Member Info for CaneToad

@InsiderKnowledge: Is gold 'worth' $1,800/ounce. Is BTC worth $35,000/coin? the answer is the same for both - supply and demand. I'll take a punt in the $10,000-$20,000 range no matter what the sentiment and before that *IF* I see a sustained bounce (a couple of weekly candles) on good volume.

This is just the volatility of BTC. FYI. BTC has been less volatile than Natural Gas lately, with NG futures sometimes moving 30% intra-day. In terms of dollar loss, my gold miners are down further than my BTC miners. No need to panic 'yet'.

The question that interests me at this stage is how much of our HODL has been used as loan collateral and at what point we'd need to provide more. As BTC falls, our own market cap falls along with our HODL value and hence our NAV falls. It's like an elastic band which can both stretch and contract.

@risehall1: "Sell. The party is over. Bitcoin is nothing, it has no use, it's worth depends on getting someone else to pay more than you paid. This is a ponzi scheme that is collapsing."

MOST commodities are like that....... what holds the gold price up? What holds the Tesla price up?

BTC will recover strong at some point. It's a greed asset like most others.

@poorinvestor: "Haa lol, falling on the floor laughing. ARB at 50p will be a dream. It really would, i'd throw my house in."

I rarely ever give advice, but my advice in this situation is not to throw your house in here or any other stock. If you have a large position, keep a tight stop. If you have a small position, be very careful if you average-down as you would probably have to double or triple your position size in order to stay in the game and that is exceedingly dangerous - foolhardy unless you thoroughly understand the situation.

The markets can go lower than 95% of people here realise. Keep your exposure limited if you want to avoid blowing up...

@poorinvestor: "People that have been involved with crypto, have been here many times. "

The landscape is very different now.

In previous crypto drops, there wasn't much correlation with the equity markets, because most investors were little guys (like you and me). It's different now. Whales and instituional investors own most of the BTC and they only care about one thing. Once Wall Street and criminal gangs saw the opportunity in BTC, they realised that it was even easier to make money off manipulating a *totally unregulated* crypto market than importing drugs or robbing people at gunpoint.........

Have a look at the volume of MSTR and RIOT last Friday and it will amaze you. This is not normal selling.

@Meeja: "How long do you think it'll take to get to 50p?"

Our fate is in the hands of BTC Whales and equity market sentiment.

If either of those are poor, ARB could hit 50p within a month or two.

I expect a lot of the 'whales' are criminal gangs and hedge funds who want BTC as low as possible, so the bounce makes as much money as possible. That is the the game.

If Nasdaq crashes, I expect most tech stocks to drop below their Jan 2020 level. That could take ARB down to the 10p-40p range.

Most tech stocks peaked in 2021/Q1. The same is true for BTC and miners, e.g. speculative ETFs such as ARKK.

While most tech stocks peaked a year ago, NASDAQ 100 has only started dropping significantly about 2w ago. If the decline continues, I expect most tech stocks to re-test the levels of Jan 2020. I expect some bull traps along the way.

I've read that crypto exchanges have been liquidating a lot of BTC due to margin-calls on loans. This makes me wonder if any miners could see their HODL's disappear in a puff of smoke if BTC drops significantly from here. Question: how much of our HODL has ARB used for its loans? At what level would we be required to provide more collateral?

Disclaimer: I hold ARB, RIOT, DGHI, BTC, ETH, SOL and I am *NOT* trying to de-ramp it. I'm lucky that my crypto weight is only a few percent of my portfolio, as I took profits several months ago.

I could be 100% wrong. Do your own research. This is now a matter of risk-management for me, rather than an attempt to predict the bottom - which is an impossible task...

Agree, update was excellent. Market sentiment is now bad unfortunately. At least we (almost) held our ground on Friday. That's more than a lot of other shares.

@notaflipper; "So there is now some worry whether this was positioning as Results will be missed."

Yeah, that is possible. It's one of the reasons I'm not adding until I see the results. I'll keep it long-term and I think it's going to give a good return, but I'm a bit worried about the effect of mediocre results. The market seems to slam this hard.

@dusty: You're right. Ignore my ignorance. I didn't appreciate the difference. Looks good for Cobalt, Met Coal and Copper, which to me, looks like most of the portfolio.

What to do when in a badly losing trade/investment:

(1) Cut your losses early before the loss becomes huge

OR

(2) Hang on and add significantly more (i.e. double or triple the position size) once some sought of bottom has been reached; this is very dangerous and you need to be confident that the stock will eventually bounce back... for that reason, you need to size your position accordingly. i.e. NEVER go all-in. That's almost certain to blow you up. It's a 'martingale' approach.

