Did rapper YG just flex a $30M Bitcoin stack in his new music video?

March 25, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin

YG is seen in the music video holding a Ledger cold storage USB close to a smartphone which has a screen bearing a wallet app with more than $30.6 million worth of BTC in it.

Keenon Dequan Ray Jackson, the rapper who goes by the name YG appears to show off a fat $30 million stack of Bitcoin (BTC) in his latest music video.

The reveal appears to either be an eye-watering — but possibly fake — flex, or a crafty bit of product placement, as a cold storage device from crypto wallet provider Ledger is featured prominently in the video. The social team from Ledger was on it immediately too:

We see you! @YG knows how to secure those bags of #bitcoin … not your keys, no your coins.
— Ledger (@Ledger) February 11, 2022

In one of the scenes of the music video for the song titled “Scared Money” featuring J. Cole and Moneybagg Yo, YG is seen holding a Ledger wallet close to a smartphone which has a screen bearing a wallet app with more than $30.6 million worth of BTC in it.

While the image could have easily been faked, rappers are well known for flaunting their wealth and success, especially so in this song which has a theme focused on spending money, investing and wearing half a million dollars worth of jewelry around one's neck.

YG is quite the BTC proponent, as he has mentioned owning digital gold in multiple other songs such as “Big Bank” from 2018, and also in an interview with RollingStone from mid-2021.

During that interview YG said that he liked the simplicity of hodling crypto as he could invest his money into the asset class without being distracted from his music career. He drew comparisons to the real estate market, where he would have to spend a lot time working and learn to do it successfully.

“I f*ck with Bitcoin. [...] I got Ethereum recently and I got Dogecoin recently but I’ve had Bitcoin for about three years. [...] Bitcoin came around and it was like ‘what?’ and I can just do it and it turns into that?” he said in reference to the booming price of the asset last year.

In a Reddit post on the r/Bitcoin Reddit community earlier today, users were questioning YG’s mammoth BTC stack, with AvoidMyRange stating that “the chance of all these ending at 0 and the cents ending in .00 is incredibly low. This is obviously fake.”

“It is fake because that isn’t even the layout of the ledger app,” user AKeveryday responded.

Other users saw the funny side of YG’s music-based BTC antics, with Redditor Lexstell11 doing the math on the lyrics from the Big Bank song when BTC was priced around the mid $7,000 range.

“In YG’s song Big Bank, he says ‘I might buy her red bottoms with the crypto- 3 coins that’ll pay your whole semester…’ the song was released on 5/25/2018 when BTC was $7,459 at close. So presumably YG paid $132,000 by today’s conversion for a girl's semester at what I’m assuming was University of Phoenix. I think about this a lot.”

Crypto has attracted a strong cohort of rappers over recent years, with icons such as Jay Z and NFT-bull Snoop Dogg both making heavy plays in the sector. Other well-known figures to jump on the gravy train include Meek Mill who snapped up Dogecoin amid the hype last year, Nas who tokenized his music as NFTs earlier this year, and Post Malone who featured a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT in one of his recent music videos.

Hodl, don’t trade, says the AI Bitcoin trading bot

February 28, 2022 Coin Telegraph

An AI trading bot that learns how to time the market and accumulate Bitcoin quickly learned that the best way is to simply ”hodl.”

“Hodling” really is the way when it comes to accumulating Bitcoin (BTC). At least, that’s the conclusion made by an artificial intelligence (AI) trading bot coded up by a Portuguese software developer.

Bitcoiner Tiago Vasconcelos is the man behind the trading experiment. Vasconcelos built an AI trading bot that would help him accumulate more Bitcoin and test his coding skills. Almost inconceivably, instead of trading, the bot quickly concluded that the best way to trade Bitcoin is to buy and hold onto it.

Vasconcelos is the lead founder of Aceita Bitcoin, a Portuguese organization promoting the adoption, education and sharing of information about Bitcoin. A keen Bitcoiner, he also dabbles in Bitcoin-related side projects.

He told Cointelegraph, “It was a reinforcement learning AI experiment, where I went and got a truckload of historical data from BTC/USDT.” The code sourced and scraped the daily price action from 2014 to 2021.

