It’s a Good Day!

December 11, 2019 Published by bitbrain

Today is a good day. I’m looking forward to its outcome.

My fight against governments is unending, a daily burden, but one which I undertake willingly.

I pride myself in fighting governments on every front that I possibly can: it doesn’t matter which level of government or even which country’s government I fight. As long as
I am making it hard for tyrants to be tyrants, then I am doing something right.

Today is a good day because, God willing, tonight I will get to confront a government official face to face. Tyrants being what they are, such opportunities are rare. “Democracy”
is only a word, a word which Representative Democracies have become the antithesis of.

I’m not naive, I know that I can’t change a politician. I can’t change a politician, but I may be able to help change politics! I will be in a room of influential people: voters, business elite, political party funders, and I fully intend to make best use of this opportunity to open their eyes.

The groundswell against politics in general is growing large, noticeable large – but that groundswell is generally confined to the lower levels. Richer citizens tend to ignore it,
they have more capacity to absorb tyranny – it doesn’t hurt them much and I doubt that they even notice it much of the time. Tonight I will do my best to enlighten the rich, and I will do this by backing the government
official into a corner, forcing them to expose their lies, greed and alternative agendas.

At least, I’ll make my best efforts to do so.

The rich have much to fear. While the average millionaire is not complicit in the day-to-day tyranny that representative democracies now are, WHEN the torches and pitchforks come out, there is no telling how far down they will go in their quest for vengeance and retribution. The average millionaires would thus do well to
enlighten themselves a little and to sympathise with the plight of those poorer then themselves. When business heavyweights start to pressure political parties and hold them accountable, that can have an immediate positive
effect on communities. No political party wants to deal with the bad press of a large company actively and publicly opposing them. If there is one thing a politician really despises, then it is the truth coming out of the
mouth of a well-known and crespected source.

And so the process continues: continually trying to open the eyes of those who have yet to see, or perhaps don’t want to see.

I’m tired of this fight, I’m really REALLY tired of it. It is a reality that I live 24/7/365, and one which I take seriously. The burden of constantly opposing corrupt governments is rather draining, because there is just so much damn evil to oppose!
I know that my many posts, blogs, emails, discussions etc often go completely ignored – but there is method to my madness.

I saw that earlier this week.

I tend to get a little shunned; not in the nasty “ostracised by the community” kind of way, but more in the “try to avoid him him, he’ll just berate you for voting
and tell you yet again why fiat money is evil” kind of way. People would rather not be around me, because “light conversation” with me tends to become rather heavy, and I won’t let them walk away without
the added burden of what they could be doing to help bring about change.

BUT

I’m right – and they know it.

There is a saying, something along the lines of “Nobody loves a warrior until the enemy is at the gate”. I am such a warrior, in more ways than one, and I wear that lack of love as a badge of pride.

And so it happens, that when the proverbial brown stuff hits the fan, suddenly I find myself to be popular again. That is what happened earlier this week.

Government (in my country) made such a large and obvious mess up, that the usually complacent sheep were temporarily jolted out of their rose-tinted slumber, and they took to social media
en masse to express their disapproval.

The words they used were heart-warming – because I saw them repeating words that I so often speak. You see, when you carry on and on and on until people are sick of you, something
you say sticks in their brains. Deep down they get the nagging feeling that all is not well. When circumstances eventually do become undeniably nasty, a little trigger fires in the back of their minds and they remember your
words.

I have made the most of this opportunity. I did not to welcome the newly awakened with open arms, but rather to chastise them for their regular conduct and to warn them against doing so
again in the future. I’m driving the lesson home. Next time around it they will react quicker and with more conviction…

It doesn’t take a lot of people to oust a tyrannical system of government, but it does take more than we have available at the moment. The longer the sheep keep their heads down and
try to ignore issues, the longer we will all suffer.

It is with that in mind that I go with a smile on my face to tonight’s meeting. I know that the politician stands no chance against me. True, it’s only a big fish in a small
pond, but this particular pond is a relatively large and significant one – the ramifications of losing control of it could have a major ripple
effect for a certain political party and even for my country as a whole. So I will be giving it my all. Wishes of good luck and prayers (irrespective of faith or denomination) are most welcome.

