Bitcoin OTC: Uncovering offline trades & insights with OSL

Hey guys, it's Michael and welcome back to Box Mining. Today is going to be a short video, but it's also going to be one of the most important videos I've ever made. And this relates to the whole crypto market as a whole, because I've been spending the past two days, actually three days, in Hong Kong visiting local OTCs, so over-the-counter desks, and getting some insights about the cryptocurrency market that has never been seen before. Let's start off with something really stupid, which is what the hell are OTC desks? Because I thought with exchanges, when people can just kind of sign up for an account, send fiat money to an exchange, and just freely exchange whenever they want, that should be the complete solution, right? I was so naive when I started, and I thought, yeah, this is the best way forward. But in actual fact, there are people who really need to sell off lots of Bitcoin or buy lots of Bitcoin, and they want to do so without affecting the price. And that's what the OTC does. They basically handle very, very big clients. In fact, a lot of them also handle with institutional clients. So the fact that we think that institutional clients aren't in, that's absolutely false. They definitely go through OTCs. So the idea is that these OTCs would kind of protect the confidentiality of the clients. They would protect the amounts transferred. So in Hong Kong, I think we're at a very special location as well, because we're right next to China, and there's a lot of Bitcoin miners there. So there's a huge production quantity of Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, Ethereum, EOS, whatnot. And we also have a lot of institutional clients and family offices here too. So this is why these OTC desks in Hong Kong matter on a global scale. It's because they deal with such large quantities, and they really know what's going on beyond just the superfluous numbers that we see, the volumes that we see. They know the clients that they're dealing with. So the OTC desk I talked to is called OSL. They're one of the biggest trading desks here in Asia. And this is interesting. The minimum trade size that they deal with is 100,000 USD. And what they tell me is a lot of times they deal in the millions as well. So that's huge quantities that they're moving for private clients. In many ways, it's a shame that I didn't manage to bring my camera there. I just felt like I can make a much stronger personal connection with these guys, and they can talk to me without worrying about what's going to go on camera or not. So excuse the fact that I don't have direct footage. But the idea of what I learned is that these guys are thriving in this space. Like we know that a lot of people in crypto, they feel like the prices are stable, maybe a lot of money can be made. These guys are absolutely thriving because there's a huge market for cryptocurrencies and to institutional clients. And you can definitely see that they're getting a lot of institutional interest because they're thriving. They're hiring a lot and a lot of experienced financial people. And that's to directly deal with clients who want large amounts of cryptocurrency, and they want to feel safe when they're buying it. So I think there's a misconception that institutions are not entering in the space. They're already here. Well, if institutions are already here, then what's Bakkt and the Bitcoin ETF going to do? Well, the idea is that there's many more institutions out there. I mean, think about it. Our market cap is around 200 billion right now for the whole of cryptocurrencies, the whole of crypto. And that's nothing compared to what BlackRock is doing compared to what Fidelity is doing when their units are measured is in the trillions. We're basically a speck of dust right now. So for Bakkt, the primary purpose is that they're an exchange into crypto with a Wall Street backing, with a Wall Street background because, well, it's done by ICE and the guys who did NASDAQ. So yeah, they can give that legitimacy and show cryptocurrencies to their customers or institutional customers and get them on board. The most important part is the on-board process. Once you're into crypto, man, you get pulled straight down into it, just like I have. I'm pretty much super deep into crypto right now. And the same thing with the Bitcoin ETF. It's just getting a bigger audience. And this is why the whole community itself is very excited for what's going to happen next. For me personally, I know that institutions, because they're already coming in, I feel like once Bakkt gets deployed and once the Bitcoin ETF is approved, it's going to be a gradual process. It's not going to be like a spark like this. It's not going to be the craziness that we saw in January. I think that's going to be the second wave. It might need more countries, perhaps even like Taiwan or Southeast Asia to come into crypto and generate that fever like South Korea did. But what we do know is that with more ramps into crypto, that means more interest. And with more interest comes, well, higher evaluation, supply and demand. So that's my insight into the space. Summary, well, OTC desks are thriving in this space. Tether was, well, a big short term FUD. And lastly, we have OSL and the crazy watch. So they were like, this is the pet project they were showing me for like half the time there. They convinced the guys at Hublot to make a watch for Bitcoin's 10th birthday, 10th anniversary of the white paper coming at the end of this month. And what they did is that they're going to make this watch only purchasable by Bitcoin, and they're going to engrave the Bitcoin transaction at the back. So at first I thought this was a money grab by Hublot, but they're only making 210 copies of it. And they did a lot of kind of blockchain stuff with it. So the power reserve indicator that's based on the red and the green trading candles, got a Bitcoin logo on it. And they even made a white paper like for reals. The sale of the watch ends on the 29th. So you have to register on the website. So I'll put a link down below. It's on the official Hublot website, and that's where you register and put your name down for the registration. I'd like to thank everyone at OSL for helping me understand what's going on. If you have any additional questions, leave them down below, and I hope to answer them. And if you guys are interested in your watch, check out the link below. And that guys is my research for what's happening in Hong Kong. So recently, I've been really interested in just getting down to what's really happening on the ground level. And next up, I'm going to have a conference. So this is going to be DEF CON Ethereum coming up next week. So I'll be traveling to Prague to kind of, that's going to be fun, actually. So we're going to travel to Prague, check out what's happening with DEF CON, see if Vitalik's an alien, and see what other projects that's kind of interesting or can be developed on the Ethereum network. And hopefully that's going to be fun. So if you guys have any suggestions of where to go, what to see in Prague, never been there in my life. Thank you guys so much for watching this video. If you guys want to follow me as well, I have my Instagram up and running right now. And I'm going to show you more of what's happening on a daily basis on Instagram. So hop on over there and check it out.