Trading Bullshit in Antigua
Someone in the cryptosphere has a sense of humour!
Another day, another crypto curio.
Having a wind down chat with my trading buddy, we were weighing up the offerings of a new and innovative crypto futures exchange, FTX. Brought to our attention by way of a recent investment by Binance, it is still independent and incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda (though who knows where the servers and physical staff are located).
Binance’s earlier acquisition in this space was JEX, based in the Seychelles, well out of the reach of intrusive EU financial regulation, just like Antigua. It’s almost as if Binance were regretting their move to Malta, the self-styled blockchain island (but not able to ignore EU rules forever).
In any event, the immediate attraction of FTX was the availability of options on Bitcoin, previously only conveniently available on Deribit.
Options are implemented on FTX via a Request for Quote (RFQ) system, as opposed to Deribit’s endless list of order books. A quick check on a 9000 call option for Friday showed barely a sliver of difference ($58 vs $61). But in the meantime, something more entertaining caught our eye.
FTX, tongue firmly in its cheek, has introduced a Shitcoin Index, based on 58 Altcoins which no-one really expects to go anywhere, but which might just pull off a surprise one of these days.
Even better, they have created tokens based on the Index that you can buy and hold, as an alternative to trading the future and worrying constantly about keeping sufficient margin supplied. One token gives 3X the return of any losses suffered on the index (the Bearshit token) and the other gives 3X the return of any gains (yep, the Bullshit token).
A rising tide lifts all boats, so who is to say that, when Bitcoin screams up to $100k (surely imminent!), the altcoins won’t be dragged up too.
I just had to have a nibble.
And to think that only one article ago I was claiming to have cracked the secret of trading, which boiled down to a) having a rational basis for each trade and b) taking it slow and steady.
Looks like I’m going to have to adopt the televangelist protocol.
“Do as I say, not as I do”.
Many thanks for reading!
I would probably think it was a hoax too, but check it out at FTX.com (not an affiliate link!). NB — A Bull in financial markets is one who predominantly expects markets to rise, whereas a Bear expects them to fall.
More of the same sort of nonsense below:
