Bitcoin PUMP coming? Is it MANIPULATION

All right guys, so welcome back to Box Mining. We're sitting here with Michael too. So okay, so in all seriousness, we're sitting in the Genesis block offices right now. Hedge trader Charles is with us and I felt like this video is gonna be great because he's been sharing a lot of insight into what's happening in the cryptocurrency trading and also inside the industry as well. So in this episode, we're gonna ask him a few questions about kind of what's the latest in crypto and how it's affecting the market. Obviously in the past week, we saw a huge jump Bitcoin move 20%. Yeah, do you think that's related to happening? Let's start with that Charles. Yeah, so April was pretty boring month for us. I would say not a ton of price action. But finally, we saw that, you know, pre having pump that everyone was waiting for. And I think it's just the beginning, right? We still have a week left before the actual event. And we're seeing a kind of correction right now, which sets us up for actually another run just before the actual event. You have to look at the patterns of Litecoin, Bitcoin Cash and BSV was quite recent as well. So you did a lot of this research about the various happenings that happened before Bitcoin to kind of predict what's gonna happen in this time. Yeah. So you sound hopeful though. This is like the first time I ever heard you sound so hopeful and optimistic. Yeah, I think there's no scenario where it doesn't pump. I've, you know, I think I've commented before that this is a great market for big players to manipulate. And they love taking momentum. So momentum from the media, momentum from, you know, fundamental events. Having is naturally a, you know, very important event where, you know, in the inflation of Bitcoin, the limited supply of how it's being produced is going to be cut in half. There's only, you can only take it in a positive light. So looking at the price action for these other coins that have already gone through the halving, I'm 100%, you know, I'm not surprised at all to see this pump. I would not be surprised to see another one. And the question is what happens after the event? Yes. What happens after the event? Does everybody lose interest? Okay. The event's over. There's no more catalysts. Bitcoin is worthless. Like, you know, you can speculate as much as you want. Right. But, you know, there's a good macro theme going on right now that also benefits Bitcoin, which is the struggles across all asset classes with coronavirus. You saw like the S&P 500 and other major equity markets take a big hit. Huge like margin calls across different asset classes. Initially, yeah, it did hit crypto as well. Naturally, if I'm trading a lot of different assets and I'm getting, you know, margin calls on certain stock plays, then I do need to offload other assets to make sure that I don't lose my position. So we saw that. So we saw crypto and other asset classes move together initially. And then once these urgent liquidity kind of problems got solved, you actually seeing Bitcoin kind of decouple from the other asset classes, which is actually exactly what we were hoping to see. So I guess at the end of the day, Bitcoin didn't go to zero, unlike oil, it didn't go negative either. We didn't have free Bitcoin. Unlucky for us. But so we saw that decoupling, we seen that upward momentum, like almost 20%. Yeah, it's like the good old days, 2017. So what was the research from the other happening? So was that pump and dump? Like drastically? What happened over there? So definitely, you know, a few days ahead of the halving, there was a very strong rally. So this is for which point? I'm speaking more on BCH and BSD. BCH. Okay, so they already had the halving happening. Right. The halving is already over. And obviously, what you expect to happen is, okay, so mining Bitcoin and mining BCH uses the same algorithm. It's the same equipment. So if I'm a miner, as soon as it halves, what I'm going to do is switch all my rigs to BTC. I haven't run the math, but I assume halving is pretty large impact. I would expect to make more money mining BTC. And that's kind of, it looked like that was happening in the beginning. Right. And actually, there were like no blocks for the BCH network for roughly an hour. Right, right, right. And we thought, oh my god, this is the end of BCH, end of BSV. Surprisingly, you know, like, hash rate recovered quite quickly. And even just a day or two after the halving, hash rate was actually approaching all-time highs again. So it does kind of show, even for smaller coins like BCH, that mining is profitable. It's just about having the right kind of cost base and finding your edge in terms of, you know, compared to other miners, how do I have high profit? Right, it's all about restricience. Exactly. Okay, so you saw the price also change fluctuate, right? So also before the halving for BCH and BSV, they also had a small rally. And then