1/27 ANDY HOFFMAN (CryptoGoldCentral.com): BRhodium’s Early Experience Demonstrating The Negative Impact of Weak Exchanges…And Providing An Incredible Opportunity

Over the past 30 years, I’ve witnessed many bear markets, each different in its own way. Some, like the 2008 financial crisis, were devastating but short – in that case, because Central banks, for all intents and purposes, commandeered the stock and bond markets. Then there’s mining stocks, whose crash commenced in 2007 and for the most part, continued until this day - particularly in the junior sector I spent many years in. As for Precious Metals, the decline from $1,920 and $50 gold and silver in 2011 to $1,300 and $15 today, respectively, is in my view, symptomatic of an asset class with 5,000 years of history being slowly polluted by manipulation, paper dilution, and obsolescence.

And then there’s crypto, an unprecedented asset class with unprecedented volatility, uncertainty, and diversity. Thousands of coins exist – few of which, have any future. In my view, it’s extremely likely the asset class will grow, and thrive, over time – but highly uncertain as to how, and when, it will turn around; and when it does, which coins will be the ultimate winners.

I have no apologies for anything I’ve said or done in the space. Like Precious Metals, I entered Bitcoin early on, and dedicated 100% of my time, investments, and energy to it. I have been more transparent than nearly anyone in the financial community, and extremely vocal in my views; and no one can say otherwise, as the proof is in the thousands of articles, podcasts, and tweets I’ve posted since early 2016.

This year, the sector has relentlessly declined – sometimes rapidly, sometimes in water-torture like fashion. Undoubtedly, the violent breach of the Hoffman Line – catalyzed by, of all things, the fork of already disgraced BCash by an equally disgraced core developer, with a coin whose “use case” has not a chance of succeeding (unless its goal was to attack Bitcoin) was a major psychological event. Since then, the ugliness has taken on epic proportions – with Bitcoin now down 85%, and the average altcoin more than 90%.

When Bitcoin broke the Hoffman Line, I very publicly sold it. The principal reason was financial self-preservation, but unquestionably it dealt a blow to my overall view of crypto’s near-term role in the financial world. Three months later, the best way I can put my view is, that unquestionably crypto will survive and thrive – but that perhaps, it was a bit before its time. That said, “its time” could be accelerated forward by a variety of catalysts – as in crypto, nothing surprises me anymore.

Regarding BRhodium, the free airdrop from January 2018 - whose developers spent a year building organically - I have made it well-known that I believe it to be one of the few altcoins with a well-defined, defensible long-term use case. It has been built the right way, by some of the smartest, most hard-working, and forward-thinking people I have come across – and it has been a privilege walking hand-in-hand through the journey from airdrop to development, MainNet, OTC trading, and exchange listing…and shortly, source code release (in March) and other key milestones.

From the time MainNet launched in late October, the price steadily, organically rose from .0005 BTC to a high of nearly .008 in late December, as perhaps 200,000 BTR (now XRC) traded, in a very healthy OTC market. To that end, the price remained consistently around .005 - .006 until the day it listed on Sistemkoin January 17th - when it suddenly collapsed to .002 on essentially no volume. Perhaps the catalyst was Sistemkoin, that very day, taking 24 hours to update its BTC wallets – causing BTC deposits and withdrawals to be suspended, as investors feared the worst. Or perhaps, the minor code upgrade XRC devs needed to execute, to remove the trade size limits it had conservatively put in to protect investors – which needed to be eliminated to account for the fact that batched exchange transfers cause ALL transactions to be “large” ones. Not that the code change was material, of course; however, the fact that Sistemkoin didn’t have enough tech support to implement it on a weekend (causing XRC deposits and withdrawals to be closed for nearly 24 hours) decidedly didn’t help to assuage fears, of an exchange that a day earlier closed its BTC wallets for 24 hours.

Next, four days later, the p2pb2b exchange listed BRhodium. Price crept back up to roughly .004, but volume remained very low. Since exchange listing, OTC trading volumes have dramatically declined – as potential investors, both buyer and seller, started staring at Sistemkoin and p2pb2b trading screens looking for guidance, despite extremely high spreads and low trading volumes. Moreover, it didn’t take long to realize p2pb2b egregiously generates fake volume – as by my estimate, roughly 99% of all trades are wash trades by bots, at decimal points below the prevailing offer. So, despite a thriving XRC community, featuring increasingly strong hash rate and network strength, a trading vacuum suddenly appeared out of nowhere; clearly, the result of the cumulatively negative impact of these two exchanges.

Yesterday morning, a modest-sized sell order at .003, carelessly sent to p2pb2b despite the essentially volume-less trading environment, catalyzed the price to start to eroding, despite essentially nothing trading. Late in the afternoon – on a Saturday, with overall crypto liquidity extremely low – the handful of extremely small XRC bids on Sistemkoin, p2pb2p, and Bisq were serially hit, resulting in the price falling below .001 BTC, despite nothing materially occurring in XRC’s investment or mining community. In other words, three months of slow, steady, high-volume price gains gone in mere hours, on incredibly low volume for no fundamental reason.

So far, OTC trading has yet to rebound – as it’s Sunday, on a day when yet again, crypto is struggling to tread water. However, it won’t be long, in my view, before large buyers start aggressively bidding for a coin that has so much promise, at prices barely above those seen at MainNet launch three months ago. To that end, it won’t be long before the mining pool, already operating near peak levels, is significantly upgraded again – with the source code released, coinmarketcap.com listing achieved, and additional, HIGH QUALITY exchanges solicited for listing…among other milestones on BRhodium’s current roadmap plan.

So, the morals of the story are 1) low quality exchange listings in a bear market environment can be extremely detrimental to coin sentiment; and 2) when a price event like this occurs, in a coin with so much promise; particularly, when not accompanied by volume; the opportunity to profit from it is in my opinion, very high.

If you have any questions about BRhodium, or XRC OTC trading, please email me at [email protected], or DM/PM me on Twitter or Discord.