Looking For a Cryptocurrency to Buy – Coming Up Empty

Just spent time scanning through the charts looking for a top 50 coin to buy on a trade.  Struggled to find anything that was giving me a buy single – UGH.

Indecision and selling pressure

Bitcoin has pushed higher of late and the alts have not followed at all.  However, I’m not buying bitcoin after it ripped 2,000 points the past week.

I do like the consolidation it is doing now, as if it actually wants to leg up again.   I’ll believe it when I see it and for now will just hold my long-term bag.   I buy coin on pullbacks for the most part.

LTC and ETH – nothing says buy at the moment

As you can see litecoin looks rather indecisive after retreating from that head and shoulders topping pattern.  I like that it is atleast hanging on here in the middle of the range as that is less bearish, but price action certainly isn’t bullish.

Ethereum looks like it just failed at the 230 level again so not a time to get long.  Ideally we see some unexpected buying and it pushes through that level, but that is just a gamble.

And I could continue on.  EOS doesn’t look much different nor many other coins.  There is some strength here and there, such as BNB past couple days, but that trade entry is long gone.

I’m sitting on my long-term bag with my active trading capital idle on the sidelines for now.

Stay patience my friends!

 

Dr. Copper Approaching A “The Line In The Sand” Level

The only channel I seldom have on is either CNBC or Bloomberg.  While the financial talking heads are talking about the 800 point decline in the DOW, the 10 yr and 30 yr interest rate hitting multi-year lows, the VIX and the impending currency war, nobody is talking about Dr. Copper.

The term Doctor Copper is market lingo for the copper’s ability to predict turning points in the global economy. Rising copper prices imply demand or a growing global economy and declining copper prices imply lack of demand or a slowing global economy.

The focus is increasingly on the damage caused by the havoc of a trade dispute between the world’s two biggest economies. The broad applications for copper mean it’s particularly vulnerable to the synchronized tailspin being seen in everything from car-making and earth-moving equipment to commercial property and advanced electronic components.

“What the hard data is telling us is that end-use demand is slow and in many places getting kicked quite hard,” Oliver Nugent, a metals strategist at Citigroup Inc., said by phone from London. “China’s commodity-intensive economy is as weak as it’s been in recent history.”

Source

From a macro perspective, copper stalled out in Jan of 2018 and when trade tariff became a huge topic of discussion, the momentum in copper turned which was confirmed by the trendline break.

Fast forward almost two years later and trade talk is still being discussed and in recent days it’s a matter of who has the bigger stick. However, what’s different today is Germany is pretty much in a recession, global interest rates are at multi year lows and the US just cut rates for the first time in 10 years. Thus, copper is at a level that I’m deeming, “the line in the sand.”

If copper closes below 2.5000 on the monthly chart, look for copper to make its way down to 2.0000.

This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.

? SteemMonsters Statistics & Big Datas ?

Thanks to ALL of you, Steemmonsters (aka Splinterlands) is growing, it does not care about bear/bull markets and is ready for the next Bull Run !

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "steem monsters"

SteemMonsters reached 247k visits in July 2019!

There is an important difference between total visitors to a site and unique ones. In this case the 247k include the multiple times a person visited the website.

Therefore, as a good Steemian you probably connect everyday which will make you count for a total of 30 visits.

Therefore, how many “unique users” does SteemMonsters has?

This is a very important question that I will try to answer later on. According to the Beta Analysis from the website I use to compile these datas, it is c.30,6k in July (compared to an average of c.20k over the past 18 months) !

One quick word about the Methodology

  • Datas can come from multiple sources listed in the end of this post
  • These sources get their raw datas from companies working with them and sharing their datas in order to get access to competitor’s ones, browsers add-ons, in-app softwares which allow the Big Data to have a very large panel of users (north of 20mn) in order to statistically have the number of users/visits…
  • I use these raw datas to make excels tables, graphs…

I] Traffic

Daily SteemMonsters Traffic

SteemMonsters Daily Traffic kept on improving since the launch to reach close to 10k daily visits in July 2019.