Vasconcelos then “trained it, or told him [the bot] the rules, here are the candles, you can either buy, sell, or do nothing.”

For every profitable trade, the bot would be rewarded with one point. The bot loses one point as a “punishment” for lost trades. Finally, a reward is granted to the bot for the total amount of Bitcoin the bot finishes with:

“The goal is for the bot to get the highest score possible and the exercise is that he makes thousands/millions of tries on that set of data, making a ‘mental’ path of when is best to buy, best to sell, etc.”

*Screenshots of the “figuring out that less trades work best!”*

The beauty of AI is that the bot begins to observe “patterns” and what Vasconcelos describes as “moves” that the bot makes to maximize its trading score.

“Eventually, the bot concludes the best move is to buy as soon as possible and never sell!”

There you have it, now it’s not just popular talking heads and even banks in the Bitcoin space that are crying “Hodl.” Even the robots are hodlers.

Hodl is a popular meme in the Bitcoin space, originating from a Bitcointalk forum post in 2013 by an inebriated contributor who misspelled hold. The reason why the original commenter, GameKyuubi decided to hodl is “because I’m a bad trader and I KNOW I’M A BAD TRADER.”

Turns out, he might have been just as smart as artificial intelligence all along.

Sotheby’s Cancels Cryptopunks NFT Auction After Consignor ‘Decided to Hodl’ Collectibles

February 25, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Redditor stashes away BTC worth $100 for 100 years in public library

February 12, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Redditor stashes away BTC worth 0 for 100 years in public library

Bitcoin Price

In a fun and fortune-finding experiment, a Redditor has locked away $100 worth of Bitcoin in a public library “somewhere in Europe” until 2122.

There’s never a dull day in Bitcoin (BTC) land. Despite that markets calling for a lull, the creative Bitcoin community always has cause for amusement.

Yesterday, a Redditor by the name of Optimal-Dentistador (henceforth, OD) queried the longevity of the Bitcoin network with a time-lapse challenge.

In a post made to the Bitcoin subreddit, OD “wrote a letter and also put the private keys for $100 worth in BTC.” In private communication with Cointelegraph, they disclosed they “put 0.003 BTC on a new address, put the private and public key together with the letter in the envelope, and here we are.”

The life-long experiment was inspired by recent events put on by the public library in OD’s city–which will remain secret at OD’s request. They told Cointelegraph that in their cit:

“There was an event where you could write something like a letter, poetry or a diary which will be stored for 100 years. If you write some personal info on the envelope, they will try to find some living relatives to give them.”

OD decided to put “something special” in the time capsule, namely the public and private key details to 0.003 BTC, roughly $100 at today’s rate. They told Cointelegraph, “I will tell my family about this,” however, OD also jokes they may “eventually forget this whole thing, who knows what will happen in the next decades.”

The Reddit community was quick to note that while 0.003 BTC may be a trifling sum in 2022, it could be considered a market-moving amount in one hundred years:

OD was quick to joke that in today’s world, it’s a bit like finding the “Bitfinex hack amount of money” in a letter. The Department of Justice recently seized $3.6B as part of the debacle associated with crypto exchange Bitfinex.

Given that the letter will not be opened until 2022, one Redditor, “fontinuos” commented that it’s “sad to think every single of us will be dead and won´t see the outcome.” OD agrees that while it’s a fun experiment, ultimately the outcome is “a grim feeling.”

Still, the meme value is strong, and OD’s offspring may enjoy riches. OD signed off to Cointelegraph saying, “see you in 2122, the ultimate diamond hands :)”

Willy Woo: ‘Peak fear’ but on-chain metrics say it’s not a bear market

February 2, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Bear Market

“No doubt about it, people are really scared, which is typically [...] an opportunity to buy,” Willy Woo said.

Bitcoin analyst and co-founder of software firm Hypersheet Willy Woo believes that on-chain metrics show that BTC is not in a bear market despite observing “peak fear” levels.

