Bitcoins - about to hit $5,000 per coin today!

[Griffith]

I wonder who here BTFD?

(As usual after any big short term dip, I accumulated just a little more - got them at around 63.5k - not a perfectly timed bottom, but all good when you know in the long term supply is fixed and demand is growing).

Also bought a tiny bit of SOL and FIL.

Since January 2022, Solana has seen around half a dozen significant outages and 15 partial or major outage days.

[gib]

Agree Griffith - SOL has lots of problems.

I bought purely because I believe it will be a popular alt over the next few years, not because of any really underlying long term technology value.

My vast vast majority of holding is BTC.

[French]

Solana will replace Ethereum which will gradually decline.
The Solana mainnet is in beta mode and has shown its enormous resilience by addressing unknown problems in record time compared to the gigantic volumes to be processed. In addition, FireDancer will bring the final touches to its security and the network will switch to production definitively.
Ethereum died the day it abandoned proof of work. now it is an extremely expensive limited blockchain which will die slowly cluttered by multiple layer 2s which are only patches on an aging network.

[obsidian]

Solana will replace Ethereum which will gradually decline.
The Solana mainnet is in beta mode and has shown its enormous resilience by addressing unknown problems in record time compared to the gigantic volumes to be processed. In addition, FireDancer will bring the final touches to its security and the network will switch to production definitively.
Ethereum died the day it abandoned proof of work. now it is an extremely expensive limited blockchain which will die slowly cluttered by multiple layer 2s which are only patches on an aging network.

I love the Ethereum FUD. Please bring more. Be cautious when everyone shills a certain token. The less Ethereum is in the news the more it means you are still early. Remember Kennedy's shoeshine boy.

On a serious note, I have no doubt Solana will eventually fix their transaction issues. It remains to be seen though if the one chain for everything approach will work out. Currently it seems it doesn't because of all the failed transactions.

https://solanabeach.io/transactions

Solana will also have to address the inflation of the token. It's pretty high. Transactions are low because the chain subsidizes the stakers and giving them yield from the inflated supply. Ethereum's tokenomics is better right now than almost any blockchain. Binance BNB also has a good tokenomics, and Bitcoin obviously.

Ethereum's L2 is working out very well currently. See how Coinbase's Base has performed. It's an Ethereum L2. There are actually more L2s in the pipeline lol! And Bitcoin developers are also working on Bitcoin L2s. See where it is going? Solana might eventually have to do the same. So that L2 argument of yours will not hold up down the road I think.

https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/innovation/coinbases-base-network-is-shaping-the-future-of-decentralized-finance

The New Frontier: Coinbase’s Base Network is Shaping the Future of Decentralized Finance

Coinbase's new Base network, built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, addresses the shortcomings of the popular Layer 1 ecosystems, Ethereum and Solana.

The move to Proof of Stake was a great move. It means Ethereum uses less energy and it actually makes it more expensive to attack the network compared to Bitcoin. Bitcoin mining will centralize more as less BTC is released to miners. So what happens if a rogue actor launches a few rockets at a couple of mining facilities? Sure, someone could do it to a staking facility also. But if it is more decentralized and compact it might be harder to do.

We'll see how it turns out in the long run.

[obsidian]

https://www.thestreet.com/crypto/innovation/coinbases-base-network-is-shaping-the-future-of-decentralized-finance

Ethereum and Solana Networks: Pros and Cons

The Ethereum network is widely regarded as the most robust in crypto, backed by a strong community of developers. It is known for its reliability and security, with high performance where transactions seldom fail. However, its significant drawback is the high transaction fees during periods of peak demand. For instance, fees escalated to several hundred USD per transaction during the market peak in 2021.

In contrast, the Solana network is more accessible for retail users due to its minimal network fees (mere pennies per transaction). However, it sometimes experiences slower or failed transactions when under high demand.

