I swear to god almost 200 bots have followed this blog in the past 2-3 days, fuck, tumblr wants to do merchandise, may I recommend a can of Bot Repellent??

[ID: Quick digital doodle of a small spray can labelled with a default profile picture in a red circle with a line crossed through it, placed on a zigzagging star-like shaped background like an ad. End ID]

Taylor Swift says her team was assured ticket demands would be met for her Eras tour

November 18, 2022 “Ticket sales for Taylor Swift's upcoming tour have not gone, in the words of the chart-topping singer, all too well. Mixed messages, long wait times and temporary outages on the Ticketmaster website left scores of fans frustrated and empty-handed when the first wave of tickets for the 52-date Eras Tour, scheduled for next year and Swift's first since 2018, went on sale on Tuesday.“

Ticketmaster has not responded to NPR's request for comment, but did publish a statement on Thursday called "The Taylor Swift On Sale Explained."

Some also want to hear from Ticketmaster directly — including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust, and Consumer Rights.

Klobuchar announced on Thursday that she had sent a letter to Ticketmaster president and CEO Michael Rapino expressing concern about the lack of competition and asking about certain company practices.

Greg Maffei, CEO of Liberty Media, which owns a majority stake of Live Nation, told CNBC's Squawk on the Street that the company is sympathetic to fans but the demand was simply too great, which he suggested was due to the fact that Swift hasn't toured in five years.

"It's a function of Taylor Swift," he said. "The site was supposed to open up for 1.5 million verified Taylor Swift fans. We had 14 million people hit the site, including bots, which are not supposed to be there."

Fans did not take kindly to that explanation, if the outpouring of angry tweets has been any indication.

"It's truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them," Swift wrote on Friday.

A quick glance of her Instagram account shows that her bio still bears the lyrics from one of her latest hits: "I'm the problem, it's me."  

READ MORE https://www.npr.org/2022/11/17/1137465465/taylor-swift-ticketmaster-klobuchar-tennessee

Fictober 2020, Day 2

Prompt: “That’s the easy part”

Original Fiction

Rating: G

Warnings: None

Word Count: 1396

“That’s the easy part!? Are you kidding me?” 

I gestured down to myself, at my torn clothes with a few slits in the sleeves and a scorch mark on one of my shoes. I had had a few too many close encounters, and my clothes showed it. Lia smirked. “Yeah, easy peasy.”  She still looked pristine, with only a few small slits on her right sleeve.

I just rolled my eyes. “Alright, where do we go from here, leader?” I couldn’t help the sarcasm that crept into my voice at the end - this had been Lia’s hare-brained plan from the beginning, and she had only barely convinced me to come along. At this point I was pretty sure I should have stayed home. 

She gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’re almost there. We just have to go down this hall, take a right, then a left, then another right, jump across a short gap, then go one floor up.” I narrowed my eyes at “jump”, but kept my peace. “Alright, and what makes this worse than before?”

Lia pursed her lips. “Wellll, the part we’re going into now is even higher security than where we were, so the bots are going to be a few grades higher and a few kliks faster.”

I stared at Lia. “What? I barely made it past the first set, and now you’re telling me the bots ahead of us are even worse?” She gave me a grin. “You made it past them, though, right? And now you know what to expect.” I grumbled, and then acquiesced. “If you had given me more info upfront, I could have been better prepared.” She replied, “Yeah, but I couldn’t, so here we are.” 

I turned to face the direction she said to go. “Fine, let’s just go. You lead the way.” She nodded, then walked past me. We crept along the hallway, trying to be as silent as possible so we didn’t set off any alarms. We had almost made it to the last turn when Lia accidentally tripped a sensor. Immediately panels in the walls slid open and five bots came out. 

I could tell at a glance they were higher grade than the previous ones, and I wanted nothing to do with them. I leaped over Lia and the bots and started to run down the hall, stopping after I turned the corner. I knew Lia wouldn’t have too much trouble getting out of the situation, but I still wanted to check. She was barreling toward me, a goofy grin on her face and all five bots behind her. She kept zig zagging and jumping to miss the shots they were firing at her. As she got closer she called, “Your turn up next.” 

I didn’t know what she meant until I turned to look down the hall. The “gap” she had mentioned was twenty feet across, and now I knew the reason she had been so insistent on me coming with her. I gave a deep sigh. 

She came around the corner at a run, and as she did so I grabbed her and then jumped, unfurling my wings to their full span and rising to be out of reach of the bots. “I can’t believe this is why you were so insistent on me coming. You should have warned me at least.” She just smirked and said, “I told you, I couldn’t, and anyways, I knew you definitely wouldn’t come if I told you about this.” I rolled my eyes. She had me there. 

