Reports

Bitcoin Fundamentals Report #187

This week, NY Post says we are psychopaths, lightning integration continues, price analysis and mining news.

This week... NY Post says we are psychopaths, lightning integration continues, price analysis and mining news.

In Case You Missed It...

(Fed Watch) A National Bitcoin Strategy ft. Matthew Pines - FED 88
(Podcast) Bretton Woods 3 is Silly, Here's Why! [Reaction] - E240
(Members) Bretton Woods 3 is Silly (Video) - E240
Macro update coming out later today. Stay tuned!

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Market Commentary

Weekly trend	Testing support
Media sentiment	Negative
Network traffic	Extremely low
Mining industry	Stable and strong
Market cycle timing	Early stage of new bull cycle

Hello Bitcoiners!

Hope you all are well and flourishing. With all the violence and suffering in the world today, I've recently been reflecting on my own life, and how fortunate I am to have been born where I was and to make the decisions I've made. It could have turned out differently.

One reason I write this newsletter and do my podcast is to help as many people as possible make sense of this world and prosper. I hope my news and opinions help you in a little way to stay healthy, wealthy and wise.

Be sure to subscribe and share my newsletters and podcasts to boost quality signal through the noise of the mainstream bitcoin noise.

A New Meme is Born, Bitcoin Psychopaths

This article made quite the splash across bitcoin this week. The idea that bitcoiners are psychopaths is so crazy, it was instantly reappropriated as a positive thing. Just like "bitcoin maximalism" was worn with pride.

Right up front, the study looks at people buying "crypto" and the headline says "Bitcoin". I admit, many crypto people are a bit weird, like Bcash fans, Ripple trolls, and those who constantly promote the latest scam. But Bitcoiners are not those people. Once again, bitcoin is wrongly lumped in with a less savory crowd to discredit it.

Machiavellians – who are good at deception and take a calculated approach to achieving goals – like crypto “primarily because they distrust politicians and government agencies”, Dr. Wang said.

He added: “Many crypto supporters believe governments are corrupt, and crypto avoids government corruption.”

Imagine that, corrupt politicians!! LMAO!! The study authors do know that Congress' approval rating is almost always below 25%, and most people with a brain knows corruption is a bad thing.

Narcissists, on the other hand, are drawn to the technology because they tend to focus on the positive side of life.

The researchers found that narcissists like crypto because of their great faith in the future and confidence that their own lives will improve.

Sounds bad, doesn't it?

Lastly, impulsive psychopaths and sadists like crypto because they are thrill-seekers who fear missing out on the rewards of investing.

“To them, perhaps both the pleasure from seeing another’s pain and the fear of missing out are related to selfishness,” Dr. Wang wrote.

This just makes no sense. "Perhaps"? I thought this was supposed to be a scientific study and now we have total speculation?

I'll make my own speculation in that case, and I'll make more sense. Risk-taking is relative to forward-thinking and entrepreneurship, and many other positive traits. Having faith in your own abilities and seeing the world as it is, are signs of intelligence. Lastly, this particular "subclinical" psychopathy is really unappreciated tough love. Bitcoiners believe the world is dangerously addicted to credit and fiat, and those things are degrading culture, health and prosperity. Bitcoin is the cure.

Bottom line, the study was pseudo-science exposing the pitiful state of academia and media, unable to look into actual societal issues because of the progressive box they are trapped in. Bitcoiners are going to wear the psychopath tag with pride. A meme was born.

Lightning Integration

The advancement of the Lightning Network (LN) is persistent. In the last few weeks, several major exchanges and apps have integrated Lightning Network, like Robinhood, Kraken, and Bitpay. Despite this, not all exchanges are actively pursuing integrating the technology. Three of the largest exchanges in the world, Coinbase, Binance, and FTX are dragging their feet.

Why would they do this? One would think the largest exchanges would have the most incentive to use LN to minimize fees. They also have the most manpower to implement it.

The most likely reason for these exchanges are not getting on board with LN is because it doesn't fit their business models. Coinbase, Binance, and to a lesser extent FTX, make their money by selling scammy altcoins to people. Those altcoins depend on fake bitcoin limitations. Indeed, the entire narrative for the existence of altcoins is that they do something bitcoin cannot.

The most common criticism against bitcoin by altcoiners to this day is that bitcoin is old and slow, and can't to the myriad of things altcoins can do. That is just plainly false.

Bitcoin's technology stack including Lightning and Liquid, which can do everything these altcoins can do, while doing something they can't have a legitimate distributed consensus (be decentralized). The important difference is that bitcoin's technology stack uses a single token, bitcoin. While altcoins want to pump a new token for every use case they can think of, as an excuse to print money.

