27th December 2023 > > KuCoin & MSTR.

tl;dr

The UK regulators are letting us down again, impacting KuCoin. Investors in MSTR are eyeing up ever increasing crypto gains.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Founder, CEO, and chief investment officer of ARK Invest, Cathie Wood is joining the chorus of those calling for “sell on the news” once approval is given for a spot BTC ETF. This is good, as my belief that this event will only drive the price higher across any timeframe you may wish to consider is increasingly becoming contrarian, a situation which always makes me feel more comfortable rather than being in agreement with most other people.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – KuCoin

I have been a long-term user of KuCoin. If I recall correctly, it was the only exchange several years ago that hosted POWR, which was the reason I set up an account there. I have never had any complaints except for its homepage claim that “1 Out of 4 Crypto Holders Worldwide Is with KuCoin”.

Yeah, right, are you sure that is true matey boy?

My experience with KuCoin has always been positive.

Until now.

As a rule, I do not keep assets on any exchange except for Coinbase and Binance, and even then, the value is no more than 5% or so of my portfolio. But sometimes short-term highly speculative trades lasting weeks or at most months can be left on an exchange. Just under four weeks ago I bought some SHRAP, a memecoin that might possibly burn brightly (for a while) or might simply crash and burn.

With SHRAP up over 100% since that bet, giving a return in the four figures, today I hopped over to KuCoin on my PC Brave browser to cash out. For the first time I was met with a demand to download the app to login.

The app is not available to UK investors.

The only help function I can find is available once you have logged in. Which I cannot do as I cannot download the app.

Reddit appears to suggest that KuCoin doesn’t care and will simply keep UK customer assets. I am looking elsewhere for help but cannot yet find it.

…

My scepticism of storing assets on centralised cryptocurrency exchanges was always based around the risk of being hacked, or an implosion FTX style.

Now I have one more reason not to trust them.

Self-storage – preferably a Ledger Nano X – is the only way to go, for now.

…

These problems are down to a desire by the UK authorities to prevent crypto use in the UK, despite Rishi Sunak’s claim (when Chancellor of the Exchequer) that:

“It’s my ambition to make the U.K. a global hub for crypto-asset technology.”

The current Chancellor, Jeremy (ahem) Hunt, also lied yesterday when he said that “… we are enacting the largest tax cuts since the 1980s”. Regardless of whether you wish for higher or lower taxes, a reduction in the previously announced increase in taxation is not a tax cut, and Hunt knows that. What a lying (insert his real name here).

We need a change of our political elite, and we need it soon, but it seems likely we will simply get more of the same policies and more of the same outcome from a different brand. Crypto tax dollars will not be heading the UK’s way anytime soon.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – MSTR (MicroStrategy)

MSTR now holds 189,150 BTC at an average purchase price of $31,168. With a 30% plus return on an investment of $6bn – largely financed through convertible notes handing most of the downside risk to investors in the notes, and most of the upside risk to investors in the equity – the 350% rally in MSTR stock this year comes as no surprise.

MSTR is essentially a leveraged play on the price of BTC, with no liquidation risk. Since we first looked at MSTR on 31st of December 2020, BTC is up 48% and MSTR 71%

.

If you believe the narrative around ETFs and the halving – and some scepticism is currently warranted regardless of my comments above – that outperformance by MSTR will only increase, in my opinion, over a longer time frame.