I set us both down on the opposite side, careful to look around and make sure nothing was waiting for us. She noticed and replied, “We should be good for now, but let’s go. There should be stairs down the hall and to our right, and then the room is just off the stairs on the next floor up.” I nodded, giving my wings one more stretch and then carefully folding them back into their customary place against my back. No need to get a sprained wing out of this.

We crept the rest of the way, Lia taking more care than before since she had set off the last sensor. We made it up the stairs and down a hall, and then Lia motioned to a door. “Through here”, she whispered. We slipped through the door into a darkened room.  I looked around, trying to tell why we were here, but Lia just motioned to go behind the desk. “We have to wait here, but,” she glanced over at a clock on the wall, “it shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes or so.” I raised my eyebrow at her checking the clock and us having to wait, but I had come this far and figured I might as well trust her until the end.

It felt like forever, but eventually we heard the door open, and someone walked in, turning on the lights as they entered. As soon as the lights turned on Lia popped up, motioning me to do the same. I wasn’t insane, so I stayed crouching for a half second and heard her say, “Hello Mr. Haight, I hope you’re doing well this evening.” 

At that I slowly stood up. So this was what she was up to. I saw a flabbergasted older gentleman looking at Lia and I. He was clean shaven, in a suit and apparently finishing up work for the day since he had his briefcase in hand. He stuttered as he said, “M-Ms. Lia, I wasn’t expecting you. H-how did you get in?” He looked around the room, as if he would be able to see an explanation laying around somewhere. 

Lia simply gave a large smile and bowed. “Mr. Haight, you did hire me to audit your security system, and I just wanted to back-up my proposal. You seemed hesitant to believe that your system might not be sufficient for your needs, and I figured that giving you direct proof would be easier than me showing you charts and numbers. Especially if it was two ladies such as ourselves testing it, security amateurs.” She moved back against a bookshelf as she spoke, so that she could motion to both of us. I could tell from her tone what kind of client he was, and I snickered to myself. He really shouldn’t have gotten on Lia’s bad side.

Lia continued, “Your security is fully automated, with the latest tech and bots, but that’s your problem. Fully automated feels safer, but it’s bound to miss things that humans watching video cameras wouldn’t. Splitting your building into separate quadrants for security may feel more efficient and be cheaper, but it means no one has an integrated view and one quadrant may not always notify another of an issue.”

Mr. Haight still looked confused, but he slowly nodded. “Alright, Mrs. Lia, I see your point. I’ll set up a meeting so that we can discuss this in more detail.” 

She gave another small bow. “Thank you, Mr. Haight. I hope you won’t mind if we take a shorter way out?” He nodded and waved his hand, still looking rather out of it, “Yes, go right out of this room and the elevators will be on your left just down the hall.” 

Lia gave another small nod and then left, with me on her heels. Once we were outside the building and a few blocks away I said, “Really? Security? I thought your policy was to tell the truth to clients.” She smirked. “Well, it’s true for me at least, and what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” I gave her a side-eye at that comment. She was the one in security -- wasn’t she supposed to have the morals?

“Well, whatever. Does this mean tonight was charity? Based on your phrasing I thought I’d be getting something out of this.” She smirked again. “Don’t worry, once I get paid I’ll give you your cut.” 

I shrugged. “Good enough. I would have made more my way, but, you know, to each their own.” She gave me a side-eye at that, so I grinned back. Thieves and security consultants don’t always have to be on two separate sides, after all.

Bitcoin Paints V-Shape Recovery after Crashing to $3.8K; More Pain Coming?