Conclusion

Bitcoin is coming. I absolutely believe in the power of decentralised cryptocurrencies and the revolutionary disruptive effect that they are capable of having on international finance. I
absolutely believe that governments can be starved of funding and can be rendered obsolete by blockchains; both in a financial and in an administrative role.

But Bitcoin is going to take time. The upcoming global stock market crash is not going to automatically result in cryptocurrencies replacing fiat currencies overnight. Sure, it will give
crypto an enormous boost, but this is not the crash that will spell the end of fiat forever, it will only be the beginning of the end.

It is still up to us to fight wherever we can: to fight for what is right – not legal. To fight for true patriotism – not the words and symbols created by politicians. To fight for liberty
and free will, not disguised socialism and “democracies” that aren’t democratic.

The battle is hard and the end is nowhere in sight. But if you and I don’t fight it, who will?

Yours in crypto

Bit Brain

All charts made by Bit Brain with TradingView

“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:

Brave and EOS…Going In Opposite Directions

December 9, 2019 Published by rollandthomas

Brave is a decentralized,
open source browser that puts the user first by making online privacy its first
priority. Brave also claims to be twice
as fast as Chrome on desktop and eight times faster than Safari on mobile.

The man behind the Brave
browser is CEO, Brendan Eich. Brendan
started his career at Netscape Communications Corporation in April 1995 with
the intent to put Scheme “in the browser.” In early 1998, Brendan co-founded the Mozilla
project. And his most recent initiative was creating the Basic Attention Token (BAT), a cryptocurrency
designed for use in the Brave browser when users view and share in the ad revenue.
In the ecosystem, advertisers will give publishers BATs based on the measured
attention of users. Users will also receive some BATs for participating. They
can donate them back to publishers or use them on the platform

If you don’t care for the
ads, the Brave browser has an inbuilt ad and tracker blocker. The blocker
inhibits trackers from learning more about a user for monetization purposes.
But Brave is trying to fix the internet by improving the ad model. In the words of founders of Brave “It is a
market filled with middlemen and fraudsters, hurting users, publishers and
advertisers.” And Brave’s mission of
fixing the internet ad model is gaining traction.

Brave Browser is experiencing robust user growth, gaining another 1.7 million active users over the last three weeks by carving out the privacy niche from Google Chrome.

Since its 1.0 launch mid-November, Brave announced that the open source browser had gained another 1.7 million monthly active users, growing by 19% across all devices. Compared to last year, the numbers are even stronger. The browser’s userbase saw a two-fold increase in monthly active users and tripled its daily active users to 3.3 million.

As of today, verified content creators on the platform increased to over 340,000. The majority of these creators publish to YouTube (229,00), followed by Twitter (37,000), business and personal website publishing (38,000), and Twitch (18,000), among others.

Source

A nice level to potentially go long on the BAT is at the daily demand at $0.14.

The EOS blockchain was developed with the aim of facilitating efficient and scalable decentralized applications (dapps). The blockchain includes an operating-system like set of services and functions that works similarly to the ethereum platform.

Despite EOS being the world’s seventh-largest blockchain by market cap, my first issues is who in the hell has a year long initial coin offering (ICO)…which raised $4.1 billion in crypto for Block.One. My initial thought was they better deliver due to all the hype.

EOS works on an ownership model whereby users own and are entitled to use resources proportional to their stake, rather than having to pay for every transaction. So, in essence, if you hold N tokens of EOS then you are entitled to N*k transactions. And herein lies the issue.

EOS network’s governance issues continue to haunt them as Weiss Ratings recently downgraded the network from B category to C-. Weiss Ratings also posted a Twitter thread explaining why they had to downgrade the project which was once hyped as “Ethereum Killer.”

Weiss Ratings in its tweet claimed that although the public sentiment was right behind the project in its hayday and the platform was known for being a fast, efficient and most important a decentralized ecosystem. However, in the past year, there has been a continuous decline in the decentralization aspect where major whales control the majority of the token flow which could be of a deep concern.

Weiss Ratings claimed that the top 100 EOS token holders who represented a meager 0.01% of the total token holders on the platform, has a whopping 68% of the voting power on the network. This means these whales can easily manipulate the network as per their will.

