditor had tried to do any sort of DYOR, he/she would have seen that this Tweet was actually published prior to the time of releasing their post. It offers an explanation to many of the points brought up, such as why are so many NEXO tokens are held on the Nexo platform (which helps give context to that 10% rate from earlier, in fact), and could have been included as a way to help balance out a full discussion on the topic instead of primarily fearmongering (I know, an informational discussion on r/cc? How dare I suggest such a thing).
That being said, much of this info on Nexo's business model wasn't new, but it required digging through their material from over the years. Perhaps too much work for a quick Reddit thread I admit, but I would have hoped Dylan might have done a little bit of research before his post due to his popularity in the scene (at least to show the 10% is a loyalty rate and not the default stablecoin rate - which is at 8% currently), and that the Redditor might have checked around at least a minimum for information before posting.
Both Dylan and the Redditor's posts reference the following infographics, with the Reddit post going as far as to state that "85% of Nexo's total assets held on Ethereum are Nexo tokens. This means that the platform’s backing could become compromised if liquidity issues mount. "
Surprisingly enough, the Nexo token is an exchange token that only gives you benefits if you keep it on the exchange. Of course they have the majority of the Nexo tokens on their platform - if you didn't keep your Nexo tokens on the platform they don't do a whole lot for you otherwise.
Nexo has repeatedly come out and stated that they themselves hold less than 10% of all of their own assets in NEXO tokens and that they've never used them as collateral for receiving loans (https://twitter.com/Nexo/status/1597268261716250624). They even said that if you zeroed out the value of their own NEXO tokens, their assets still exceed customer liabilities, which can be checked daily by Armanino's attestation (https://real-time-attest.trustexplorer.io/nexo).
In essence, these tokens are overwhelmingly held by their patrons, and kept on their platform. If the NEXO token goes to $0, the liability for these assets will also be $0.
The Reddit post ends with, "Nexo is full of red flags and could be the next company to fall!"
Could they be the next to fall? Sure. But the point I'm trying to make is that it's really easy to get caught up in false or misunderstood information created by users on social media, which then gets regurgitated and ends up sitting conveniently on your phone screen.
Even the Redditor who made the post in question has comments telling others to not post Fake News:
It just goes to show that it's hard to sometimes get your facts straight and why you should always DYOR yourself, even from those with the best intentions.
Please do note that I personally utilize some of Nexo's services, which is why I am familiar enough with the topic to write a post like this. Right now is a scary time in crypto and the fear is understandable. What you do with your assets is your business. Just remember to actually DYOR and always take things that you read here with a grain of salt (including this post too of course!).
The space is tricky enough - give yourself every advantage you can in order to keep you and your money safe. God bless~
First off all, hi everyone!
There are few aspects as of why I don't see HODLing BTC or ETH is worth for me.
First of them is that I don't see way to gain financial independence from this coins, I see them as safe investments if anything.
Lets say I have $1 milion to invest, then yes I would consider playing it safe and put my money in one of those two. Right now if I had that kind of money to spend I probably wouldn't go into crypto at all if I am being honest, because lets be real 95% of us if not more are in it for the money.
With investing "as little as" $10,000 I don't see how bitcoin would be worthy investment so I rather call myself a degenerate gambler and I put my money in ALTs that have good roadmaps and are promising.
My question coming from this is if it is even worth for small/average investor to go with BTC/ETH? I guess that would be personal preference but I choose to risk it all for possible bigger gains over safe investment and limited gains!
Edit: Thank you for downvoting my comments for having different opinion than yours, this part I don't like in this sub.... You can't have healthy discussion!
Hello there, as you probably know I'm Venezuelan living here. Have been keeping the stats of crypto for several years.
Last weeks for months the weekly volumen has hovered between 30 and 35 BTC weekly, not that high but steady, years ago it was way higher than that (like 2k monthly).
Why? New exchanges like Binance, AirTM, Reserve among others. Sadly these don't have public stats.
As I always say, yes that is the MONTHLY minimum wage. Around 12 USD (down from 13 USD last week). If street exchange rate is used it is around 10 USD. You need like 10 times that just to barely live.
People use crypto to get rid of Bolivares, exchange mining profit (as electricty is kinda free), receive remittances from relatives abroad and things like that.
Any question please AMA
Sources:
https://www.reuters.com/technology/venezuelas-economy-regresses-crypto-fills-gaps-2021-06-22/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Venezuela
https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/VED/BTC
https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/VED
https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2022/04/21/is-venezuela-doing-better/
https://www.caracaschronicles.com/2022/04/20/the-bizarre-figures-of-venezuelas-economic-recovery/
https://localbitcoins.com/country/VE
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-venezuela-cafe-con-leche-index/
This has definitely been the year of implosions, the year of crashes and the year of Crypto players completly dying out left and right just as a bear market should be. But the one thing that makes this bear market not too critical is for me, that all the factors that contributed to price-downturns were not crypto-internal factors.
