The Bearch Boys
Market Report: 18th Jan. 2019 — Subscribe to our newsletter.
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CRYPTO NOTE
The daily view from our desk
Would you pay a social media team to describe you online as a ‘pit bull’ or ‘sex symbol’? No? Michael Cohen (Trump’s ex-lawyer) would. Perhaps he also helped commission this sculpture in Australia? Meanwhile in Ireland, a desperate man took self-medication a step in a very wrong direction.
42 IS THE ANSWER
To the ultimate question of crypto journalism, the universe, and everything
Another Friday, another crypto carousel potentially ahead. Today the markets will discover the next tentative deadline for Ethereum’s Constantinople upgrade and, hopefully, volatility can kick in. Over the past 24 hours prices barely moved again, with less than 1% average variation. However, don’t fall for articles like this, claiming bitcoin volatility “is down 98% year-on-year” — the writer is confusing absolutes with relatives.
Looking at the original cryptoasset’s 30-day volatility indicator — which measures intraday price swings in relative terms — we can see it indeed hit a two-year low last November 11th of 1.02%. By December, it had quickly rose into interesting levels — maxing up at 6% — and is now declining again into uninteresting territory. So, year-on-year, it is just down from 7% to 4% — which is a 42% decline, not a 98% one, CoinDesk!
THE BEARCH BOYS
If everybody had an ocean across the U. S. A. then everybody’d be surfin’
Anyway, nitpicking aside, this low volatility is the new bearish normal. Once it returns — and assuming bitcoin’s movements will continue to be correlated with the rest of the market — then we’ll know someone out there is likely enjoying it. And bragging about it. We’ll know someone will listen. And will envision the possibility of catching all those daily waves. It’s that greed that will power the next bull market. Oh, if everybody had an ocean!
WHAT YOU CAN’T MISS TODAY
Don’t leave for the weekend what you should read today
▪ Not all is lost in the land of trading. The usual Dentacoin pump and dump aside, some legitimate alts have been moving wildly. Learn why Augur’s REP was such case.
▪ Not all is lost in the land of mining. It seems Grin’s price stabilised around $6 as trading volumes increase. Still, some poor soul bought some for more than $250.
▪ Not all is lost in the land of ether. Josh Stark, Evan Van Ness, and Daniel Zakrisson synthetised ”the year in Ethereum”. Review what happened and the road ahead.
▪ Not all is lost in the land of decentralisation. Steven Zheng explains how Handshake is trying to “replace some deeply centralized layers of the internet’s DNS hierarchy”.
▪ Not all is lost in the land of trustless narratives. A new paper by Harvard and Oxford academics analyses how Bitcoin’s “techno-utopian discourse” fared during crisis.
▪ Not all is lost in the land of Decentralised Autonomous Organisations. Token Economy’s Stefano Bernardi argues “why 2019 will be the year of the DAO”. Must read!
QUOTE OF THE DAY
Some say less is more. But not in this case.
“More people will own #cryptoassets than stocks.”
By Chris Burniske