Source

And now EOS block producers and developers devoted to building decentralized apps (dapps) are making little or no money from contributing to the health of the ecosystem. EOS Tribe even wrote about his experience on Steemit. They cited it’s longer possible to earn funds for maintaining the blockchain without support from major EOS whales.

Thus the chart suggest EOS is headed to the monthly demand at $1.00.

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.

The Sunday Crypto Recap – Down the Rabbit Hole 58

December 7, 2019 Published by timm

Once again this has been a great week to be engaged with crypto. While the charts offered volatility, the space itself heaved with good ideas, competing narratives, and incremental developments. This week’s crypto Twitter segment alone is a treasure trove of expertise and insightful analysis. The charts will wait.

As per usual, each item is here because it is compelling/interesting or thought-provoking in some way. Inclusion is not an endorsement. Verify don’t trust (cough..HEX).

Picks of the Week

So much to choose from – this fine-grain analysis of recent changes to Libra’s governance structure and this much-needed exposure of influencer pushed leverage trading. In addition, this wide-ranging discussion of the proposition that is BTC.

Twitter

Much needed calling-to of crypto influencers for peddling leverage trading (highly recommended):
https://twitter.com/Brad_Laurie/status/1201393846443102209

Four likely long-term outcomes for BTC:
https://twitter.com/krugermacro/status/1195787745391566848

Interest in crypto passive income is on the rise:
https://twitter.com/krugermacro/status/1200614101094785025

Some crypto memories:
https://twitter.com/pierre_crypt0/status/1201260117494243328

Unpacking Libra’s recent changes to its Articles of Association (highly recommended):
https://twitter.com/Fatalmeh/status/1200733070766116864

Ethereum meaningfully decentralized?
https://twitter.com/AnselLindner/status/1201719094434828289

Fifteen of the best crypto podcasts (aside from my own of course):
https://twitter.com/JasonYanowitz/status/1199126396062359553

Comparing China-based exchanges such as Huobi and OKEX with Binance (highly recommended):
https://twitter.com/SpartanBlack_1/status/1201823827468025858

A ‘best of’ 2019 crypto podcasts (again sadly missing my own :))
https://twitter.com/AndyPickeringNZ/status/1201969412737097728

A little context re North Korea / doing business there:
https://twitter.com/laurashin/status/1201331530523648001

Articles

A sound rebuttal of the tired ‘Bitcoin is for criminals’ narrative.
https://www.unchained-capital.com/blog/bitcoin-is-not-for-criminals/

A wee bit of inspiration for fellow Bitcoiners (recommended):
https://offthechain.substack.com/p/bitcoins-missionaries-vs-wall-streets

Let’s face it – most crypto predictions are downright nonsense:
https://hackernoon.com/why-crypto-predictions-are-irrational-fy4ct46a8

The Ethereum network is showing strong growth across a range of metrics (recommended):
https://www.newsbtc.com/2019/12/03/ethereum-network-activity-defi-still-growing-when-will-eth-prices-follow/

Segwit explained:
https://www.binance.vision/blockchain/a-beginners-guide-to-segretated-witness-segwit

Energi uncovers massive ‘fake-account’ network while auditing their air-drop (recommended):
https://medium.com/energi/organized-fake-social-media-group-with-over-a-million-sockpuppets-identified-642186d075ef

A proposal for improving EOS REX:
https://medium.com/eos-argentina/notes-on-rex-7f764f42f78

Protocols and product (highly recommended):
https://medium.com/swlh/do-protocols-need-product-management-6c597d65faad

Podcast

Two industry insider’s perspectives on China’s moves to promote blockchain (highly recommended):

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/why-china-aims-to-replace-cash-with-the-digital-yuan-ep-146/id1123922160?i=1000457234635

YouTube

Leverage trading is promoted with the expectation that you will get wrecked (highly recommended):

Bitcoin empowers you (highly recommended):

Not exactly secrets but useful information nonetheless:

Let’s talk Bitcoin (highly recommended for an overview of what’s in play with BTC):

Colin continues to shine a much-needed spotlight on EOS (recommended):

A brief discussion of how governments fudge inflation figures (recommended):

Is HEX a scam – yes, it is (Highly recommended):

Infographics

BTC cycles seem to be extending:

https://twitter.com/IamCryptoWolf/status/1199703369880915969/photo/1

It’s been a good year for assets:

https://twitter.com/CNBC/status/1201585160031997952/photo/1

If you didn’t learn anything….As always, looking forward to your comments and suggestions.

