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CME Bitcoin derivative traders had ‘paper hands’ as BTC broke $55K — Report
Bitcoin (BTC) derivatives traders on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) missed out on incredible profits as BTC’s spot price smashed through $55,000 this week.
Retail investors reduced their long exposure across the Bitcoin futures and options markets in late September, according to data shared by Ecoinometrics. The amount of open short positions also climbed, indicating that derivative traders anticipated Bitcoin’s price to drop, as shown in the chart below.
The data was taken on Sept. 28, when BTC price had fallen below $41,000 on Coinbase — down almost 23% from its month-to-date high near $52,950. The drop surfaced in the aftermath of China’s decision to ban all kinds of crypto transactions.
“Most likely, this dip is due to a mix of traders not rolling their long positions to the October contract and some outright liquidating when BTC looked like it was going to drop below $40k last week,” said Nick, an analyst at Ecoinometrics.
“Regardless, the overall picture is that the futures traders lack conviction.”
“That’s paper hands 101,” the analyst noted.
Smart money
Institutional investors in the CME Bitcoin futures market also followed retail sentiment as they reduced their long exposure in the market. But, on the other hand, their short positions climbed.
With CME options traders convinced that Bitcoin price would drop, the number of puts — an implicitly bearish bet on Bitcoin’s price — turned out to be almost twice the size of the calls, or bets on potential Bitcoin price gains.
Traders’ position distribution made $40,000 the most sought-after strike price target.
On the other hand, some options traders bet that the spot Bitcoin price would hit $60,000 by the end of October. Additionally, analyst Crypto Hedger highlighted that Bitcoin options expiring on Nov. 26 show bulls’ sentiment skewed toward the $80,000-strike target.
“At this current growth pace, Bitcoin has formed very strong support at the $50,000 price point, and short-term traders may also need to watch out for the key resistance level around $56,000,” said Konstantin Anissimov, executive director of CEX.IO, adding:
“A break below or above these levels can stir another cataclysmic price reversal or a massive run toward $60,000 in Q4.”
Bitcoin supply squeeze in play
On-chain data shared by Ecoinometrics also showed a higher level of Bitcoin withdrawals from all the crypto exchanges.
In detail, Bitcoin’s 30-day net exchange flow has been rising since July 2020, as noted in the color-coded chart below, with blue and red indicating extreme outflow and inflow, respectively.
Ecoinometrics noted that the amount of Bitcoin currently leaving exchanges is higher than it was in the previous four-year halving cycles.
Meanwhile, traders see the reduction in Bitcoin’s supply on exchanges, with increasing “hodling” activity, as further catalysts for a liquidity crisis and more price upside.
Related: Bitcoin ‘heavy breakout’ fractal suggests BTC price can hit $250K–$350K in 2021
“Back then there were indeed periods of net outflows but in terms of size they look much less dramatic than what we have right now,” Ecoinometrics highlighted, adding:
“That’s another sign that we are on course for a liquidity crisis which could drive Bitcoin’s value much higher than it is right now.”
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Bitcoin Conference Pitch Day Builds The Next Generation Of BTC Startups
Bitcoin 2021’s Pitch Day gave Bitcoin startups an unprecedented chance to drive their projects forward.
Bitcoin 2021’s Pitch Day was a platform for the next generation of Bitcoin startups to put its ideas and products to the test in a competitive format.
Taking place during Whale Day on the grounds in “The Deep,” the Pitch Day competition featured companies ranging from a weather-betting website to a derivatives exchange, pitching their ideas to a panel of venture capitalists representing some of the most active investors in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Each of the participating projects made its case to secure investment from the panel, with the optimism that their startups could, alongside Bitcoin, change the world and launch them to whale status themselves.
The 12 startups were chosen from a pool of over 140 applications from all over the world. Divided evenly into two divisions, “hyperbitconization” and “infrastructure,” each company had ten minutes to present their pitch and take questions from the panel. Following the conclusion of each segment, the panel of judges deliberated before deciding on first- and second-place winners. The two winners from each segment were presented with a trophy, as well as full tuition to attend “Draper University,” a 16-week entrepreneurship program started by venture capitalist and Pitch Day judge Tim Draper.
The first segment featured the companies Citizens of Bitcoin, 5 Day Forecast, Satoshi’s Games, DIBA Global Inc., Bitmatrix and Shock Network Inc. While the missions of each company varied, they were all united under the umbrella of advancing hyperbitcoinization. The panel of judges featured Draper (founder and managing partner of Draper Associates), Oleg Mikhalsky (partner at Fulgur Ventures), David Roebuck (venture principal at Wave Financial) and Paul Veradittakit (partner at Pantera Capital).