Highlights: Bitcoin plunges to $3.8K for the first time since April 2019. The cryptocurrency’s deep dive came alongside a massive liquidation spree on the BitMEX crypto exchange. The price recovered by $2,000 but left the market in further distress, especially amidst the rising Coronavirus risks on global financial markets. Bitcoin fell to its 10-month low this Friday the 13th as liquidation went rampant on crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX. Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of Hong Kong-based crypto derivatives exchange FTX, alleged that BitMEX failed to liquidate an adequate number of bitcoin tokens from leveraged long positions. He noted that the exchange’s order-book was ten times thinner than what was required to balance the liquidation demand. As a result, the XBT/USD contract rate on BitMEX fell to $3,596, much lower than the cryptocurrency’s spot price across other exchanges. The pair staged a sharp reversal – of more than $2,000 – only after BiTMEX went offline. Mr. Bankman-Fried noted that bitcoin risked falling to zero had not BitMEX shuttered its trading. 12) BTC rallied without the gigantic sell wall of the BitMEX liq. And even more than that–BTC rallied, so fewer people *had* to be liquidated….. Creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we could will BTC up above $5k, maybe then it would no longer *need* to go down. — SBF (@SBF_Alameda) March 13, 2020 BitMEX denied Mr. Bankman-Fried’s allegation, labeling it as a “conspiracy theory.” But the liquidation of $993 billion long positions on its platform left the entire cryptocurrency market in a deep state of shock, with Atlanta-based mining firm BitPico even saying that BitMEX orchestrated the crash. “Per our analysis, BitMEX liquidated $993 billion long positions using their own bots & capital,” it tweeted. “[At around] 2:43 UTC, activity across all exchanges stopped and BitMEX database crashed. Today’s BTC manipulation was caused by one entity.” Bitcoin’s V-Shape Recovery Bitcoin’s spot rate on Coinbase exchange plunged to $3,858 as of around 0200 UTC on Friday. After BitMEX’s standby, the cryptocurrency rebounded to as high as $5,858, its gains partly following upside moves in global equities. It so far fell in tandem with the US indexes as a rapidly growing Coronavirus pushed the global economy to the brink of recession. BTC/USD recovers by circa $2,000 after diving to $3.8K | Source: TradingView.com, Coinbase Bulls have pinned hopes for a broader bitcoin recovery as the market heads to neutralize its oversold technical indicator, the Relative Strength Index, or RSI. At below 30, RSI signals a move upward in the coming sessions, given its history of leading price recoveries. Bitcoin climbs above 200-week MA | Source: TradingView.com, Coinbase Also, on bitcoin’s weekly chart, the price is maintaining a strong floor near its 200-week moving average wave. The indicator has previously called out bitcoin’s bottoms, which means there is a possibility that bitcoin could floor-out at $5,500, followed by a decent bounce to the upside. The Coronavirus Pain Bitcoin’s latest upside also followed stimulus packages announced by the European Central Bank and Federal Reserve to protect economies from the Coronavirus fallout. The ECB decided to offer cheaper loans with interest rates fixed at negated 0.75 percent. It also expanded its bond purchasing program. On the other hand, the Fed confirmed that it would inject $1.5 trillion to banks via its repurchasing agreement program, marking the beginning of a stabilization process after Thursday’s erratic sell-off in the US stock market. Investors with higher risk-appetite could direct some part of the new money to the bitcoin market. But that does not solve the core issue: the Coronavirus pandemic that could kill up to 1.7 million people in over a year, according to a New York Times report. Analysts believe people will continue to hedge into cash more than gold or bitcoin as long as Coronavirus pandemic affects their sentiments. The fact that Treasuries, munis, and gold are getting hit tells me that everything is for sale right now. One giant margin call where even the safe-havens aren't safe anymore. Except for cash. — David Rosenberg (@EconguyRosie) March 12, 2020 So it appears, more pain is coming to the bitcoin market from the fundamental front. from Cryptocracken WP https://ift.tt/3cTY1Ic via IFTTT

Bitcoin Paints V-Shape Recovery after Crashing to $3.8K; More Pain Coming?

