An interesting read. Filled in some holes in my understanding of things. Ether has allegedly addressed some of the mining concerns mentioned with Etherium 2.0 coming this summer.
It would seem that front running would be dependent on a high rate of volatility. Stable or very slowly changing prices would take away the incentive, no ?
Kurt...we agree on something!
The current market cap is $768B for Bitcoin. I think the entire market will be almost worthless at some point, but that market cap makes it the 7th largest "organization" on the planet...just ahead of Berkshire Hathaway. Nobody is trading enough Bitcoin to front-run. They may gain some tiny advantage, but by the time the trade is complete, they could have lost more than any gain.
Do you know what front running is? Let's say you're a hedge fund and you put out a big order. Let's say: You buy 100.000 Adidas shares. Such a purchase increases the demand and more demand means that the price goes up. So if the broker, through whom your hedge fund places the order, sees the order, he can profit from it by buying Adidas shares cheaply, then making your big transaction, and then selling the Adidas shares again. This is, of course, illegal insider trading. And there are authorities that are supposed to uncover and punish something like that. Because of this kind of criminal activity, financial markets are regulated. You can probably guess where it's going now. With cryptocurrencies, there is no regulator. Can you do front running there? Well, sure you can! Bitcoin is not as vulnerable, but Ethereum with its smart contracts is tailor-made to make that possible! You can also generalize the whole thing and think about the concept of "Miner Extractable Value", i.e. value that a miner can extract by manipulating the fresh block. Oh, and once you have a model like that, you can look through the transactions to see if you can find any clues. You won't guess what you'll find! Read for yourself. Hey, all this cryptocurrency stuff, it looks like a super-solid investment! Makes you want to invest your money!1!!!
An interesting read. Filled in some holes in my understanding of things. Ether has allegedly addressed some of the mining concerns mentioned with Etherium 2.0 coming this summer.
It would seem that front running would be dependent on a high rate of volatility. Stable or very slowly changing prices would take away the incentive, no ?
Let's say you're a hedge fund and you put out a big order. Let's say: You buy 100.000 Adidas shares. Such a purchase increases the demand and more demand means that the price goes up.
So if the broker, through whom your hedge fund places the order, sees the order, he can profit from it by buying Adidas shares cheaply, then making your big transaction, and then selling the Adidas shares again.
This is, of course, illegal insider trading. And there are authorities that are supposed to uncover and punish something like that. Because of this kind of criminal activity, financial markets are regulated.
You can probably guess where it's going now.
With cryptocurrencies, there is no regulator. Can you do front running there? Well, sure you can! Bitcoin is not as vulnerable, but Ethereum with its smart contracts is tailor-made to make that possible!
You can also generalize the whole thing and think about the concept of "Miner Extractable Value", i.e. value that a miner can extract by manipulating the fresh block.
Oh, and once you have a model like that, you can look through the transactions to see if you can find any clues. You won't guess what you'll find!
Read for yourself.
Hey, all this cryptocurrency stuff, it looks like a super-solid investment! Makes you want to invest your money!1!!!
âPeople who play blackjack, according to research, are more likely to push you off a cliff while hiking and set your car on fire. Hereâs our graphâ¦â
"Our results do not support the idea that the high valuation of cryptocurrencies is based on the demand from illegal transactions. Instead, they suggest that the majority of Bitcoin transactions is linked to speculation"
"...the only reason for the massive carbon footprint of Proof-of-Work and the complexity and risk of the alternatives is to maintain the illusion of decentralization."
Not sure about that. One thing that gives me pause is the idea that someone in India can do the same job, via the internet, that someone in the US can do. Why are they paid so very differently (that is, the person in India gets paid â of the US person and still lives like a king - but not the US person)?
The difference in value of goods and services is a result of local factors that begin to disappear as the world gets smaller.
That's exactly why it doesn't work.
When US unemployment is 20% (because all of the work is done in India at half price), and the US can't pay its debts because tax revenues are down 15%, there is nothing policymakers can do to maintain competitiveness. Sure, you can attempt to get Americans to take a pay cut, but then they can't pay their bills which are already fixed (mortgage, car loans, student debt). If you want to see how this works, look up Ireland and more dramatically Greece 10 or 12 years ago.
What's interesting about your comment is that currency is not a barrier to offshoring. Yeah, remember that word. The world has been getting smaller for a few decades. Ten years ago corporate America was Satan for moving US jobs offshore. Now you can do it on your own. Need a Java developer or Tax Lawyer, they're just a click away?
When people don't come to an office, why pay them US salaries and benefits? As this happens, a single currency would cause catastrophic problems for declining economies.
They already have. Paper bills, coins, and paper checks and other things you can hold in your hand are anachronisms, having been replaced long ago by digital worth. You can see its digital worth on the little signs outside a bank telling you what relative values each digital currency (dollar, yen, peso) have to each other.