^^^^^^^
Regarding the Ethereum high fees, that's actually a plus if you want token deflation. Ethereum's deflation has taken a hit since the recent Dencun upgrade will lower fees. Extremely low fees also bring spam and congestion. I wish email was not so cheap - it would lead to less spam if spammers had to pay for each email they send.

[Mayday]

Agree Griffith - SOL has lots of problems.

I bought purely because I believe it will be a popular alt over the next few years, not because of any really underlying long term technology value.

My vast vast majority of holding is BTC.

You have the same behaviour as everybody else 😀 We all moved out the risk curve. You now recommend and buy alts (regardless it’s 2 it’s still a move away from your BTC only stance). All the BTC maxis from 2020-21 have also bought alts.

Those of us in alts in 2020-21 have moved into shitcoins, memes. It’s a dirty, dirty place out here man lol. A Total scam.

I expect around 500k shitcoins will be available in 2025 and is why I believe this is how the shitcoin space dies. It dilutes faster than funds coming in. Already seen it happening, so many rugpulls and failed launches.

If I am right about the US repegging the USD in 2026, perhaps this is the narrative to trigger a huge bullrun in 2025? I am open to ideas.

On a side note Grayscale has changed the ETF fees, therefore the punishment of Barry has now stopped. It cost him 50% of his holdings to keep out of jail 😬  I never know the story but 76k and I assume some dickhead ruins it for us and yes indeed, Barry fucked all of us 😂

[obsidian]

You have the same behaviour as everybody else 😀 We all moved out the risk curve. You now recommend and buy alts (regardless it’s 2 it’s still a move away from your BTC only stance). All the BTC maxis from 2020-21 have also bought alts.

Those of us in alts in 2020-21 have moved into shitcoins, memes. It’s a dirty, dirty place out here man lol. A Total scam.

I expect around 500k shitcoins will be available in 2025 and is why I believe this is how the shitcoin space dies. It dilutes faster than funds coming in. Already seen it happening, so many rugpulls and failed launches.

If I am right about the US repegging the USD in 2026, perhaps this is the narrative to trigger a huge bullrun in 2025? I am open to ideas.

On a side note Grayscale has changed the ETF fees, therefore the punishment of Barry has now stopped. It cost him 50% of his holdings to keep out of jail 😬  I never know the story but 76k and I assume some dickhead ruins it for us and yes indeed, Barry fucked all of us 😂

In 2021 I got into Dogecoin around 2 cents. It went to 73 cents and ten crashed down. Currently it is at 16 cent. That's still 8x the 2021 low end price. The price bar has been lifted. It could potentially go back to $1. That's a 6x move. Totally possible. It's been a top 10 crypto for years now.

So that's one shitcoin that will probably not go away. Dogecoin is also over 10 years old now, older than Ethereum.

I do agree with you, there's just too many tokens. One benefit of a Meme is it can't be classified a security. You're buying a meme because it is "cute", like a pokemon card.

https://blackmountainig.com/why-memecoins-arent-securities/

[obsidian]

Bitboy made an interesting comment about Cardano and diamond hands.

The problem for Cardano is the older investors are holding their tokens with diamond hands. Whales need to be able to get into the token for the price to go up. So some of those diamond hands need to sell. At some point Saylor would have to stop buying BTC also. The more his entities acquire the more centralization fears will be raised. Imagine if he owned 100% of Bitcoin - lol! It would be worthless. There needs to be a balance between whales and smaller portfolio holders.

[loco]

[SouJerz]

This

[SouJerz]

https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/chinese-fx-outflows-soar-priming-next-bitcoin-surge

[gib]

https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/chinese-fx-outflows-soar-priming-next-bitcoin-surge

Yes, we will over time see massive amounts of Chinese currency flowing into BTC. There are various restrictions on capital outflows in China, but also very easy to circumvent - Chinese are innovative when it comes to loopholes with regard to putting their money into assets beyond the reach of the CCP.

[gib]

Bitboy made an interesting comment about Cardano and diamond hands.