Highlights: Bitcoin plunges to $3.8K for the first time since April 2019. The cryptocurrency’s deep dive came alongside a massive liquidation spree on the BitMEX crypto exchange. The price recovered by $2,000 but left the market in further distress, especially amidst the rising Coronavirus risks on global financial markets. Bitcoin fell to its 10-month low this Friday the 13th as liquidation went rampant on crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX. Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of Hong Kong-based crypto derivatives exchange FTX, alleged that BitMEX failed to liquidate an adequate number of bitcoin tokens from leveraged long positions. He noted that the exchange’s order-book was ten times thinner than what was required to balance the liquidation demand. As a result, the XBT/USD contract rate on BitMEX fell to $3,596, much lower than the cryptocurrency’s spot price across other exchanges. The pair staged a sharp reversal – of more than $2,000 – only after BiTMEX went offline. Mr. Bankman-Fried noted that bitcoin risked falling to zero had not BitMEX shuttered its trading. 12) BTC rallied without the gigantic sell wall of the BitMEX liq. And even more than that–BTC rallied, so fewer people *had* to be liquidated….. Creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we could will BTC up above $5k, maybe then it would no longer *need* to go down. — SBF (@SBF_Alameda) March 13, 2020 BitMEX denied Mr. Bankman-Fried’s allegation, labeling it as a “conspiracy theory.” But the liquidation of $993 billion long positions on its platform left the entire cryptocurrency market in a deep state of shock, with Atlanta-based mining firm BitPico even saying that BitMEX orchestrated the crash. “Per our analysis, BitMEX liquidated $993 billion long positions using their own bots & capital,” it tweeted. “[At around] 2:43 UTC, activity across all exchanges stopped and BitMEX database crashed. Today’s BTC manipulation was caused by one entity.” Bitcoin’s V-Shape Recovery Bitcoin’s spot rate on Coinbase exchange plunged to $3,858 as of around 0200 UTC on Friday. After BitMEX’s standby, the cryptocurrency rebounded to as high as $5,858, its gains partly following upside moves in global equities. It so far fell in tandem with the US indexes as a rapidly growing Coronavirus pushed the global economy to the brink of recession. BTC/USD recovers by circa $2,000 after diving to $3.8K | Source: TradingView.com, Coinbase Bulls have pinned hopes for a broader bitcoin recovery as the market heads to neutralize its oversold technical indicator, the Relative Strength Index, or RSI. At below 30, RSI signals a move upward in the coming sessions, given its history of leading price recoveries. Bitcoin climbs above 200-week MA | Source: TradingView.com, Coinbase Also, on bitcoin’s weekly chart, the price is maintaining a strong floor near its 200-week moving average wave. The indicator has previously called out bitcoin’s bottoms, which means there is a possibility that bitcoin could floor-out at $5,500, followed by a decent bounce to the upside. The Coronavirus Pain Bitcoin’s latest upside also followed stimulus packages announced by the European Central Bank and Federal Reserve to protect economies from the Coronavirus fallout. The ECB decided to offer cheaper loans with interest rates fixed at negated 0.75 percent. It also expanded its bond purchasing program. On the other hand, the Fed confirmed that it would inject $1.5 trillion to banks via its repurchasing agreement program, marking the beginning of a stabilization process after Thursday’s erratic sell-off in the US stock market. Investors with higher risk-appetite could direct some part of the new money to the bitcoin market. But that does not solve the core issue: the Coronavirus pandemic that could kill up to 1.7 million people in over a year, according to a New York Times report. Analysts believe people will continue to hedge into cash more than gold or bitcoin as long as Coronavirus pandemic affects their sentiments. The fact that Treasuries, munis, and gold are getting hit tells me that everything is for sale right now. One giant margin call where even the safe-havens aren't safe anymore. Except for cash. — David Rosenberg (@EconguyRosie) March 12, 2020 So it appears, more pain is coming to the bitcoin market from the fundamental front. from CryptoCracken SMFeed https://ift.tt/3cTY1Ic via IFTTT

Bitcoin Paints V-Shape Recovery after Crashing to $3.8K; More Pain Coming?

