 Hello, everyone. Sorry for the slight lag there. I welcome back to the market report with Cointelegraph. I am your host, Joe Hall, and we are joined again by our resident experts, Marcel Peckman and Sam Borgie. Now, Sam Borgie is a business editor at Cointelegraph, where he brings over a decade experience in economic analysis and financial market writing. Marcel Peckman applies over 17 years of experience trading derivatives, options and futures to the crypto derivatives markets. How are we doing today, gentlemen? Can't say I'm very good, Joe. Well, the test of the 18,000 Bitcoin, it looks so fake. It looks like it was a single entity propping the price up using the realist contracts. I don't see any real buyers out there. Even if you talk to long-time holders, if you ask them, are you buying here at $17,000, $18,000? He said, no, I already have a position if it drops to $15,000, $14,000. I'm going to add more, but other than that, I'm good. So I don't see any trigger for someone to be buying Bitcoin and Ethereum out loud here. So it looks kind of fake. Plus, we have all this binance fraud going on, which we're going to discuss later. So I'm not comfortable right now. Plus, I don't know if the world is going to end. I mean, a big recession is coming away or not. Some data, especially on the auto sector, looks ugly. There's people paying over $1,000 per month on auto payment. What are you guys thinking? You can't be that stupid, but apparently, yes. I mean, what is a car after all other than an expensive chair? Am I right? Sam, how are you doing? Thanks so much for the intro discussion. Marcel, that's really set the tone for the discussion today. Sam, is the world ending with you in Canada today? How do you feel? Well, maybe the economic world is for a while. Things don't look good on the economy front. The US is in a technical recession that they redefined what that means. From the crypto market, from the Bitcoin market, I've been saying all along, we are probably in the process of bottoming out. When that bottom comes exactly, I don't know. It's very difficult to predict. No one really predicts the market bottoms and tops perfectly. I still think we're in a bottoming trend. We could go lower, but ultimately, I've just been cost averaging into BTC for a while now after having my core position. These levels for me are very attractive, but don't be surprised because things could always go lower in the crypto market. Now is the time to show whether you have the conviction to hold or whether you want to go do something else. Bitcoin hasn't changed fundamentally, so I feel confident about that. We are in a pretty nasty spot when it comes to the broader economy, the broader macro backdrop. Everything that's going on is not conducive to a rally in risk assets. The market still sees Bitcoin as a risk on trade. Unfortunately, that is the reality of the situation. I had it a couple of times personally this week where I read the news and I saw the Trabfi news and I saw the Trabfi markets and thought, oh God, Bitcoin's probably puked to 13 or 14k. Then I saw that it was still acting like a stablecoin around the 16k mark. Yes, there was, as I very accurately pointed out, there was the dip over on the 19th, actually my birthday yesterday, but it's since recaptured that 16k stablecoin range and hopefully we'll hold there for the next couple of weeks. We'll dive into this very shortly, particularly with the fiscal. Before we get up there, I just want to give a shout out to those that are watching in the chat right now. Hello Vikram, long time watcher. Good to see you again Raju Raju and Michael. Thanks for stopping by. It's good that you're here with us so we can talk you through what's going on in the crypto markets and the Bitcoin markets. Just want to make it very clear as well that we're giving away a one month subscription to Markets Pro, which is worth $100. So if you drop in a comment in the YouTube chat or if you take part in this conversation with us, then you might be in it to win it. Right, today's show. How does it go? First up, we have the weekly highlights video. Following that, we've got Meemtime, the best bit of the show, and then it's into market news updates in which we'll dive into the discussion we sort of touched upon just there. Following that, we've got a quick crypto tip. We've got Marcell's trading insights. I wonder what he's got in store for us today. And finally, we rounded up with Markets Pro, a coin watch catch up and the giveaway. So yeah, get active in the chat guys. Keep the conversation going because we want to help you understand what's going on in the markets because we are in it every day reading, writing, researching. Oh, and a quick reminder as well to get 20% off Markets Pro as there's a link in the description. So even if you don't win the competition this week, you can still get 20% off. Cool. All right then video team, let's kick things off with a roundup of what's gone in the week's news. It was actually a busy week actually looking back on it. I thought Matt of Kulot for Edward Snowden know for his tweet response to Elon Musk. I