Cycles of narratives within this period of time as well for you too much
Is my Mac learning from the randomness of my written musings? The original title of this note was going to be "Silence of the bids" but then i noticed the touch bar on the Mac was proposing me 3 random words. I decided to pick Cycles as the first choice amongst the 3 and repeated same approach for a while - end result being the above title in quotes!
Leaning into this artificial title; I wonder if you have noticed the spaghetti of narratives over past months and how each have been tested if not shattered. The most spectacular fall from heaven has been of Terra Luna & UST - the very system I previously mentioned (10 April) might be leading us down the path of 2008 style crypto's very own contagion. Within matter of hours it wiped out $60+ billion of paper wealth!
The downfall was not surprising yet the speed indeed has been. In terms of impact there is much yet to be revealed vis-a-vis Terra Luna's financial dealings, how did it actually survive the covid crash of March 2020, what were the secret deals between the founders and VCs, how bitcoin treasury that Luna Foundation Guard held was managed and how more than $2.0 billion of said treasury in bitcoin was effectively market sold.
Moreover, over the past 48 hours there has been continued pain especially in non-BTC crypto markets where even ETH lost another 8+%*. This clearly is a sign that margin calls that started being made around May 13 have used up all the grace period they could likely muster prior to end of month. Moreover, mining hardware prices, ASICs specifically, are now suddenly under $6k!
Moreover, over the past 48 hours there has been continued pain especially in non-BTC crypto markets where even ETH lost another 8+%[1]. This clearly is a sign that margin calls that started being made around May 13 have used up all the grace period they could likely muster prior to end of month. Moreover, mining hardware prices, ASICs specifically, are now suddenly under $6k!
So, as the Mac generated title seems to be ending in a "question", is the wobble of prices and pain too much now?
All-in-all, my psychological pain level is still around 4 out of 10. I fail to deduce if this is due to having spent a decade in this valley of boom & doom or pure complacency. One thing is clear; just as how I was feeling not too glorious in October last year; similarly I now won't be surprised if this is the end of bitcoin's bear market. My personal alt-coin wallet that always only holds the most useless tokens bled 80% by January 2022 and has been idling there since; even the Terra fiasco didn't make it go to 0; yet!
Looking back at bitcoin price the best outcome would be for the price to bleed slowly down and then wiggle around for next 9 months (similar to what occurred between Jan 2015 till Sept. 2015). The bear won't hibernate if boredom doesn't devour its appetite.
There had also been much noise regarding a block re-org event (its when most recent X blocks are disputed & have their sequence re-ordered) on ETH's Proof-of-Stake on May 25. However, it turns out not to be an issue with the chain but rather with validators not being on latest versions of code. It's something the ETH dev community will need to keep an eye on but will not delay the merge. The merge still seems to be a Q3 event. ↩︎
Side note:
- till today $10+ billion have been redeemed from Tether (USDT) since Terra Luna collapsed about 2 weeks ago; leaving it with $72 billion of assets
- ETH merge podcasts have started to pop-up. Following two parts from Uncommon Core podcast are a great listen. They show the marketing campaign advocating for superiority of Proof-of-Stake over Proof-of-Work is slowly being rolled out by ETH foundation