The judges came away with plenty of good things to say about Pitch Day 2021. Veradittakit said, “The startups at the pitch day competition were impressive and focused on some innovative use cases. Overall, the experience of judging with the other judges and interacting with the startups was very fruitful.”
The winner of the hyperbitconization competition was Satoshi’s Games, a gaming platform built on the Lightning Network. 5 Day Forecast, a betting website that allows users to place bets on the weather using Bitcoin, took second place. While Citizens of Bitcoin did not place in the top two of its respective competition, its founder and CEO, Rogelio Caceres, had positive things to say about the experience as well.
“We thoroughly enjoyed the Bitcoin 2021 conference and highly recommend it,” he said. “Both the experience of competing as a finalist at Pitch Day, as the only Miami-based startup selected, as well as sponsoring a booth, exceeded our expectations. In fact, we have generated nearly $500,000 in revenues from new clients we met at the conference to date.”
The second segment featured the companies D2X Group, Moon, Liquid Ventures, 24 Exchange Bermuda Ltd., Sazmining and Bitex. Each of these companies is focused on enhancing the existing infrastructure of Bitcoin. They were judged by Matt Roszak (founding partner at Tally Capital), Kevin O’Leary (chairman of O’Shares Investment Advisors and judge of ABC’s “Shark Tank”), Christopher Calicott (managing director at Trammell Venture Partners), David Lee (head of Samsung Next and EVP of Samsung) and Tyler Evans (cofounder of BTC Inc. and managing partner at UTXO Management). 24 Exchange, a bitcoin trading platform, won first place in the infrastructure competition. Moon, a virtual payment card that allows users to earn, save and spend bitcoin, finished as the runner up.
“The pitch competition was especially valuable to present our business to investors that deploy capital into Bitcoin startups,” Moon CEO and founder Ken Kruger said. “We secured funding from investors at the pitch competition.”
If you are interested in being considered for a slot on stage, we encourage you to apply here for Pitch Day at Bitcoin 2022! Parameters for participants are open and flexible, so feel free to apply whether you are an individual with an idea, a company raising a series B round or somewhere in between.
Bitcoin Magazine is operated by BTC Inc, which also hosts the Bitcoin Conference series.
Bitcoin ‘heavy breakout’ fractal suggests BTC price can hit $250-$350K in 2021
Bitcoin (BTC) has the potential to push its prices to between $250,000 and $350,000 by the end of 2021, a long-standing fractal suggests.
First spotted by pseudonymous analyst Bit Harington, the bullish setup drew its inspirations from Bitcoin’s secular bull runs every time after halvings when the miner block reward gets cut in half. Analysts perceive the halving as a bullish event, which reduced the supply of newly mined BTC.
Harington reminded that Bitcoin’s prices surged by more than 600% after the first two halving events in 2012 and 2016 when measured from a so-called resistance/support (R/S) line, as shown in the chart below.
The line represented a barrier during the period of price uptrend. Traders tested it for a breakout multiple times before successfully breaching it to log a new record high. When prices started correcting, they eventually bottomed out near the same line.
In 2020-2021, Bitcoin underwent a similar upside trajectory, bouncing from below $4,000 to rising to above $60,000. Again, Harington highlighted the $60,000-level as the same R/S line that kept trades from logging a clear bullish breakout.
BTW: From this perspective there’s a “Bitcoin double top” after every halving. It wasn’t really obvious after halving 2 (like the obvious double top after halving 1), but you can still see this double top in various indicators. Weekly RSI for example:https://t.co/lopvWPqd3v
— Bit Harington (@bitharington) September 19, 2021
The analyst hinted that Bitcoin would break above it to soar towards a new record price level.
Cointelegraph Markets analyst Michaël van de Poppe reacted to Harington’s fractal theory, adding that it would lead the Bitcoin prices to the $250,000-$350,000 range.
He noted, however, that the massive run-up could also prompt a brutal correction that can push Bitcoin prices back toward $65,000, right near the Harington’s S/R level of $60,000.
This makes a ton of sense and in line with my ideas too.
Somewhere 2017 we are. Heavy breakout to come at a later stage to ~$250-350K and then landing on $65K in the bear market for #Bitcoin. https://t.co/4XX7aDp2rs
— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) September 19, 2021
Do fundamentals agree?
Bitcoin skyrocketed after crashing below $4,000 in March 2020 primarily due to the global central banks’ loose monetary policies to curb the economic aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. The cryptocurrency closed the year at around $30,000, as retail and institutional investors woke up to its safe-haven narrative against a falling U.S. dollar and rising inflation fears.