also afterwards, there was a correction as well? Yeah, so there was a correction initially, not as bad as we expected. And it definitely recovered very quickly as well. And I think it's, hash rate, in this case, hash rate was kind of the leading indicator, where people felt confident, okay, the miners are still going to mine this. There's still going to be a network. Obviously, everyone knows, no miners, there's really, the blockchain cannot move. There's no purpose for having this network at all. Right? Yeah, so it's like, the public has been canceled, we're moving forward. Yeah. In that sense as well. So now, talking about a bit about miners, do you see mining volume potentially decreasing? Obviously, their income is now halved after the halving. Bitcoin coming up soon and already happened for BCH and BSV. Would you see potentially less clients? Or do you think the same number of clients that trade flow is around the same? Yeah. So from miners' perspectives, I would say by, at this point, they've already made all the preparations for the halving. If they're going to give up, they're going to give up sooner rather than later. They're not going to wait until the very last moment. And there's actually good news today, BTC hashrate hit like an all-time high, which is very positive in terms of fundamentals for the health of the ecosystem. And in terms of trading volume going ahead, I'm not really sure how much relationship there is between new coins versus total volume in the market. It really does come from a lot of the volatility. So volatility creates more opportunities to trade. Right, right. And it's not really about the total supply of coins in the market. So you saw more action when the markets were more volatile, right? Yeah. So that was a bigger driving factor than how many coins in miners' properties. And I think going ahead, news like halving just puts crypto back in the media's eye. And when that happens, there's a lot more variety of flow that could come from people that weren't paying attention to crypto, new funds that are professionally trading this now. And you can see the activity growing on futures exchanges, derivatives. And this is where you see more of the inefficiencies and that will actually directly impact spot markets as well. Okay. So now being here in Hong Kong, obviously, we see a lot of action in China recently and switching gears a bit. We saw China really pushing heavily this week and last week for the new currency, DCEP. Right. So decentralized, not accusing decentralized. No, it's in my mind. Okay. It's in my mind. So digital currency, electronic payment, one of the sexiest names for some of the Chinese to come up with. But DCEP is a new coin that the Chinese government themselves, they're pushing a digital currency. Do you see that coming and changing the landscape of what we're happening in crypto having a digital national currency? Yes. I mean, the timing is quite interesting. Just when there's a global panic, they decide to launch all this, like a test app coming out from major banks in China, different partners that are already agreed to be testing this. McDonald's, Starbucks, they're all copying the word. But at the end of the day, it's good to have mass media focus on digital currency. I'm not completely sure how this will affect decentralized public markets. Would you take this? So right now you're doing some currency exchanges. Would you take DCEP? Like later on, if someone just comes over with a digital wallet containing DCEP, would you guys take it? I think so. I think so. I mean, you know, if there's adoption, that means there's liquidity. It's equivalent to taking, I guess, renminbi or some kind of government backed currency. Yeah. It's not a cash suitcase full of cash. You would get like a phone call. I mean, the more important discussion is with a government backed cryptocurrency, how does it impact existing cryptocurrencies? So right now, China, there's a massive market for things like DTCEP. USDT is a big one. Are they going to continue to allow stuff like this when they have something that they consider their own and in a way competitive? Right. Interesting. You mentioned USDT. So you say USDT volume is still quite high in China. Yeah. So actually, I mean, globally, with, you know, especially the recent rally, I think, you know, I think market cap itself, like in terms of total supply in the market, which means more people are printing. I think it's like tripled in like the last six months. Interesting. How about the other one? Didn't Teva create their own digital version of the renminbi as well? Yeah. Is that picking up or is that just like completely dropped off? Yeah. So it was quite, you know, interesting move. I mean, a foreign company trying to create a token that represents China's like national currency is very risky. Uh huh. But it looks like, you know, there hasn't been a lot of traction. I mean, you got to realize Tether has tried this