Bitcoin over $17,000 — Bull trap? Or is a relief rally incoming?

Foreign. Hello, everyone. Welcome and thanks for hanging out with us on the market report with Cointelegraph. My name is Joe Hall. I'm usually a reporter on the Cointelegraph news team. And I'm joined again by our resident experts, Marcel Peckman and Sam Borgi. Now, Sam Borgi is a business editor at Cointelegraph. He's been doing this for over 10 years where he's been delving into economic analysis and financial market writing. Marcel Pechman applies over 17 years of experience trading all sorts of techie things, including derivatives options and futures for the crypto derivatives markets. How are we doing today, gentlemen? It's lovely to see you both.

Joe, I can't say I'm happy for the markets about this FTX thing and Genesis. And now we have the Wikilevals brothers, United States, the Germany exchange. Seems like they own some clients, $900 million. So it looks bad if you are outside of this industry. Like, well, looks like everyone is a scammer. It looks like we cannot trust exchange, etc. But if you've been here for a long time like we did, you know that you cannot depend on centralized entities. That was not what Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies were designed for. This is exactly the problem that we're trying to solve. So I think that it's our job to explain the viewers and whoever didn't yet enter to the cryptocurrency and Bitcoin space that we're trying to solve exactly this problem. FTX is not Bitcoin. Gemini Earn is not part of the crypto ecosystem. It's a centralized entity and eventually they are all going down. So I'm culturally optimistic.

Good. Okay. I mean, everyone's a scammer apart from us, of course, but there's, there's good things to be happy for, such as Brazil in the World cup. Your, your native country. They're doing pretty well.

Yeah.

Good. Sam, how are we doing? How are things in Canada? Is it freezing yet?

Well, when it comes to the World Cup, I may be in Canada, but my heart is in Brazil. So we took care of business yesterday and we're still on track. You know, it's not, it's not the same teams as the turn of the 2000s when we had Ronaldo, you know, the real Ronaldo, but you know, we're, we're making progress anyway regarding, you know, where we are in the industry. As Marcel mentioned, you know, Bitcoin really teaches people about, about self sovereignty and about, you know, not your keys, not your Bitcoin, we said that a million times, but with the collapse of all these centralized platforms, that echoes much, much louder. And that was always the reason why I was skeptical about a lot of these yield platforms like blockfi etc. They had a strong value proposition in the sense that you can earn yield on your earnings. But I'm not going to give up an exponential asset class in exchange for 5% APY. And I said that before. So I think right now bitcoin's use case will continue to shine as more investors begin to recognize its very, very unique properties. So I'm very confident about the future in terms of market cycles where we are, we're obviously in a pretty brutal bear market, but I think that we're probably toward the end of this four year cycle and we're gonna have a pretty long extended sideways action before we come out to their side.

A great time to stack stats. I mean, you mentioned something there that Jeff Booth, a fellow Canadian, said in a recent cointelegraph interview. You know, coming out of the FTX fiasco, bitcoin continues to do what it does best. TikTok next block, every 10 minutes we've got some more bitcoin mined and more transactions confirmed. Anyway, to business. We've already had some amazing wisdom in the intro. Space Market Reports is of course the show where we bring you, you guys, the viewers, the information you can't find anywhere else on the web. So today, Sam, Marcel and I will discuss what's been making the headlines in the crypto space and the bitcoin space as well as the wider business and financial markets. More importantly though, we're here for you guys, our loyal viewers, to try to help you through this brutal bear market, to steal Sam's phrase there. So we're looking forward to chatting with you, interacting with you. So if you have any questions or any ideas, pop them in the chat. We'll bring them up today and we'll discuss them as best we can. We're also giving away a $50 gift voucher voucher for this Cointelegraph swag store. So if you like merch, I'm trying to work out if I'm wearing some today. I am. There you go. If you like this jumper, for example, that has the big bitcoin logo one, it's on the CT store and you can win a $50 voucher for there today. Right, let's go through today's show. We're going to start off with a market roundup, then memes, market updates, a quick crypto tip from yours truly, Marcel's Trading Insights, Markets Pro giveaway and we'll round it off to close. Just remember to like and subscribe. And there's a 20% off link for Markets Pro in the description. Okay, got the housekeeping out the way. Let's get things kicked off with a meme review. Take it away. It. Sam, Not a great deal of change in the past week, is there? But there's been lots of, lots of attention from Vitalik there and yeah, of course, Bloomberg Crypto giving us all the amazing insights, am I right? Not the place to go to for your crypto news. Just, just a heads up there, guys. I know that from personal experience and I can say that as I used to work for them. Right, moving on to my favorite part of the show here should give us all a giggle. As you might have noticed, that was the weekly roundup, not the meme review. I was just testing your listening. Shall we jump straight into that, guys?

Let's do it.

Sweet.

Yeah.

Okay.

I saw this one multiple times. Yeah, it's a good one.

For those not based in the US or America centric, you've got Blind Bart, who, who is representing the government here. And the Venmo transaction of $600 is clearly under massive scrutiny from the US government. Venmo is. Have you. You guys have used Venmo, I imagine. Or imagine Sam might have done it.