think the Twitter news has really dominated the news landscape the past week. And of course, congratulations or Felicity Davies to Argentina who won the World Cup on Sunday. We'll get on with the meantime guys. Who are you rooting for in the final? Did you both watch the final the FIFA World Cup? Marcel? Yeah, it was a great game. I think Argentina deserved, especially Messi. I think if you're French and you're disappointed, at least know that Messi is a guy that has been winning all the titles over the past three years. He's on top of his career and he deserved it. So not be sad if you're French. I was quite delighted to see France lose. I ticked that box for the World Cup. I hope that they would have lost sooner and I wanted to see a different World Cup final but it's nice to see the World Cup go back to South America. I always liked that. So I was happy. Great. Now I'm in the same I was happy to see France lose. Sorry to any French that you want it to go. I'm just saying. Right. Let's get on with meme time. I'm hoping that's set the time for this week's round of the memes. Eliana Musk. I don't get this one. What's going on here? I guess because he's leaving. He's stepping it down as CEO according to the poll and maybe Eliana Musk will you'll just change his gender and you'll still stay on as Eliana Musk. That's how I looked at it. I don't know. I guess there's levels to this that I'm just not getting. But he did. No. He said should I run? Go ahead. Yeah. He opened up. He opened a poll on Twitter saying I'm going to abide to this poll. So you guys are going to decide should I continue as the CEO or CEO of Twitter and 57% said no. It had over 17 million votes. So you cannot say that it was flawed or whatever bots because 17 million votes. But I do think that he already had set up his mind to be the chair member or whatever but not the day to day CEO. That's not his core business. If you get the value of Tesla and SpaceX you're talking about I don't know 600 billion dollars and Twitter is worth I don't know 30 billion dollars. So it doesn't make sense for him to be on the day to day operations. Yeah. It's more like a vanity trip, isn't it? And then the lock trading crypto FTX, Jennifer Aston. Oh, short, Jennifer Aston as well. I thought she looks great in her old age. Oh my. Who's this? The lead singer of? Is it the lead singer of a band from the 80s or 90s? Who is this guy? Red hopped chili peppers, maybe? No, that's my hair. But I know the guy you're thinking of. How do I google image search this guy? It's not like Kid Rock or something like that, is it? Anyway. Oh, have you ever had the scare where you wake up in the middle of the night and think, oh my god, where did you phrase? Did phrase. Nice. Yeah. This thing. Yeah. What was that? Who is going to who's going to pay $100 for an NFT of Donald Trump wearing a fantasy or come on guys. Especially when you can get free. Yeah. Yeah. That's even worse. But why don't you spend $100 buying Bitcoin Ethereum or some other coin that you studied and think that there's potential? That's not the future. That's not the future of finance, the NFT of an image of Donald Trump. Yeah. It seems to be a bit of a money grab. But no, I wasn't actually making a jab but you can right click save as the picture. But genuinely because the Donald Trump NFT was released as a sweepstake in US law, you have to give away those sweepstakes for free. So you can actually write a letter addressed to the headquarters of the NFT offices for Donald Trump, which is in New York. And you can basically say, you know, I would like to apply for the sweepstake as massively included provided you adhere to what they stated. One of the rules was you cannot write the letter with a black pen. So it genuinely is a, you can get this NFT for free and you can get the benefits of the NFT, i.e. Donald Trump, a trip to his Mar-a-Lago Gulf Resort without buying the NFT. So I thought that was quite funny. You know, there was technically a way to rug the entire process. You can also right click save as. Yeah. I'm just going to check the chat right now to see if anyone's saying hello to us. Michael, it's 3 a.m. on the other side of the world. Good stuff. And Georgie Toscano, 99 or George Toscano, 99. Sorry. He sends everything to his ledger just in case. That is good practice. Get your coins into cold storage ASAP Rocky in the second news story for this week. Okay. Gents, let's move on to the first story of the day, which is regarding whether or not we're going to go in Bitcoin. Marcel brought this up in the intro's spiel today. I might just share my screen here. So basically we're looking at that the Bitcoin price is hovering in a tight range. The Bitcoin analysts predict end to year for risk asset holders, which is the Santa Rally. The idea that perhaps in the run up to Christmas, we might get a run up in trad and also Bitcoin prices. But unfortunately it looks like we're having a grim end of year. And there's a couple of sections that I highlighted here just to discuss with Marcel and Sam today. Are we going to get capitulation? Or are we going to get a slow