Did you see what happened yesterday, Anon?
So many things looking wildly bullish for crypto.
https://doge.gov
I gotta say it's one thing to hear it being talked about... but actually seeing a DOGE government website is a truly mindboggling experience. A couple days ago this website straight up had the DOGE logo on it. Then it changed to something else... then it got removed. 
Ross Ulbricht pardoned
The Libertarian Silk Road celebrity has been freed. I was getting kind of worried to be honest. When Trump didn't free Ross on day one or even mention crypto or this promise... it made a lot of people a little nervous and even enraged. For every day that Ross was not freed you could tell people were going to get more and more pissed. I was thinking there was going to be a lot more drama here but then he freed him much sooner than expected.
I was arguing with multiple people on crypto Twitter today who are a bit uncomfortable about putting a "drug dealer" on a pedestal. This pardon weirdly makes Ross a much bigger celebrity than he was before, especially within libertarian and crypto circles. Already people are donating gobs of money to him for his new life. Interesting to see for sure.
Some are worried that glorifying the black market is a bad look for crypto. I would argue that this is exactly what we signed up for. Black markets are not supposed to exist, and if permissionless crypto has anything to say about it they will not exist. The government has no business telling us what we can and can not buy, and then in doing so create an exponentially more dangerous environment where the artificially low supply funds cartels and mafia willing to kill to maintain their power.
In fact there's also incontrovertible proof that three letter agencies like the CIA greatly profit from schedule 1 drugs, not only by selling product that they confiscated but being able to wield deadly force and coercion against the very cartels being funded by the black markets that the government creates. And then the losses are subsidized by the prison industrial complex through taxes and inflation. The entire system is a complete and utter shitshow that most people have an opinion on but little actual knowledge due to all the propaganda like the "War on Drugs".
https://x.com/myhiddenvalue/status/1879648286023577729
The Qanon Shaman was also pardoned along with all the other J6ers,
but that's a whole other thing unrelated to crypto.
Crypto Mom Taskforce
Acting Chair Mark Uyeda announced Tuesday that the agency has created a crypto task force dedicated to “developing a comprehensive and clear regulatory framework for crypto assets.” The task force will be led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, a long-time advocate for the crypto industry, and will work closely with the crypto industry to develop regulations. The task force will also work with Congress, providing “technical assistance” as it crafts crypto regulations.
The most bullish piece of news yesterday by leaps and bounds was the announcement of a crypto taskforce being spearheaded by Hester "Crypto Mom" Pierce. For those who don't know (literally everyone I've talked to so far) Hester Pierce was the only agent within the Securities Exchange Commission who seemed to understand the nuance of crypto in a totally unbiased and reasonable way. Giving her power over a crypto regulatory entity is a massive win that will echo into the future in a big way.
“To date, the SEC has relied primarily on enforcement actions to regulate crypto retroactively and reactively, often adopting novel and untested legal interpretations along the way,” the statement said. “Clarity regarding who must register, and practical solutions for those seeking to register, have been elusive. The result has been confusion about what is legal, which creates an environment hostile to innovation and conducive to fraud. The SEC can do better.”
https://x.com/DegenerateNews/status/1881841069249458241
Peanuts!
Crypto degens are losing their shit over a reporter asking Trump about his memecoin, and POTUS responded that multibillion dollar gains are "peanuts to these guys". This leads degens to believe that perhaps number will continue to go up even though Trump clearly doesn't know a damn thing about the product, down to the market cap and token valuation.
And still Bitcoin trades flat
The fact that we didn't pump hard leads me to believe that we're going to continue trading sideways for a while longer. So much positive news for crypto is a massive catalyst. Number should have gone up. The fact that there is nothing in the market to catalyze should lead us to believe that we are in for some disappointment in the short term.
In response to these events I've moved to reduce the volatility of my trading account. Instead of being 100% BTC as of yesterday @ $103k, I've since opened an x0.5 short on my account (sold half my stack for USDT) to reduce my volatility by 50% during this weird period. I'm more than willing to capitulate and take the 2.5% loss if we move higher than $110k. This is just a hedge in both directions.
0.5x short? Why not just sell spot?
Going short on BTC/USD is superior to selling the spot market because the funding rate pays 0.01% yield every 8 hours to the shorts. This is the standard baseline yield. It can change but it's at the baseline so it's worth farming even though it's only 11% APR. A little birdy told me 11% is higher than 0%. This short has a liquidation level of $1M BTC, which I find slightly humorous, especially since the position can't be liquidated at all (which I tested by adding collateral to find that $1M is just a placeholder for infinity).
On the technical side... Bitcoin has support everywhere.
- Support at $96k (especially on January 31 intercept)
- Support at $92k (tested a half dozen times during crab)
- Support at $90k (MA(100))
- Support at $85k-$77k (Huge range that no one had time to buy at)
- Support at $76k (MA(200) + first breakout flag)
- Support at $72k (top of the brutal 9-month $58k crab market)
What does this mean?
Well it means that if we somehow someway crash 30% on a classic retracement I'm going x10 or even x20 long. Nuff said.
USA leaves the World Health Organization
This was not on my Bingo card, but I guess people were pissed off enough about COVID for it to happen. I can't say I'm for or against this move but it is quite the statement to make on the geopolitical scale. Take note.
https://x.com/edict3d/status/1882082599864320088
ETH split?
Bearish news for ETH... the network is fractured and bickering because number go down vs Bitcoin. Will we see a new fork of ETH? Is buying ETH right now super risky? ... or is this the ultimate bottom signal? Could ETH be worth buying just in case it does split and we can sell two tokens instead of one? Truly I have no idea this is an absolute shitshow.
Thinking back to the Hive hostile takeover... there definitely was an opportunity to buy in on the cheap cheap... get the forked tokens, and then sell everything for a huge profit before it all crashed into the dirt. Many of us did not capitalize on this because we cared about the network too much. Luckily I don't give a shit about ETH so I can be much less emotional about these things happening to other communities I'm not a part of. Of course being a vulture isn't exactly honorable work. There are many variables to consider.
Conclusion
It's been an absolutely crazy few days and now that inauguration is over and done with, the price action seems to be somewhat frozen in place. I'm still holding out hope that the wildcard that is the month of February matriculates into an altmarket, but in the meantime we just need to get through this month and hope the bleed isn't too bad.