- The Art of Execution by Lee Freeman-Shor
- How to Make Money in Stocks by William O'Neil
- Free Capital by Guy Thomas
- Reminiscences of a Stock Operator - Edwin Lefevre

If you one or two of those, you'll learn a lot about what NOT to do. I found them useful. I hope they're useful to some here.

The first is useful for a stock like ARB; it's one of the few books that talks about what to do when you're in a badly losing trade.

My own ARB investment is about 50% down.
That's just the volatility of BTC/miners.
It's not a surprise.
If you're surprised, then maybe BTC isn't for you....

FYI. there's nothing different to investing & trading...

I've had £150k invested here at times.

I scaled down from crypto several months ago and now have only about £30k invested. If I lose it all, I'll still be ahead, so I'm not overly concerned. I think ARB will eventually bounce back and I'll hold for however long it takes; years if necessary.

If people choose to invest 100% of their accounts in 1 or 2 stocks, then that's nothing to do with ARB. It's just their own recklessness and they need to go and read up on risk-management before spending any more money.

Good luck.

@poorinvestor: "Also, Canetoad, when does a gold or copper miner, hodl it's produce?"

To my knowledge - never.

In my opinion, miners HODL'ing the bitcoin is a flawed business model. You're stuffed if you've collateralised loans against your HODL, as you'll need to raise increasing amounts of capital until you become insolvent; it scales as 1/x.

Anyway - I don't care. I'm not an idealist. I just trade the thing.

I have no plans to sell my ARB, RIOT, BTC or ETH.

I think it's going to eventually bounce back; I'm in no hurry.

@AlphaOmega: "You might be paying 10,000 bitcoin for 2 pizzas again like in 2010. It all depends on what people value them at. Their value is purely based on what people will pay."

Totally agree. ANYTHING is only worth what somebody pays for it. I hold BTC and ETH, but I see no reason whatsoever why it couldn't drop 99.99%. If NASDAQ drops significantly, I expect BTC to drop below $10k and for miners to drop 90% from the *current* price. Why not? What's changed? BTC is the same as 5y ago. It's only worth more because people are prepared to pay more, like tulips....

It's all about sentiment - and that's now very bad.

People ramble on about the hard assets that bitcoin miners hold (data centers, mining hardware etc) , but I think you'll find that they're worth next to nothing on the second-hand market - scrap value only.

Just before CRAY supercomputer went bankrupt for the millionth time, people thought they'd be able to sell the unfinished supercomputers for millions. A few days later, one of the engineers saw their latest model sitting in a field amongst some cows.

@poorinvestor: "BTC cannot fall to $10,000, it is not possible, as it is costing more to mine"

Oh boy, so you've never heard of a gold/copper/coal miner that's gone out of business because it costs more to mine that the stuff's worth. Have you ever invested in an AIM mining/oil company?

Hint: they go bust all the time. There's nothing special about crypto mining. It's just another form of mining.

Personally, I think there are too many bitcoin mining companies. It's sucked all of the investors away from the good ones. I hope that half of them fold in the next year.

"The simple reality is that one country after another are starting to ban bitcoin because of the sheer cost of the mining and the effect on the native populations. "

Banning bitcoin in the US/UK is like saying tobacco, alcohol, porn or gambling will be banned...

As far as bitcon itself is concerned, I can't see it disappearing for a very long time. It might drop (collapse) in price for a while, but I expect it's going to eventually bounce back higher.

Who cares if it's banned in the Sweden and the EU? - I don't... If it's finally concluded that it uses too much power, the algo will be changed. Simple.

The big problem that I see for BTC is that Wall Street bought into it and now it's highly correlated with speculative tech stocks. Amazon fell 96% in the dot com crash and for that reason, I don't see why a drop back to the level of 1y ago is not off the cards. Companies that have borrowed heavily againt BTC could be in very deep trouble (wrong-way risk) and could rapidly become insolvent.

@HopeGreed: "i know you have always said you could be wrong, well congrats you are :)"

Some of the most profitable investors/traders on the planet are 'right' 25% of the time, but still make a 250% annualised return. Consistently profitable traders understand that being WRONG is inevitable... It's what you do after realising that you're wrong that's more important...

It's always a laugh seeing people mocking others for being wrong on this board. It's the biggest sign of a newbie there is...