If we compare to Steemit.com, we can see that there is a lower % of mobile traffic, let’s hope the future app will fix these issues.

Steemmonsters website is ranked 133,146 worldwide.

We can also see that the rank is improving daily.

Google Trends

Google Trend is an Indice based on 100, which means that 100 represents the week when most people searched for “Steem monsters and steemmonsters” on Google.

Google Trends are still very low but there is hope as Bitcoin Google Trend is increasing slowly again, maybe more crypto users joining decentralized platforms?

Bitcoin Google Trend Graph

SteemMonsters Traffic share by country

In the Top 5, the strongest traffic increase came from Germany with +154% visits!

Mobile Traffic is low compared as it represents only 21.19% of the total

78.81% of players on Desktop, probably as it is more convenient.

Be Careful with the Number of Visits

Also, remember that if you connect from a different device (home/work computer, mobile phone, tablet) you will count as a “new visitor” on each of these devices.

So as an example, let’s say you connected at home, at work and in the subway. You would represent 3 visits out of these 1mn+ Daily Visits.

II] Marketing Mix

Organic Search is once again improving and represents 67,3% of the incoming Traffic.

Organic search is when people research on Google. As the number of quality bloggers on Steemit increase, our content has a higher probability of being listed in Google’s Top results.

Different Channels:

Direct: When you type in you Web browser www.steemit.com
Mail: When you connect to steemit.com through an e-mail link
Referrals: When you connect to steemit.com through a link found on another website (github…)
Social: When you connect to Steemit through a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram… page or link
Organic Search: When you type a search term like “Crypto” on Google and you click on one of the following steemit link proposed to you

Traffic Share Evolution since inception of this analysis

You can see the continous improvment of the direct line. This is showing active players and commited ones. You can interpret this growth as the ability for @steemmonsters to grow its number of players and keep them addicted to the game. Congrats !

As a player myself, I can understand why people stick around :D.

Referring Social Pages

Youtube represented 53,4% of all the social platform incoming traffic. Reddit is also a strong source of new visits on the Steemit Platform.

5 most searched terms on Google that lead to Steemmonsters.com

To be honest, I don’t really get how some of these requests lead you to Steem but… it does.

What are Steemians main interests?

Gender Demographics

Age Distribution

III] Steemit website metrics

You feel a bit confused about these 3 metrics? Let me explain.

  • Bounce Rate is the % of people that leave the Website after just navigating on a single Webpage. The lower, the Better
  • Daily Pageviews per Visitor is the average number of pages a visitor opens. The Higher, the Better
  • Daily Time on Site is the full time a visitor spend on the website before closing the internet Webpage. The Higher the Better

Bounce rate is particularly low which is probably linked to the fact that most traffic is direct, meaning loyal users mak the biggest chunk of the traffic and they come to do their daily quest / tournament.

My assumptions for July 2019

  • Total visits to SteemMonsters.com: 247k
  • Assumption of Total unique visitors in July: 25-30k
  • Total Daily visitors: 7.5-10k
  • Assumption of Total Daily Unique visitors: 4-6k

This is a collective achievement and I would like to congratulate all of us! We need to continue helping @yabapmatt to grow this platform

If you would like more data: Check this post from @steemmonsters: https://steemit.com/steemmonsters/@steemmonsters/guilds-well-that-escalated-quickly

This monthly report makes me very optimistic about @steemmonsters future !

Next BigData Analysis coming on @drugwars, different social Steem apps and other cool projects !

Sources: Alexa, SimilarWeb, Google Trends…

The Only Reason Why The US Equity Markets Reversed Where It Did

Arthur D. Cashin, Jr. is a managing director of UBS Financial Services Inc. and the Director of Floor Operations for UBS Financial Services at the New York Stock Exchange is a well-respected figure on Wall Street. 

Traders are trying to remain positive as stocks came off their sharp morning lows, veteran trader Art Cashin told CNBC on Wednesday.