grind as this quote from crypto Tony listing really did sound like tea leaves. He said, so in 2023, I'm expecting Bitcoin to begin to form a bottoming the lower bound range we currently sit in a volume support around 11,000 to 9,000. So we're down to four figures. He said in a Twitter thread this weekend either that we capitulate or slow down is to be seen. Sam, this sort of flies in the face of your idea that we are bottoming. Is that for more relation, maybe down to this figure territory? Yeah. So I mean, as I mentioned, predicting the exact bottom is notoriously difficult. My general thesis has been a bottoming formation around this time in Q4 of 2022. Now, whether that happens in Q4 or in Q1 of next year, for me as a material, I think that the cycle has played out more or less like a four year cycle. So for me, anything sub 10K is pretty extreme, but one of the things that classifies a bottom is calls for extreme bearishness. And I mean, how much more bearish can we get? As I mentioned to the outside, things could always go lower, but right now I'm not picking any kind of bottom. I'm just cost averaging in. So Anon, I don't really care exactly when the bottom is because I'm not trading. Marcel will tell you about the trading aspect what the traders are doing. I'm simply investing in BTC as sound money. So I'm good either way. I'm glad to hear that. Marcel, are we at peak bottom? Are we at the peak bear market? Joe, I don't like to talk about short term, like two or three months, because for me, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies is a long, long-term saving. It's like digital gold is a good start if you're a beginner. You won't see anyone going to a gold shop or to a bank to buy gold aiming for the next two or three months, because the oscillation price for gold doesn't happen that way. It happens over the span of five years, over the span of decades. And that's what I'm seeing in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies right now. I'll explain that to you. For instance, CBDC, the central bank digital currencies, like every central bank in the world is saying that they're doing studies. Some of them like China already implemented in a few cities. And why do we want, do they want to do that? First, complete control. So they know how much money each person has, what are the transactions that this person is doing. And more importantly, it can implement restrictions to the flow of this money. If you have CBDC, you can tell investors well, if you don't spend it for over 33 months, we're going to deduct 20%. Or we can say, well, 50% of your income, you can only spend on food or domestic companies. You cannot send it abroad. So it gives the central bank's total control of the population. So CBDC for me, it's the main trigger for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, which are decentralized. The second trigger would be, for instance, the United States, the more debt that the government has, the country has, which currently stands, I don't know, 32 or 34 trillion dollars, the more interest rates they're going to pay. And from what we are seeing right now, the debt levels continue to increase. So by the end of 2023, by the end of next year, they will be paying one trillion dollar of interest payments. The government is going to have to pay one trillion dollar just to cover the interest rates on the debt. So this spreading out effect of the debt, it's going to happen over the next two or three years. There's no way out of that. So the trigger is from here, CBDC and trillion dollar payment for interest rates on United States. So I don't know if it's going to happen in one year, two years, three years. So I completely agree with Sam. It doesn't really matter if the bottom is 14, 13, 16 thousand dollars, because what's going to happen over the next three years is what's going to set the tone for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. And I do really think that 200 dollars is a conservative target, looking at the longer timeframe, like four years to eight years. Okay, okay. Fantastic analysis there. I mean, we've got a few comments in the chat just come through there. Firstly, we've got a identifier on the rock star that was pictured in the meantime. It was Iggy Pop. So a bit of pop culture knowledge important to stay in tune with mainstream. And the other was about whether or not 13,500 might be the bottom. Did you just mention it there Marcel and I missed it? Or could 13,500 be the bottom? It makes sense something around 14,000 dollars if you think that the top was 70,000. So the top to bottom would kind of match the ugliest bear market that was ever registered. And it makes sense if you were expecting a deeper recession on traditional markets. So you cannot say that well, the S&P is going down by 30% over the next two months, and Bitcoin is going to stay at $17,000. It's unimaginable. So if the stock market tanks, there's a good pretty good chance that Bitcoin will drop to $14,000 14k approximately. Okay. Okay. Good to know. And I'd just like to apologize to any viewers. There's a storm where I am