Highlights: Bitcoin plunges to $3.8K for the first time since April 2019. The cryptocurrency’s deep dive came alongside a massive liquidation spree on the BitMEX crypto exchange. The price recovered by $2,000 but left the market in further distress, especially amidst the rising Coronavirus risks on global financial markets. Bitcoin fell to its 10-month low this Friday the 13th as liquidation went rampant on crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX. Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of Hong Kong-based crypto derivatives exchange FTX, alleged that BitMEX failed to liquidate an adequate number of bitcoin tokens from leveraged long positions. He noted that the exchange’s order-book was ten times thinner than what was required to balance the liquidation demand. As a result, the XBT/USD contract rate on BitMEX fell to $3,596, much lower than the cryptocurrency’s spot price across other exchanges. The pair staged a sharp reversal – of more than $2,000 – only after BiTMEX went offline. Mr. Bankman-Fried noted that bitcoin risked falling to zero had not BitMEX shuttered its trading. 12) BTC rallied without the gigantic sell wall of the BitMEX liq. And even more than that–BTC rallied, so fewer people *had* to be liquidated….. Creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we could will BTC up above $5k, maybe then it would no longer *need* to go down. — SBF (@SBF_Alameda) March 13, 2020 BitMEX denied Mr. Bankman-Fried’s allegation, labeling it as a “conspiracy theory.” But the liquidation of $993 billion long positions on its platform left the entire cryptocurrency market in a deep state of shock, with Atlanta-based mining firm BitPico even saying that BitMEX orchestrated the crash. “Per our analysis, BitMEX liquidated $993 billion long positions using their own bots & capital,” it tweeted. “[At around] 2:43 UTC, activity across all exchanges stopped and BitMEX database crashed. Today’s BTC manipulation was caused by one entity.” Bitcoin’s V-Shape Recovery Bitcoin’s spot rate on Coinbase exchange plunged to $3,858 as of around 0200 UTC on Friday. After BitMEX’s standby, the cryptocurrency rebounded to as high as $5,858, its gains partly following upside moves in global equities. It so far fell in tandem with the US indexes as a rapidly growing Coronavirus pushed the global economy to the brink of recession. BTC/USD recovers by circa $2,000 after diving to $3.8K | Source: TradingView.com, Coinbase Bulls have pinned hopes for a broader bitcoin recovery as the market heads to neutralize its oversold technical indicator, the Relative Strength Index, or RSI. At below 30, RSI signals a move upward in the coming sessions, given its history of leading price recoveries. Bitcoin climbs above 200-week MA | Source: TradingView.com, Coinbase Also, on bitcoin’s weekly chart, the price is maintaining a strong floor near its 200-week moving average wave. The indicator has previously called out bitcoin’s bottoms, which means there is a possibility that bitcoin could floor-out at $5,500, followed by a decent bounce to the upside. The Coronavirus Pain Bitcoin’s latest upside also followed stimulus packages announced by the European Central Bank and Federal Reserve to protect economies from the Coronavirus fallout. The ECB decided to offer cheaper loans with interest rates fixed at negated 0.75 percent. It also expanded its bond purchasing program. On the other hand, the Fed confirmed that it would inject $1.5 trillion to banks via its repurchasing agreement program, marking the beginning of a stabilization process after Thursday’s erratic sell-off in the US stock market. Investors with higher risk-appetite could direct some part of the new money to the bitcoin market. But that does not solve the core issue: the Coronavirus pandemic that could kill up to 1.7 million people in over a year, according to a New York Times report. Analysts believe people will continue to hedge into cash more than gold or bitcoin as long as Coronavirus pandemic affects their sentiments. The fact that Treasuries, munis, and gold are getting hit tells me that everything is for sale right now. One giant margin call where even the safe-havens aren't safe anymore. Except for cash. — David Rosenberg (@EconguyRosie) March 12, 2020 So it appears, more pain is coming to the bitcoin market from the fundamental front. from Cryptocracken Tumblr https://ift.tt/3cTY1Ic via IFTTT

Bitcoin Paints V-Shape Recovery after Crashing to $3.8K; More Pain Coming?

Highlights:

Bitcoin plunges to $3.8K for the first time since April 2019. The cryptocurrency’s deep dive came alongside a massive liquidation spree on the BitMEX crypto exchange. The price recovered by $2,000 but left the market in further distress, especially amidst the rising Coronavirus risks on global financial markets.

Bitcoin fell to its 10-month low this Friday the 13th as liquidation went rampant on crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX. Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of Hong Kong-based crypto derivatives exchange FTX, alleged that BitMEX failed to liquidate an adequate number of bitcoin tokens from leveraged long positions. He noted that the exchange’s order-book was ten times thinner than what was required to balance the liquidation demand. As a result, the XBT/USD contract rate on BitMEX fell to $3,596, much lower than the cryptocurrency’s spot price across other exchanges. The pair staged a sharp reversal – of more than $2,000 – only after BiTMEX went offline. Mr. Bankman-Fried noted that bitcoin risked falling to zero had not BitMEX shuttered its trading.

12) BTC rallied without the gigantic sell wall of the BitMEX liq. And even more than that–BTC rallied, so fewer people *had* to be liquidated….. Creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we could will BTC up above $5k, maybe then it would no longer *need* to go down. — SBF (@SBF_Alameda) March 13, 2020