So far in 2021, the price of Bitcoin topped around $65,000 before correcting lower below $50,000. At its year-to-date (YTD) low, the pair traded for $29,301 on the Coinbase exchange. Its losses were led by a sudden ban on all crypto activities in China (including mining) and Elon Musk’s alarming tweets over Bitcoin’s booming carbon footprints.
BTC balance on exchanges drops to fresh lows
The cryptocurrency held prices above $30,000 as its reserves across exchanges dropped significantly.
Blockchain data analytics service CryptoQuant reported that Bitcoin’s balances across the crypto trading platforms slipped to around 2.37 million BTC last week, its lowest in more than a year.
A decrease in Bitcoin reserves represents traders’ intentions to hold the cryptocurrency instead of trading it for altcoins and fiat currencies.
Bitcoin hashrate has nearly recovered
Bitcoin’s recovery from below $30,000 to almost $50,000 also coincided with its V-shaped hashrate recovery.
Related: BTC price falls back to $47K as weekly close neatly tracks Bitcoin futures gap
For the uninitiated, the Bitcoin network’s computation power plunged to 84.79 million terahashes per second (TH/s) in early July from 180.66 million TH/s in late May. The drop surfaced as many miners responded to China’s crypto crackdown by either shutting down their facilities or moving their operations abroad.
But the network recovered more than half of its lost hashrate, hitting 136.92 million TH/s on Sept. 18, indicating that China’s direct ban did not have a prolonged effect on Bitcoin’s mining sector.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Bollinger Bands creator warns Bitcoin bulls as BTC price struggles below $50K
Bitcoin (BTC) prices have recovered by more than 60% to $47,486, after bottoming out below $30,000 on July 20, triggering anticipations of an extended bull market toward $100,000. But to John Bollinger, a celebrated contributor to the field of financial analysis, investors should refrain from buying the benchmark cryptocurrency at current prices.
Bollinger advised in his Tuesday tweet that investors could secure their Bitcoin profits or build a hedge position elsewhere to offset potential BTC/USD decline risks. Explaining his cautious outlook, Bollinger noted that “aggressive traders can think about putting out some shorts,” which, in turn, could push the Bitcoin prices lower in the coming sessions.
“Hodlers can look [to] add at lower levels if we see them. No confirmation yet, just be on the alert.”
Bitcoin could hit $41,000?
The statements appeared as Bitcoin underwent a correction after reclaiming its three-month high of $50,505. In doing so, the cryptocurrency fell up to 6.70% to $47,122, signaling a strong bearish presence around the $50,000 price area.
Scott Melker, the author of the Wolf Den Newsletter, expected Bitcoin to fall towards the $41,000-$42,000 range in the coming sessions. Nevertheless, the independent market analyst asserted that such a pullback would still be healthy—a “heavy load up zone” that would lead to a price rebound.
Another pseudonymous market analyst CryptoHamster shared a similar bearish outlook but based his analogy on a technical pattern called Ascending Channel. The pseudonymous analyst illustrated Bitcoin testing the Channel’s support trendline for a potential breakout move to the downside. It tweeted:
“Bitcoin could have one more bounce here (chart below) or there will be a breakout to the downside. And it will define the mid-term trend to a great extend.”
The Ascending Channel short target in the CryptoHamster’s BTC/USD chart was below $41,000.
Bollinger’s technical indicator, dubbed Bollinger Bands, spotted Bitcoin holding above the 20-day simple moving average as interim support at around $46,750. Nonetheless, a break below the so-called signal line risked sending BTC/USD toward the lower Bollinger band around $42,670, as shown in the chart below.
The $100K Bitcoin predictions
Bitcoin’s correction from $50,000 does not necessarily mean the beginning of a bear market, especially as analysts continue to project six-figure valuations for the cryptocurrency.
For instance, Lyn Alden, the founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, told Business Insider that Bitcoin has an incredible potential to reach $100,000 by next year, stating that the cryptocurrency is “still in kind of the early-to-mid stage of its long-term trajectory.”
Related: Options traders aim for $100K Bitcoin by the end of 2021, is there a chance?
Bloomberg Intelligence’s senior commodity strategy Mike McGlone also envisioned the same price target for Bitcoin in hopes that it would attract capital from the gold market. Iqbal Gandham, vice president of transactions at Ledger, also said Bitcoin would surge to $100,000 in the second half of 2021. He told MarketWatch:
“With all the movement, whether it be noise around ETFs or countries adopting BTC as legal tender, one could easily assume that this is where BTC would rest by the end of the year.”
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Bitcoin Artwork Will Make Your Life Beautiful
Rule VIII: Add Bitcoin Artwork to Your Life to Make It As Beautiful As Possible
A REIMAGINATION OF “BEYOND ORDER” BY JORDAN PETERSON THROUGH THE LENS OF BITCOIN.