No, it's actually barred from Canadians to use. So yeah, there you go.

This instant mobile. You just need a mobile number and you can send it to that. Is that how it works?

Yeah, it's basically mobile payments. You know, Venmo, it's very easy to use. That's why I signed in Canada, because it's very convenient, very easy to use. You know, Canadians don't like. Canada doesn't like that stuff. You know, we want to regulate the hell out of everything. So.

Yeah, similar situation in the UK actually. But there you go. Governments love those sorts of things. There's a lot of information here they don't know that crypto enthusiasts have very low attention spans. Okay. I think it's. There's a lot of thought that's gone into this meme here is a cool monkey, yes or no? It's true, my degree does not resemble a cool monkey, but what about you guys? Do you have degrees?

Yeah. Yes, and I agree it's not a cool monkey. And it's definitely a liability as opposed to an asset.

Yeah, trade that.

Well, I think the problem with the NFT is saying that it, it is unique. Well, it is a 10,000 collection of monkeys. So it's not really unique if you have 10,000. And the creator might go to Solana and create another exactly similar collection. So I don't know. I never understood the utility of the NFTs. But call me old Grandpa.

Grandpa Marcel. Got a nice ring to it. And the Grim Reaper here. This is also the Thanksgiving meme, isn't it? You know, people gathering around the table and realizing, oh God, why did I tell them to get into bitcoin last year when the price was 50 or 60k and now it's 17. Shitcoin has been here. How can you tell? Many tears. This is brilliant. And it was definitely written by some bitcoin toxic. Maxi. Shitcoins will make you cry.

I just want to say to the viewers that all of the bitcoin maxes, you know, at some time in the past were shitcoiners or even doubt about bitcoin. So you're not alone. I used to think that litecoin was better than bitcoin, that dash offered more privacy and that having a masternode was the equivalent of distributing the hashing power of bitcoin. So it was not concentrated on a handful of miners. So we've all fall for those, I'm not saying scams, but incorrect versions. So after some time, some takes two months, some takes five years, but eventually you couldn't learn. And if you don't want to lose money quickly, don't gamble on altcoins and shitcoins. Maybe if you're really interested in smart contracts and Ethereum, you want to experiment with that, okay, leave 10%, 20% of your crypto portfolio on that, but don't go all in on altcoins, please, for God's sake.

Yeah, you will cry. As the meme suggests, important public service announcement there from resident maxi Marcel or I don't know if you're a maxi or not, but let's avoid labels. The yeah, the important thing there is, yeah, don't gamble with what you can't afford to lose. And yeah, shitcoins will make you cry. So we move on. Now there is three important articles that we'd like to discuss this week with, of course, expert advice and insight from Marcel and Sam. The first one is regarding the imminent crash for stocks. Five very important things to know in Bitcoin this week. This comes from William Seuberg, one of our prolific and proficient markets writers. The key thing to know here is that, well, are stocks a good indicator for bitcoin and should we do anything differently with regards to our own sort of bitcoin journeys. As the deck here suggests, bitcoin has got a boost from a declining US dollar, but bitcoin price action is is anything but straight bullish, says analysts. And then the article goes into what the last stretch of 2022 will look like. For example, as the end of the year approaches, will bitcoin see a Santa rally or face a new year nursing fresh losses? Sam, what's a Santa rally? What does that mean in crypto or trading speak?

Sure. Well, the Santa rally is basically a seasonal observation that we notice mostly in the traditional financial markets where stocks tend to rally toward the end of the year, especially around the Christmas time. And there's many reasons why that's the case. No one knows exactly for sure, but a lot of it has to do maybe with lower volumes, maybe some holiday cheer, maybe a lack of direct trading catalysts allows people to buy toward end of the year, but it's been a fairly, fairly reliable indicator of how stocks perform at the end of any calendar year. Again, that doesn't necessarily carry into the new year, but there usually is a nice little bump in equity prices around that time. Now, the thinking of this is that given the fairly strong correlation between bitcoin and the equities market over the past year, that if we see a Santa Claus rally in stocks, we'll also see one in bitcoin and crypto. So that's perhaps where the thinking is. I'm not quite sure how that's going to be. There seems to have been a bit of a decoupling recently. I know that bitcoin really didn't enjoy the same rally that stocks did in the most recent large bounce that we got, but that probably has a lot to do with the overall market conditions in crypto. Right now we're in bitcoin given the FTX collapse. So I'm not really too concerned about a Santa Claus rally or a dump at this point. I know where we are in the market cycle, or at least I think I know where we are in the market cycle. I'm not particularly concerned about a few thousand dollars gain or loss in either direction because I'm playing this out strategically to accumulate as much bitcoin as I can for the next cycle and for the future. So that's where my head is at.

Nice. Great comments there. Let's hope the Lapland whales are favorable this winter for the Santa rally. The article then goes into there's one thing I wanted to pop up here. Will there be knock on effects. But in the wake of ftx, can the FTX and the fact that it fell so heavily and so quickly, could that cause a wave of discomfort and, I don't know, fear among the traditional markets? What do you reckon, Marcel? You're smiling away there.

