Walker88

If the major seller is using a good broker, he will let it breathe, even buy it up a little and let the market think the storm has passed. Then...BOOM ! When the bid side fills in, hammer it again. This has already happened after the late afternoon lull yesterday (Thai time). Just when folks thought it was safe to go back in the water, the seller struck again. (This assumes the seller isn't yet done; we'll see)

One famous Warren Buffett saying is: "When the tide goes out, you can see who's been swimming naked" When markets crash, the fraud, abuse and abject silliness comes to light. In 1987's 'portfolio insurance' disaster, all funds thought they could just hedge by shorting futures, forgetting there has to be another side to that trade. In 2008 we found out about dark markets and how assets are marked by prime brokers (heavily in their favor,,,quel surprise !). We also found out AIG was assuming most of the world's known risk. We found Synthetic CDO Squareds where the bank was allowing major clients to hand-pick the mortgages going into a security against which the client would hold the CDS. Six months in arrears was the preferred mortgage for the eventual CVDS holder. In 1990 in Japan, my favorite tale was that a major bank at that time---Industrial Bank of Japan---had loaned more than $2 billion to a single customer, a woman who owned a sushi restaurant in Osaka. Her restaurant was the sole pledged collateral. On her loan applications, she actually put as the reason for the loans, "To buy stocks the gods tell me to buy". Apparently her gods were neither omnipotent nor infallible. I wonder what nonsense we will find in the crypto and associated industry collapse? How many Michael Saylors and Three Arrow Capitals are there out there, who borrowed to buy other cryptos, pledging their existing crypto as collateral? That is the 'history rhymes' equivalent of LEH's 100:1 leverage back in 2009, or what went on at Bear Stearns. Like Saylor, both Jimmy Cayne and Dick Fuld were billionaires....until reality intruded. I certainly hope Michael Lewis will put his humor to this debacle.

Cue the "Hey, Ken Griffin is shorting coins! That's not fair!" Or maybe folks will go to the old standby, George Soros. I suspect we're getting close to folks dragging out that tired old excuse....but then they'll begin dreaming of Gamestop.

How do you unwind a large position? Just the way someone is doing it now. Pick a time, hammer the bids. Unload as much as the market will take without a total crash. Then go silent for a while. let the market think you're done. If fans think the selling is over, they will try to lift the market a little. Help them. Buy a little bit to get some recovery. Let the bid side fill in again with dreamers and the endlessly hopeful. Then give it Round 2. Hammer the bid side. Rinse and repeat until most of the position is gone. Especially try to get as much done as possible before the market gets really spooked and enters full blown panic. That this is happening on the weekend is interesting. It suggests some bank---a lender to someone---couldn't wait anymore and pulled the plug on collateral for a loan. Is it because of Saylor? Could it be Three Arrow Capital? Maybe "Satoshi" himself, just trying to get last blood out of the rock? (How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large one.) The trading style of whomever it is is fascinating. In equities, Bear Stearns and Lehman traded this way near the end. Bulls like Bill Miller,when they saw BSC tumbling, kept saying, "I'm buying more here...why shouldn't I?" Buy more, he did. BSC fell to $2, and then merged with JPM. The price was later adjusted to about $10, for some reason. LEH went to $0. Those were real companies who had long provided services. They got wildly over leveraged. btc, on the other hand, is a 'finite' entity in a world of infinite cryptos with zero barriers to entry. It's an 'industry' where there is massive incentive for someone to produce a better mousetrap, correcting for the inherent flaws in existing coins, if indeed there is any genuine reason for any crypto. It's possible 'crypto' is the new internet, though that is unlikely. Powered flight is revolutionary. The transistor was revolutionary. The internet and www were revolutionary. Blockchain could be semi-revolutionary. crypto is still a 'solution' looking for a problem, and btc may well not be the long term winner. Then again, it might just be another Beanie Baby, just not as cute to teens and soccer moms.

When something is cratering like btc, the term is 'trying to catch a falling knife' When it first broke below $40K, folks on different forums were saying "I'm buying more here". The same was said as various stops on the way down. It's $19,250 right now, so if those folks bought, then got hammered. Sometimes it is best to 'let it breathe', even if one is fond of the entity. There were 'ambulance chasing journalists' in early 1990 when the Nikkei fell from 38,915.87 to near 30,000. They were right, however, as it continued to fall for years and fell below 8,000. 32 years later the ATH of 28-12-1989 still holds. When the Dow crashed in 1929, it took until 1954 to set a new high, and that was only because the bankrupt companies were replaced in the index. A term arose from that time which folks still parrot, even though it was dead wrong ("Buy when there's blood in the street"). There was blood in the street, as folks jumped, but that was nowhere near the end of the bear market. When the Hunts and Saudis gave up the ghost on Au/Ag in April 1980, it was 31 years before a new high, and $48 Ag fell to $3, $800 Au to around $270 in the interim. Those things were either collections of productive enterprises, or else re the metals, something with a few thousand years of affection supporting it. It still took years and years to recover. I still think that even if any crypto survives, it will be one that corrects for what ails bitcoin, just as Google bettered Lycos, Facebook bettered MySpace, etc. When speculative frenzies end, it varies from 'years' to 'never' to reach new highs. Whether btc $69K was the end of a speculative frenzy or not remains to be seen. I think it was, but that's why there are markets: opinions differ. (ETH is bouncing off $1000. One try so far. Usually the 3rd try does it, and if it holds, a good bounce higher results.)

Looking at the images folks have posted here, the phrase from Hannah Arendt comes to mind: "The banality of evil"