Preface
This writing mirrors the exact chronological structure of Beyond Order offering reflection through a Bitcoin lens. This is chapter 8 of 12. If you read the book it adds a second dimension. All quotes credited to Jordan Peterson. All reflections inspired by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Cleaning Your Room Is Not Enough
“Making something beautiful is difficult, but it is amazingly worthwhile. If you learn to make something in your life truly beautiful — even one thing — then you have established a relationship with beauty… That is an invitation to the divine.”
@FractalEncrypt
Bitcoin has inspired artistry including memes, GIFs, paintings, sculptures, music, literature, and decorated hardware wallets. There’s no denying the artistic expression runs deep.
“If it is a genuine artistic production, it will invade your life and change it.”
Bitcoin is the original, the immaculate conception. It is a genuine artistic production that is invading our lives and changing them. There are many pretenders attempting to siphon your money and attention. Be careful what you allow into your life, enabling the wrong product to invade your life will change it for the worse. The consequences of incorrectly allocating your time and money are dire. Simply knowing Bitcoin exists teaches you, whether you choose it or not. Time is the ultimate scoreboard, and Bitcoin is time. That is the power of a genuine artistic production.
“A real piece of art is a window into the transcendent, and you need that in your life… Unless you can make a connection to the transcendent, you will not have the strength to prevail when the challenges of life become daunting.”
Bitcoin’s design is striking: elegant, simple, powerful. Transcendent works speak to something deeper within us. Real art leaves us speechless because the way it makes us feel we lack the words to fully convey to do it justice. These qualities make it timeless. And Bitcoin will be a conversation piece for programmers, poets, journalists, and artists alike for decades to come. Once you think you’ve figured it all out a series of new paths take you deeper. We start by answering “what is Bitcoin,” mature into explaining “how Bitcoin works,” then graduate into “why Bitcoin matters.”
And the deeper your connection to this transcendent force, the more likely you will have the strength to prevail when the market correction becomes daunting. HODLers don’t flinch in an -80% fiat correction because our belief is anchored by the knowledge that there is no better alternative. Glassnode’s HODL Waves show the conviction of long term HODLers who set the new floor with each halving cycle.
Image source
Memory And Vision
“Perception has been replaced for me with functional, pragmatic memory. This has made me more efficient, in some ways, but the cost is an impoverished experience of the richness of the world.”
Society teaches us to trust data over our own feelings. So we lose our instincts as we age. We focus on what’s factual rather than subjective. Life narrows human effort into streamlined operations seeking maximum speed and lowest cost. But in this race to the bottom, we end up with an impoverished experience of the richness of the world. The Bitcoin community shares core beliefs yet expresses them on a spectrum of form factors adding dimension and richness.
“… left as we are with the pale reflection of our surroundings that our increasingly restricted mature perceptions deliver to us.”
Older generations are calloused in their ways, often perceiving Bitcoin with apprehension when in reality they are holding a dollar-based bag that is a pale reflection of its former glory.
“… museums, those asylums for genius: we isolate everything that is great — everything that could in principle be distributed throughout the world. Why cannot every small town have a shrine devoted to one great piece of art, instead of having every piece collected in a manner impossible for anyone ever to take in at once?”
Each of us is unique but society makes sense of us not as individuals but as a collection that fulfills various roles. Rather than try to cage all the talent in a centralized place wouldn’t it make more sense to decentralize talent and enable each to shine uniquely in its own space? Bitcoin allows people to contribute without geographical concerns. Developers, nodes, coin holders, and miners all operate throughout the world. And each Bitcoiner has a unique perspective to bring to the table. If money is sane it may just give us all a chance to breathe and remember what it is to be uniquely human rather than cogs in a centralized machine.
I deeply believe each Bitcoin pleb has one great piece of artwork within themselves if only they had the courage to take it upon themselves to let out. Your “you-ness” is not meant to be bottled up and sat in a cubicle from 9 to 5. It’s no wonder we feel like sardines in the office, each person elbowing their way up the ladder often forced to step on others in said mission. The future that Bitcoin offers is unclear but there are pathways ahead that will reward individuals for being individuals. That is something the internet era has shown is possible. But the vast majority of people make their living by being disgruntled middlemen when in reality we all wish to devote our lives to one great act unique to ourselves that nourishes our soul. I may be swinging for the fences but I believe Bitcoin opens that door for many millions of people.
The Land You Know, The Land You Do Not Know, And The Land You Cannot Even Imagine
“Artists are the people who stand on the frontier of the transformation of the unknown into knowledge. They make their voluntary foray out into the unknown, and they take a piece of it and transform it into an image.”