Well, I think it was good that we dropped ahead of the potential crash on traditional markets. I don't know if the S and P is going to collapse over the next weeks or months. Maybe they're going to be able to propel that for the next year or so. But a crisis is underway. It's undeniable. And I think we have the Federal Reserve meeting next week. Is that right, Sam?

I believe it is, yes.

So I can let you know if you like. It's one of the first things I did when I began working for Cointelegraph because I realized that the Fed and Bitcoin or Fed crypto are so intertwined. They have a meeting and something happens in the markets. So next week we've got the real earnings, we've got the cpi. That's the classic one, isn't it? And then we've got the US Import and Export Price indexes. But I imagine that the big do is the Consumer Price Index report coming out, as there usually tends to be a bit of volatility around that time. Is that fair to say?

Yeah, but my point, Joe, even if there's a drop in financial markets next week due to cpi, for instance, you got to remember that the correlation between The S&P 500 and Bitcoin inverted some 18 days ago. So it had been quite strong positive for the past eight months, nine months, meaning when the S and P went down, Bitcoin also went down. But such data inverted 18 days ago. So regardless if the S and P is going to be able to sustain the 4,000 points level, which does not seem likely considering the tensions in China and the negative retail sales in Europe, I think Germany had a 5% drop in retail sales and there has been strong employment data in United States. So all of these things reinforces that the Federal Reserve will continue hiking interest rates and it's going to be bad for traditional markets. But remember the correlation from The S&P 500 to Bitcoin inverted 18 days ago, which means that if the S and P continues going down, there's a high probability that's what's happening in the past weeks, that bitcoin is going to continue grinding up. So it was a good thing that FTX collapsed a month ago. So it's a risk that's off the table now.

Okay, okay. Interesting. The next point was regarding something we touched upon last week. Miners, of course, some of the most important participants in the bitcoin network. Apparently they're already in a giant capitulation as the latest data shows that the 30 day change in the bitcoin supply held in miner wallets is at its most negative since the start of 2021. You guys are here to help us explain what this even means. We've got a lovely graph here from Glassnode, Friends of Common Telegraph of course, showing a big bleeding red line at the bottom here. This doesn't look good. I know, I know. When a red line like this goes down, it's not a good thing for traders or for, for minor, sorry, for miners. Generally speaking, should this be deemed as exclusively negative or could it be compensated by these more capitalized listed companies? Growth. What do we reckon, Sam?

Yeah, I think we alluded to this as you mentioned last week, it's, it's very difficult to get a sense of how miners will have a direct impact on Bitcoin's price. I think that's where a lot of the big question is, does a minor capitulation event automatically lead to Bitcoin's price going lower? I think it's more nuanced than that because various mining operations have different break even points, different business operations. Some are over leveraged, some are not. I think we've seen a bleeding out of the leverage in the market like we have other segments of the crypto and bitcoin space. So for me I don't see necessarily a direct correlation with price. But if we do get a very large capitulation event, in other words, if miners are selling bitcoin rapidly to cover costs, that could obviously have a direct impact on price. But what we've been seeing, I mean the fact that bitcoin bottomed out and is holding steady above 16 is fairly impressive given the fact that the second largest crypto exchange in the world basically was a fraud and the cascading effect that's had on the whole industry. The question that I have, the really interesting hypothetical is that would bitcoin have puked this level if the FTX situation hadn't happened? You know, because it was holding up fairly well around the $20,000 mark before all this, all these shenanigans played out. So I think there could be some short term selling pressure. But overall the, the, you know, the mining industry, it's so diverse, it's very difficult to glean one trend based on Just how vast and how, you know, decentralized and diverse the mining industry really is.

Yeah, I mean, I'm heating my flat with a bitcoin mine this winter. So that goes to show, you know, the decentralization, the resilience of the, of the network. It's not just bitcoin mining anymore, it's also bitcoin mining. Waste heat. But I like that turn of phrase there. The bleeding out of the leverage. Hopefully we've seen the last of it. And Marcel, how do you view this situation? Is there a risk of more miners going bankrupt, for example?

Well, Joe, I think it's the classic chicken and egg problem. So, yes, miners now have the urgent need to sell Bitcoin at the lowest price in five years due to rising energy costs. The hash rate at highest ever. They were using excessive leverage to buy those ASIC machines. But I highly doubt that miners had a relevant impact when bitcoin went down from $50,000 to $40,000 because they were highly profitable back then. And then we dropped from 40,000 to $30,000. And yet most of them, the majority was highly profitable at $30,000. So I don't think we can attribute the downslide of bitcoin to minor selling pressure. That seems incorrect to me. And we've seen funds and exchange vanishing with 10 billion, $20 billion over the past six months. So those were the guys causing the most damage because they were trading using leverage and some of them was trading plainly stealing cash from clients and buying FTT tokens or whatever and they got liquidated. So what got us from $50,000 to $15,000 was leverage. Reckless gamblers. So is miner selling some kind of pressure? Yes, it is, but I don't think they're the ones trading using leverage and causing the extreme damage.