at the moment in Portugal. And as a result, the internet gets a bit shaky at times or at least this is my understanding of the situation. Let's move on to the second article, which is the meat in our markets sandwich today. We mentioned it in the beginning whether or not Binance could be fud or not. I'm going to try to share my screen again to show the article. Now, effectively, the CEO of Binance, Xiaoping Zhao or CZ, as he's more commonly named, announced that he would acquire Voyager Digital, the defunct crypto exchange, which Cointelegraph reported about seven or eight months ago, became insolvent. Before we get onto the questions here, gents, Sam, who is this reporter here? I don't recognize this person on our team. Or is this supposed to be a Binance person? Who is it? It perhaps could be. I mean, is it Rachel Wilson with a haircut? I'm trying to work out what the arts team were doing here. Not quite sure. Okay. Either way, you can pick it up as an NFT if you are so that way inclined, as now all of Cointelegraph's articles are available as NFTs or at least the artwork is. Now, the real news here is that by April 18, 2023, Binance should have completed this deal with Voyager. We're going to discuss now whether or not they will complete on it. And they've also already agreed to make a $10 million deposit in good faith. Binance, of course, is one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, and $10 million should be a drop in the bucket for a group as large as them. Marcel, what do you make of this news here? Could this be a show of strength from this largest cryptocurrency exchange, and there's nothing really to it? Or are they genuinely looking at acquiring Voyager? Yeah, Joe, I don't know why, but it seems like CZ is tracking what Sam from FTX did step by step, trying to show a force. I would say that. So spending a billion dollars right now on the worst bear market that you had over the past six years, in a time that everyone is asking for regulators to be more harsh and to charge fines, even Binance itself is being investigated. Since 2018, it's nothing new, but maybe they have to pay a $100 million fine next month. And where is the money going to come from? If you're spending a billion dollars to buy a company, a troubled company, Voyager, it's not something that it's a cash call, that it's going to generate income for Binance. So I'm not familiar with bankruptcy procedures. So I don't know really what are the odds of recovering additional money. Maybe CZ had some insights to whether Tree Arrow's capital was hitting money or assets because they own Voyager over, I don't know, $400 million. So maybe it's a good play by CZ, but the timing right now, it doesn't seem good, doesn't seem fine with me. If he really has $1 billion stored in cash, he should be holding to that. So I think it's kind of odd the timing and deploying so much money in a business that doesn't generate cash flow. It sounds odd. It's funny, right? And yeah, that point about timing is crucial. I mean, CZ, if you follow his Twitter feed, for example, he's still promoting the fact that Binance is hiring, that Binance has been ready for this bear market for years, and they're really trying to show that we are robust, we are strong. Sam, you've been covering this space for years, you've been covering businesses for decades. Do you think that this guy is telling the truth? Do you think that Binance really is in a good position right now to acquire these companies? Well, as Marcel mentioned, and I think I raised it a few weeks ago, I'm getting eerie parallels between SBF's behavior and CZ's behavior, everything from the sporadic tweets to the mixed messages to the audit potential issues. For me, what I found kind of odd was this whole talk about the clawbacks on FTX, and I think it was about 2.1 billion. I mean, whether the clawback happens or not is kind of immaterial. But why would he come out and say, well, if that were to happen, we'd let our lawyers take care of it? If you were in a better position, wouldn't that be reflected in your language? If somebody was coming to withdraw significant funds, or if you had to withdraw significant funds from your exchange and you're solvent and you're in a good position, you shouldn't have to resort to talking about your lawyers. So it's hard to say what goes on within Binance. I know we were talking about it before the show, and Marcel is absolutely right that it's very difficult to trust anything in crypto. Nothing is normal in this industry. The fact that we don't really know the corporate structure of Binance, the fact that you can't find key executives, the idea of trying to locate where their head offices is, where it's a complete mess, and that for me has more mirrors to previous shady business dealings that I've seen in the industry. So can I trust him? I personally wouldn't. I think he has a vested interest. I think he played a role in the bank run on FTX. I wouldn't trust what he's saying. Take it with a grain of salt. At the same time, I don't want to fud the whole situation. I'm just going by what he said and the incongruence