By this definition all Bitcoiners are artists. We are frontiersmen venturing boldly into the unknown in an attempt to define the future. This is why we are often misunderstood by normies. The general population sees crazy people taking outsized risk beyond society’s comfort zone. If you are a Bitcoiner who feels misunderstood you are not alone.
“That edge, where artists are always transforming chaos into order, can be a very rough and dangerous place. Living there, an artist constantly risks falling fully into the chaos, instead of transforming it.”
No-coiners are rightfully fearful of Bitcoin. It represents precisely a rough and dangerous frontier land. It has been said that when explorers of old reached the edge of their known map the common saying was “here be dragons.” Bitcoiners stand at the edge of monetary chaos in an attempt to transform it into something better.
“That is the role of the artist, occupying the vanguard… They are the initial civilizing agents… The artists do not understand full well what they are doing. They cannot, if they are doing something genuinely new.”
Bitcoiners may seem like cowboys to the rest of the world but we recognize ourselves as the initial civilizing agents. We are all attempting to reconcile the old with the new but we do not understand full well what we are doing because this is uncharted territory for every living human. No one in our lifetime has witnessed the reinvention of money.
“Artists must be contending with something they do not understand or they are not artists.”
Everyone daring enough to create on Bitcoin is contending with something we understand but don’t understand and that takes artistry.
“They are likely, when genuine, to be idiosyncratically and peculiarly obsessed by their intuition — possessed by it, willing to pursue it even in the face of opposition and the overwhelming likelihood of rejection, criticism, and practical and financial failure. When they are successful they make the world more understandable.”
This is what motivates Bitcoiners in a nutshell.
One Room
“I can tell you that the art shines through the propaganda as the years pass.”
How many Bitcoin copycats have come and gone? Many replicated Bitcoin’s codebase promising something better but few have stood the test of time. And after 12 years there is still only one Bitcoin. And the “next Bitcoin” will be Bitcoin.
“We need the new, merely to maintain our position.”
Step back and consider the bigger picture. Fragmented groups in America are at one another’s throats. China is at full force breathing down our neck. It is not enough to simply stand in place or redistribute wealth without. We need to revitalize our society to maintain our position. It isn’t enough to just tax money from one group and give it to another. We need a new mindset, and Bitcoin is capable of delivering.
Not Decoration
“… when impressionists first displayed their paintings… the pieces were met with laughter and contempt. The idea of perceiving that way… was so radical that it caused people to have emotional fits.”
When you have something that makes people wildly emotional (see Peter Schiff, Nouriel Roubini, Steve Hanke, etc.), that’s when you know it’s a work of genius. It’s ahead of the critics’ time. In the words of Victor Hugo, “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.” And Bitcoin’s time is now. Silicon Valley has learned that special products originated from highly divided opinions. Ideas that are too agreeable are usually too obvious. The genius ideas are often met with deeply polarizing responses.
“Artists teach people to see. It is very hard to perceive the world, and we are so fortunate to have geniuses to teach us how to do it., to reconnect us with what we have lost, and to enlighten us to the world.”
We lost sound money. Lost in the annals of history are all the known civilizations whose money was debased leading to societal collapse. Americans have strong amnesia so we must be reminded. Bitcoiners are teaching people to remember what took thousands of years for humans to figure out — that sound money is intertwined with societal prosperity.
“Beauty leads you back to what you have lost… forever immune to cynicism… Beauty… straightens your aim. Beauty reminds you that there is lesser and greater value.”
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Until Bitcoin came around I never thought I’d describe money as beautiful. But how can it be anything but beautiful once you understand the balance between miners, node operators, and developers; the elegance of Bitcoin’s design; the harmony Bitcoin offers humanity. Any one solution with the capacity to benefit multiple wildly complex social issues is a creation of genius. Bitcoin reminds us that there are greater and lesser forms of value. And most importantly, it sets the bar for the greatest value in our species’ history.
Try to teach one no-coiner in your life “Why Bitcoin.”
This is a guest post by Nelson Chen. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
With Bitcoin 2021’s Iconic Graffiti Wall, Muralist Greg Mike Captured The Community
Renowned muralist Greg Mike discussed the inspiration for his iconic graffiti wall at the Bitcoin 2021 event.
If you were one of the thousands of Bitcoiners in attendance at Bitcoin 2021 in Miami, it was hard to miss the giant graffiti mural onsite, featuring a mix of well-known and newly-inspired cartoonish characters adorned with Bitcoin iconography.
Over the course of four days, the mural was painted by American street artist Greg Mike and his Atlanta-based team, which has been creating ambitious blends of classic American cartoons, Mike’s own imaginary characters and cultural symbolism around the world for years. Still, even for such experienced artists, the mega wall (which ran some 100 feet wide and 20 feet tall, by Mike’s estimation) at Bitcoin 2021 was a unique challenge — one that required two scissor lifts, a team of extra help and more than 200 cans of spray paint.
