'Twas the night before Christmas, and try though they may
Not a token was mooning, not even AAVE
Market buys getting sent by the apes without care
In hopes that new all-time highs soon would be there

Our traders were summoned post-haste from their beds
While visions of making bank danced in their heads
SBF in his sweatshirt, and I in my tee
Had just downed something we're gonna label "coffee"
And amongst all the chaos, amongst disarray
Amongst the red numbers borne out of the fray
From all of the carnage arose one big loser
A coin with a regulatory accuser
For days, XRP has been in the gutter
Because of the claims from Jay Clayton the FUDder
U.S. folks had to spew their positions before
The exchanges could manage to shutter the door
Exchanges like Coinbase -- they threw up their hands
What to do when your government comes with the bans?
To delist or restrict? Or just pause for a while?
It was clear they'd react -- that's Coinbase's style
Trading got pretty crazy because no one knew
Would withdrawals make it past the the phase "under review"?
The markets on Coinbase got quite out of line
Sometimes rich, sometimes cheap -- a trader's goldmine
And elsewhere! Premia were just as sky-high
Japanese XRP was percents good to buy
Derivatives markets moved sort of at random
Arbs arise when the products do not move in tandem!
Insane though it was, there was also a trend
Each XRP market tended to descend
To prices lower than we've seen in some time
Since before Thanksgiving and crypto's big climb
Crypto has high leverage! Which many traders love
It gives them positions many times above
Their net worths with which they could easily gain
The crypto exposure they seek to attain
This magnifies winnings, of that there's no doubt
That carries a cost, and that cost gets borne out
When markets decide to move the other way
It magnifies losses traders need to pay
When a coin's cut in half in the course of a week
The outlook for longs can get pretty bleak
At this point I believe that I've set expectations:
XRP got destroyed amongst liquidations
EVERYWHERE traders got too aggressively long
On BitMEX, on Binance, on Huobi -- all wrong
Positions insta-sold into thin walls of bids
Since traders are off spending time with their kids
Orders always dry up when the market's away
And that is especially true Christmas Day
Impact from aggression gets much more intense
Causing MORE liquidations -- and then even more hence

More from Crypto

Michael Pettis @michaelxpettis argues that it is not always obvious who (China or the U.S.) adjusts best to "turbulent changes."
Bitcoin answers that question.
Thread:


World economies currently suffer four major redistribution challenges:
The most important is increasing government stealth use of the monetary system to confiscate assets from productive actors.
/2

That process is exacerbated by "Cantillon Effect" transfers to interest groups close to government ("the entitled class," public sector workers, the medical industrial complex, academia, etc....), which is destroying much of that wealth /3

The shadow nature (see Keynes) of government inflation makes the process unidentifiable, un-addressable and undemocratic.
The biggest victims (America's poorly educated young) are unequipped to counter generational confiscation tactics of today's wily senior beneficiaries. /4

Government control of the numéraire in key economic statistics (GDP, inflation, etc...) makes it impossible for economic actors to measure progress and liabilities. /5

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Oh my Goodness!!!

I might have a panic attack due to excitement!!

Read this thread to the end...I just had an epiphany and my mind is blown. Actually, more than blown. More like OBLITERATED! This is the thing! This is the thing that will blow the entire thing out of the water!


Has this man been concealing his true identity?

Is this man a supposed 'dead' Seal Team Six soldier?

Witness protection to be kept safe until the right moment when all will be revealed?!

Who ELSE is alive that may have faked their death/gone into witness protection?


Were "golden tickets" inside the envelopes??


Are these "golden tickets" going to lead to their ultimate undoing?

Review crumbs on the board re: 'gold'.


#SEALTeam6 Trump re-tweeted this.
So the cryptocurrency industry has basically two products, one which is relatively benign and doesn't have product market fit, and one which is malignant and does. The industry has a weird superposition of understanding this fact and (strategically?) not understanding it.


The benign product is sovereign programmable money, which is historically a niche interest of folks with a relatively clustered set of beliefs about the state, the literary merit of Snow Crash, and the utility of gold to the modern economy.

This product has narrow appeal and, accordingly, is worth about as much as everything else on a 486 sitting in someone's basement is worth.

The other product is investment scams, which have approximately the best product market fit of anything produced by humans. In no age, in no country, in no city, at no level of sophistication do people consistently say "Actually I would prefer not to get money for nothing."

This product needs the exchanges like they need oxygen, because the value of it is directly tied to having payment rails to move real currency into the ecosystem and some jurisdictional and regulatory legerdemain to stay one step ahead of the banhammer.