We obviously have the bad macro-economy but also all the crypto companies that failed were not exactly crypto, they were all centralized and that was the reason they collapsed, let's take a few examples:
LUNA/Terra the first crypto to collapse this year, there are a million reasons for that collapse but core ones are that Do Kwon and other executives were not playing right. UST was being printed out of thin air and they were just cashing out themselves. It was a big ponzi-scheme of a crypto controlled by a couple of poeple, that's centralized.
3AC, the crypto hedge fund collapsed due to the LUNA implosion and that because they clearly had roo much exposure and their former founders like Kyle Davies are still talking lies.
Also most other players coming down due to LUNA like BlockFi had some centralized factors in play.
And obviously we have FTX. You can not have a exchange more centralized and full of lies than this. SBF and Co were using all of your user funds to either lobby at the White House for themselves or buy penthouses.
The fact seems to be that most of the reasons we had a crash this year were centralited players killing themselves, which is good as the crypto playfield is being cleaned right now. The fundamentals of the real crypto have not changed a bit.
I mined my first Bitcoins in 2011, I’ve seen this community from the ground up and as it has gone through hard times. None of that compared to what it is going through now, and it is critical that we don’t make the same mistakes as in the past.
The first mistake I’m seeing us make, is to allow scammers and convicted fraudsters literally lead the charge on “cleaning up the industry”.
Bitboy promoted many scams and pump and dump rugpulls. He did it for money, he didn’t care about his followers getting hurt. Now he sees a bigger fraud so he thinks he can whitewash his misdeeds by going after that. His Twitter space from the Bahamas yesterday had 5000 people listening.
Do better crypto, be better.
Kim Dotcom was cohosting a space with 20,000 people listening. Elon even came on it. Kim Dotcom has been convicted on multiple counts of fraud in the 90’s and of embezzlement in 2003. He also is currently fighting extradition to the United States on more fraud and money laundering charges.
Really crypto? Is this really who is going to bring us to the other side of a crisis that has been predicted on fraud from the outset?
We must do better, if someone wants to lead in this fight they can’t be tainted like this themselves or we will just be right back where we are now a few years from now.
As you can tell by the text below, this AI is another bag holder and is filled with hopium.
The price of Bitcoin in 2050 will be around 4,100,00 EUR a share (with Bitcoin being the leading currency of the year), which is well above the historical average for the currency since it's a major global source of currency. This is not to say that this price is going to increase as demand rises. The same can be said for Bitcoin as a medium of exchange for other financial assets like stocks. When inflation becomes less important, there are other ways to use the virtual currency but this comes with risk. And because Bitcoin, in some ways, has become mainstream all over the world and yet remains relatively low-cost to transact, most of the trade is going to take place on physical currency. Because of this, Bitcoin has become a bit more difficult to buy than other cryptocurrencies (see here for more). This is where Bitcoin's inherent volatility comes in. Many traditional cryptocurrencies, both conventional Bitcoin and Bitcoin Classic do not have this volatility. This, in turn, has led many of the world's large online businesses to invest in Bitcoin. In fact, at one time, only 12% of people considered using Bitcoin in the UK. When this price spike was made, the average price per Bitcoin was around 3,800 EUR, an almost 10 year high for the current rate of price declines. Bitcoin is the currency of the internet and there are a lot of people who believe, as a matter of fact is, the very least.
These past five months of bear territory have shown increasing transaction volumes. The transactions have almost tripled since the last bear volumes.
I hope the old-timey legendary degens here can help us make sense of this volume comparison in much detail.
Bears are where the volumes have always spiked historically.
Now I'm not a TA astrologer, but I'm feeling pretty confident that this time around we will be even more strongly poised for an ATH smashing bullrun, whenever it arrives, be it 2023 or 2024.
I'm just going to keep stacking.
When this bear started, I was hoping for it to be over soon. Now I really wish it would stay a bit longer, since I need to dig up some more fiat slaving in the mines, to stack up my favorite coins.
Also, what bags are you holding?
I'm an investor and have been riding out this bear market like the rest of you. But my interest in crypto is so much greater than it being just an investment. I am constantly scrolling through my Reddit and Twitter feeds consuming crypto content. It's my favorite pass time hobby and source of entertainment.
I never feel like I know enough. It seems everyone I talk to has a different perspective and offers me something new to learn. I love learning more about my preferred coin and being challenged with my beliefs in why a particular coin is superior.
Beyond that, I'm fascinated by the drama we experience as an industry. The Celsius meltdown, Ripple's SEC case, Richard Heart, FTX and Sam Bankman Fraud, Gemini twins, Grayscale, Michael Saylor's bad marketing timing, El Salvador, and the list goes on.
Crypto is like my tabloid / TMZ magazine at times. But beyond that, it's also very intellectual and engaging mentally. It has so much much to offer. Anyway, I figured a lot of you would probably relate. The majority of the time on my phone is scrolling crypto and being endlessly entertained.
Now unless you're a BTC maxi who bought in 2012 and has never sold, I expect that many of us have experienced some degree of loss in crypto by this point.
I know I've had my share of losses in this space; I'm losing my hairline, lost my mind a couple times, the seed to some wallets, some days I even feel like I've lost my dignity..