Note on Sources:

Twitter & Reddit (cryptos current meta-brains) / Medium / Trybe / Hackernoon / Whaleshares / TIMM and so on/ YouTube / various podcasts and whatever else I stumble upon. The aim is a useful weekly aggregator of ideas rather than news. Though I try to keep the sources current – I’ll reference these articles and podcasts etc. as I encounter them – they may have been published just a couple of days ago or in some cases quite a bit earlier.

FUN technical analysis

December 5, 2019 Published by mrbullishsail

FUN seen from the temporality of 1W we can observe how the structure of candles has formed us so far two HL on the diagonal support indicated within the chart by the horizontal dark blue, the closing of the previous candle has formed an accumulation doji as a bullish signal, if the closing of the current candle ends up being bullish we would have our third HL confirmation of a next move towards our first target gain located within the price range of 0.00000074 – 0.00000083, indicated inside the chart above by the two horizontal black color, our second target is located higher at 0.00000127, the major trend is bearish, the minor figure is forming an inverted triangle that could conclude in our first target, we would confirm this by seeing the price reaction in that area.

FUN seen from the temporality of 1D we can observe more closely the current movement of candles where we see how the price has formed the double floor on the zone of weekly demand located at 0.00000038, indicated within the graph above by the horizontal green color, the current candle is being rejected by the zone of daily supply located at 0.00000051, we need to get the closing above that level if we want to see a next movement towards our target profit.

In conclusion, FUN maintains an excellent movement on the diagonal support where we have been forming two HL and we could have the third with the bullish closing of the weekly candle that has yet to be confirmed, however, the probabilities of a move towards our first profit target are high, this profit target is located within the price range of 0.00000074 – 0.00000083, it is very important that the price keeps the support diagonally, otherwise, the price could fall and form a new LL, therefore, I recommend to follow very closely the action of the price in 1D and always remember to place your stop loss to avoid possible invalidations during the movement.

As I always say, you have to be aware of the movement, invalidations can occur, there is no 100% reliable analysis, take your own precautions when trading.

You can follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/armijogarcia

Two Minute Crypto – Deciphering China’s Blockchain Play – Part 4 of 5

December 4, 2019 Published by timm

Please click the link below to listen to the 65^th episode of my weekly crypto podcast ‘Two Minute Crypto.’ These are intended to be short, single-topic ramblings on some aspect of the cryptosphere. Consider dropping a like and or a review on iTunes or Podbean if you enjoy the podcast. Comments and critiques welcome.

External Podcast Links

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/two-minute-crypto-deciphering-chinas-blockchain-play/id1441492450?i=1000458599399

https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-32m4r-c9f816

Transcript

Deciphering
China’s Blockchain Play – An Inflection Point?

Welcome to Two Minute Crypto. This week focuses on the
wider implications for blockchain arising from China’s declared ‘embrace’ of
the technology.

To date, this series has repeatedly highlighted the
control-centric purpose of adopting blockchain in a Chinese context. Blockchain,
as it will be implemented by the Chinese Communist ruling Party, will serve to
extend the state’s reach ever further into the daily lives of its citizens.

To summarize – the Beijing blockchain model will be
centralized whether presented that way or not. Projects will be state-subservient
and their apparent efficiency benefits will simply be an added bonus regardless
of the propaganda which promotes their adoption.

Clearly, the chains that receive state-endorsement will see massive initial inflows of investment and user-base. In the short-term, this will present a direct challenge to their comparatively decentralized peers. Beijing blockchain may demonstrate blockbuster numbers in terms of users, market penetration and network value. In comparison, free-market projects may seem peripheral and indeed, irrelevant. A Telegram community channel boasting 20 thousand users will seem paltry when superficially compared with a state compelled user base running into the hundreds of millions.