Gosh, thank God the miners can't use leverage, eh? That would be a really volatile market. Cool. And there's just one last point I wanted to touch upon. It was regarding the. The Fear and Greed Index. This has become a bit of a, it was for a while ago metric of mine. But then we got into peak bare market and I realized that we're just sort of making camp in, in fear. So it's towards the bottom of the, this article here. And supposedly the sentiment right now is to avoid extreme fear. But if you look at the actual index itself, we've been bouncing between the, what, the 20 and 40 range for what, since September 7, 2022. So that's a couple of three months now. So we spent one quarter in the fear Slash extreme fear zone. It's not pretty, is it gentlemen? And I know that when I speak to my friends who aren't into the bitcoin or crypto worlds, they basically ask, are you okay? Do you still have a job? Marcel? I know that my friends asking me if I'm okay is probably a pretty good metric to indicate if the bottom is in. What do you think regarding the fear and grade? Fear and greed. IND Sorry, Is it a good indication that the bottom is in? The bottom is over. Dare I say it.

Joe? Not necessarily, because I think that such data is backward looking. So if it's a month that we dropped 40%, then fear is going to be in. It's not predicted about future. But I think we're not currently on extreme fear simply because whoever's left, whoever's still holding bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, do not care anymore about the price. Yeah, we're down 70%, we're down 90% from the all time high. I don't think it's another 20% drop that it's going to cause this guy to sell. I think 90% of the buyers that are left are either waiting for five year, 10 year or they simply said, okay, I'm down 90%, I don't care for the price anymore. So that's why we don't have panic and fear anymore. It's long time past that whoever left is a long term holder for good or for bad.

Yeah, that sounds right. And hopefully the people watching and if there are any new watchers out there and you are a little bit worried or scared seeing these prices and seeing all these weirdos that are left supporting this movement, don't worry, we're here to help you. If you have a question, no matter how crazy, pop it in the chat. We'll, we'll give it a go addressing it. Sam, before we move on to the next article, is there anything you'd like to, to bring up there with regards to the general sentiment in the space? No.

Well, the crypto tourists have checked out. You know, the bitcoin tourists are no longer in the market right now. It's only those of us who have a strong conviction in bitcoin's value propositions. We're buying at these levels. We're not selling. So you know, anon, you're selling your bitcoin to me and to us and to people like us. So you can do that. You know, we'll see you again at 50 or 60K, you know, in a couple years from now. But if you take a look at how many Hodlers have in soul, I think it's a pretty substantial percentage and I think that's going to remain the case. This is, this is pretty stable where we're at right now because of the fact that the tourists have kind of exited stage left or is it stage right? I don't know, but that's. They're gone for now. They'll be back. They'll be back. I guarantee you they'll be back. But not at these levels.

Yeah, no, I think they've just exited like swan dive off the stage as fast as possible. At least I know that's what the majority of my friends who dip their toes into the bitcoin and crypto markets this year have done. That's what extreme fear will do for you. Very well put, Sam. Let's move on to the next piece here regarding Twitter coin. Oh, gosh. You know, I saw this and started immediately. Facepalming. Sorry. There's been rumors that a new native Twitter coin might emerge. Meanwhile, dogecoin bag holders. Sorry, Dogecoin holders remain hopeful. Got a little giggle from Marcel there. Good, good. Now if we could just go to Sharing the screen again. I've got the article up here live. There are. Yeah, I'll zoom in a bit more on that article here. This one comes from Brian Quarmby on the Australian team. We all saw this trending on our respective social media platforms, but of course, on Twitter it was the biggest news. I groaned when I saw this. Just before we dive into the actual questions here, Marcel San, what was your immediate reaction upon learning that Twitter might be creating a coin? We'll go with you, Sam.

First, so I spent a good portion of yesterday's shift trying to understand whether it was true or not. You know, this seems to have been posted by a researcher, a security researcher, and then she disappeared entirely. Like she deleted her account, deleted the tweet, deleted everything. So I wasn't sure the extent of whether this was actually true or not, but it seems like the rumors are very strong. I know there's some speculation that maybe Elon is using this as a placeholder for dogecoin tipping, which for some reason he's really behind the Dogecoin. Yeah, I mean, it is what it is. At this point, I don't really have anything else to add unless we get some confirmation one way or the other.

Yeah. And rather frustratingly, the option to twit, to tip people around the world is also being phased out. And I'm British and I was only able to send to people based in the us. So when this Twitter Bitcoin lightning feature first rolled out, for example, I could tip Jack Marlows from Strike or Jack Dorsey from Twitter, but I couldn't actually receive my own payments to myself, as the only thing that it could link to if you were outside of the US was a Bitcoin base chain address, which is quite frustrating. Marcel, what do you reckon here? Is this something we should all get excited and hyped about? Or is it more of just Elon Musk being Elon Musk?