Mike said such an ambitious project would usually take his team a week to complete. They executed the Bitcoin 2021 mural in four days.
But following Mike’s experience completing a similar (though much smaller) mural project for the Bitcoin 2019 conference, it seems that deciding on the blend of imagery and Bitcoin references for the 2021 wall was less of a daunting challenge than the execution.
“[At Bitcoin 2019], I would pop into some of the speaker rooms and just hear some of them speak and that kind of sparked my interest just to dive deeper into the culture and community and learn more about it,” Mike told Bitcoin Magazine. “So, coming into this one, I definitely had some tricks up my sleeves in terms of the visuals to kind of get people excited about it and make pieces.”
The resulting wall featured a colorful, energetic smorgasbord of icons, pulled from Mike’s own psyche as well as the deep channels of Bitcoin’s internet culture. There is Scrooge McDuck holding a physical bitcoin, Lenny from “The Simpsons” with laser eyes and Mike’s Larry Loudmouth with diamond hands. It captured, likely perpetuated, the event’s celebratory festival atmosphere.
Scrooge McDuck, Lenny from “The Simpsons” and Larry Loudmouth all adorned with Bitcoin memes for the mural.
“I have my original characters and then my original characters hang out with all of these iconic characters,” Mike explained. “It’s cool to mix them together and make them hang out together in one big party or event. And that’s kind of what’s on this wall.”
Beyond the incorporation of Bitcoin memes, it’s hard to articulate just how well the mural encompassed the spirit of the event and the ethos of Bitcoin in general. Bitcoin is, after all, ultimately a software project with no inherent visual component. But Bitcoin 2021 was wild and weird; there was no shortage of original characters roaming about; it was loud, colorful and ambitious. Mike’s mural captured this in-person spirit, as art is always uniquely positioned to do, and offers a visual that may not be inherent in Bitcoin, but has certainly sprung from its deepest roots.
“It’s like art is very outside-of-the-box thinking and trying to carve your own path and own lane and do things that are different,” Mike said. “So, I definitely feel like there’s some parallel to explore, you know, if you’re into Bitcoin and that way of thinking.”
Why Ron Paul Is Bullish On Liberty And Bitcoin
The legendary politician, who advocated for many of the underlying principles present in sound money, believes liberty is inherent to Bitcoin.
One of the most exciting moments for me personally at Bitcoin 2021 was getting the chance to interview Dr. Ron Paul. A true pioneer in libertarianism, Dr. Paul is an advocate for so many of the underlying principles present in Bitcoin. It was truly an honor and privilege to get a quick word from him on his thoughts about Bitcoin. Be sure to watch his Bitcoin 2021 speech on YouTube after reading our interview below.
Casey Carrillo: First of all, thank you so much for joining us here, Dr. Ron Paul. We really appreciate you coming. So many of us see you as a hero of ours, so thank you again.
To start off, how were you first introduced to Bitcoin?
Dr. Ron Paul: It was probably indirectly by just reading about it. When it first started, I didn’t hear much about it because I wasn’t into that. Probably just the business stations, magazines, and the freedom movement, they started thinking about it. I think I associate it more with libertarianism, and I don’t think anyone resents me associating Bitcoin with libertarianism, and I made that big point that the answers will come from dealing with the issue of liberty. Liberty is the answer, then all the quirks that have to be worked out, with government and everything else, are much easier when we live in a free society where people are allowed to do what they want.
Carrillo: Absolutely, I think there is a connection between liberty and Bitcoin that can’t be severed. Going off of that, what do you think the impact of permissionless sound money will be on the world in the long term?
Paul: I don’t really know; I know there are a lot of opinions, but I think only time will tell. There are some unpredictables. One would be the government; one would be “what’s the world like?” I think things are going to get worse socially, but how do we react? And if it works that Bitcoin can operate in a parallel manner under the right circumstances, that could be very beneficial. If there was a society that had more respect for liberty, it makes it a lot easier. Then you don’t have to dodge people that are trying to close you down because they don’t want competition. And libertarians should be quite willing to have competition.
Carrillo: How do you think the U.S. could foster better innovation towards Bitcoin, specifically U.S. policymakers?
Paul: While there are others who would know more about that, my idea is very simple; the least amount of government is the best. Just get them out of the way. There will always be risk in things that we do. In new things there will be risk, but the person that’s doing it that benefit, they should also have the same risk That’s why you don’t wanna say, “Let’s have a government commission to set up some rules on how we’re going to allow Bitcoin to expand themselves and where they go.” I don’t like that. I want people who know about the issue to not have any interference from the government.