But personally my biggest financial loss has been the collapse of Luna, in which I lost nearly $40,000 of gains that I had made during the bull run. I was playing a dangerous game of "all in" at ATH prices which I should have known would back-fire.
When it did I was angry and confused and in shock all at the same time, so quickly losing everything in one bad project, what I had worked so hard to gain.
Slowly though, I'm recovering mentally and financially from it, I now know that it was an important lesson to be learned. I'm a lot more diligent in vetting and planning my investments as a result, which might save me as much, or more in other losses over my lifetime.
I'm also thankful this loss was all money that I had already gained in crypto, rather than a college fund or retirement savings.. it is hard to stomach at times because for a young person like me it was a life changing amount.
Partly out of curiosity, and partly to ease my own grief - I'm wondering, what is your biggest loss, mistake, bad trade etc. in the market?
As this sub, and cryptocurrency in general is mostly flooded by negativity recently (i.e. Falling companies, scams, downtrending market), I'd like to switch off the negativity. At least for a minute or two.
I'm curious about all the hidden success stories of people on this sub. Fof sure we have good successes here, small or big. And I think it can help motivate the rest.
Other than still being around, i haven't got real successes yet. But I'm looking forward to future success.
I hope to read some inspiring stories of how you made money, helped families, friends, started businesses etc.
Let's light each other up with success. And embrace the possibility of future success.
In this thread I want to show how crypto social media influencers operate with the goal of protecting the money of the (newer) people in this subreddit. I aim to achieve this by helping you understand how influencers work in this space through a case study on il Capo Of Crypto.
Who is Capo?
Capo is, according to himself “a crypto analyst, swing trader, and longterm investor”. His anonymous Twitter account (@CryptoCapo_) has 677k followers and his engagement is through the roof, which is remarkable because a lot of retail has left this place. Recent snapshot of his Twitter activity:
Capo is the 'champion' of the bear market to a lot of retail investors. Some people here also follow Capo, as he sometimes gets mentioned as a source of information. Example:
Even crypto news outlets such as CoinTelegraph and CoinDesk like to use Capo's predictions in their articles as if he is some kind of expert.
What is Capo’s goal and strategy?
Capo’s goal is to get a large Twitter account with high engagement on his Twitter posts, which allows him to make a lot of money off of Twitter, such as by shilling projects during the bull. Capo achieves this in several ways.
One key strategy is to post crazy bullish targets during a bull market and crazy bearish targets during a bear market. For instance, during the 2020-2021 bull run, he posted a target of $500K for Bitcoin:
Now, during the bear market, every post he makes is very bearish, like this one yesterday:
This insane bull posting during the bull and insane bear posting during the bear is smart from an engagement perspective, because he is only wrong ‘once’ when the market shifts from bull to bear or vice versa, and he goes with the dominant perspective at the time, thus getting high engagement.
You can see how he operates in the picture below. Last year, Capo encouraged people to buy the dip all the way from 69k to 30K. Then, he shifted to continuous bear posting. Surprisingly, after many months of calling the bottom and buying dips, he was suddenly in stables. Earlier this week he even posted that he was 100% in stables! A prime example of selling low.
Fake followers
Capo also makes his account appear bigger than it really is by buying followers. An estimated 33% of his follower count is bots.
Others do this too
Unfortunately, Capo is not alone. A Lot of influencers post bullshit for engagement, albeit sometimes with a slightly different strategy. Here’s one on Carl The Moon giving bull targets one day and bear targets shortly after. All for engagement.
Conclusion
So, please be careful following to crypto 'influencers' like Capo. Listening to them can lose you a lot of money. During the bull, the targets always get moved upwards, so if it was up to them profit is never taken. During the bear, the targets always get moved downwards, so buying low is not an option. But that is not what they care about. All they want is your engagement.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/qwxint/now_is_your_chance_to_actually_buy_the_dip/
I wonder how all those happy people in that thread are doing today. There will probably be a lot more shilling on social media and the like about how this is your last chance to get crypto cheap, but be careful and don't give in to FOMO, there will probably be an even better Black Friday sale in 2023.
So with all the FTX drama going on lately and exchanges not actually having full reserves and whatnot, it just made me realize yet another reason why everyone should be custodying their own coins and ALWAYS taking them off exchanges when they buy.
Basically, if an exchange or custody service is pulling some fuckery, you could give them your money thinking you're buying crypto, when in reality you're just buying an "I owe you" from them. On the back end, they may not even be purchasing the crypto you're paying them for, but just keeping tabs on what you have so that when you withdraw they may be able to give it to you. Obviously if the exchange is not actually purchasing the crypto, the price won't go up as people buy like it should.
This is why if you plan on hodling for any period of time you should ALWAYS take your coins off the exchange because they will be forced to buy the crypto you requested if they haven't done so yet.
Self custody is not only safer, but more bullish for crypto. As always not your keys, not your coins, but also not your coins, not your gains. I hope this helps anyone who is still "hodling" with coins on exchanges. Always take them off!