In the short-term, there will be a temptation to jettison
this whole decentralized thing – bend the knee and make merry in the Chinese market.
Let’s not forget other authoritarian states will be following on behind Beijing
– so state-sanctioned centralized blockchains will be in a period of rapid
expansion. It’s also worth highlighting that most self-declared chains are
decentralized in name only. They are dominated by their founders, a core
development team, uneven coin distribution and so on. A shift from decentralized
to centralized would in most cases be very easily achieved – if the price was
right. To date, the cryptosphere has been replete with short-sighted cash grabs.
Any opportunity to cash-in has been taken this ‘opportunity’ will be no
different.

Of course, there’s Yin to this Yang. Any blockchain system
rolled out by the ruling party will clearly operate under direct supervision
and control. Independent ‘decentralized’ chains will have a readymade ‘dark’
version of themselves to compare and contrast to.

Immutability, censorship resistance, and permissionless
access may shine in this environment. Blockchain implemented as a tool of state
repression will likely see a flood of interest into the ‘other’ version’ as over
time the realization will dawn that’s it’s one version or the other. Blockchain
as big brother or as a vehicle of greater autonomy.

At the moment, it’s all what if’s and potential but that
era is coming to an end. Soon, a billion people will live under a darker vision
of blockchain. This will clearly offer an opportunity to decentralized projects.
In the medium to long-term decentralized iterations of blockchain may organically
overtake their lesser brethren. Where choice is possible – individuals will
likely veer towards tech that empowers.

In the interim, a ghetto system seems very likely.
Nations like China locked behind centralized networks while other states opt
for or are over-taken by permissionless chains. Over the next few years, real
investment opportunities may lie with projects that bridge the gap between the
two. Allowing access to or communication between chains with vastly differing governance
models

The centralized/decentralized blockchain development arc
will take decades to play out of course. Progress will be uneven and individual
jurisdictions will take different roads at different times. Whether one
iteration of blockchain comes to dominate the other remains to be seen. What is
absolutely clear, however, is that a struggle for the ‘purpose’ of blockchain
is about to start in earnest.

Thanks for listening.

Series Links

Two Minute Crypto – Deciphering China’s Blockchain Play – Part 1 of 5

Two Minute Crypto – Deciphering China’s Blockchain Play – Part 2 of 5

Two Minute Crypto – Deciphering China’s Blockchain Play – Part 3 of 5

IOST technical analysis

December 2, 2019 Published by mrbullishsail

IOST seen from the temporality of 1W we can see how the current structure of candles begins to form a pattern of reversal of trend, the price is in a key area of the movement and the current bullish momentum has already drawn us an HL that we see marked within the chart above by the small green arrow, the price has managed to maintain the area of weekly demand located at 0.00000065, indicated within the top chart by the lower horizontal black, this is causing the current momentum of the candle that should reach the area of supply located within the price range of 0.00000098 – 0.00000108, indicated by the two horizontal black color, the price could make the test and go back a little to form another HL of confirmation to look for the breakage and recovery of the zone of offer, if this possible scenario is achieved, we could see the price reach our objectives of superior gain, the second objective of gain is located in the 0.00000145, the third objective of gains is located in the 0.00000196 and our objective higher is located in the 0.00000233.

IOST seen from the temporality of 1D we can observe more closely the current movement of candles where we see how the price after getting the break of the descending wedge in the 0.00000057 made the confirmation test to get back to get bullish momentum towards 0.00000079 where the price has taken a small break forming a bullish flag with an inverted shs as a signal continuation, this we see indicated in the chart above by the parallel channel in purple, the price should reach the bidding area without any problem.

In conclusion, IOST is still at accumulation levels at an excellent buy point even before having a much higher next move up, the price should go to test the bid zone and go back to 0.00000079 before looking for the break, the profit targets are shown in the 1W chart, therefore, I recommend to be very attentive to the price action in 1D and always remember to place your stop loss to avoid possible invalidations during the move.

As I always say, you have to be aware of the movement, invalidations can occur, there is no 100% reliable analysis, take your own precautions when trading.

You can follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/armijogarcia

BrainMetric – IT’S STILL ALIVE!

December 2, 2019 Published by bitbrain

Does anybody remember reading this?

No? Well I don’t blame you. It’s from THIS POST back on 5 August, so I hardly remember it myself!