BitMEX denied Mr. Bankman-Fried’s allegation, labeling it as a “conspiracy theory.” But the liquidation of $993 billion long positions on its platform left the entire cryptocurrency market in a deep state of shock, with Atlanta-based mining firm BitPico even saying that BitMEX orchestrated the crash. “Per our analysis, BitMEX liquidated $993 billion long positions using their own bots & capital,” it tweeted. “[At around] 2:43 UTC, activity across all exchanges stopped and BitMEX database crashed. Today’s BTC manipulation was caused by one entity.” Bitcoin’s V-Shape Recovery Bitcoin’s spot rate on Coinbase exchange plunged to $3,858 as of around 0200 UTC on Friday. After BitMEX’s standby, the cryptocurrency rebounded to as high as $5,858, its gains partly following upside moves in global equities. It so far fell in tandem with the US indexes as a rapidly growing Coronavirus pushed the global economy to the brink of recession. BTC/USD recovers by circa $2,000 after diving to $3.8K | Source: TradingView.com, Coinbase Bulls have pinned hopes for a broader bitcoin recovery as the market heads to neutralize its oversold technical indicator, the Relative Strength Index, or RSI. At below 30, RSI signals a move upward in the coming sessions, given its history of leading price recoveries. Bitcoin climbs above 200-week MA | Source: TradingView.com, Coinbase Also, on bitcoin’s weekly chart, the price is maintaining a strong floor near its 200-week moving average wave. The indicator has previously called out bitcoin’s bottoms, which means there is a possibility that bitcoin could floor-out at $5,500, followed by a decent bounce to the upside. The Coronavirus Pain Bitcoin’s latest upside also followed stimulus packages announced by the European Central Bank and Federal Reserve to protect economies from the Coronavirus fallout. The ECB decided to offer cheaper loans with interest rates fixed at negated 0.75 percent. It also expanded its bond purchasing program. On the other hand, the Fed confirmed that it would inject $1.5 trillion to banks via its repurchasing agreement program, marking the beginning of a stabilization process after Thursday’s erratic sell-off in the US stock market. Investors with higher risk-appetite could direct some part of the new money to the bitcoin market. But that does not solve the core issue: the Coronavirus pandemic that could kill up to 1.7 million people in over a year, according to a New York Times report. Analysts believe people will continue to hedge into cash more than gold or bitcoin as long as Coronavirus pandemic affects their sentiments.

The fact that Treasuries, munis, and gold are getting hit tells me that everything is for sale right now. One giant margin call where even the safe-havens aren’t safe anymore. Except for cash. — David Rosenberg (@EconguyRosie) March 12, 2020

So it appears, more pain is coming to the bitcoin market from the fundamental front. Bitcoin Paints V-Shape Recovery after Crashing to $3.8K; More Pain Coming? was last modified: March 13th, 2020 by Yashu Gola

https://cryptoveins.com/bitcoin-paints-v-shape-recovery-after-crashing-to-3-8k-more-pain-coming/

The Lessons Of A Bearish Market

New Post has been published on https://cryptnus.com/2018/09/the-lessons-of-a-bearish-market/

The Lessons Of A Bearish Market

With my last couple of articles, I’ve taken the discussion away from price and volume, as I wanted to focus on the underlying bitcoin infrastructure and governance model, as well as on the technology developments that will push adoption. I believe it was worth it, as we really need to understand how this new distributed infrastructure and organizational models can be applied to most businesses today. More however, if we do not make an effort to learn the subtle difference between decentralizing infrastructure vs decentralizing governance, all this cryptocurrency madness might end up blowing all over our faces.

After all, what’s the point of having a decentralized infrastructure if power remains with the few and not the many?

It’s up to all of us to pressure governments, regulators, news media, and crypto-influencers to promote better outcomes for a decentralized world, by simply not blocking people from accessing this wonderful medium of storing value or by spreading FUD amongst the crypto-community. Aren’t we all on the same boat, after all?

–this article shouldn’t be taken as financial advisement as it represents my personal opinion and views. I have savings invested in cryptocurrency so take whatever I write with a grain of salt. Do not invest what you cannot afford to lose and always read as much as possible about a project before investing. Never forget: with great power, comes great responsibility. Being your own bank means you’re always responsible for your own money—

The Latest Bitcoin Price-Action

The current price of Bitcoin is sitting at a comfortable USD 6300 level, meaning although we saw a huge sell off, most likely due to pure market manipulation, Bitcoin’s price is still above the USD 6000 support level and below the USD 8400 resistance. The trigger to the sell off that took place during the beginning of September was probably related to a wallet which remained inactive for 4 years and then decided to dump some btc, according to some sources. Not before, of course, a huge short against bitcoin appearing on our good ol’ friend Bitfinex. This leads me to believe the flash-crash was due to a single player/entity selling about 100k Bitcoin to make a quick buck.

If you look at the 1 year evolution of Bitcoin’s price, from September 2017 to 2018, what we notice is that it grew 1.5x. Now, does history predict future prices? Clearly not; but it can tell us a really interesting story. For one, will this bear market have a long-term influence on the price of bitcoin? Is the cryptocurrency market capable of recovering?