I'm 100% sure Elon Musk wants to integrate make micro payments on Twitter, that's for sure. As for Doge, yeah, I share some kind of passion because the coin was created in 2013 or 14 and it's the original MEM coin, but I don't think it's going to be used for micropayments on Twitter. Even if you check out shop.tesla.com where you can shop merchandise like T shirts from Tesla, where supposedly Dogecoin was integrated. I tested today from my personal computer in Brazil and it was not. It was not offered me a Dogecoin payment form, only credit cards. I don't know if it works in the us, but it doesn't work in Brazil. So had Elon really be keen on using Dogecoin as the central payment for system, he would be using that his own companies and he's not. But more importantly, the viewers need to remember that what makes Bitcoin special, what makes Bitcoin valuable is the network of users running their own nodes. And there are more than 5,000 or 20,000 of them, depends how you count them. And that does not exist in Dogecoin. Yet it has mining, yes. It has proof of work. Yes. It's 98% copy of Litecoin, which is a copy of Bitcoin, so it's presumably safe, but it doesn't have the network of users, so the social consensus is missing. It's a very important piece of software of the system. So I don't think that Elon Musk will proceed with using Dogecoin as a payment system.

Interesting. Have you ever run a Dogecoin node yourself? Or a Doge node? Is that what they call it? Do they call it a doggy node, A kennel? I presume there's some sort of. Funny.

I don't know a single person that have ever done that.

No, I don't know, nor myself personally. I mean, there's an interesting question to ask here. It might get a little bit conspiratorial. But I mean, is Musk this crypto hero that people make him out to be, or is he maybe an agent who's there to undermine Bitcoin's network effects and use his own influence to try to, you know, usurp the top. The top spot cryptocurrency? Do you think this is a valid question to ask here or is this preposterous? What do you reckon, Sam?

You know, I've always viewed him more as a crypto tourist, if anything. I mean, if you take a look at his justification for why he's into Doge, I mean, he just said, wouldn't it be funny that the coin that was created as joke ends up being the one that's used? That's as far as the justification that I've seen from him. I actually think the bitcoin gambit was more of a distraction for Tesla than anything. You know, I didn't really understand that whole play, although it was funny that their profitability was, was certainly aided by bitcoin and they're not a very profitable company, generally speaking. So I think it's been more of a distraction than anything. So I'm not looking to Elon Musk for any kind of signal about the future of digital assets. Although if you take a look at his, his broader ambitions for Mars, etc, it seems like crypto and digital assets will probably play a role in that. How that's going to look, I don't know. And I don't think anyone really knows what the guy's thinking from any moment to another. But I've always seen him more of as a, you know, this is a nice toy to play with.

Interesting. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, in conversation with some of my sort of hardcore maxi friends, some of them believe that he's using Doge as a distraction for his real conviction to Bitcoin. Because if he was to really come out and say, listen, I'm a bitcoin maxi, I believe that lightning payments are the future. And I believe that, you know, in 10 or 15 years time we're all going to bitcoin standard, then that would almost be too much for the bitcoin space to handle. You know, you know, the Elon Musk pump last year, whenever it was, or two years ago, I can't remember now, that was, you know, massive for the space. And he has such influence and he's, you know, the wealthiest person in the world with one of the largest, most recognizable companies in the world. If they were to genuinely Take bitcoin, take lightning and run with it. Then it could be, you know, the super cycle or the, the giant bull run that we all know. So he's doing us all a favor by not showing us his true colors and not showing us his hand so that we can all stack at these nice, low prices. But this is again, a slightly sort of off the wall take. Marcel, do you have anything to add to this sort of slightly surreal summation of Elon?

I don't know. He looks like an agent to me. He's hands tight with the government, but I don't think that the government care about bitcoin right now. They have so many other issues, bigger issues to handle.

Okay, okay. I mean, Vikram had quite an interesting question there in the chat. He suggested that maybe Twitter coin could run on the Dogecoin blockchain. Can you mint coins on the Dogecoin blockchain? If it's a proof of work blockchain like bitcoin, presumably that's not possible. You'd have to create a layer two something or other on top of it. I wouldn't know how that works. I'm not techy enough. What do you reckon, guys? Anyone? Anyone? To add something there.

Doesn'T seem feasible. You need a second layer.

There you go. There you go. Dogecoin, Doge Lightning or Doge Sprint. I'm sure there'll be some catchy name to it, maybe that's coming. Sorry, vikram, I'm not 100% sure about the answer there, but thank you very much for your question. Moving on to the third article of today, it's all about our favorite villain in the crypto landscape comes from Brayden Lindrea, who again on the Aus team, the Australia team. Despite endless media appearances, I'm sure you've probably read about SBF or Sam Bankman fried in, I don't know, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, the Telegraph, the Times, or in a Twitter spaces or on Cointelegraph. The man is everywhere. But despite all these media appearances, SBF is unlikely to testify next week on December 13th. Here we have an amazing image of SBF in an orange, you know, Guantanamo style jumps, the jumpsuit. The former CEO of ftx, Sam Bankman Frieda, signaled that he's unwilling to testify before the United States Congress until he's finished learning and reviewing what happened. He apparently continues to play the, oh, sorry, guys, I don't know what was going on. Despite the fact that six months ago ago he was, you know, the guy to go to for all things, trading leverage Risk management, despite also being 30 years old. The whole thing is completely fantastical. I don't even know how to put it into words. Marcel, what do you think? Is the money still there? As a first question and as a second question, what do you make of this SBF character? What's your take?