Speaking on the What Bitcoin Did podcast hosted by Peter McCormack on Jan. 30, Woo cited key metrics such as a strong number of long term holders (wallets holding for five months or longer) and growing rates of accumulation suggest that the market has not flipped the switch to bear territory:

“Structurally on-chain, it’s not a bear market setup. Even though I would say we’re at peak fear. No doubt about it, people are really scared, which is typically [...] an opportunity to buy.”

I guess BTC is in demand lately pic.twitter.com/5h1IeMT2lK
— Willy Woo (@woonomic) January 29, 2022

In the short term, Woo noted that “you don’t often get this kind of pullback without it relief bouncing” and that a potential capitulation down to the $20,000 doesn’t appear feasible as it would replicate the 2018 crash into a bear market in the space of just three months as opposed to a year.

The price of BTC has declined around 44% since its all-time high levels of $69,000 in November, and the analyst cited institutional futures trading as a key reason behind this steady decline and flat performance over the past three months.

Woo suggested that the increasing influx of mainstream traders and roll out of BTC futures markets over the past few years has significantly changed the market structure of BTC in which the price directly correlates to “risk-on risk-off from macro traders looking at traditional stocks.”

“You know back in 2019 to 2020, if you looked on-chain at what the investors were doing, they were accumulating but you just couldn't see any impact of price because the price was really dictated by traders on the futures exchanges,” he said.

The analyst cited a large number of long-term hodlers who haven’t sold for more than five months, traders who stopped selling around the $40,000 region along with a steady rate of accumulation as key reasons to remain bullish.

“Most of the coins have been sitting there for longer than five months and people who do that, they’ve held on for five months, they’re not selling at a loss, they will sell when there’s profit to be had and you’ll see that whenever it breaks out of like all-time highs and does a really strong rally."

In terms of adoption, Bitcoin has roughly the same users as the Internet had in 1997.

But Bitcoin's growing faster. Next 4 years on current path will bring Bitcoin users to 1b people, that's the equivalent of 2005 for the Internet. pic.twitter.com/Np9yTR3WkL
— Willy Woo (@woonomic) February 1, 2021

He also argued that a key indicator for bear markets is usually when “newbs” or new coin hodlers are in the majority:

“The 2018 bear was at peak new guys holding the coins, and the cycle repeats. Those guys either sell, or the ones that don’t become hardened hodlers and they sell on the next rally when it goes even higher.”

Bitcoin cycle is far from over and miners are in it for the long haul: Fidelity report

January 13, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Industry

In a jampacked report on digital assets, Fidelity asset management theorizes that miner movements indicate the Bitcoin cycle has a lot more room to run.

Fidelity Digital Assets — the crypto wing of Fidelity Investments which has $4.2 trillion assets under management–shared their “two sats” on the future of the digital assets space. The key takeaways touched upon miners’ behavior and Bitcoin (BTC) network adoption.

In the annual report released last week, the group shared some insights into the world of BTC mining:

“As Bitcoin miners have the most financial incentive tho make the best guess as to the adoption and value of BTC (...) the current bitcoin cycle is far from over and these miners are making investments for the long haul.”

The report stated that the recovery in the hash rate in 2021 “was truly astounding”, particularly when faced the world’s second-largest economy China banning Bitcoin in 2021. The rebound in hash rate since the ban thanks to BTC’s hash power being “more widely distributed around the world,” showed miners are set on long-term profits.

The statements aligned with miners’ recent selling performance. Key on-chain metric indicate Bitcoin miners are in “massive” BTC accumulation mode, as miners show no desire to sell.

When it came to orange-pilling entire countries, Fidelity made some interesting predictions into more nation-states accepting BTC as legal tender:

“There is very high-stakes game theory at play here, whereby if bitcoin adoption increases, the countries that secure some bitcoin today will be better off competitively than their peers. We, therefore, wouldn't be surprised to see other sovereign nation-states acquire bitcoin in 2022 and perhaps even see a central bank make an acquisition.”

Their comments come as Tonga’s former MP suggested the country could adopt BTC in late 2022.

In essence, more regulation and better products will open up the crypto space, “bringing a greater portion of the hundreds of trillions in traditional assets into the digital asset ecosystem.” Combined with miners' hodling, it could lengthen the cycle and drive BTC to new highs.