The real future is the stabilization of the relative values so that they donât fluctuate. Once thatâs agreed upon (if ever) then a single currency is possible. This was certainly the goal of the Euro, although it mightâve been too soon for that when it was conceived. Now, with all currency being digital, itâs much more possible.
Right.... Central Banks will create something very similar to the crypto currencies we currently observe. And yes, that is happening as we speak.
Central bank backing should stabilize the value of any official purely digital currency.
The real future is the stabilization of the relative values so that they donât fluctuate. Once thatâs agreed upon (if ever) then a single currency is possible. This was certainly the goal of the Euro, although it mightâve been too soon for that when it was conceived. Now, with all currency being digital, itâs much more possible.
The inability for policymakers to control economic factors (interest rates), regional social norms (homeownership vs. rental), and economic factors (growth, tourism) make a single currency impossible. It's not paper vs. digital, it's output, innovation, efficiency, and workforce dynamics that are not controllable on a global scale. To maintain a healthy competitive balance, the value of goods and services can't be fixed.
Central banks will create/adopt some kind of digital currency.
They already have. Paper bills, coins, and paper checks and other things you can hold in your hand are anachronisms, having been replaced long ago by digital worth. You can see its digital worth on the little signs outside a bank telling you what relative values each digital currency (dollar, yen, peso) have to each other.
The real future is the stabilization of the relative values so that they donât fluctuate. Once thatâs agreed upon (if ever) then a single currency is possible. This was certainly the goal of the Euro, although it mightâve been too soon for that when it was conceived. Now, with all currency being digital, itâs much more possible.
Central banks will create/adopt some kind of digital currency. Then central governments will either ban privately sponsored cryptocurrencies or make life increasingly difficult for them.
Cryptocurrency can facilitate transactions for violent non-state actors, domestic and international. Police agencies and national security organizations will be really keen on either learning how to observe these transactions, thus rendering them pointless, or stamping them out.
Yes, I find macro economics fascinating. Along with logistics. I was going to go for a Masters in Supply Chain Management at CWRU after I got my BBA in 2007. In 2008 the starting pay for grads was an easy $100 k. Found out I needed 2 years of Calculus and I didn't know if I had it in me to write another paper. I did a 40 pager for my BBA. Then I got sick and that ship sailed for good.
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I do very little in precious metals. Too moody for my tastes. Ever notice that the really successful Gold Bug speculators take profits and then sit in cash? Sometimes sitting in cash for rather long periods of time? Contradictions much? How about that discourse that the world was ending?
Rare metals is a tough trade. No understanding? Stay away. Say no to envy. Say no to regret.
Foreign exchange is super speculative. Currencies can trade well above or well below purchasing power parity rates of exchange for years and years at a time. The currency speculators who I have met and appear to do well are usually trading on technicals (TA) and the trading horizon is very, very short. Days or hours. One of Canada's best known international finance economists trades currencies using TA (technical analysis) suggesting that mean reversion and fundamental analysis are not all that useful.
Too bad you missed the Masters in Supply Chain Management. Those are skills that will remain in high demand going forward despite all the current bleating by economic nationalists and those calling for a more muscular industrial policy.
Calculus is extremely useful. I did well in high school calculus and algebra but in hindsight wished that the teachers had invited in folks with a background in either academia, financial sector, engineering, etc., to explain just how incredibly useful these math skills are in real life.
One of the things I have learned over the years is that one can make really good coin in boring equity plays. Blue-chip, dividend-paying stocks. REITs. Probably MLPs too (don't have those in Canada). A good understanding of macroeconomics helps. Some understanding of market structure and the regulatory environment also helps.
Covered-call enhanced ETFs may not appreciate much but can crank out high yields year in, year out (e.g., 5% to 12%). A little understanding of the history of the ETF and the sector(s) it focuses on are helpful. Even if the capital value trends down over time, the cash distributions in a tax-protected account can more than make up for the capital loss. The managers do all the heavy lifting in the options market; the investor sits back and collects cash distributions — monthly.
Just a reminder about what, where and why I am. The platform is PayPal and it is 100% funded by me. No margins, puts, holds, stops or anything. Full 24 / 7 manual control.
..............
Good. If the trade goes south, you will not have to move into and live in an RV.
Recall one of the most useful concepts from freemarket economics: sunk costs and the related sunk cost fallacy.
In terms of investment, that means that the current price of an asset is what matters. What you paid for it does not or, better put, SHOULD not matter. The current price and the future prospects of the asset are what matter.
If it makes you feel any better, lots of graduate school-trained economists and economists with a financial specialization have trouble with this one. These are smart, numerate folks and they are still capable of making major behavioural mistakes. Which suggests why in part economists, financial experts and related love behavioural economics and finance.