Oh, the guy is a fraudster and a liar, Joe. There's no doubt about that. So we cannot trust a single word coming out of his mouth. But the truth is the money is gone. It doesn't matter if they lost trading using leverage, if they gave to political parties, if they invested in venture capitals from friends and whatever, if they bought real estate, the money is gone. So even if the some government agency or whatever can seize some of those assets, the bankruptcy case, it's gonna take at least four years. I know Mt. Gox in Japan is going on for seven years. Still strong. There's no set date for the money to be released. And the attorneys gets some, gets paid every year during the process. So in a nutshell, it does not matter if SPF, if Sam goes to jail or not. No one is getting not even 10% of the money deposited there anytime soon. At least not on the next four years.

Good, good conclusion, good summation there. I mean, even in the tweet that Sam put out, it was like, oh, I will testify just once. I've finished with my homework over here and reviewing what's happened. It's amazing how much he's playing the sort of dopey card. Sam, what do you think? Sam Bankman Fried, Would you. Let's, let's ask an off the wall question. What would you do if you were stuck in an airport with Sam Bankman Fried?

Well, I don't want to incriminate myself, so I think I'll just resort to calling him a fraud, which I think we're the only ones doing. You take a look at what mainstream media. Most pathetic display I've ever seen. Basically dealing with him with, with kids, gloves. You see all the headlines from basically every major news source. Take a look at the wall. What was it, the New York Times article? It was an absolute disgrace, the fact that nobody is calling it what it is. You know, the issues that Sam Bankman Fried did, they're not really unique to crypto or any other asset class. He was basically a fraudster. He committed fraud. From all the indications that we have, he lied. And I think he should be held accountable. I'm not sure what's going to look like. He paid off a lot of people, so I Guess we have to wait and see. And as Marcel said, if you're one of the creditors, if you have money on ftx, it's unlikely you're going to get, you know, even if it's a haircut, you're not going to get anything anytime soon. So it's going to be fascinating to see how this plays out. But I think he's doing all this for a reason. You know, I think that there's a strategy behind why he's doing all these media interviews and why he's playing dumb. There's probably a strategy behind that. I don't think his lawyers or whoever the hell is representing him would just let him run, run his mouth publicly unless there was a reason. So that's the extent of it for me at least.

Yeah. And I'd just like to chime in with. I am quite proud as well to see that Cointelegraph is doing artwork where he's in a jumpsuit or there was another really striking picture where it was Sam Bankman Fried in handcuffs. Where's my camera? Handcuffs like that. And I just got another headline here from Vice. I don't know if you want to share screen again, but the headline is laughable. It literally says, sam Bankman Fried is trying to find the guy who did this. If you still look.

What do you expect?

Well, there you go. It's. It's just fascinating, isn't it, to know that this is what, you know, mums and dads and people that haven't come across bitcoin or crypto yet still think, or are told to think by mainstream media. Wake up everyone. There is the truth out there and we'd love for you to join us in. In speaking it. It's, yeah, sad state of affairs, but that's why you got Cointelegraph. You know, guys, cool. I. We had a couple of really lovely comments actually in there. A useful one from. Wrong again. Who said that you can't mint new tokens onto the Doge blockchain. I think that was in reply to Vikram's question, as it's not an EVM blockchain. So that's good to know. And he also said he loved the jumpsuit. I do too. I think it's, you know, wonderful work and shows that we are willing to put our reputation out there and our credibility online to tell the truth, which is really important, I think, in this space. Fantastic. Don't forget to drop us a question a like or just simply subscribe to the channel. You'll get lots more entertaining Content like this. And of course, if you want 20% off Markets Pro, there's a link in the description below. Wonderful. We're going to move on to a quick crypto tip next. It's all about Bollinger bands. When I say Bollinger, I hope the first thing you think of is the trading bands, not the very expensive champagne. Sometimes these are called bb. You know, that's what they're short for. I'm just going to talk you guys through what these mean, because it's another terminology that could go right over your head. But basically, they measure market volatility, and they look specifically at overbought and oversold conditions. So they're made up of three lines. An sma, which is called the moving, sorry, the middle band, or the single moving average, and an upper and a lower band. These settings can vary depending on what you're doing with Trading View, but typically the upper and lower bands are two standard deviations away from the middle band. Now, as volatility increases and decreases, the distance between the bands increases and decreases as well. So the band actually gets fatter and thinner depending on what the volatility is like. Generally speaking, the closer the price is to the upper band, the. The closer we are to being overbought, which might be an indication that it's time to sell or maybe trim some off. Conversely, the closer the price is to the lower band, the closer to oversold we are. As you can probably guess, right now, we're in. We are in very oversold territory. For the most part, the price will stay within the bands, but on rare occasions, it may break above or below these bands. Right now, we're kind of breaking through to the. The bottom side as we're in peak, bare market territory. Now, this event is not necessarily a trading signal itself, but again, we can use it as an indicator. And especially in extreme market conditions, it's a really easy way to be like, okay, we are in exceptionally volatile territory right now. So, yeah, that's it. Bollinger bands, don't forget it. And now you know a little bit about how to use them, play around with them, don't necessarily trade off them, Take your time with it. But they could be an important tool to go into your trading toolkit if you are that way inclined. Okay, let's get back to the show and to see if there's any more lovely comments from people around the world. Not yet. We can. We can carry on. I think we're coming around to my second favorite part of the show, Marcel's trading Insights. Marcel, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Joe.