“If we rolled over here and violated the morning lows, then it would really begin to be a problem,” said Cashin, UBS director of floor operations at the New York Stock Exchange. “For now, everybody is kind of crossing their fingers and whistling past the graveyard, saying, ‘OK, we tested Monday’s lows,’” he added, around midmorning as the worst of the sell-off was abating.

“The S&P held, so I guess we can be in good shape,” said Cashin, who predicted rocky markets for the next few weeks as global trade tensions mount. “I think volatility is here to stay.”

Source

However, there is one reason and one reason only why the US equity markets are off the Monday lows.

The moving average is the most ubiquitous and simplest technical analysis tool used by discretionary and system traders, market analysts and those pestering algos. The 200 moving average, the king of moving averages is used on a daily chart to determining the overall long-term market trend over the last 40 weeks.

Discretionary and system traders, market analysts and those pestering algos also use moving averages for support and resistance. For example, in February and April of 2018, the 200 moving avg. (yellow line) served as support for the Market.

In October of 2018, the same thing happened.

And again this week,

Whether you trade cryptos, stocks, forex, but don’t have the 200 moving average on your daily chart, consider plotting it on your daily chart as it might offer you an additional edge to accompany your trading strategy.

This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.

Say “NO!” to KYC

 

Well it looks like Binance KYC information is all over the internet.

I couldn’t possibly provide links to all the articles I’ve read about it, because they are a dime a dozen. In case you somehow missed them all, here is one, just as an example: https://www.coindesk.com/binance-kyc-issue

Let’s get one thing very clear from the beginning: I’m not anti-Binance. As you can clearly see from my previous blog posts and Tweets, I’m actually a big fan of Binance and of CZ. My only real problem with them is their overly agnostic stance towards cryptocurrencies, even the dreaded Libra.

This is also not one of the (many) posts telling you to panic because your data has been compromised. Panic is stupid and never helps anything. It’s far better to remain calm and find a solution to the problem. It would help if Binance was a little more responsive/open about this issue – take note Binance: rapid and truthful PR is essential in such cases. People don’t panic when they know the truth, they panic when they don’t know what’s going on or when they find out that they were lied to.

This post is a reminder of what I warned you about previously, the evils of KYC.

“Try to give you warning, but everyone ignores me.
Told you everything loud and clear, but nobody’s listening.
Call to you so clearly, but you don’t want to hear me.
Told you everything loud and clear, but nobody’s listening.”

~ Nobody’s Listening – Linkin Park (R.I.P. Chester Bennington)

I will be the first to admit that public dissemination of your KYC data was not (and still is not) first and foremost on my list of KYC-related concerns. But: I did warn you about KYC in general, and proclaimed it to be a bad thing, a bad thing which is being done in an even worse way.

I have big issues with KYC. How many of you remember this article?

I wrote it a little over two months ago. Do you remember some of the things which I said in there?

KYC IS BAD FOR CRYPTO”

“KYC obviously stands against some of the very principles that crypto is built on!

The ability to transact with anyone, anywhere, anonymously is a core concept built into the crypto way of doing business. The matter of asking someone for their identity before agreeing to carry out crypto transactions with them should never even be raised!”

“Crypto was based on a zero-trust model which uses cryptographic methods to ensure trust. IT DOES NOT NEED INDIVIDUAL IDENTITIES IN ORDER TO FUNCTION!”

“A crypto system which demands the identities of its participants is a self-destructive system. It unbalances crypto as a whole and works against the principles on which crypto is built.”

I think that the truth behind my warnings is now starting to become apparent. It doesn’t really matter how or why your KYC data was compromised, or even who did it. What matters is that your data was able to be compromised in the first place! Fact: there is no such thing as a foolproof system. This is especially true in crypto, the cryptospace is still new and many loopholes have yet to be found. This will not be the last such incident! We need to eradicate the procedures which leave us vulnerable!

If Binance had not had any KYC data, then there would have been nothing to leak! Yes, I DO understand regulatory need for KYC / AML etc, we’ll get to that later. But first, let’s look at more of what I had to say in my anti-KYC article:

“…if I need to identify myself in order to make a crypto transaction, why would I not just use a fiat one instead? Either way I’m going to have to comply with regulations. Either way I’m going to end up paying taxes on it. Either way my identity will be known. What KYC does is to strip the usefulness away from crypto, thereby undermining its value and making it not worthwhile investing in!”