with the entire picture of Binance being healthy. But overall, beyond that, I haven't seen any direct indications of any kind of solvency issues. Binance does go down. It's not going to be a positive for the industry. The fact that so many people are calling or want Binance to fail is another potential bottom signal for me. We were in the depths of despair so much that people in the industry are bringing it on. Let's add another layer of complexity and let's have the biggest exchange in the world go under. I'm not in that camp. I'm just trying to have a more nuanced position on Binance. But it's very difficult given the lack of transparency. Yeah. And it's funny, right? Because his behaviour as a CEO is to be that friendly, trustworthy face. He was bragging recently about how many selfies he took with people around the world at conferences. He is the guy that will pose for your camera, whatever. But behind the scenes, as you rightly point out, it's very hard to get concrete information about the financials, about the treasury, even about the headquarters, as you point out there, Sam. We just had a really good question through in the chat from Robert Santiago who said, considering all of the negatives, news about exchanges, which one do you use currently? For example, if you're looking to buy some Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever you want to buy, what do you use? I mean, you could talk about this personally, I guess, gentlemen, or you could talk about what you think is the industry standard. Sam, in light of Binance being under fire, what would you use? Not necessarily recommend because I'm not sure we should be using those words, but what do you think people can use? In terms of exchanges, where to buy Bitcoin? Look, I've used in my life maybe seven or eight different exchanges over the course of my Bitcoin crypto career, whatever the hell you want to call it. I've been mostly using Kraken myself. Again, I don't work for Kraken. I don't have any association with them. For me, Kraken has always been a more secure exchange. I think you pay a higher fees, but in a lot of ways, as Jesse Powell just said, you get what you pay for. So for me, I haven't seen any real issues with Kraken. I've been using that exchange for years now with absolutely no issues. So that's what I use. There's another exchange in Canada that I use as well, but I wouldn't even recommend it given the background they've had before hasn't always been positive. I mean, if you look for any exchange, if it's a centralized exchange that has a good reputation or as good a reputation as you can have in the crypto industry, you could simply buy the Bitcoin there and then you could transfer it into cold storage, which is what I've been doing. So that's kind of been my approach, cost average in. From cost averaging smaller amounts, I might leave it on the exchange for a while, but after a few months, I'll transfer everything over. Just to kind of minimize my risk and to make sure that I don't have, I'm not overly exposed to one exchange. I do still use multiple exchanges. Binance isn't one of them and FTX wasn't one of them, thankfully. Yeah. I think plus one for Kraken. I think another thing that is in their favor is that they have lasted so long and Jesse Powell has been around the Bitcoin space. He seems to be more of a cyberpunk kind of character and he's weathered a few of those storms that the industry has seen, whereas the likes of Binance and FTX and other exchanges that went under recently, they were sort of born during the ICO boom and were created during this environment of sort of easy money, listing lots of tokens and a lot of these sort of pumps. So yeah, the fact that Binance has been going so long is probably a good note of encouragement and also the other key thing that Sam said there, if you're buying on exchange, you're not buying to leave it on an exchange, are you? You're buying to use it to spend or you're buying it to save with and if you're saving your Bitcoin, then withdraw it to culture. So, you know, get yourself a hardware wallet. Marcel, do you have a personal preference here with regards to exchanges to help out our friend in the chat, Roberto? Personally, I recommend if you do trade, for example, futures contracts and options, you should spread across at least two exchanges so you don't get rugged all at once. Personally, I like to use Kraken. It's been here since 2011, so 11 years, almost 12 years in a row without hacks or stuff like that. So, I agree with you guys, but for derivatives, I use mostly Deribit because there's where 90% of the volume goes through on options markets and it has a good proof of reserves and liabilities for the exchange. Yes, they were hacked last month, $28 million, but they covered it was a hot wallet, it was less than 1% of the total holdings. They covered the loss. So, I think Deribit for derivatives is doing a great job. They have proof of reserves, proof of liabilities and Kraken for sport markets. Super, great stuff guys. And I think, yeah, Roberto, try a few things out of course, but remember the primary thing