500 sats

500 sats?

Yep that's my number. That's the price point in which I dump all my Bitcoin for Hive and YOLO it up once more. Of course I don't actually think it will get that low, but hey if it does opportunity only knocks once, ya?

The last time we bled out against Bitcoin was late 2020, with the ultimate low of 289 sats per Bitcoin on January 7th, 2021. Yeah I remember those times quite well because I was stacking as much Hive as I possibly could. And I will again if the opportunity arises.

Those were actually very depressing times for the community. Seems like the more disillusioned and hysterical everyone gets the smarter it is to take the other side of the trade. Of course this only applies to legitimate projects. Those who employed the same strategy on NFTs or DEFI got wiped out and then wiped out again when they doubled down.

To be fair it's really not that difficult to see if a network has any substance or not. Searching for signs of life is quite easy when the ultimate goal stops being "make as much money as possible no matter the cost". Ironically, the cost ends up being losing all your money. Go figure.

Hive has been taking a beating against Bitcoin since October. In November we got a wave of death-crosses where everything dipped under the MA(200), and then we got another wave of death crosses in March as all four moving averages started to fan out and separate, and not in the bullish direction. Very sad. But also not unexpected.

We can see the new local low is around 1000 sats per Hive. Will this level hold? Ah I feel like there's a good chance, but again I'm only all in if we get absolutely obliterated down to the 500 line.

What was the environment like back then?

The last time we bled-out against Bitcoin the Hive brand had only existed for 10 months. Anyone who was around during that time knows that the uncertainty of it all hung thick in the air. Would this network be able to survive the onslaught and hold its own against our sister chain nemesis? Those who put their money where their mouth is were rewarded, and we seem to be approaching such a situation again.

The nice variable this time around is that nobody is actually worried that we'll crash to zero. We jacked up the yield of HBD to 20% to match the competition, and look what happened. All the competition went and died on us during the bear market. Hell, that's essentially what CAUSED the bear market to begin with (many flavors of overleverage). And yet we are still at 20%. It's like being in a strong-man tournament that we've already won but we haven't put the bar down just to show off. Pretty funny honestly. The politics of this network are odd to say the least.

Another nice thing about the 2020 Bitcoin bleed-out is that Hive wasn't losing value at that time. We were at rock-bottom levels and consolidating hard while Bitcoin went x4 from $10k to $40k. This created the same quantity of panic, but it was in the FOMO direction rather than the FUD. Better to trade flat while Bitcoin moons than get stopped together. I know from experience.

Wen altseason?

The current market is certainly whispering that the next bull run might be the classic double-waterfall. The seemingly choreographed adoption of Bitcoin by Blackrock and other institutions combined with regulatory overreach can not be ignored. They are really going hard on their little song and dance. The approval of an x2 BTC futures market off the heels of suing the two biggest exchanges is honestly comical at this point. Protect me harder, Daddy government. Yikes.

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So yeah the chance that institutional money gets once again gets pumped into Bitcoin is high. Bitcoin dominance "should" go up. It takes a while for money to shift around and people to take gains before altseason hits. I mean hell who wants to sell their Bitcoin to Blackrock this cheap? Not me, that's for damn sure. Make them pay for it.

So having some corn is still a good play.

Speaking of halving, the speculation around BTC block rewards getting cut in half is still the talk of the town. I've said this many times and I'll keep saying it: the hype is misplaced. The next halving is meaningless. Cutting a 6.25 BTC block reward in half means nothing in the face of any kind of institutional adoption combined with the natural exponential growth of the network. It won't be long before the halving event becomes a rounding error, but I'm sure that won't stop the market cycle from trying to price it in.

Buy the rumor, sell the news.

Events like this have a tendency to get priced in months before they actually happen. Three months is pretty standard. What's three months before April? January... so if BTC is mooning in January and everyone is riding high on that Blackrock money... I'm selling. I'm taking gains. I'm out. Not out out, but perhaps more out than I've ever been. Of course that's not a very bold statement considering I've pretty much been 100% all in since 2017. Permabulls gonna permabull.

In any case December/January are very common times for Bitcoin to moon anyway. Add to that liquidity coming back into the legacy markets and the potential for rate cuts and whatever else... the end of this year really could be the perfect storm for crypto. I was very much hoping that we'd of already been rampaging by now but we very much still seem to be in this slow burn phase after putting the FTX nonsense behind us. Patience seems to be more than a virtue in this space. Practically a matter of life and death in this markets.

Conclusion

Seems like Bitcoin is the asset we should be holding, but Bitcoin is boring and the community is toxic. Still, always good to have some exposure to the big dawg, if only to leverage that position into more alts later when the time is right. For me the right time is 500 sats per Hive. No reason to keep stacking BTC if I can trade it for a mountain of tokens I actually want.

The four year crypto market cycle continues. First comes the bear market, then the year of the maximalist, then the narrative for the altseason, then moon. The year of the maximalist will be over in six months. Good thing too as it's been getting quite tedious. I'm ready to see what the new narrative is for 2024, and I'll cross my fingers for "decentralized social media" for reasons that shall remain shrouded in mystery.