Opinion

Your weekly dose of crypto news & opinion.

Opinion

Buying the Bitcoin Bubble

We’ve always been told to stay away from bubbles. But in crypto a good bubble is just part of the process. When I first got into crypto, the one thing skeptics loved to throw at our feet was the Dutch tulip mania of 1637. Put simply, this was a

Opinion

All Bundled Up

Variety is the spice of life. In crypto, it’s also a handy way of ensuring that you don’t get rekt. As a field, crypto can be remarkably tribal. Bitcoin maximalists, the XRP Army, LINK Marines – talk to any of them and they’ll likely say the same thing:

Opinion

Beyond DeFi

The DeFi frenzy shows no sign of slowing. But when the hype finally dies down, what will take its place? I last wrote about the DeFi supernova a month ago, but the space is moving at such an absurd velocity that the article already reads like something out of the

Opinion

Bull in a Crypto Shop

Markets are soaring, coins are putting in 50% days and the Lambo memes are back. Is this 2017 all over again? I don’t normally do this, but let’s start with the caveats. This might not be the start of the next bull market. Even after a few good

Opinion

DeFi-ing Gravity

It’s the summer of DeFi! (AKA decentralised finance). But is something revolutionary happening or is it just another crypto bubble? People have been proclaiming alt season from the rooftops recently, but it’s probably more accurate to call it DeFi season instead. From a relatively fringe pursuit whose products

Opinion

It’s… Stock Season?

Penny stocks going 5x, bankrupt companies pumping 700% – why is the share market acting like crypto in 2017? For the better part of two months now, bitcoin has been stalled. At the start of May, a few days before the halving, we pumped into the US$9000 range and have,

Opinion

Bitcoin for the People

Remember when your friends used to ask you about bitcoin? Those days might be back sooner than you think. If you were around during the 2017 crypto bubble, you probably remember the first time someone asked you about bitcoin. How startling it felt to have a real world, flesh-and-blood person

Opinion

The Sacrificial Half

The bitcoin halvening is HERE. We take you through the ins and outs of bitcoin’s biggest event. At 5.23 am (AEST) this morning a seismic shift occurred: the amount of bitcoin produced every time a block is mined was slashed from 12.5 to 6.25 BTC. It’

Opinion

Oils Ain’t Oils

Oil prices are literally through the floor and it’s making crypto look like an oasis of stability. On April 20 you could, for a brief moment, get paid US$40 for buying a barrel of oil. For a sense of how insane that is, try and imagine it happening

Opinion

May the Half Be With You

On May 12 the bitcoin mining reward rate will halve. The only guarantee is that turbulence is on its way. In the crypto universe, no event comes saddled with more unhinged hype, arcane mythology, wild theorising and all-out anxiety than the bitcoin halving. Perhaps bitcoin’s single most defining feature

Opinion

The Decoupling

The coronavirus is pushing the global financial system to the absolute brink. Will this be Bitcoin’s moment? I think it’s fair to say that we’ll always remember March 2020. It was the month that one-third of the world’s population – 2.6 billion people – went into borderline

Opinion

Coronal Mass Ejection

In the space of 24 shocking hours, bitcoin’s price plunged by 50% – and then rebounded by 50%. The black swan has well and truly arrived. When I finished the last newsletter by warning about the risk of “savage and unpredictable” market moves during the #coronapocalypse, I was not in

Opinion

A Case of Corona

Corona is spreading and the markets are freaking out. What does it mean for bitcoin?

Opinion

It’s Alt Season?

Coins soaring 50% in a single hour. Tokens going 3x. Could it actually be *gasp* alt season? Say the words “alt season” in front of anyone who’s been trading crypto since 2017 and you’re likely to be greeted with misty eyed reminiscences about a time when even conservative

Opinion

A Cautionary Tale

Hacks, exit scams and insolvency, oh my. So, how safe is your crypto? Even by the sometimes surreal standards of crypto, the news this week that creditors for bankrupt Canadian exchange QuadrigaCX were seeking to have the body of the founder, Gerald Cotten, exhumed to prove that he was, in

Opinion

Here’s to Being Average

Is Dollar Cost Averaging the solution to all your trading woes? There are times when bitcoin’s daily price gyrations feel like they’ve been specifically designed to induce a state of low-grade insanity. Take the last few weeks, for instance. First, the price flips out of a six-month long

Opinion

A Very Crypto Christmas

Beer, barbie and a captive audience – there’s no better time of year to get chatting about crypto. Here’s how to broach the subject. You know it’s coming. There you are, sitting around the dinner table on Christmas Day, trying to find common ground with a cousin you

Opinion

A Miner Key

Prices are going down, down, down. Are we witnessing the effects of miner capitulation? The crypto markets have a way of making us feel foolish. A month ago we were soaring when China issued its blockchain mission directive and the price of bitcoin jumped almost 50% in a day. How

Opinion

Island of Stability

They won’t make you rich, but stablecoins are crypto’s hottest property. Here’s why they matter. On November 1, CoinJar added trading support for USD Coin (USDC), a US-dollar pegged stablecoin backed by crypto-pioneers Circle and Coinbase. The idea behind the coin is simple: 1 USDC = 1 US

Opinion

BlockCha̶ina: China Says "Get in the Car"

After months of brutal downtrend, bitcoin just had its best day since 2011 – and you can thank Xi Jinping. So, let’s recap. In the three months to June, bitcoin, seemingly without warning, quadrupled in price. Euphoria reigned, naysayers were roundly booed, down-payments were made on many lambos. And then,

Opinion

Defence against the dark arts: how to spot fake volume on cryptocurrency exchanges

In early 2019, a report by Bitwise to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission put forward a bold statement which at the same time failed to surprise anyone, “95% of all reported bitcoin trading volume is fake”. Since then Bitwise have followed up their much-publicised report with an update

Opinion

Adoption Blues

Despite our best efforts, cryptocurrency remains a fringe pursuit. Could a new film help spread the love? Sometimes blockchain can feel like a Magic Eye picture: the kind of thing you either get instantly and it blows your tiny little mind, or that you’ll never understand no matter how

Opinion

BTCO₂

Mining Bitcoin uses more electricity than the entire country of Switzerland. Is cryptocurrency an unmitigated eco-disaster? The recent announcement that bitcoin mining is consuming more energy each year than Switzerland (population 8.4 million) was enough to make your average crypto enthusiast shift uncomfortably in their chair. These are, after

Opinion

All the alts are dying

Bitcoin has had a hell of a year. So, why are the altcoins being absolutely obliterated? During the 2017 crypto bull run people noticed that the market had started following a predictable pattern. First Bitcoin would make a move north, then the major caps like Ethereum, Litecoin and XRP would

Opinion

Currency wars are good and easy to win

It’s official: America and China are in a full-blown currency war. Could this be the best thing that’s ever happened to bitcoin? Even by the standards of the Trump administration, the most recent trade war escalations with China have been, how shall we say, kinetic. After announcing that