What's your preferred BTC mix?

Do you prefer having 100% of your BTC-related investments in cold storage or have you also considered a mix of perhaps 50% cold storage 30% MSTR 10% FBTC 10% top 3 miners? Especially where the funds for the proxies are tied up in IRA accounts.

The short answer is this:

Your very first priority should be securing your BTC stash in cold-storage.

You need to figure out what your target stack sizes are (your minimum, target and outrageous stacks) and make sure you are well above minimum and at least well on your way to target level before you consider "diversifying" into other BTC-adjacent plays.

I do understand some of your money may be stuck in the fiat machinery and you may be trying to figure out how to turn that into BTC. My personal pick for that is 100% MSTR.

I'll explain why near the bottom of this rant but the inverse-Cramer should be inspiration and guarantee enough:

Miners

Mining is and will remain a difficult business and cutthroat environment demanding not just ruthless efficiency but a real edge —which is hard to achieve and harder to sustain .

You not only need access to cheap electricity in abundant supply, weather-appropriate setup, good maintenance staff and well-priced mining rigs. You also need enough capital to sustain you through bear markets, and the ability and luck to avoid regulatory capture (not to mention outright theft).

Will TeraWulf —as the first US nuclear-powered BTC miner have a long-term edge? Damned if I know. I like the concept but they still have execution, regulatory and many other risks ahead of them.

It's worth noting many public miners, their stocks rise notwithstanding, are not actually profitable.

The worst part is at no foreseeable point will it get easier as new rigs will keep pushing difficulty up. There may be a respite in difficulty if a large miner blows up (or there's another country-wide ban) but it's unlikely to last long.

Furthermore, big-public miners are not the all that healthy for the ecosystem as they are both prone to regulatory capture (which could eventually mean attempts at censorship) and have mandates which will make it difficult for them to choose to do what's right for Bitcoin long-term if that means it may not be the best short-term decision for their shareholders.

If you want to mine for ideological, privacy or other reasons that's great, just don't expect to make back your full investment (if you do you'll be pleasantly surprised)

If you must invest in mining I'd suggest you start by mining yourself with either a small lottery-like solo miner (like BitAxe) or buying and running your own rig.

ETFs

Sure, the ETFs seem to be doing well,

And it does seem —contrary to popular sentiment— that it's more the case that buyers are more bitcoiners new to Wall Street than "Wall Streeters" new to BTC.

Still, there's no potential upside from the ETFs beyond spot and there is a fee, so you'll be slightly underperforming. Don't see the appeal beyond "grandma can't use a wallet"

MSTR

In the clip above, Cramer mistakenly states MSTR is a derivative of BTC, which is at best a half-truth —ETFs are direct derivatives of BTC, all the price action (minus fees) with none of the custody (for good and bad).

MSTR is a bit different. Yes, it's fully tied to BTC but it's inventing (and monopolizing) a whole new "Bitcoin securitization" market.

When you buy MSTR you don't own paper BTC, you own a slice of a business that is sitting on a huge-and-growing pile of BTC and transforming it into "different-flavored" products for the Trad-Fi market.

These products cater not just to different investor appetites, but to different investor mandates. This is a key detail, if you're bullish BTC but can only legally buy bonds (or stocks) what do you do? You buy MSTR debt (or shares).

• Want a BTC-yielding investment?
• Need to buy bonds but would like something closer to BTC price action?
• Don't care for BTC but want a market-beating fixed-income?
• Would you settle for limited BTC upside if it had zero downside risk?

MSTR has a product for you.

I'm not saying the current NAV is high or low, but I am saying almost no one understands this yet, no one is trying to compete with MSTR in this market and no one is likely to emerge as a credible competitor.

MSTR's has a positive flywheel effect where —as long as they don't over-leverage— they can keep repeating the same strategy successfully, and because they were first-movers they've now developed a moat that will make it very hard for anyone else to catch up —even if they have more money.

I highly recommend this interview of you want to dive deeper into MSTR:

Bitcoin News

Let the Games Begin

There has been some (above my pay grade) discussions about whether options on BTC ETFs will increase or dampen volatility. What is clear to me is they will provide a broader hedging/speculating toolbox for professional traders, which means more interest in the asset. There's no date for their release yet, but options have been approved.

Surely at least a few of them will be blind to the dangers of paper Bitcoin and get gloriously REKT. May they pump our bags with abandon.