The problem for Cardano is the older investors are holding their tokens with diamond hands. Whales need to be able to get into the token for the price to go up. So some of those diamond hands need to sell. At some point Saylor would have to stop buying BTC also. The more his entities acquire the more centralization fears will be raised. Imagine if he owned 100% of Bitcoin - lol! It would be worthless. There needs to be a balance between whales and smaller portfolio holders.

Not really - it will become increasingly difficult for MSTR or Blackrock to acquire more than 1% of all BTC supply. Price will simply rise too much, meaning any additional amount they seek to acquire would be increasingly expensive, and hence less of an overall % increase. I don't think MSTR would ever get much beyond 1%. Perhaps 1.2% of all supply at some time in our lives. As for Blackrock, I can't see them ever accumulating more than 2.5% of global supply. And remember, in both cases, whilst these are single entities, they are essentially holding on behalf of hundreds of thousands of individual shareholders.

Hence of the often stated statistic that the average person is only likely to only ever own 7% more of what whatever BTC they now currently own, at any time in the future. Or in other words, (unless you are really proactive), you have likely accumulated 93% of all the BTC you will ever own. (Same principle applies on a larger scale also).

[gib]

You have the same behaviour as everybody else 😀 We all moved out the risk curve. You now recommend and buy alts (regardless it’s 2 it’s still a move away from your BTC only stance). All the BTC maxis from 2020-21 have also bought alts.

Those of us in alts in 2020-21 have moved into shitcoins, memes. It’s a dirty, dirty place out here man lol. A Total scam.

I expect around 500k shitcoins will be available in 2025 and is why I believe this is how the shitcoin space dies. It dilutes faster than funds coming in. Already seen it happening, so many rugpulls and failed launches.

If I am right about the US repegging the USD in 2026, perhaps this is the narrative to trigger a huge bullrun in 2025? I am open to ideas.

On a side note Grayscale has changed the ETF fees, therefore the punishment of Barry has now stopped. It cost him 50% of his holdings to keep out of jail 😬  I never know the story but 76k and I assume some dickhead ruins it for us and yes indeed, Barry fucked all of us 😂

Not really. First of all, nothing I buy is an "alt" to Bitcoin. Sol, for example, I see as an alt to ETH. And FIL I see as an alt to the cloud storage services provided by Amazon, MSFT, and Google. And Uniswap I se as a alt to some types of financial and trading services. But none do I buy as an alt to BTC.

Second, the amount of non-BTC crypto is tiny. Less than 2.55% of my BTC holdings.

Also, these investments I have, are all with a long term hodl in mind (as I believe in the underlying long term upside). I don't buy in the hope of making a quick alt-gain to use to ultimately accumulate more BTC.

So I don't see any of what I do as being inconsistent with the BTC maxi philosophy, just like me being a BTC maxi does no stop me buying gold, property, or stocks.

Your point about shitcoins is the reason why I never partake. When you pay money something with no fundamental value and with infinite supply, you will be allowing yourself to get scammed by an inevitable the infinite dilution of shitcoinery, all eventually falling to almost zero. Every time, lessons are learned. And everytime, new shitcoiners (and sometimes prior ones who have not learned their lesson), return. If we all focussed our monetary energy solely into BTC, we would all collectively be so much better off. Over time, this is what will happen to a much greater extent - but it sometimes takes people being burned directly before they learn their lesson.

[gib]

The alts I sold I put towards my objectives, landscaping to finish on my property (my place will be magazine worthy in 5yrs once the gardens matures). I bought 7 guitars, all nice limited editions and then Paid for lessons in a different style to the Metallica I usually play. Quality of life stuff, be happy and proud with what I have achieved 😀

My big holdings are still in play. They are my bet on September 2025 (for now).

Nice one - always good to put any stored value you have into things you truely want. Congrats!

[SouJerz]

https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/hong-kong-bitcoin-and-ether-etfs-officially-approved-start-trading-april-30

Honk kong ethereum and Bitcoin etf approved.

When is the deadline for the USA Ethereum ETF?