you're doing on an exchange, if you're just DCA-ing or cost-stabbering into Bitcoin is to withdraw off the exchange. So, make sure you know how to do that and educate yourself on that. And if you need some education, then Cointelegraph is the place to go. There's lots of handy guides on cold storage and how to manage your crypto in a safe way. Now, the third article today, this is probably one of the best headlines I've read this month. It's all about how Bitcoin has ditched the 16,000 dip as Leroy Jenkins, Bank of Japan flattens the dollar. For those of you who don't know who Leroy Jenkins are, Jenkins was. Welcome to the internet. It's a fantastic place to hang around. Leroy Jenkins came to fame. Actually, do you guys recognize or remember this meme, Sam Marcel? I do. Yeah, I do. Go ahead, explain it though, Joe. Oh, no. I mean, we can both have a go at explaining it. It was a World of Warcraft game, maybe nine or 10 years ago, that they're all prepping before they go into the fight. And they're giving out mana and trying to work out how to best allocate the resources, because it's a big battle. And then this guy, Leroy Jenkins, who it transpires, was actually high at the time. He just charged into the battle, sort of shouting, Leroy Jenkins! And it became very memed in a very popular video. And 10 years later, it's still been used on Cointelegraph headlines. It really has become sort of an evergreen piece of content from Leroy Jenkins. Is that a fair summation, Sam, of the Leroy Jenkins story? That was excellent. And it was funny. When Leroy charged, everyone was like, oh my god, oh my god, he charged, he's in, what are we going to do now? And the outcome wasn't very good for the group. Absolutely. And I think that then became like a secondary meme to the Leroy Jenkins thing, which was goddammit, Leroy, because everyone's swearing at the fact that he effectively ruined the battle. Anyway, internet meme culture aside, the article today is about how the Bank of Japan flattens the dollar. Now, this is not my wheelhouse when it comes to sort of financial markets and macros. So I'm really relying on the expert panel I have with me here today. So basically, dates from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, who you should definitely be subscribing to, and TradingView showed that the BTC USD, so Bitcoin US Dollar, returned to near $17,000 after falling 3% over the course of December the 19th. And this is shown on this great big wick down here. I'm going to make it a bit bigger on the 19th morning. What was going on there? Well, apparently, Japan seeming to follow the United States in attempting to take inflation had unleashed a can of worms, which would only become apparent later, they said. That's what happens when you artificially surprise the free market or suppress, perhaps as a typo, Arthur Hayes, former CEO of Exchange Bitmex, tweeted, likely intending to write suppress instead of surprise. There you go, there's your correction. Guys, what's going on here? Marcel, I'm going to call on you first. What's going on here? Why did Bitcoin dip so quickly? Why did it recover so quickly? And why is Japan? Why should we care about what's going on in Japan? So first of all, I don't think that yesterday's dip had to do with what Japan central bank did because it was later on the day from what I recall. But Japan looks for me that they folded after they bluffed. So they were saying that, yes, we're going to stop with the bond repurchase program. We don't think that inflation is a problem right now, but they reversed the trend. So they're increasing bond repurchase program. They're increasing interest rates. So they are scared about inflation. So kind of following what the UK, England did a month ago. So truth be told, everyone knew that those economies would not sustain themselves without heavy intervention. But they could not say that part out loud. They had to pretend, no, we're fine. No inflation is not a problem. No recession is not coming our way. They were live. And now these lives are being exposed. But the biggest question is how long can the US, the biggest economy in the world, sustain these tightening movements, so the raising interest rates and halting the bond buying repurchase program? Will US follow Japan and UK? Most likely, yes. When it's going to happen, we don't know. So until then, until the US bluff gets called, it's bearish for stock markets and consequently for crypto. So right now we remain bearish. Fantastic analysis. Okay, Marcel. And now in the article, just to go to the Leroy Jenkins bit, it says other responses were no less than Frank in their appraisal of Bank of Japan with Marty Bent, who is the founder of Crypto Media Company, TFTC or Tales from the Crypt. Oh, he won't like that. He'll say Bitcoin Media Company. He's one of those Bitcoin or crypto guys. He likened the move to the Bank of Japan having pulled off a Leroy Jenkins on the global financial system. Sam, please give you translate what Marty Bent means here. How has he pulled off a Leroy Jenkins on the global financial system? Well, I think the whole idea is that