…and leading on from that…

 “If my crypto has no benefit to me, then my crypto has no value to me. Then it’s just another unbacked, regulated means of exchange. I have no need for another one of those, I have enough trouble with fiat money as it is.”

Now this is where regulations and centralised exchanges really start to come into it:

“I DON’T agree with KYC procedures which exist to placate the demands of centralised entities, but I do agree with identification procedures that are required to carry out basic business transactions.”

“Centralised crypto exchanges in particular are starting to look more and more like banks (as mentioned by Heidi in her Monday “Crypto tips” video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91f-QNSmzrA&t= ). Let’s be very clear here: an exchange does NOT require your name or phone number to change one coin into another!

“Dealing in crypto is not the same as dealing with fiat based assets, crypto is not linked to government assets and governments have absolutely no right to attempt to regulate it. One of the greatest attractions of crypto is that is is beyond the reach of regulations, if crypto is to succeed then it needs to remain that way! Don’t let your own government fool you into thinking that you have to play crypto by their rules, you don’t. Find a way around the rules. Crypto is decentralised, it is designed to to able to avoid such regulations! Giving in to regulations and supporting them is akin to driving a knife into crypto’s back, get out of the crypto space if you want to be like that, it’s counter-productive and will devalue the very asset which you are investing in.”

“KYC is part of the slippery slope to crypto regulation. I stand strongly against it.”

“Show me the government argument in favour of KYC and crypto regulation, and I will show you the counter argument that disproves it.”

A great opportunity which remains a missed opportunity in the cryptoverse, is that crypto projects are failing to leverage the utility that they can provide for one another. I have spoken harshly against projects which insist on using their own KYC procedures and which are not utilising specialist cryptocurrencies designed for that role:

“We have an array of already working and under development Identity Verification cryptocurrencies available to us: Civic, THEKEY, SelfKey, Worbli, NEO ID etc. We as crypto users need to put pressure on crypto companies to use these services. We need to support those who already use these services and demand that the others do the same.

I have taken such crypto projects on in several private emails and occasional public Tweets – such as this one:

From twitter.com

 

There are exchanges and wallets which I refuse to use because they refuse to use other crypto projects.  I know that in a way this looks like cutting off my nose to spite my face, but if we – the crypto community – don’t take a stand to support ID verification projects and stop the endless and unnecessary KYC procedures, who will?

I also know that some of my favourite exchanges require KYC – some at various levels, depending on what you want from them. Binance, KuCoin, even Nash – all exchanges which I highly recommend – have such requirements. I’m not suggesting that you avoid pro-KYC entities completely, but rather that you start moving in the right direction. For instance: Nash is more decentralised than most exchanges (an exchange is not simply “centralised” or “decentralised”: CEXs and DEXs lie at two ends of a continuum, and most exchanges lie somewhere between those two points), so I will be using it a lot after its August 23 launch and will slowly scale down on using the more centralised ones. Similarly, if given the option (in terms of trading pairs), I choose to use Binance DEX over traditional Binance. As seen in the Tweet above, when an exchange like IDEX takes such a bold move in the wrong direction, then I cut it off completely.

I also included quite a few original Satoshi Nakamoto quotes in my anti-KYC post. People need to be reminded of these regularly! People need to remember Satoshi’s vision!

Satoshi quotes:

“Participants can be anonymous.”

“…privacy can still be maintained by breaking the flow of information in another place: by keeping public keys anonymous. The public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone.”

“We have proposed a system for electronic transactions without relying on trust.”

Conclusion

I don’t give a damn that governments want KYC. If you are a large crypto company, and local government regulations are making it hard for you to operate – then MOVE! Don’t try to block users, leave that up to the governments who want to do the regulating. Let people discover the power of the TOR network, VPNs etc. And for crying out loud – stop demanding KYC information! This won’t end well for you or your users!