[gib]

https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/hong-kong-bitcoin-and-ether-etfs-officially-approved-start-trading-april-30

Honk kong ethereum and Bitcoin etf approved.

When is the deadline for the USA Ethereum ETF?

The HK one is interesting. They will allow "in kind" purchases for BTC (ie you can send Sats in return for the ETF, and, I think, you can also receive cashouts in Sats).

Time will tell how much demand there is for these ETFs, but the demand is likely to be way higher for BTC than ETH (at least in the foreseeable future).

Regarding the US, the first possible approval date (which many Eth'ers are keenly hoping on), is 23 May 2024. Lets see. (Peresonally, I think its very unlikely we will see an approval of an ETH ETF on this day - indeed, I think it might be delayed at least a until after the next US election).

[SouJerz]

I agree I think the ethereum ETF doesn’t get approved this time around but eventually it will.

[SouJerz]

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-sec-expected-deny-spot-ether-etfs-next-month-industry-sources-say-2024-04-25/

Not looking good

[gib]

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-sec-expected-deny-spot-ether-etfs-next-month-industry-sources-say-2024-04-25/

Not looking good

This is what I told ETH'ers all along who naively believed that 23 May it was going to happen.

I would be quite happy if it was accepted that there is no "alt" to BTC, but that there are an infinite number of alternatives to Eth, and they further, that Eth (obviously) is an illegally issued security, which in turn would be quite a perversion of core SEC principles and logic to allow to be listed in an ETF security (just as it would be unfathomable for XRP to be allowed to used in this way).

I expect this will all be delayed to next election. Greyscale has incentive to push for an ETH ETF. The other providers I think don't really care too much, as I think they know both volumes will be much lower, and that its ultimately dilutive to BTC.

Hong Kong's ETH ETF starts trading next week (along with their BTC ETFs). That may provide some insight to demand.

[obsidian]

This is what I told ETH'ers all along who naively believed that 23 May it was going to happen.

I would be quite happy if it was accepted that there is no "alt" to BTC, but that there are an infinite number of alternatives to Eth, and they further, that Eth (obviously) is an illegally issued security, which in turn would be quite a perversion of core SEC principles and logic to allow to be listed in an ETF security (just as it would be unfathomable for XRP to be allowed to used in this way).

I expect this will all be delayed to next election. Greyscale has incentive to push for an ETH ETF. The other providers I think don't really care too much, as I think they know both volumes will be much lower, and that its ultimately dilutive to BTC.

Hong Kong's ETH ETF starts trading next week (along with their BTC ETFs). That may provide some insight to demand.

ETF BTC inflows have slowed down, even with Blackrock's fund. They want additional funds to flow in via the ETH ETF. Meanwhile the Asians can snap up ETH while it is still extremely undervalued relative to BTC. The SEC delaying the ETF will just mean US investors will lose the opportunity to get in at a lower floor. The rest of the world is not going to wait for them to get their shit straight.

If it wasn't for the Signing of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 you would not even be using this language. Security means alarm systems, antivirus, etc. Fuck this other meaning brought in by old farts that never even saw a computer in their whole life. That shit is not applicable at all to cryptocurrencies.

I can use all your arguments against you. Bitcoin was pre-mined by Satoshi because he was the only one dominating the hashrate and hence he could mine over a million BTC in record time. That's 4.76% of the total BTC supply. Meanwhile the ETH foundation holds just 0.3% of all ETH in circulation. That's 3x less than Saylor's percentage of BTC and almost 16x less than Satoshi. Talk about being decentralized - WOW! Once the masses find out this secret along with the fact that it gives yield and is sometimes deflationary they should jump on it! LOL - who am I kidding. They will follow the FUD until the narrative changes.

The SEC's job is to protect investors. That's it. ETH is not a security at all. The "profit on the work of others" does not apply to stakers. And I can throw that argument at you and Saylor as well. You're doing nothing to develop Bitcoin, you're not maintaining it, you're not mining it. You expect the price to go up so you can profit (based on the work of others). See, I did it! I summed your shit up perfectly! 

