Bitcoin rises amidst the madness.
and…Dogecoin.
I’ll do my best to try to keep it to Bitcoin and the broader crypto market but it’s tough… there’s so much overlap in what’s going on in legacy markets. There is an all out war on Wall Street: Reddit vs. hedge funds; Robinhood vs. Reddit. While the situation escalated, Bitcoiners across the globe sat on the sidelines salivating over the thought of massive inflows into BTC following the response to retail inflicting maximum pain on the Wall Street elites.
I woke up yesterday at 4am Cali time feeling groggy as hell but with the clarity to buy me some Dogecoin. I just knew that it was going to get memed to the moon after the Robinhood debacle from the day before. I fired up my laptop to make the trade and was blocked for being in the States… then I got busy and subsequently missed the trade — first world problems.
Yeah, Dogecoin… the meme coin whose own founder has openly admitted that he created it as a joke did 4x yesterday. Crowd mentality fuelled by a splash of Elon and the fact that Doge is also on Robinhood = path of least resistance and all the motivation for the r/WallStreetBets army.
What we saw at the desk
A client of ours said the word “weekyear” the other day and I absolutely loved it. That’s what these past 4 days were — a weekyear.
The weekyear started off pretty rough for Bitcoin as it slid from ~$34k on Monday, bounced around ~$32k and found a bottom just below $30k on Wednesday. Like clockwork our clients bought the dip as we saw heavy volume on the buy side.
And yes, we sold a ton of Dodgecoin yesterday. More Doge then I sold back in the epic run of 2017 — a lot more. Most of our clients got in early and sold at a healthy profit before moving back into BTC (mostly). A daring accumulation strategy but the momentum trades are definitely hot right now. Let’s hope that the Stocktwits (formerly, r/WallStreetBets) community has the same plans!
Amidst the momentum (*cough* degen *cough*) trades this weekyear, we were able to help another company facilitate a large BTC purchase for their treasury. Here’s a clip from ARK’s Cathie Wood the other day outlining that corporations are substituting Bitcoin for cash. She says that if companies in the S&P 500 were to put 1% of their cash into Bitcoin it would double Bitcoin’s value.
BTC led the way this week followed by ETH, DOGE, SUSHI, YFI, and other smaller exotic trades, in that order.
They can’t shut down Bitcoin.
The little guys found a way to strike back this week. Sick and tired of the feeling that the deck is stacked against them, they organized themselves on Reddit and performed a takeover on heavily-shorted stocks, like GameStop (GME), and AMC Entertainment Holdings (AMC) driving their prices up massively. With their collective hive mind they were able to put a ton of pressure on these shorts and had hedge funds struggling to cover their positions resulting in major losses.
There was a ton of chatter amongst my friend groups and on social platforms that “this is the power of decentralization.” Bitcoiners such as myself shot back with the argument that this is not decentralization and that if the situation gets out of control these platforms would quickly be censored or shut down.
That’s exactly what happened. The powers that be silenced the subreddit r/WallStreetBets where the swarm against the hedge fund sort sellers got together. Then, Robinhood and other trading platforms did the unthinkable and began shutting down the buying of those shorted stocks yesterday while hedge funds still had access to the markets. This was the catalyst to massive backlash against these platforms from retail users, Chamath Palihapitiya, Dave Portnoy, and politicians ranging from AOC to Ted Cruz.
Just like that we were quickly reminded what we’re all in this for. This is the major catalyst for adoption that Bitcoin was looking for to drive its next move up. So naturally, Dogecoin memed itself to the moon by force from the same community that drove up GME and AMC… Wait until they realize why Bitcoin was created.
Bitcoin was born out of the ashes of contempt for the legacy financial system. It has given everyone a choice, a life raft, to opt out of the heavily rigged system.
“Bitcoin is a swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom, feeding on the fire of truth, exponentially growing ever smarter, faster, and stronger behind a wall of encrypted energy.” — Michael Saylor
Okay, even I think that’s a bit much but you get the point.
As I’m finishing up this piece this morning, Robinhood just restricted crypto trading… how to destroy your business before IPO 101. I feel gutted for their employees with stock options right now.
As Last Week Tonight’s TV Host John Oliver would say: “And Now This”
In case you missed it…
- Billionaire hedge fund manager, Ray Dalio does a 180 on Bitcoin https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ray-dalio-calls-bitcoin-one-160539587.html
- Grayscale files new trusts for DeFi projects https://cointelegraph.com/news/grayscale-prepares-for-defi-future-with-new-cryptocurrency-trust-filings
- Translation: Central Banks may lose everything https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-29/bitcoin-investors-may-lose-everything-central-banker-warns?utm_content=business&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic
- Musk-Prompted Bitcoin Price Surge Causes Liquidation of $387M in Shorts https://www.coindesk.com/elon-musk-prompted-bitcoin-price-surge-causes-liquidation-of-387m-in-shorts
- Reddit group drives Dogecoin — up 800% https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/29/dogecoin-cryptocurrency-rises-over-400percent-after-reddit-group-talks-it-up.html
- For fun: My Joke Cryptocurrency Hit $2 Billion https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kng57/dogecoin-my-joke-cryptocurrency-hit-2-billion-jackson-palmer-opinion
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Satstreet serves private Canadian clients including some of the largest Bitcoin mining operations, institutions, and high net worth individuals. Satstreet has raised initial funding from Round13 Capital and several prominent investors.
