Subscribe | Specs Chat | Sponsor Us

⌐◪-◪ → Hedge funds are shorting Bitcoin at record levels as Bitcoin drops from $71k to $66k.

Unclear what is driving this bearish sentiment, but the latest time Wall Street shorted something this hard (GameStop) it didn’t end well for them.

The hedge funds will have to rebuy 100k BTC at some point to cover their shorts, and if BTC doesn’t break down to $62k this will result in a massive short squeeze.

Zooming out: It’s been 500 days since BTC hit the bear-market bottom. In 2020, BTC went up 732% over the next 12 months from the same 500-day point. Peep this chart.

Furthermore, the Bitcoin supply shortage on exchanges is so bad that the largest banks are contacting miners directly to buy Bitcoin, this comes from the CEO of Hut 8 Mining.

I really hope r/wallstreet bets rallies the retail troops on this one.

⌐◪-◪ → Ripple just announced they’ll launch a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar across the Ethereum and XRP Ledger blockchains.

The token will be 100% backed by US dollar deposits + short-term US government treasuries or other cash equivalents.

For context: the stablecoin market is over $150B today and is projected to exceed $2.8T by 2028.

Ripple wants to play in a similar lane as $USDC, providing the world a complaint stablecoin that provides trust, stability, and utility.

Meanwhile, Ripple is still battling the SEC — which might scare users away in favor of more “safe” stablecoins like Circle’s $USDC.

Court case aside, I think this is a smart move by Ripple because stablecoins are a growing market segment with undeniable product/market fit.

This move means Ripple could become a bank that pays no interest. Pretty nice if you ask me.

⌐◪-◪ → Coinbase is officially integrating the Bitcoin lightning network, and the CEO said it, “should be launching soon”.

I think this is good news, as it gives users more optionality and faster/cheaper transactions, but not everyone agrees…

Bitcoin accelerationist @Pledditor believes that “Coinbase has zero engineers with Bitcoin experience” citing 3 bits of evidence:

1. Coinbase outsourced Lightning to Lightspark

2. After 14 months of Ordinals, they haven’t listed a single one

3. They don’t even support Taproot transactions

While I appreciate his opinion, Coinbase has proven its competence time and time again over many years of operations, so I’m optimistic.

Outsourcing to Lightspark could simply be a way to move faster rather than an expertise/knowledge dependency and no ordinals could have its own set of reasons (regulatory/risk/values).

But who knows, he may have a valid point here. I’m not familiar with Coinbase’s team composition or BTC expertise.

Join The Conversation!

Unlock Specs’ full potential by joining Specs Chat, where members chat with Valko, add context to the daily crypto news, and share a diverse set of perspectives.

Specs Chat is more than just a group chat, it’s a community designed to help you become a better crypto investor and operator.