Meanwhile you should avoid these (you don't want to outsmarting yourself) and keep stacking spot BTC. Having said. that if you're really curious about what this means, I'll repost this from a few weeks ago:

If that's too much text here's a clear simple chart:

and speaking of early adopters, the ECB says you're all bastards…

Fighting Words

The European Central Bank just flipped positions. It went from BTC being worthless to Bitcoiners being thieves for stealing economic value from non-adopters, and dares to suggest non-adopters may experience "malaise and frustation" and will NOT, in fact, have fun staying poor.

This is not only a retarded position, it's hilarious as everyone knows it's impossible to stop Bitcoiners from trying to convince anyone at anytime and for any reason to buy some BTC.

I do applaud the for stating BTC could reach $10M per coin and for this excellent quote though:

Missing out on Bitcoin is not merely a lost opportunity for wealth accumulation, but means real impoverishment compared to a world without Bitcoin.

The cherry on top is that the absolute clowns responsible for this piece Mrrs. Tweedlee and Tweedledumb Ulrich and Jürgen, encourage non-adopters to oppose Bitcoin and advocate for laws that prevent Bitcoin's price from rising and preferably make it disappear altogether.

LOL

LMFAO even.

But as idiotic as their arguments are, the reality is they allow midwits to feel justified in proposing dumb, bound-to-fail anti-BTC policies, like this one

Krypto News

"Crypto" can be lethal to your portfolio

Billionaire Agents

VC legend Marc Anderseen must have been bored. He gave an AI agent $50,000 in BTC to help it "spread in the wild".

It resulted in the launch of a token (based on a very gross meme) called Goatseus Maximus. As of this writing it's market cap is <$400 million

Abort

Speaking of highly retreaded ideas, Trump's crypto project —and I can't overstate how BAD an idea this was— launched to resounding crickets (sold less than 5% of its 20 billion tokens on the 1st day). Let's hope they give it a quick, merciful death.

Delusional

Charles Hoskins must have access to phenomenal drugs.

Fiat News

MOAR

$455 Billion of additional debt in 3 weeks. $4 Trillion since the debt ceiling was suspended 16 months ago. People who study the rise and declines of empires call this the "looting the treasury" stage. It always happens near the end.

Speaking of the Treasury, are they down with the flu or something? Their Monthly Treasury Report was released (uncharacteristically) 6 business days late without forewarning, explanation or comment.

The current estimate for 2024 deficit spending is now an eye-popping $1.8 trillion.

As Mr. Mattison points out in the Tweet above, the government needs lower rates. But that is a bit of an issue because banks have gargantuan (means trillions) "unrealized losses" —an accounting wizardry spell that allows banks to hide the fact they bought tons of expensive bonds at very low rates which are now kind of worthless in a high-rate environment.

BofA alone has exposure to the tune of $130 billion and Wells Fargo weighs in at over $50 billion.

If banks face a situation where they need to sell those bonds to meet liquidity requirements, they'd be completely fucked in serious trouble.

Here comes the interesting twist: The Fed lowered rates a month ago, but the market has been giving them the finger demanding higher rates on 10-year debt. The higher these rates go, the deeper in trouble the banks are.

It's worth mentioning that if banks don't face any runs / liquidity issues, they will simply hold the bonds to maturity and all will be well. Also the government won't allow the big banks to fail, it will reach into the future, take your children's and grandchildren's savings and use them to bail out the banks and pay big fat bonuses to the executives. We know this because it's what they've done every time.

Debt

Meanwhile debt seems to be weighing on the American consumer too.

Then again, it seems everyone is up to their eyeballs in debt.

But remember what your mom told you "just because everyone else is doing it doesn't mean it's OK"

No Gold

BRICS has been talking about its alternative currency forever. Recently they've been backstopping their transactions with gold, with plenty of hopium they'd mnove to a BTC standard. Now it seems they're releasing a new digital currency (sigh). I hope it does as well as Trump's project.

Dystopian News

Dinosaur Dislikes Meteors

I don't expect central bankers to like Bitcoin. But statements like this are just embarrasing.

Shot:

Chaser 1:

Chaser 2:

Chaser 3:

Chaser 4:

Chaser 5:

Price News

Bitcoin Surfing

Bitcoin jumped off the Board ($63k) last week and hit its head on the $69k resistance. The Water level ($63.3k) is near and provides support.

Dip Fishing

Price managed to briefly pierce through the $69k resistance last week before being rejected. A trip back to the $65k support would be unsurprising and even down to $60k would not be alarming. A dip below $60k I'd find surprising and a great buying opportunity.

Calm Chart

Uptober remains green, as expected.