[obsidian]

Justin Sun recently acquired close to $500 million worth of ETH. Interesting move.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/03/14/justin-sun-deposits-480m-of-eth-to-restaking-protocol-etherfi/

Justin Sun Deposits $480M of ETH to Restaking Protocol Ether.Fi
Ether.Fi is nearing $3 billion in total value locked.

The 120,000 ether deposited was acquired in February, when ETH was worth around $2,800.
Ether.Fi is nearing $3 billion in TVL ahead of its governance token release later this month.

[SouJerz]

Justin Sun recently acquired close to $500 million worth of ETH. Interesting move.

https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/03/14/justin-sun-deposits-480m-of-eth-to-restaking-protocol-etherfi/

Justin Sun Deposits $480M of ETH to Restaking Protocol Ether.Fi
Ether.Fi is nearing $3 billion in total value locked.

The 120,000 ether deposited was acquired in February, when ETH was worth around $2,800.
Ether.Fi is nearing $3 billion in TVL ahead of its governance token release later this month.

What percent are you getting on your staked ethereum?

[obsidian]

What percent are you getting on your staked ethereum?

If fluctuates depending on how many people are staking - similar to how the mining difficulty increases or decreases relative to hash rate. When I started staking I was getting over 4%. Now it is apparently around 2.5%.

The thing is the staking yield cannot be too high or else the Ethereum inflation will increase. That is what's happening to Solana. The supply inflates because new Solana is minted to pay stakers.

If there are less stakers the yield percentage can increase without affecting the supply inflation too much

It's a fine balancing act. When the yield drops too low, people might unstake  and then the yield goes up again.

Flexacon mentioned EigenLayer restaking. I'll have to look into that. Looks like I will have to move my ETH to different platforms if I want to take advantage of that. But that could potentially be a way to get more yield on staked ETH. I think there are waiting lines for EigenLayer also.

I thought about solo staking, but it seems to be a real pain in the ass to set up and there are long enter and exit periods apparently.

Ethereum’s Queue for New Validators Is 51 Times Longer Than Its Exit Queue
Almost 8,300 validators each with 32 ETH are currently waiting in line to begin staking, while 161 validators are trying to exit, a sign of continued interest in restaking.

https://www.theblock.co/post/290303/eigenlayer-tvl-15-billion

EigenLayer's TVL crosses $15 billion as restaking protocol expands ecosystem

The total value locked on Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer surpassed $15 billion after the project recently lifted its caps.

The platform allows users to stake native ether and liquid staked ether, which is then restaked to secure other protocols.

The TVL jump came after EigenLayer had its anticipated launch on April 9, allowing actively validated services to come online.

The project added several updates following the launch, most recently lowering the minimum stake for the operators on its data availability layer EigenDA, from 320 ETH to 96 ETH.

[obsidian]

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/25/consensys-ethereum-sec-lawsuit

Consensys files preemptive lawsuit against SEC over Ethereum

Consensys, the Ethereum blockchain company founded by Joe Lubin, sued the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday seeking to head off any coming enforcement action.

Why it matters: One of the biggest Ethereum firms is striking back amid an ongoing campaign by the SEC to classify the world's second largest digital asset a security.

"We are hopeful that the case brings attention to — and ultimately halts — the SEC's reckless approach," Lubin said in a press statement.

Between the lines: The firm is seeking injunctive relief, "preventing the SEC from continuing any investigation or commencing an enforcement action" against it as it relates to the premise that ether transactions are securities transactions, the lawsuit reads.

Consensys has been subject to "coercive investigation" by SEC staff and in 2023 received three subpoenas containing two dozen distinct requests for information, according to the lawsuit.

On April 10, 2024, the SEC staff sent Consensys a Wells Notice for allegedly violating the federal securities laws through its MetaMask Swaps and MetaMask Staking products.

The bottom line: Consensys wants a court to say that ether is not a security, that its MetaMask wallet is not a broker, and that its staking service didn't violate federal securities law.