Carrillo: What makes you most hopeful about what you’re seeing in the Bitcoin community going forward?
Paul: I think the whole idea. I noticed it a lot at this meeting [Bitcoin 2021]. Sometimes if I go to a meeting, I might not throw the word libertarian around and liberty because you know they might be more conservative, or independent, or democrats, but I’m always trying to introduce it. Here, what I found is that in this audience [Bitcoiners] I don’t think I offended anybody by putting the two terms together; Bitcoin as a libertarian idea. Because I think that’s where I heard about it first when libertarians got into computers before. I think the association is very clear that it is perfectly okay. And I think I even ribbed the mayor [Francis Suarez] about it, and he took it very well.
And I don’t know if I spent enough time on it, is that when people do things, you don’t endorse what they’re doing. Like I did with the marijuana. I want it to be legal, but I don’t do it, or I don’t care about that. It’s because people have the right to do it, and they also have the right to deal with the consequences.
Carrillo: I absolutely agree, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this interview with me Dr. Paul, and I appreciate you being here at Bitcoin 2021 with us. Thanks again.
Watch Dr. Ron Paul’s talk at Bitcoin 2021 on YouTube.
Bitcoin 2021 attendees’ positive COVID-19 tests are going viral
Some of the attendees who attended the Bitcoin 2021 event in Miami last weekend have tested positive for Covid-19 after returning home from the conference, leading to a wave of negative media coverage and social media speculation it could turn into a “super spreader event.”
Bloomberg called Miami Bitcoin a “Covid hot spot” while Gizmodo reported the conference “May be the latest COVID-19 super spreader event.”
Arcane Research CIO, Eric Wall, was among those to contract the virus, tweeting earlier today that he underwent a CT-scan after suffering from a “high fever” and “chest pains,” with medical staff having suspected he may have a blood clot in his lungs. No blood clot was found, with Wall having been discharged from hospital and returned home.
Luke Martin of automated trading software developer, Coinist, also admitted to testing positive for COVID-19.
According to CNBC, at least 12,000 people attended the event — which did not require proof of vaccination or enforce a mask mandate. The event lasted for three days at Miami’s Mana Wynwood convention center, cramming into crowded auditoriums while social distancing was not enforced.
The event was Miami’s first major conference since the beginning of the pandemic. According to a New York Times report lines to enter the building “stretched for more than a mile.”
Miami mayor and Bitcoin proponent, Francis Suarez, spoke at the event, and was introduced on-stage as “probably the most irresponsible politician in all of America,” and “the mayor of the meccas of freedom.”
Here’s some footage of the #Bitcoin Conference.
With an estimated 50,000+ visitors over 2-days, almost no one was seen wearing a mask.
As of now, it’s unknown exactly how many people were exposed. I’ll be sure to post any further updates! pic.twitter.com/QeVj0tJYEZ
— Mr. Whale (@CryptoWhale) June 10, 2021
Social media reports have estimated the number of attendees and positive tests may be higher than mainstream reports. Influencer “Mr. Whale,” told his roughly 235,000 followers that “dozens” of conference-goers have since tested positive, estimating the event could have seen more than 50,000 attendees.
A screenshot of an image retweeted by Bitcoin 2021 organizer Dylan LeClair that scathingly dismissed the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Covid-19 Vaccination Record Card system has circulated on social media.
Our future captains of finance
— Keith Erskine (@kerskine) June 10, 2021
Bitcoin 2021 was not the first crypto conference to host Covid-19 transmissions, with TorusLabs’ co-founder, Zhen Yo Yong, urging attendees of the Ethereum Community Conference in Paris and ETHLondon hackathon in early 2020 to get tested when he was diagnosed with coronavirus after participating in the events.
Dhruv Bansal On Societal Organization Systems And Bitcoin
This interview with Dhruv Bansal was conducted by myself in an effort to obtain valuable insight into a rather visionary Bitcoiners mind, and I believe my mission was accomplished. Bansal’s answers are profound and thought-provoking, giving us a glimpse into his thoughts on Bitcoin at large. Be sure to check out his talk at Bitcoin 2021 here after reading the edited transcript of our interview below.
Casey Carrillo: Hi everyone, I have here Dhruv Bansal, co-founder and CSO at Unchained Capital.
I was lucky enough to have an email Q and A with Mr. Bansal, and we agreed to sit down here at Bitcoin 2021, where I’ve had the pleasure to finally meet him in person. First of all, welcome to Bitcoin 2021, and I hope you are enjoying your time here.
Dhruv Bansal: Thanks Casey, it looks like I’m going to be a little overwhelmed, it looks like a huge conference.