I say all this to show that altcoins depend on bitcoin being "old and slow", and therefore these exchanges whose business models depend on selling altcoins would undermine their profits if they were to promote bitcoin's true technology.

Another reason they don't add LN is because it makes withdrawals fast and cheap. Bitcoiners are always worried of fractional reserve banking. Applied to this case, that would be exchanges selling more bitcoin than they have on deposit hoping people don't withdrawal. LN makes withdraw fast and easy, not something you'd want if you are using a FRB scheme. Exchanges that do integrate LN are most likely more solvent than those who don't.

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Quick Price Analysis

Weekly price*	$40,290 (-$2,000, -4.7%)
Market cap	$0.766 trillion
Satoshis/$1 USD	2,481
1 finney (1/10,000 btc)	$4.03

Bitcoin Daily Chart

Price is resting on the bottom of an ascending channel that some might see as a long bear flag. There are several reasons I do not agree with that assessment, which I detail below. But before we get too bullish, there are some bearish considerations.

My line in the sand on the down side is $38k. If price dips from here, falling out of the channel and making new lows, the bullish case is crushed and we need to look for places to bounce. It could go much lower at that point, down to $29k even. I think that is highly unlikely though. Here's why...

Hidden Bullish Divergence

A hidden divergence signals trend continuation. It allows you to spot traps in either direction. As you can see in the chart above, there is a higher low in price and a lower low in the RSI. The last major hidden divergence I could find on the daily chart was in September and June 2020, shown below.

This matches with my expectation of the cycles. We are about in the same place, ready to take off on the next rally.

Volume by Price

We are also maintaining the support of the VPVR very nicely. There is a massive amount of support directly under the current price

I wanted to see what the VPVR would look like for the same range as the above chart (volume profile for the last 495 days) but applied to that September 2020 hidden bull div. I shouldn't have been surprised, it was formed at the exact same kind of spot, right above the largest support on VPVR.

Price Conclusion

Overall, I think we are getting closer and closer to the next major rally in bitcoin. Like last week, it is possible to see a wick down to $38k, but it's not very probable. We are sitting right on massive support and fundamentals continue to strengthen globally. In the next week I believe we see a turn around and a turn back toward the top of the channel.

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Mining and Development

Previous difficulty adjustment	-1.2636%
Next estimated adjustment	+2% in ~12 days
Mempool	1 MB
Fees for next block (sats/byte)	$0.06 (1 s/b)
Median fee (finneys)	$0.06 (0.015)

Mining News

A Bitcoin mine in North Dakota running on excess nat gas apparently exploded last week pic.twitter.com/pKj5F5fAD5
— Will Foxley 🧭 (@wsfoxley) April 11, 2022

There was an explosion at a bitcoin mining facility in North Dakota. The operator reported later that they were mostly unaffected by the mishap.

“There was an accident unrelated to us on a location where we operate but we were relatively unaffected,” Crusoe Energy’s CEO and co-founder Chase Lochmiller told CoinDesk.

“Fortunately, nobody was hurt. Our operation was not the cause and was located far enough away from the incident that the damages to Crusoe’s facilities were minimal,” Lochmiller added.

North Dakota is hoping to double the $3B spent in the State for emission cutting bitcoin technology.

(Archived to get around anti-ad blocker)

Georgia is starting to go crazy for bitcoin. I've traveled to some of these rural parts of Georgia, and let me tell you, it's slowly dying. Bitcoin could provide much needed jobs and money for basic services. Whatever the case, miners are being courted heavily by rural Georgia towns.

Rural areas of Georgia and small towns like Adel, Dalton, Fitzgerald and LaFayette lured the first wave of mining companies. In March, an Australian company announced an expansion of its facility in Sandersville, between Macon and Augusta.

An Argentine town struggling to update basic railway services is turning to mining "crypto". They've purchased some graphics cards for ethereum mining and a mining rig for bitcoin. It's a very small start, but we could see this kind of thing spread, as cheap local energy is used to mine bitcoin by city or regional governments for the small income it can provide.

(Archived)

Kazakhstan is taking steps to raise the tax for entities mining cryptocurrency in the country. According to a statement by Minister of National Economy Alibek Kuantyrov, the plan is to calculate the tax based on the market value of the mined cryptocurrency.

This is similar to an income tax scheme present in the US, but don't know about writing down expenses and so forth. In any case, the regulatory environment for bitcoin mining in Kazakhstan continues to be risky.

Difficulty and Hash Rate

Another very quiet week for hash rate and difficulty. This is about the most steady period I can remember for bitcoin hash rate. Difficulty dropped by a small 1.2% yesterday.