So a lot has been said about the FTX and Alameda's downfall, but what exactly was the impact on markets? Well, there are two ways to interpret that. The first, we can speculate on how much Bitcoin and crypto market capitalization went down. But such analysis incorporates a myriad of other factors such as the Genesis GBTC risk, we covered that last week, the impact of further interest rates, hikes by the Federal Reserve and minor selling pressure, which we discussed today, and etc. But there's another way of measuring the impact of the FTX downfall. You got to remember that it was the second largest exchange in open interest futures and volumes. And Alameda was a key market maker on exchanges and decentralized finance defi application. So we should analyze the volume so how much the market volume went down to understand how much, how important FTX and Alameda were on the day to day activity. So I recommend using either Messari or Nomics as both providers. They have some transparent volume ranking, so that excludes exchanges that have been historically inflating their numbers. Danilo, I want to share my screen please. So here we have Messari data which shows Bitcoin trading volume. For the past days. It's been trading around 3, 4 billion dollars per day. And if we compare to what happened two months ago in September, before the FTX went down, we had a daily volume between 7 and 8 billion dollars. So Bitcoin spot trading volume went down by 50% in that period. Thank you, Daniel. And if we use Ethereum data, we have a similar pattern. Currently there's a 1.9 billion daily traded volume on spot exchanges and that compares to $3.8 billion in September. So a 50% decline on trading volume in Ethereum, that is really unprecedented. We haven't seen such a drop in such a short time. And you've got to consider that the market capitalization of the coins only dropped 15, 16% in the period, but the volumes dropped 50%. And the other data we should be using is the, the TVL on on DeFi. So the TVL is the total value deposited. So the total value that has been deposited on smart contracts. And for that we're going to use Defi llama. Danilo, if you can share my screen please. So what Defi llama shows us? Oh, the Defi llama one, Danilo? Yeah, that one. So what Defi llama shows us is that the TVL, for instance in Ethereum went down 30% in a month to $24 billion. If we go to Solana, the plunge was 75% to $300 million. So the aggregate TVL, so the total TVL on DeFi markets went down from 58 to $42 billion. That's a 28% decline. Thank you, Danilo, for the share. So some $10 billion, nine and a half billion dollars of debt can be explained by the prices of the cryptocurrencies sliding 16 to 17%, but there's still $6 billion unaccounted for. So, in essence, 11% of the TVL, roughly 10% of the TVL, can be attributed to the FTX downfall. So we had, in short, we had a 50% drop in volume, which some 20% can be explained by lower prices, and we had 11% downfall on the TVL. So no doubt it was eventful. And its impact is likely going to wait on the markets for a few more years to come because we have regulatory risks. But the total market capitalization from September to Now is down 16%. We are almost at $900 billion. And before the FTX collapse, we were at $1 trillion. So that should be extremely encouraging data. That's really positive and a sign of confidence, but because if we had really been in a bear market and the second largest cryptocurrency exchange and market maker disappeared, the market would have collapsed 50% or 60%, and that did not happen. So I think it's encouraging news.

Wonderful deep dive there. Thank you so much, Marcel. It's really important to get a sense of where we are in terms of the FTX fiasco, how low it can go. And also looking at the numbers and like. Right, okay, what can we deduce from this? And, yeah, those TVL numbers, they're quite frightening, aren't they? Dropping by high double digits, Solana dropped by 70%, but presumably they can just turn it off then on again. Right, and get the number back up. Is that not how Solana works?

They can hire the brothers that inflated the TVL by $10 billion in 2021.

Ah, there you go. That's how you. That's how you do crypto, ladies and gentlemen. I'd also just like to stress that these are our personal views when we're talking here. This is my personal view. I'm making a joke about Solana, for example. It's not Cointelegraph making a joke about Solana, and it's certainly not investment advice. Wonderful. Let's move to the next segment, which is all about markets pro. Now, I'm sure you guys know Already. But Markets Pro is the app that you need if you're going to take trading seriously. It's all about what to do, what not to do, and it's based on data provided by the Markets Pro app. So in this segment today, we're going to introduce to you something that you would have taken advantage of had you subscribed to Markets Pro last week. Before we get there, I'm going to give you a brief intro about, you know, Markets Pro in a nutshell. So it's a data intelligence platform which is designed to enhance investors decision making with industry grade analytics. And it's also not that expensive. There's 20% off in the subscription in box just down below. This week we are doing a news quake about the token called Band. So as you might already know, news moves the crypto market. Sometimes it's these whales up in Lapland with these Santa rallies, but most of the time it's news. Now, the Newsquake service by cointelegraph Markets Pro helps traders stay on top of important developments. And these newsquakes are effectively automated alerts that instantly notify users when these market moving events happen. So you basically get a pop up or a notification on your phone saying something like band could move soon due to this news event. Thanks to them Markets Pro subscribers, they often beat the crowds to the most important news of the day. I mean, at cointelegraph, news is our bread and butter. It's what we do best. And these Markets Pro newsquakes are pretty good stuff. So as per usual, newsquakes this week sent the Markets Pro community some timely information. On December 1, a newsquake alerted subscribers about the new partnership between Band Protocol and Desmos Network. If you weren't part of cointelegraph Markets Pro, you wouldn't have got this newsquake. At the time, band or band was trading at $1.89 and just hours later, its price pumped a whopping 25% to $2.37. You could have traded it had you been in the know. So consider subscribing to Cointelegraph Markets Pro. And if you do want to do that today, then there's a link in the description down below. Wonderful. Let's continue on with the show. And yet, of course, the best comment today still wins $50 from the coin Telegraph store where you can get some pretty cool swag. I think the winter Christmas jumper. Sorry, are now in stock. Have you gents got your Christmas jumpers this year? Have you got your trees up? Have you got your lights Up. Have you got your decorations up? I feel like we should get more Christmas, you know, are you guys Christmas lovers or, you know, Christmas haters? Is that a thing? Marcel, are you a Christmas lover?