If you remember the words of expert traders and investors you should always:

buy when there’s fear,

sell when there’s hype;

I see the past 6 months as an amazing opportunity to snatch some bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency for that matter), at a really nice price. Would you sell-off your investment at a loss if you knew it could be 1.5x times higher next year?

Bitcoin Price Volatility

The reason why so many people invest in bitcoin is due to its volatility. Without it, there would be a lower chance for epic gains. Whoever is patient during extensive bear markets, will eventually take home a butt load of profits. This is what price history tells us: what eventually comes up must come down; yet, the opposite also happens.

Looking at the table above we can see many great opportunities to enter the market. I really don’t know that many assets that can crash more than 80% and then, not only recover, but grow 10x; just 3 years later. It’s insane how speculative the bitcoin market is, however it is that same speculative nature that brings more people in.

You might still be worried though, how can anyone be sure what the future holds? What if this is the only time ever the market won’t recover?

What if I lost all my money?

My advice is to stop going in circles. Literally.

Warren Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., speaks during an event marking Business Wire’s expansion into Canada in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008. Buffett said a credit crunch isn’t underway and he forecast that the dollar’s value is likely to decline. Photographer: Norm Betts/Bloomberg News

The point is: ride the waves, don’t fight them.

Unless you have the money to move mountains (on this specific case the mountain being the price), it’s futile to worry too much what about you can do. The way I see it, this is a very simple binary game. You either win or lose by selling or buying. The options are quite simple and the end result depends on a good strategy, hard work, timing and patience.

Let’s get down to business and discuss my view on how to tackle bear markets.

Find a reliable strategy

There are plenty to chose from but your goal is to chose one and stick to it. It’s easier said than done, especially if you like to glue your face to candle charts on a daily basis, however, do not deviate from a path before you’re sure there is an abyss.

Any strategy depends on its players. Think if you’re into researching projects, teams, businesses and make long-term bets, or care more about price-action and short-term trading. Or both. I really can’t say, it depends greatly on your personal interests.

Strategies take time to show results, like everything worth in life. Most successful traders understand this as a golden rule, as well as, no strategy can overcome all obstacles. That’s just the way it is.

Some bottlenecks cannot be avoided and you will make bad choices.

pro-tip: enjoy falling. It’s part of the learning experience. 

After all, we’re just human. Even bots make mistakes – as they are crafted by us and code isn’t free of bugs.

Learning from those experiences is what can make you a better trader or investor. For example, if you had bought cryptocurrency on the 6 months prior to January 2018, you could be making a hefty profit by converting your cryptocurrency into fiat.

Anyone with a bit of sense in their heads would at least convert enough to cover for the initial investment. That way, even if the price went to zero, you would have your butts covered.

What if you’re stuck at a potential loss because you came in too late?

My strategy is simple: buy when prices are low, sell when prices are high, hence there are always two options:

(a) sell the assets at a much lower profit or at a loss and reinvest at a later stage,

(b) keep the assets, maybe buy more to average losses and wait for another bull-run.

Whatever decision you think is the right one, it is the right one.

The likelihood we look at money, risks and rewards the same way is quite thin, meaning: there are no right or wrong answers.

What matters to me is the ultimate goal: to make money; and the best way to do achieve that is to stick to a strategy and keep going at it – with a certain degree of critical thinking, as you don’t want to keep losing money in the long-term.

However, in order to achieve mastery of any kind, one needs to work hard at it.

Put in the hours

Time is a funny thing. Until a couple of years ago we thought time was a constant, this is, it was felt exactly the same way no matter where you were in the universe.

Of course we now know, thanks to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, time is actually relative. This is, the faster you go, the slower time will pass (relatively). If you hopped onto a shuttle and went to another galaxy at near the speed of light, it meant you would experience time differently from someone down in Earth.

Why is time important? Well, because I believe knowledge to be connected to your perception of time. It’s much easier to make good decisions when you have sufficient know-how and understanding to expand your event horizon; in this very specific case, the event horizon being the limit of our own knowledge.

What I mean is the more knowledge one possesses, the easier it is to see past certain barriers. It can be news, experts’ opinions, price movements or anything that could be a potential trigger for bad decisions.

To gain knowledge, however, there are no clever ways to circumvent the harsh reality of things.

You need to dig-deep and find ways to learn as much as possible, about each and every field that dictates the price of cryptocurrency.

Some I tend to follow are down below. They’re purely based on my opinion and preferences, nothing else.

Technology: it dictates user adoption. Understanding how bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies work under the hood is crucial. You can have the most amazing tech, but without proper UX/UI and nicely thought incentives and rewards, user adoption won’t likely grow as expected.

