Crypto Salon Ep1: The Metric that Moved Kiyoung to Blockchain
At the Crypto Salon we discuss various topics ranging from crypto investments, everything-fi, DAOs, NFT markets all the way to your kids and their wife. With insiders from each field, we sit down to share insight into important questions our crypto scene is yet to answer.
Refer to our youtube channel for the original video!
Well without further ado, welcome to the first of our Crypto Salon episodes with…
Ki Young 👏
(Twitter:@ki_young_ju)
A crypto analyst masquerading as a crypto whale, and irrefutably one of the most influential crypto investment voices in South Korea. CEO of CryptoQuant.com, with a following of 300k+ on twitter, his two mighty fingers move the hearts of thousands of mom-and-pop investors nationwide. In this episode we discuss Kiyoung’s journey into crypto, his opinion on Bitcoin investments, and some other cookies we don’t want to spoil.
Speakers: Youbin, Yumi (Nonce Classic), Joon (Founder of mvnt.)
Guest: Kiyoung Ju
Location: @nonce_community
Starting with Bitcoin
Nonce Classic: Kiyoung welcome! Long time no see — could you share how did you first come to nonce?
Kiyoung: Actually Youbin (CEO of nc) first invited me to a study here and I have since developed my interest, now I am an analyst. He was the first one to introduce me to on-chain data, it was through him I learnt about MVRV ratios.
Nonce Classic: (Youbin) I remember during our study we looked at a few metrics of reading on-chain data suggested by Willy Woo who was, and is a renowned analyst of on-chain metrics. Out of the few that we looked at, the one I had the most assurance in was MVRV, and I think Kiyoung was inspired by that too, so I’m proud to say I introduced it to him.
Kiyoung: To provide context, when the MVRV ratio goes below one, it’s a sign that you should sell your house, or even go into debt to buy. I think it was 2020 March, and Bitcoin’s MVRV actually fell below one. We bought them together for a record-low price. Youbin are you still holding those coins?
Nonce Classic: (Youbin) Yes I am and it did make quite a profit!
Kiyoung: I remember Bitcoin was worth around $3.5k to $4k then so now it has jumped about 20x.
Nonce Classic: (Yumi) But do you know what’s such a joke? I actually personally invested in Bitcoin with them but it was the early days of crypto investment and the price started to jump like double. You know my heart started beating so fast..that I shouldn’t have let them go… but I did. 😂 It happens. There is a sad side to this history.
Questions from the Comments Section
Nonce Classic: (Joon) From the comments we found an interesting question. How much money have you made? 🤭
Kiyoung: Actually I’m not a person that made a lot of returns from investing in altcoins but more so from margin trading. I fell in love with on-chain metrics and ever since I’ve been investing based on those metrics. In September 2020 I uploaded a tweet saying I’m going to go long until Bitcoin rises 10x. And it did then doubled so I went short, then long again... I made a lot of money from margin trading.
Nonce Classic: (Joon) So how much? Around 20x?
Kiyoung: Hmm… I wouldn’t say 20x, a little less? I’ll stop here.
Nonce Classic: (Joon) Fair enough. We have another question from the comments. Does Kiyoung, the one and only, lick the lid of his yogurt cup? 🤣
Kiyoung: Yes I do actually!
Nonce Classic: (Youbin) Since when did this become the measure of wealth 😅
Ethereum vs Solana
Kiyoung: I met some top traders in June/July at the Miami conference. They told me they personally thought Solana was going to make it big. This was when Solana was around $70. Even the VCs that were investing in Ethereum, told me they personally believed Solana was going to go big. I contemplated buying Solana but I said I’m not going to invest without accurate data.
Nonce Classic: What a plot twist😂
Kiyoung: Now I look back and think why did I do that… 😄 But since then Solana released a huge supply, and at one point the price fell to $1 so — you know.
Bitcoin Predictions and Important Metrics
Kiyoung: I think a lot of people are interested in bitcoin price predictions. We’re all interested in how long the bear market will last, how far the price will fall etc. But in my opinion, if we want to see Bitcoin prices climb upward, we need to consider
- the narrative,
- market macro, and
- on-chain metrics
at the moment, all three don’t look very good. What I mean is in the current situation where Bitcoin ETFs are yet to be approved, and I saw in an article today that international transactions on metamask are going to be blocked in Korea. This is going to damage the NFT and Defi market, inevitably reducing the size of the market. With the Fed printing more money, asset prices are going to rise and they say many skill-related markets are going to suffer because of omicron, but honestly, there have been so many variations of the virus I don’t believe that's the issue, and interest rates are going to rise. Then ultimately there will come a time when all asset prices and company value including the stock market are going to fall.
Nonce Classic: (Yumi) I agree, the market has had unbelievable growth these last 1–2years so in the near future, we can expect to see some adjustment and leveling in the market.
Kiyoung: More importantly, when you read on-chain data you can see when the whales sold their bitcoin. When they choose not to hold their coins but put them up for exchange it means they want to sell them right? In March 2021, there were a lot of deposits made onto exchanges. The amount is less important, the key lies in whether it was the whales who deposited and I found it was whales who were selling. For example, one of the important metrics we consider is the proportion of whales, hence how much of the total percentage the top 10 transactions take up, and it is currently 95% (21/12/09) at an hourly time frame.
Nonce Classic: (Youbin) We really need to think about this because, for example, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have started to sell their stocks. These are a few of the smartest people in the world. So if you’re selling while they’re holding a long position then you’re doing the opposite of what they’re doing. This means you’re confident you’re smarter than them or they are wrong. What Kiyoung is saying is similar. Whales in the context of cryptocurrency are the smartest and most influential but if they’re selling a large proportion it’s worth noticing.
Nonce Classic: (Yumi) I agree, Kiyoung tweeted a chart on the 23rd of November, and a few days later the prices really did drop. I agree that this metric is meaningful. What are the metrics called?
Kiyoung: I look at “exchange real ratio” and “all exchanges inform me”. This looks at the average rate of deposits to exchanges. People usually deposit around 0.7 BTC but here the average rate rose to about 4 BTC. With that, we can see that whales were depositing quite a lot compared to the average amount.
Nonce Classic: Thank you so much for coming in today Ki-young, we’ll wrap up our first epiosode of Crypto Salon here— see you next time!
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