It depends if bitcoin is above or below $200,000.

Okay. The Max Kaiser 220K still in play for 2022. We've got a fan there, Sam, presumably Christmas runs in your blood. Being that far north and in Canada, you just have to celebrate Christmas, right?

Yeah, it's quite nice, the lights and it's hard to imagine Christmas in a warm climate myself, but personally. Right. It doesn't. Doesn't compute with me given the association with the lights and the, you know, cold weather and the snow and everything, so. We got plenty of that up here.

I bet, I bet. And also don't forget that I think it was last year or the year before Christmas lights in the US used more electricity than mining the bitcoin network. That was one of my favorite sort of anti FUD sort of headlines. I can't remember the actual details. If. Do you guys remember the actual details of this? Because presumably the bitcoin network now uses more energy than Christmas lights, right? Or at least I hope so, because it can't be that insignificant, can it?

No, because it's about, I don't know, 80 million houses and it's so many lights outside the house and inside the house. And you also have the apparel to dry the clothes dryer. Clothes dryers in the United States and Europe uses also more energy than bitcoin. And that's every day for the whole year, not a single week on Christmas.

I like that. Because bitcoin miners could eventually obsolete clothes dryers around the world because you could be mining bitcoin whilst drying your clothes. Sam, do you have any closing thoughts for people watching today? Any words of wisdom or advice or just Christmas cheer?

No, I'm very pro bitcoin mining. I think if we're using a fraction of 1% of what the global financial system uses to secure the future of money, you know, the most perfect form of money we've ever created as a human race, I think it's a pretty good investment, you know, so I don't have any issues. And I mentioned last week that ESG is basically a scam. It's another vector to attack bitcoin with. So I don't have any issues with the miner. I think they're doing a great job and I think we'll find we'll start to see more of that. The benefits of Mining as more people come online to bitcoin out of necessity.

Okay, interesting. I agree with your opinion there and I just like to stress that it is opinion. I agree that ESG is indeed a scam, but that is also my opinion. Marcel, do you have any closing comments for us or. Christmas cheer? You know, we're getting in the spirit. Yeah.

I strongly advise to all the viewers to check out Joe Hall's interviews on the Beaheats beach. There's a video of him doing interviews with random folks on the beach and ask him if they ever known or if they hold bitcoin. And I think it's really interesting to see that even young people don't even know what the bitcoin logo is. So I think you guys should check out his video.

Marcel, thank you.

We're still early.

We're still early.

We're still very.

That's the Christmas cheer. Oh, we, we. We certainly are. And even watching this, because that was recorded in the summer, I'm watching this back today. I realized, oh, my gosh, we have so much work to do. If people from, you know, 13 years old to 80 years old don't recognize the. This on my shirt behind me, then, you know, what are we doing? We need to go out there and talk to people about bitcoin and talk to people about money and get people thinking, okay, why is my bill 10% higher this year? Why are my Christmas lights a lot more expensive this year? You know, all these sorts of things and get them to think about, okay, maybe there's a solution here. Maybe there's a way out. And maybe, just maybe, it's bitcoin. Okay, let's do our giveaway. Who are we giving it away to this week? Or is it going to be a rollover? Do we do that sometimes here? You know, like the lottery, you double it down, it becomes bigger the following week. I'm just checking the chat to see if there's anyone popping up. I know Vikram, our friend of the show. He has had the giveaway a few times. He is a die hard supporter and we commend that. But we are, of course, an inclusive community here. We like to keep things broad.

Anyone?

I think we can roll over. Roll over.

Yeah.

Most.

Most of the guys are here every week, so it's not. It shouldn't be fair to give them the prize because they're here every week. We applaud you guys for it. We thank you guys for being every week. But we want to give the prize to newcomers to the show.

Fantastic. Very good, Marcel. I'll follow that instruction. And I think that we will round it off there, guys. Season's greetings. Keep warm, keep stacking. Sats. Not financial advice, just my opinion. And yeah, we will see you all next week. Thank you so much for tuning in.

Over and out.

Stack those sats. Sa.