Let the governments who don’t want crypto seal their own fates. The future of global finance lies in decentralised crypto. If they don’t want to be a part of that future – so be it.

We were lucky with the latest Binance KYC leak, it could have been much worse. Consider this a small taste of what is to come if we continue down the dark path of government-enforced crypto regulation.

To the crypto service providers: I ask you again, with tears in my baby-blue eyes – Use the ID verification projects! Let me login using e.g. Civic. Let me control which information I share with each company. Let me not spread 100 different photos of myself and my identification documents all around the internet!

Simple systems engineering principles are at play here people: you are introducing multiple points of failure – AND THEY ARE FAILING!

Let the KYC we know today die the death that it deserves. It does not matter about government concerns re money laundering, purchases of illegal goods etc. When criminals are selling drugs or guns on your streets, taking away money is not the answer! Yes, without money you can’t buy drugs and guns, but you also can’t buy food, clothing, fuel… The government arguments that crypto transactions are largely in criminal hands are fallacious. FAR more drugs are sold using fiat. FAR more money is laundered using fiat! FORGET ABOUT WHAT GOVERNMENT WANTS! What’s the worst that could happen? They ban crypto? Remind me again how well the drug bans are working after all these years…

Yours in crypto

Bit Brain

“The secret to success: find out where people are going and get there first” 

~ Mark Twain

“Crypto does not require institutional investment to succeed; institutions require crypto investments to remain successful” 

~ Bit Brain

Bit Brain recommends:

Crypto Exchanges:





? Daily Crypto News, August, 8th?

Welcome to the Daily Crypto News: A complete Press Review, Coin Calendar and Trading Analysis. Enjoy!

? Steemit Statistics & Big Datas: ? End of July 2019 Update ?

We reached 12.2 mn visits in July 2019!

There is an important difference between total visitors to a site and unique ones. In this case the 12.2mn include the multiple times a person visited the website.

Therefore, as a good Steemian you probably connect everyday which will make you count for a total of 30 visits.

Therefore, how many “unique users” does Steemit has?

I] Traffic

Daily Steemit Traffic

You can find the full analysis here


? An Extortion Gone Bad: Inside Binance’s Negotiations With Its ‘KYC Hacker’

The Takeaway

Prior to publishing details about real Binance customers online Wednesday, a hacker operating under the pseudonym “Bnatov Platon” had a month-long conversation with CoinDesk reporters.


In the talks, Platon revealed how he allegedly hacked individuals behind an earlier hack in which 7,000 bitcoin was stolen from the world’s largest exchange.


Platon claimed his aims were altruistic, and that he simply wanted to bring the hackers’ identities to justice. However, it appears he also effectively asked for money in exchange for promises he would not release Binance’s customer data.


Platon and Binance would hold numerous talks, and reportedly struck a deal that was later aborted. CoinDesk has obtained full transcripts of these conversations.

? Ex-Coinbase CTO Is Behind Mysterious Nakamoto.com

Nakamoto.com is a website that’s more than twice as old as bitcoin, and for most of its life, it has just redirected to a San Francisco developer’s personal website.


Now, though, according to two industry sources, it’s under the ownership of one of the best-known investors in crypto: Balaji S. Srinivasan, former Andreessen Horowitz partner, founder of Earn.com and former chief technology officer of Coinbase.


The current site says, “Nakamoto is bitcoin country. HODL or GTFO.”

As of now, potential users can only enter their email address and await more information. Srinivasan never directly responded to multiple attempts to confirm he was running the site, but in a recent tweet he recommended a go-to-market strategy similar to the one the site appears to be using:

? Doubling up on STEEM! Reasons and Thoughts

Here is a quick post to tell you that I am doubling up on STEEM. One of the reasons is HF21 (find all the info from @steemitblog‘s post here) but this is neither the only one or the most important.

I think HF21 has its flows, yes it redistributes more to SP holder, but through this it will bring more investors, therefore more Buying pressure and a better STEEM Price I Believe.

More curation rewards also means more attention spent by SP Holder to curate content of quality. This would be beneficial to the entire STEEM Community.