In all seriousness, I didn’t forget about it, and I actually have been working on it (albeit at a rather low level) for the last four months. I want to reassure you
that I still fully intend to finish it, though it’s going to take much longer than expected. This is it’s story so far…

A Brief History of BrainMetric

As you can see above, I described my metric as being “a quantitative metric used to determine the investor confidence of the market”. That’s no longer an accurate description of it.

The more I worked on it, the more I realised what else I could do with it by expanding upon it. I’ll spare you the details of the equations, partly to protect my own intellectual property, but mostly
because equations tend to make people’s eyes glaze over!*[1]

I soon realised that my metric needed a benchmark. Finding a good benchmarks is trickier than it seems, because cryptocurrencies are anything but constant. They vary wildly in price compared to other
asset classes, as well as to one another. Even a single cryptocurrency tends to have high price volatility. I reasoned that the best benchmark to have would be an aggregate of the combined data of all of the cryptocurrencies
averaged over different time durations.

The trouble with that approach is that it is practically impossible to do. Wash trading wrecks it. Unlisted coins corrupt it. Delisted coin data are no longer readily available. Data anomalies (e.g. a
spike caused by a data capture error) have a big effect on it. Even in a best case scenario it will only ever provide you with an approximation. With so much data and so many potential points of failure, it becomes a bad idea.

Big Data vs Little Bit Brain

The death blow to the “all coins” approach is the sheer amount of data it requires. Assuming the other issues can be resolved, I would still have to import, capture and process practically
the entire historical database of a site such as CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko. CMC has got almost 4900 coins, CoinGecko (whose API I prefer to use) has over 6200! I’m working alone on this, and that amount of data is way
too much for me to handle! Put it this way: Bitcoin alone represents about 15000 rows of data, each row being several columns wide! In fact, all I’ve managed so far is to process Bitcoin data.

But that’s fine. During this process, I have been able to plan my next steps, and have also found value in BTC data on its own.

Analysis of BTC’s data processed through my most basic algorithm, reveals that it behaves much as as Bollinger Bands do (with similar predictive abilities). It is my hope that I will be able to
calibrate the figures into a form of meaningful “market tension” indicator, an advanced warning sign of when some big price move is about to happen. Take a look at what I mean, this is the most basic form of BrainMetric
data displayed in graphic form:

Excuse the rudimentary charting, I originally made these strictly for developmental purposes, not for publishing! The aim of charting this was to determine how to use it as a benchmark. What you see
above is basically how BTC trading activity (of which volume is only a part) changes over time. It’s a few months old, but you can notice that the far right side is already very “squashed” – much like the
squeezing of Bollinger Bands. When I calibrate my data, this “squashing” will translate into a market tension; the more squashed it is and the longer it remains squashed, the higher the market tension figure will
be.

Beyond BTC

I have decided that BTC will be my industry benchmark, it’s far easier working with one coin than with thousands! There is the option of using total market data, but this data is very hard to find
for the early years and tends to be inherently corrupted by aggregation, lack of data and coins constantly being added to it. As a constant, it is very poor. It’s also interesting to note that you can’t use something
like the “Top 10” coins, because while the names of those Top 10 may seem fairly constant, they change significantly over time. – making their data impossible for me to process.

I aim to be able to average my BrainMetic over time (in intervals of selectable duration for both macro and micro trends), and then compare it to the values of specific altcoins worked out using the same
method. This will work in much the same way as we currently use BTC/sats price to benchmark the performance of different altcoins. Only, unlike with sats price, with BrainMetric the algorithms will allow us to compare apples
with apples. You can’t say that e.g. DASH is better than TRX just because DASH has a higher sats price. But with BrainMetric you WILL be able to say that one is better than the other, since price will not be a primary
factor.

“Better” is not the correct word, I think “less overbought” would be a more accurate description. BrainMetric will be similar to my 4 November post: “Perspective on Altcoins”, in which I used a pseudo-neutral metric (percentage drop from All Time High) to compare altcoins to one another. (Note: BrainMetric equations will not use ATH.)

Joining the Dots

At the end of the day I have a vision of what I want from BrainMetric, I want something that will show:

· The “Market Tension” of BTC – and maybe selected altcoins too.

· … possibly graphically.