Yeah. I cut my teeth on precious metals. Problem with it mostly (besides volatility) is you had you buy minimum amounts and had to sell off within the minimums in blocks of. Then holding costs and interest with margins and sometimes commissions. Then you had to wait for your local market to open. Often times big moves happened elsewhere before the US markets opened and you were screwed. But that works both ways and then they are also beholden to currency exchange rates which drives prices up in down all by themselves in your local currency. I was going to do FOREX before I tried metals, but that required programs, stable internet service and also blocks.
I'm trying to apply the lessons learned there here with crypto. Metals cycled notably silver. I learned too late. It used to be very range bound up until a few years ago and you could predict the moves. Platinum and Palladium were most affected by projected car sales. One was more favored by diesel and the other gasoline. I forget which. Palladium was the biggest mover last I looked which hasn't been in a couple of years. Gold, meh now.
All that stuff was too white knuckle for me looking back and why I was glad to get out altogether. This is pretty simple and laid back and starting to come into focus. ETH is passing through major resistance points and within about $500 of its all time high and pushing hard at $4000 right now. It was above that in mid September and then fell back rather sharply. It has come back now a month later. Once it cracks that it becomes decision time. What I'm thinking is that it will be up for a day or two and then drop back sharply to around $3000 ish. So if a profit is taken at 4 there is enough change to go back in at 3 and continue a cycle. Hard to tell. But that is what I'm thinking now.
Yes, I find macro economics fascinating. Along with logistics. I was going to go for a Masters in Supply Chain Management at CWRU after I got my BBA in 2007. In 2008 the starting pay for grads was an easy $100 k. Found out I needed 2 years of Calculus and I didn't know if I had it in me to write another paper. I did a 40 pager for my BBA. Then I got sick and that ship sailed for good.
But this crypto stuff is beginning to make sense to me. I get the forks, with Bitcoin Cash being a fork off of BTC. Etherium just had a major fork over the summer but it was internalized rather than spun off which improves the product and makes it more efficient. Sometime shortly after all the fuss about energy consumption hit the fan in the Spring somewhere I saw where crypto miners were buying up decommissioned power plants and reopening them to serve their own needs and provide their own stable power off the grid. And make their energy costs much less and more predictable.
Hey steely, you still in ? You're not camped out in my backyard. We are back close to the all time high. It's pretty tempting to take some profit, but with my luck it will really get going.
I'm not in BTC, but in ETH. Finally back up to the level where it's minimally profitable ($3,898/coin). Bought in at $3375/coin and should've bought more when it dropped to â of that, but I'd made a deal with myself that I'd buy once and hodl. Which means the question is Is this a currency that can be used for day to day transactions, like people wish, or is it just a Beanie Baby where you buy, hold, and hope to be wealthy from the investment one day? It's looking for all the world that crypto is the latter, because of its wild price unpredictability. It makes it completely useless as a currency.
Yeah, I knew that you had ETH. I thought you bought in back when we were talking about it. You would definitely be up 100% if you did. Yeah, missed the dip, too. Was still watching and very nervous, I'll admit.
You should be safe for the long term @ $3375. I don't think that ETH is suited to be a currency at this point. Both BTC and ETH are more suited for stores of wealth, especially ETH. The others can definitely be currencies. Over the long term they have settled down to be pretty flat. Acceptance and fees become what matters. Way too many. What I have already read is that many people in families for example are using certain coins to move money globally. Find one that works in everybody's country and move money with as few international conversion fees as possible. Kind of like a friend and family cell phone plan. Get a wallet, fill it, move it to another wallet and take it out. Fluctuation is not much of a problem when you're in and right back out. This might stick a fork in Western Union. Otherwise for shopping, unless it's a large purchase, they are pretty much worthless as long as they are volatile.
With PayPal, it is set up so that they will allow you to spend any crypto that you hold for payment of purchases run through PayPal. You cannot receive crypto from others like a wallet though. If someone sends you something that was their own crypto, PayPal converts it to your local currency when you get it. That sucks.
Just a reminder about what, where and why I am. The platform is PayPal and it is 100% funded by me. No margins, puts, holds, stops or anything. Full 24 / 7 manual control.
..............
Good. If the trade goes south, you will not have to move into and live in an RV.
Recall one of the most useful concepts from freemarket economics: sunk costs and the related sunk cost fallacy.
In terms of investment, that means that the current price of an asset is what matters. What you paid for it does not or, better put, SHOULD not matter. The current price and the future prospects of the asset are what matter.
If it makes you feel any better, lots of graduate school-trained economists and economists with a financial specialization have trouble with this one. These are smart, numerate folks and they are still capable of making major behavioural mistakes. Which suggests why in part economists, financial experts and related love behavioural economics and finance.
