SMCJB 

Changing the subject slightly, at 12/18 12:08pm Central I see BTC on CME at 18755/18810 so lets say 18785. Jan/Feb is 90/185, last trade 185, but lets say 135. (Feb premium). That means they are implying a 0.7% 1 month carry. Jan/Mar last trade was 350. (Mar premium). That implies a 1.85% 2 month carry. So if you hold physical bitcoins, you can hedge them in deferred months and the market is paying you approximately 0.5-0.9%/month extra. I suspect this implies something about the risk of holding actual Bitcoins. (Ohh and if you've bought bitcoins and they are still on exchange, then you don't hold physical bitcoins - they are just paper as well.)

12/21/17 8:01am Central
CME Jan Bitcoin 16425/65
Jan/Feb spread 145/215 ~ 0.88%/1.31% carry
Feb/Mar 155/285 bid ~ 0.93%/1.71% carry
Mar/Apr 200/ ~ 1.20%/ carry
Is there any other explanation to this other than the risk associated with holding physical bitcoins?

SMCJB 

12/21/17 8:01am Central CME Jan Bitcoin 16425/65 Jan/Feb spread 145/215 ~ 0.88%/1.31% carry Feb/Mar 155/285 bid ~ 0.93%/1.71% carry Mar/Apr 200/ ~ 1.20%/ carry Is there any other explanation to this other than the risk associated with holding physical bitcoins?

I think of the following :
- i didn't check the spread on the bid/ask of the spread futures as such, but i guess that counts
- i think there is a whole unpredictable cloud of what regulators might do (SEC, Central banks, governments)
- velocity is for sure an issue, not for nothing that margins are 50% - 100%

These guys are ruthless. Pulled from an ad in my personal GMail... we gonna take ALL YO MONEYZ!

From twitter:




Link here:

Wow.

I recognize that fighting against a public mania is not ever going to work. When it all goes to pieces, then everyone will say they saw the bubble before it popped, but at this stage, there is no way to stop it.

Be careful, folks.

Bob.

I see the crypto market is deep red all over the board, we went already down 160B$ from 640B$ to 480B$
that is a big swing... not sure all those little guys can handle emotions that come which such a swing..

I saw the below image on social media, at least one exchange is delaying withdrawal ...



My thoughts :
- liquidity issues at some BTC exchanges ?
- fear for large scale hack ?

This illustrates, BTC is far from replacing fiat money in the world...

Could be fake news....

rleplae 

My thoughts : - liquidity issues at some BTC exchanges ?

CME has gone from a slew of competing bids and offers to just one or two.
Jan/Feb spread has collapsed to 7/44 from 120+
CME last trade 12265 -3065 -19.99%

SMCJB 

Could be fake news.... CME has gone from a slew of competing bids and offers to just one or two. Jan/Feb spread has collapsed to 7/44 from 120+ CME last trade 12265 -3065 -19.99%

Seems to be real

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

rleplae 

Seems to be real https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

Thanks for the insight...

Still interesting the comparison from mining revenues to electricity consumption:

"Annualized global mining revenues $17,737,087,330
Annualized estimated global mining costs $1,815,921,584"

Of course the statistics were calculating on a BC best price around 20k

GFIs1

Of course, I have no idea how the Bitcoin/cryptocurrency market will work out, and it may turn right back up again.

But for the fundamental view, this article may add some perspective. It gets a little technical, but it has some interesting information:

Quoting 

Everyone says the blockchain, the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, is going to change EVERYTHING. And yet, after years of tireless effort and billions of dollars invested, nobody has actually come up with a use for the blockchain—besides currency speculation and illegal transactions. Each purported use case — from payments to legal documents, from escrow to voting systems—amounts to a set of contortions to add a distributed, encrypted, anonymous ledger where none was needed. What if there isn’t actually any use for a distributed ledger at all? What if, ten years after it was invented, the reason nobody has adopted a distributed ledger at scale is because nobody wants it?

And,

Quoting 

Plus, it’s not actually that good a payment system — Visa can handle sixty thousand transactions per second, while Bitcoin historically taps out at seven. There are technical modifications going on to improve Bitcoin’s efficiency, but as a starting point, you have something that’s about 0.01% as good at clearing transactions. (And, worth noting, for those seven transactions a second Bitcoin is already estimated to use 35 times as much energy as Visa. If you brought Bitcoin’s transaction volume up to Visa’s it would be using as much electricity as the rest of the world put together.)

It's a long read, but I found it interesting:

https://hackernoon.com/ten-years-in-nobody-has-come-up-with-a-use-case-for-blockchain-ee98c180100

Bob.