with a lot of different currencies already. They have the Euro Tether. They should have like maybe the Canadian dollar. Maybe they have a bunch of others. But at the end of the day, it's all about demand. And, and, uh, USDT has been such a front runner in this entire space that, uh, that's all that people really need. Yeah. Interesting. So that trading pair of the USDT is just being so well adopted. Yeah. There's just no point. There's no, the, the, uh, the renminbi tether. Exactly. Just kind of matched that. Yeah. Interesting. So maybe the Chinese government can create a digital version. We'll see in the times ahead, very interesting times ahead as well. Okay. Last topic of the day, I think we saw ETH 2.0 come out. So lots of news related to ETH. I think ETH environment as a whole has been heating up a bit. What's your kind of viewpoint? Are people also trading more ETH now? Is that what volume is seeing right now? Yeah. So I think ETH definitely outperformed Bitcoin, uh, just looking at the last month. And the only reason you can point to is it's either, it either has to be DeFi related or it has to be ETH 2.0 related. Um, it probably isn't DeFi because DeFi has been taking a few hits lately. Uh, like ERC 777, uh, there's like a, you know, people are launching this, these smart contracts without understanding the flaws. Yes. Um, so that's obviously not a good look. I mean, the, the, the D4 space, uh, the D4 event was $25 million. And if they didn't recover that, that would have been a huge hit to any holders. Yeah. Yeah. The only positive we can take away from that is, um, you know, blockchain works as it's public. So we know where the coins are going. Uh, authorities can come after you, but it's kind of funny that, you know, like centralized authorities have to be the ones that solve decentralized so-called problems. Right. Um, but yeah, DeFi, you know, not, not very positive events as of late. Uh, definitely ETH 2.0 looks like, um, you know, some hype around it. Are you excited? Are you excited for ETH 2.0? Uh, so I think it's going to be quite a while before we can actually do something with it. So, you know, phase one is supposed to be Beacon Chain. Uh, this is essentially them testing out proof of stake. Does it work or not? Yeah. Right. And can they make it compatible with the existing chain? Um, so ETH 2.0 is like a brand new product. I think there's more risk than reward at this point. And, um, I think, you know, it's rallying now for this news seems a bit, um, you know, disproportionate compared to what you're actually going to get. I think so. I would agree half here, but at the same time, you know, my very first video I made, uh, I think it was one of the earliest ones was about Ethereum proof of stake. It was like, at that time, it was like, like programmers said, you know, we're going to be one year out and then we can get ETH 2.0. Yeah. Like the proof of stake working, but obviously we waited three, four years. Yeah. So I think finally seeing some code is great. I think it's like for anyone who's been waiting for such a long time, finally seeing a little bit of code and a little bit of stuff in action. I think that's exciting. The problem just is, uh, you know, this is the first step of many, right? Yes. Um, involving sharding, like cross sharding consensus sounds very complex for me. I mean, you know, I'm not an expert, but just logically, it sounds very difficult. At the same time, they're going to have like side chains, like plasma. Yeah. Also, they're going to have a new token, ETH 2. Did you know that? No. They really shouldn't do that though. It's going to be a one way move. Um, when you, when you migrate to the beacon chain, you stake, you stake into it, you stake into a contract that results in an immediate burn. And then you create ETH 2 and then ETH 2 you can't take out of ETH 2. Okay. Understood. And then, and then eventually ETH 1 will all migrate to ETH 2. Right. So just more work for exchanges. It's a lot more work for exchanges. They have to integrate all this again. Yes, exactly. I can definitely see like a whole exchange ecosystem popping up. It's just going to be a whole mess. So hopefully it works. I'm pretty excited for it. Just because I've waited so long finally. I mean, you know, it's, it's definitely positive to have, uh, progress. And, uh, I think, you know, we're set up for a really good year. Yeah. You're excited. Yeah. That's great. I love to see you. You're like, you're the most rational person I've seen in this space. And I think that's a, that's a great thing about Charles here. It's like, he's always rational minded and always strategic planning forward. That's how you stay aligned for like decades in this space. Right. Hopefully. I mean, we do what we can. Okay. So I think that's wrapped up today. I hope to see you guys more in the future. And then hopefully we can see what's happening after happening. All right. Thanks Michael. Cheers. Cheers.