Wait and see approach: 3/4 of Bitcoin supply now illiquid

January 5, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Accumulation

Around 76% of the total circulating Bitcoin supply is now illiquid according to on-chain analytics from Glassnode.

Bitcoin markets have been consolidating since the beginning of the year, but on-chain metrics are painting a more positive picture as more of the asset is becoming illiquid.

On-chain analytics provider Glassnode has been delving into Bitcoin supply metrics to get a better view of the longer-term macro trends in its weekly report on Jan. 3.

The findings revealed that although the asset has been trading sideways so far this year, more BTC has become illiquid. There has been an acceleration in illiquid supply growth which now comprises more than three quarters, or 76%, of the total circulating supply.

Glassnode defines illiquidity as when BTC is moved to a wallet with no history of spending. Liquid supply BTC, which makes up 24% of the total, is in wallets that spend or trade regularly such as exchanges and hot wallets.

“We can see that over the final months of 2021, even as prices corrected, there has been an acceleration of coins from liquid, into Illiquid wallets.”

The figures suggest that more Bitcoin is being transferred into storage indicating an increase in hodling habits and accumulation. The decline in highly liquid supply also hints that there may not be a major selloff or capitulation event at any time in the near future.

BTC liquid and illiquid supply as a percent of the total: Glassnode

The researchers concluded that these conditions indicate “divergence between what appears to be constructive on-chain supply dynamics, compared to bearish-to-neutral price action.”

In the same report, Glassnode stated that the total supply held by long-term holders has plateaued over the past month or so. This suggests that longer-term investors have stopped spending or selling coins and have become hodlers or even accumulators at this stage. “This provides another constructive view of market conviction,” it concluded.

The current supply held by long-termers is 13.35 million BTC, a decline of just 1.1% from October’s high of 13.5 million coins. Glassnode defines these long-term holders (LTH) as wallets or accounts that have held their Bitcoin for more than 155 days.

Is Time on our Side? The Case for Bitcoin’s Lengthening Cycles

December 31, 2021 The Crypto Briefing

‘Twas the Night before Christmas: A Cointelegraph Story

December 25, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Art

The classic poem remade for the crypto space, to remind readers it's all about the HODLing this holiday season.

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro' the Twittersphere

Not a troll was stirring, not even a financier;

The crypto was HODLed in cold storage with care,

In hopes that Satoshi would soon reappear;

The newbies avoided FUD and slept in their beds,

While visions of lambos danc'd in their heads.

And Pomp being occupied, and Schiff spewing crap,

Weren’t calling attention to traders stacking sats.

When in the trends came mentions of Nakamoto,

I had to be sure it wasn’t just FOMO.

Away to my portfolio my fingers did fly,

And checked on the prices — man, were they high!

Then, for a moment, I thought I was wrong.

But no — a huge bull run, and eight altcoins going along.

Who could have done this? Who answered my prayer?

I knew in an instant the answer: Michael Saylor.

He's making a list. He's checking it thrice. #HappyHodlDays pic.twitter.com/cb6yzLKEbc
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) December 24, 2021

A purchase so massive that all tokens mooned,

Out of character he tweeted, and shouted, all to CT he crooned:

"Now! Ether, now! Maker, now! Luna, and Solana,

"On! Matic, on! Litecoin, on! Doge and Shiba;

"To the top of the charts! To new all-time highs!

"Now to the moon! Let the whales make the buys!”

And then in a twinkling, I thought more than once,

“Maybe this is the time to cash out, after months?”

So on the sell button my cursor did hover,

As I drew in a breath, and heard myself mutter:

“Maybe,” I said, “Crypto has other plans.”

Maybe, perhaps, Christmas is the time for diamond hands.

I nodded to Saylor, and turned off my monitors,

Even as users flew in from all corners,

The tokens went wild, but I was content,

Holding my Bitcoin, no matter where the price went.

My message before signing off, bracing for a fight?

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all HODL tight.”

Here’s Why the Current Bitcoin Correction Is Different From BTC’s Collapse in May: On-Chain Analyst Will Clemente

December 15, 2021 The Daily Hodl

HODL

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