Psychology: it dictates market behaviour. If you want a neat tool to understand when it’s a perfect time to sell, check google trends. People lookup bitcoin the most when prices are at its highest. I would argue it’s within our nature to buy when prices are high due to excessive FOMO and hype. That’s why it is so important to be a contrarian when it comes to making decisions.

Traditional Markets: they dictate investors’ strategy. Consider the following: if the shares-asset class is doing fine, how do you think the price of long-term assets, like gold or silver, will behave? Interest rates near zero-levels make investors bullish on spending money on assets with huge returns, as making riskier gambles is cheaper. Don’t people say bitcoin is the new digital gold? What do you think it will happen when traditional markets enter a bearish cycle? In my eyes, cryptocurrency could be the answer.4. Reality: it dictates market values. If you didn’t know, most technological problems are also philosophical ones; if you think of scalability, the hottest subject around cryptocurrency adoption, it becomes obvious the discussion is not whether you can scale bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies), but how you’ll do it. Will we give up decentralization for efficiency? If so, where would that lead price-action? What matters at the end: core values or the reality of things?

These are my four pillars of investing. Remember, critical thinking is key to becoming aware of how knowledge can be applied in different situations. To become a winner you certainly don’t need all the know-how in the world; there are plenty of examples that show success is not due solely to our big brains. You can’t master investing without mastering a bunch of other fields first. That’s why so many successful people who don’t possess formal education have made it.

Learn as much as possible, fail as soon as you can and repeat the cycle. There are no exceptions.

Work hard and always share knowledge with others. Remember, networks only grow if its community grows too.

Time spent on the market

There’s a really nice article explaining why timing is so critical, but the gist of it is that if you miss, for example, the best 10 days of trading (during peaks/lows), you could potentially lose more than 50% of all potential profits. This is, missing the 10 best days can lower your expected returns in halve.

Instead of worrying, take these bearish cycles as a lesson and study some techniques to assist you in making more accurate predictions in the future.

Nobody can time the market perfectly, but there are a few tricks to minimize your risk.

TA is definitely a great tool to better understanding price movements and how you can leverage them for your own gains.

I’m definitely not an expert when it comes to TA, so I would advise you to follow some people who do trading for a living. Two of my favorite are Daniel Jeffries and Alessio Rastani. They have completely different approaches, but that is what you should be looking for: people with different ideas, visions and ways of investing/trading.

Pro-tip: You can learn a great deal by researching on the old masters of trading and their long-term techniques.

The underlying logic always remains the same:

Buy low / Sell high,

Be a contrarian, but respect trends.

Now, accomplishing this feature isn’t easy; to make it simpler, I will share my knowledge and way of thinking, what I personally care about and the correct time-frame for investing.

If it works for you, build upon it. Knowledge clearly has network gains, as the more you share, the more people can build upon your findings, making the entire network better.

Be patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

How many stories have you read or heard of people complaining they either lost everything or sold too soon?

That’s how hard it is. Especially when you can now easily trade with leverage.

Don’t forget, it’s you vs the market.

Always.

At the end of the day what matters is if the call you made translated into profits. If you’re looking for lambos and moons, I’m sure the likelihood of losing your investment is quite high. This is, usually people who expect quick gains do not have a key ingredient for success: patience. That’s why bearish cycles are so important, as they clean the market of both disbelievers and bad projects.

If you really want to succeed in this market, you need to go all-in. No, do not put all your hard-earned cash into bitcoin, but do dive-deep into cryptocurrency by learning about its technology, business ventures, market behavior, TA, or any other field you might consider relevant. You’ll be adding value to the market not only because you’ll be making more informed decisions, but you can also share knowledge with others.

Markets are cyclical. If you lost money now you can always recover it on the next bull-run, which in my not-expert opinion, might be coming soon.

One of the obvious reasons are ETFs. If, in one hand, bitcoin futures gave institutional investors a chance to bet heavily against bitcoin and make double-wins, ETFs will have the exact opposite effect.

Another, as they say, is history. It surely does not repeat itself; nonetheless, it gift us with price-action certainty. Like October and November being kind months for Bitcoin’s price.

Set reasonable targets in your head and don’t get too greedy. Be patient and learn as many different strategies as possible.

At the end, any market is just a game of winners and losers.

Want to be on the winning side?

Sell high, buy low.

Don’t forget, nothing is certain; chaos is everywhere and the arrow of time always moves in the same direction. All you read are my personal opinions which are not financial advisement. Be responsible.

Featured image from SHutterstock.

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