· A fair comparison between various altcoins to show which are undervalued and which are overvalued.

· The later incorporation of an additional metric which I have yet to develop.

BrainMetric will probably take the form of some sort of dashboard with a simple interface that hides all the background number crunching.

Yes, as the last bullet point states, there is a second metric in the pipeline. My brain laid yet another original idea egg that will tie in very nicely with my BrainMetric
vision. So “BrainMetric” will probably become “BrainMetrics” as the second metric literally gets added into the equation. IF I can get it calibrated and start getting good predictive data from it, then the addition of the second metric will:

· Further help to determine “Market Tension” (i.e. how likely the next big jump will be), and

· (importantly) give percentage probabilities as to which direction that big jump will be in.

The second metric will operate on the principle of a rudimentary Kalman filter, calculating future jumps based on the frequency, sizes and directions of previous jumps. At this stage the second metric
exists solely in my head, I haven’t had a chance to even start looking at the equation for it.

Making things happen

After deciding last year that Microsoft has got enough money, I stopped using Excel for my crypto-tracking spreadsheets. After trialling several free alternatives, I settled on the excellent FreeOffice suite for my day-to-day needs. (Visit www.freeoffice.com to check it out for yourself, MS Office users should feel right at home. This post was originally created in FreeOffice.)

Figuring that learning how to import APIs/scrape webpage info into FreeOffice spreadsheets might not be so fun (it can be bad enough in Excel), I decided to switch to the web-based Google Sheets for
my crypto spreadsheet needs. I figured that Google may have better internet data integration tools. That was only partially true, and subsequently took a large step backwards when the most popular crypto plugin ceased working.
But I pushed on and have become moderately competent at getting Google Sheets to work for me.

Level 5+ Excel Grand Wizards will know that with enough time and practise, you can make Excel do just about ANYTHING! It may look similar to its siblings Word and Powerpoint (and the other younger ones that few people use), but under the hood, Excel is a V8-powered, fire-breathing beast! Still used to the formidable capabilities of this beast, I built BrainMetric in Google Sheets.

..and that’s why I’m taking so long to do this.

After much struggling, I realised that it just wasn’t going to work. Using Sheets I simply did not have the tools I needed to effectively process all that data. I don’t blame Google: Sheets
is a very capable web app which can do most things, but it just isn’t Excel which can do absolutely anything!

Knowing what I would have to do, I tried the old “ignore the problem and hope it goes away” trick. It didn’t. Eventually I confronted my demons and dusted off some long-neglected bookmarks in my browser. I started the painful process of re-teaching myself computer programming.

Unfortunately programming is not like riding a bike, it’s a perishable skill – one which I learnt at university two decades ago! Modern programming languages evolve constantly: the little which
I do remember is horribly out of date. It’s like semi-remembering the home phone numbers of people you knew 20 years ago: you dial a few, half of them are wrong, and the other half no longer work anymore. The language
Java is now on version 13. I learnt version 1. An early edition of version 1!

Worse still, I have to fight my way through the badly outdated Java documentation – the hallmark of massive open-source software projects. Since I want to use a specific type of user interface creator
(JavaFX), Java 13 is actually not really suitable for my purposes. Java 11 sort of is. Java 8 is. Don’t ask about the in-between version, just don’t. It’s probably only after
Java 14 is released in Q2 of 2020 that things will work properly again (after some work by the community). If only I’d know that at the beginning, I would have saved days, days which I wasted trying to correctly configure the programming environment of my PC.

Now that everything is running semi- properly, as much as I want to jump straight into coding BrainMetric, I need to first practise the fundamentals and make stupid mistakes as part of the re-learning
process. Yesterday I started writing a very basic word processor program. Once I can get that finished, then I should be about 70% of the way there and will just need to work on charting and data management skills. That and
Christmas madness should take me well into early 2020.

So BrainMetric is coming, but I wouldn’t start holding my breath just yet!

For now, what I can tell you is that the prototype charts show a very squashed BTC profile. Something is going to happen soon.

*[1] Stephen Hawking said that when he was writing “A Brief History of Time”, he was advised that each equation in the book would halve his sales. He took the advice to heart and included only “E=mc²”, acknowledging that leaving it out may have doubled the sales of his wildly successful bestseller.