7th September 2023 > > TA & Russia.

tl;dr

A bit of a laugh at the techies, but they can take it. ETFs (again) and Russia in a more positive light, in a slightly tangential way.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

Ark and VanEck have filed applications with the SEC for ETH spot ETFs. The deadline for a decision is May next year but once the SEC gives way on a BTC spot ETF, perhaps we should expect a faster decision to allow the ETH version?

Occasional Series – Barcelona

It is a complicated situation I know, but tika taka was so fundamentally boring, seeing Barcelona relegated would surely please all real football fans.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Technical analysis

It’s been a while, so let us have some fun once more. For the techies out there, I am just pulling your tail. I know I can’t demolish your religious belief.

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@Bluntz_Capital has posted this on X:

As with all TA, the squiggles can only be made to work when you zoom in or out on the timescale. Choose the timescale that gives you the result you want, and hey presto!

To give Bluntz some credit, he has largely foregone the squiggles, and just used two utterly meaningless lines, so we don’t have to waste our time trying to interpret the graph.

To take away that credit, his avatar on X displays a face mask. Oh dear, he’s one of those.

But I know you want to know his deep and meaningful insight, so here it is (grammatical and spelling errors all belong to matey boy Bluntz):

“looking like btc is about to lose this channel we formed over the last 2 weeks, all bounces from the highs have been super shallow with none even reaching any 0.618 fib levels.

btc looking super weak to me with alts looking even worse and i cant help but feel a savage breakdown is near.

pretty much cut all longs at this point with a few shorts open but not nearly as many as id like.”

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What can I say?

He has only a “few shorts open but not nearly as many as id (sic) like”.

Well, go open some more then.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – ETFs and BTC price action

I have previously commented that I am no longer convinced that the approval of BTC spot ETFs in the US will be a major re-pricing event (upwards natch).

But it is only fair to consider the opposing view.

K33 senior analyst Vetle Lunde and/or Vice President Anders Helseth (https://k33.com/research/articles/a-buyers-market) weigh in with this:

“I firmly believe the market is wrong. This is, by all accounts, a buyer’s market, and it’s reckless not to aggressively accumulate BTC at current levels.”

Love the use of “reckless” in this context.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Russia

Just for once, we are going to discuss Russia without reference to alleged paedophile Putin and his personally sanctioned ongoing genocide (*).

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Russia’s slightly less than liberal approach to letting people live means that it is not the most crypto friendly place in the world. But CCC readers know that neither was China, and there are big changes afoot in the Far East.

Anatoly Aksakov, head of the State Duma Banking Committee, with whom I have never met (at least to my recollection) has been giving his thoughts about blockchain technology.

Aksakov (against whom any allegations of defrauding the Russian people remain just allegations) has made this rather startling comment:

“As for the role of banks, I think that their role will fade in the future with the development of blockchain.”

Illustrating this claim he says that borrowing money using cryptos will happen ” … because it will be faster and, perhaps, more efficient." We can ignore the use of the word “perhaps” in that statement.

These are insightful comments on two different levels.

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Firstly, the disintermediation of banks has been largely overlooked by the likes of the EU, China, Russia, et al, in their pursuit of a CBDC.

Remember that the US, Switzerland, and Slovenia, are the only countries to date that have put ferocious legal obstacles in the way of launching a domestic CBDC. We need to doff our hats to those three countries in appreciation of their libertarian stance.

During any financial crisis (an almost permanent situation now) why would you leave spare cash with your high street bank when you can leave it with the central bank at no extra cost? The issue here is that central banks don’t make personal or business loans (at least not in the traditional sense), so the concept of fractionalised banking goes out of the window, along with almost all future technological progress for humankind.

Secondly, he refers to the complexities of making under-collateralised loans using blockchain technology.

Make no mistake, this is already happening on a very small scale, but it will grow as the tokenisation of assets gathers pace, and the trust placed in oracles accelerates past legacy centralised solutions.

Aksakov foresees a centralised and decrepit world of stagnation supported by consumer tax receipts paid for by the decentralised world when the two entities are forced to interact through the regulation of the production of consumer goods. The production of which will forever remain the preserve of national governments, as you can neither build a factory, nor import large quantities of physical goods, without being noticed.

Aksakov is ahead of the game.

Much more of this type of challenge to Putin and he might also find that standing near an open window above ground level inevitably results in a claim on your life insurance by your loved ones.

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(*) The FSB already knows where I live. I have no more to fear.