Carrillo: Absolutely. So, jumping right in: in your previous article you mentioned that you’re excited to see the Bitcoin-inspired discoveries other scientists make within their respective fields. What, in your opinion, gives Bitcoin this capacity to inspire different ways of thinking about things?
Bansal: I think anytime humanity discovers a new principle of organization, governance, construction or material science, it affects everything. I think that’s true for ideas of evolution and for ideas of computation. I think we’re seeing that with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is interdisciplinary. One of the things it does is that it distributes decision-making, order matching, reality and truth in a way that we’ve never seen happen before, which gives Bitcoin a lot of its strength and resilience and is what makes it unique. I would love to see scientists and researchers of all stripes apply those kinds of thoughts and methods to other kinds of systems. My talk with Ryan is attempting to apply some of this thinking to things like the internet, other networks and civilization. But I think Bitcoin can go beyond that: it can teach us how to deal with systems that don’t have any definite state in a given moment in time but that eventually become consistent. We know this from databases quite intimately, but to see it not only affect a database in an esoteric programming context but to see normal people talking about notions of forks and eventual consistency is really powerful. I love to see that learning wash over humanity as a whole and allow us to be more informed of the trade-offs and rules of distributed systems.
Carrillo: I find your business, Unchained Capital, extremely interesting. What is your personal interpretation of the macroeconomic conditions surrounding the surge in bitcoins price, and do you believe the conditions we’re in currently are set to continue?
Bansal: That’s an interesting question—and I’m certainly not an economist or anybody you should look to for macroeconomic commentary—but what I’ll mention is that like a lot of Bitcoiners I expected the price to increase in 2021 tremendously. Why? History, stock-to-flow, four-year cycles. It feels a little bit silly to say that just because it happened four years ago it’s going to happen again, but I have admitted to myself that that’s kind of what I believe. And here we are: it’s happening again and it’s been happening. Now, truthfully, it’s not happening merely because it’s four years from the last time. It’s happening for real reasons. Most people who are buying bitcoin probably don’t care that four years ago was the halvening or that last year we had a halvening. It’s so curious to me, believing that the price would increase, to watch things like the COVID pandemic happen, to watch things like money printing go crazy over the last year, and to watch people pay attention to that and connect it to bitcoin. And lo and behold, the price started to increase. And as much as I expected it would, I was still shocked to understand why it did. Obviously nobody expected the COVID pandemic. There are probably other reasons too, which if I was more of a macroeconomic thinker I would be able to draw out. To me that’s been the most interesting part of this whole process, knowing that it would happen but not really knowing why and then seeing the why and understanding thesense behind why it happened.
Carrillo: Going off that, I suppose it may be believed that these conditions drive the price in the short term. Are you of the personal belief that in the long term these things are irrelevant to bitcoin and we’re experiencing a sort of water flowing down a mountain, a sort of inevitability?
Bansal: I think that’s a nice way to put it. I mean yes, this is something Ryan and I were talking about: Bitcoin has already won. And I’m not saying there’s no risk or no concern and we should all just be chill and not try to work hard to make this asset class better, richer, stronger and more robust. We should be doing those things. But essentially I believe it’s already won. That, in your words, it’s kind of like we’re just going to be going downhill in the next fifty years as Bitcoin takes over every aspect of society and affects it in some meaningful way. Nevertheless, even water going downhill has to contend with things in its way like obstacles, boulders, whatever you like. And there are a lot of those. So I think when we see the price retrace by 50%, that affects my business very strongly, it affects so many people here [Bitcoin 2021], and so when I see that happen I kinda think “well, we’re still just rolling down hill, aren’t we?” Like, we’ll be right back at $60,000 in a couple months, we’ll maybe cross $100,000 after that. I still tend to be extremely optimistic. Of course I could be wrong and it won’t work out this way, but hopefully it continues to do, on the largest scale, the thing I think it’s going to do, which is increase in price tremendously over the next few decades.
Carrillo: Having conducted this interview at Bitcoin 2021, I want to ask you what you’re most looking forward to at the conference.
Bansal: Oh that’s an easy answer. There are so many people here that part of me is worried that, while walking through the conference and all the events, there’s gonna be so much noise and chaos. But the excitement is that there are so many people here, so many of my friends and colleagues, people I’ve been reading the last few years and admiring from a distance. And I’m getting to meet them, have drinks, go on walks with them. You know, the chance to really dig in and have that kind of conversation you can only have in person is what’s so great about conferences in general, and in particular that’s what’s going to be so great about this one for me.
I really appreciate Mr. Bansal taking the time to answer my questions at Bitcoin 2021. Thanks for reading, and be sure to check out his talk at the conference on YouTube.