In the end, what is the point to have 75% of your posts STEEM rewards / SBD if they are valued at a few cents, wouldn’t it be better to have 50% of a post valued a few $$$?

Full post Here

? Report: Around 300 Addresses Contain 80% of Tether Supply

The takeaway:

The Massachusetts-based crypto market research firm Coin Metrics says that 318 addresses hold at least $1 million worth of Tether (USDT), comprising 80% of the global Tether supply.


Bloomberg reported the company’s finding in a report on Aug. 7. Coin Metrics co-founder Nic Carter additionally mentioned that some of the USDT whales include major crypto exchanges, such as Binance and Bitfinex.


The report additionally notes that this is staggeringly different from the distribution of Bitcoin (BTC), for which whales apparently hold only around 20% of the total token supply. Moreover, over 20,000 BTC addresses reportedly hold at least $1 million in equivalent assets.

However, despite Bitcoin being more evenly distributed among its user base, the USDT whales may be able to swing the Bitcoin price on their own, as suggested by University of Texas at Austin finance professor John Griffin:

“The concentration of Tether suggests that control of Tether is in the hands of a few central players who can swing Bitcoin prices, and have a vested interest in doing so […] It also suggests that many exchange players have a vested interest in keeping the Tether game going.”

image.png

? Daily Crypto Calendar, August, 8th?

“Look forward to year in review and an important announcement to celebrate the $ARN date!”

BitMax Listing

AMA session with Fivebalance at 7:00 AM (UTC). 1,000,000 FBN to be airdropped.

“Every Thursday at 8PM (UTC+8), join us to learn all about your favorite projects and their exciting developments!”

“Live AMA with our CEO @Kris_HK on @cryptocom ‘s Twitter this Thursday, 8 August, 11AM HKT.”

image.png

STEEM Trading Update by my friend @cryptopassion

Here is the chart of yersterday :

STEEMUSD.jpg

Here is the current chart :

STEEMUSD.jpg

And the support line at 0.21$ is now broken… and the drop is continuing. I just have a little hope that it is a trap from the market and that we will be back upper than this line in the coming hours. If it is not the case, the drop should become more powerfull and show us where the market want to go…

image.png

Last Updates

image.png

Join this new Free To Play on the STEEM Platform !

Crypto Contest August 8: Huobi Token

Huobi Token (Huobi: HTBTC) has broken out of the triangle pattern in the daily chart.

(Chart courtesy of Tradingview.com (log scale))

Elliott Wave Analysis

In Elliott Wave terms, Huobi Token began a wave one advance in November 2018. The red wave one (blue sub-waves i-ii-iii-iv-v) finished in April this year, and the red wave two (blue sub-waves a-b-c) correction ended in June. If this wave count is correct, Huobi Token should be heading next towards the April peak in the red wave three.

(Chart courtesy of Tradingview.com (log scale))

Looking at the weekly chart, I believe Huobi Token is currently in the red wave three (blue sub-wave iii). The red wave three began in November 2018. 

(Chart courtesy of Tradingview.com (log scale))

Funnymentals

Huobi Token is an exchange based token and native currency of the Huobi crypto exchange. You can watch their intro video below.

(Sources: Huobi Token and YouTube)

How can I vote? Where is the contest?

You can vote by following this link.

Silver Gets No Love…Until Now

Silver prices on surged more than 4% on Wednesday, this highest one day return in three years and in the process breached the key psychological $17 level.

although I’m very bullish on Gold,

but I think the red headed step child, Silver will perform better than Gold over the next several years.    The gold/silver ratio is simply the amount of silver it takes to purchase one ounce of gold.  And when this ratio hits 80, it reverses. 

Since the mid-1990s, the ration has hit 80 four times.  And when it reversed, silver outperformed gold over the next several years. 

The Smart Money is recognizing what’s going on.  They just bought over 85, 000 of the September call options, $17 strike price in SLV. 

SLV is the iShares Silver Trust which seeks to reflect the performance of the price of silver. However, I think SLV is just beginning.

This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn’t financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.