they made a move that people weren't expecting. Right. And I think that that is probably where the Leroy Jenkins reference comes to. I mean, it's very difficult to kind of predict where this is going to go. But this kind of introduces a new level of complexity, I think, in the market, given the fact that Japan has been trying to tame inflation. I think the global central banks have been taken a similar approach. But this seems to be a slightly different take than what we're seeing with the raising of interest rates that you're seeing. The Fed wasn't the first to do it, but they're the ones that are really leading the charge given just how correlated central banks seem to be with the Fed. Yeah, no, it does seem like the dollar or at least the Fed is pulling the strings for most markets around the world. And we're seeing these ricochets play off in small ways around the world. But ultimately, it's still the Fed that's there with the voodoo doll or the Pinocchio strings, whichever you want to look at it. Marcel, anything else you'd like to add in terms of analysis or context to this piece before we move on to the next segment? No, Joe. I think that it's a matter of sitting in wait. We're calling the central bank bluff. It's not something that's going to unfold in one or two months. We think that they're lying, that the economy is not in a big recession. They're moving go folks. So we just have to sit and wait. And when it happens, when they have to revert the trend, we call it pivot. So we start to buying bonds to protect the economy and the banks and the hedge funds. Then they're going to have to print more money. Then it's going to be a good time for Bitcoin. But you have to sit and wait. We don't know when it's going to happen. Okay. Okay. Good. Wise advice there. Fantastic. Okay. Let's move on to the next segment. But before we do, I just want to say hello to wrong again in the chat and Queen in the chat who's here for the exceptional care. That's always nice. We do like to take good care of you. And the following segment is all about just showing how much care we take with you. And it's all about a crypto tip. So this one is about taking your gains often. Now, these tips come courtesy of the market report and of markets pro. If you want to subscribe to markets pro, check out the link in the description down below as you can get 20% off. Now this week, we're talking all about taking your gains often. What does that mean? I'm going to explain to you right now. So as experts say crypto market participants should take gains frequently. When it's time to take profits, crypto investors are often faced with a dilemma that a crypto tokens price could sink or saw. So it's best to have a reliable strategy for profit taking. A lot of people nowadays just buy and hold for an indefinite amount of time. The hodl meme as it's known. And they're at the mercy of news, memes, celebrity tweets or FTX going up in flames, for example. So always establish a clear reason and goals for trading crypto in the first place and define your entry and exit points for trades. So before you even start clicking on Derabit, Marcel's exchange of choice or Kraken's sound exchange of choice, make sure you know why you're doing it and where your entry and exit points are. So that was our crypto tip of this week. Always helpful advice. And also remember that when you're taking your profit, think about what profit you're taking it into. Are you putting it into dollars? Are you putting it into pounds? Or are you putting it into Bitcoin? Also worth considering. Okey doke. As I say, don't forget to check the subscription box down below because there's 20% off-markets pro. Moving on swiftly, Marcel, I think the floor is now yours to take us through your crypto tip of this week. What do you have in store? Okay, Joe. Okay, Joe. So this week, we're going to talk about futures markets specifically about liquidations. It's a word here all the time. Well, $200 million liquidation moved the market down. But we need to understand what's happening out there and if that's really what's driving the market down. Pavel, if you can share my screen, please. So on December 15, the crypto futures markets face the $200 million worth of liquidations, which was the highest since the FTX collapse. So what does it mean? Liquidation means when leverage traders did not have enough margins deposited. So you can see that when FTX collapsed, we faced $550 million on one day and $340 million the next day. So roughly $900 million worth. And on December 15, we had $200 million, which is significant. Thank you, Pavel. So how does leverage trading and futures markets work? So for instance, a trader can deposit $1,000, $1,000 and buy $10,000 worth of Ethereum futures. It's a derivative contract. So he's betting that the price will go up. So he's using a 10x leverage. He deposited $1,000. He bought $10,000 of futures contracts. It means that if the price go up 5%, he gets paid 50% gains. Wow, that's magnificent. Everybody wants that. So what's the catch? The problem is if you're doing 10x leverage and Ethereum drops 10% at any point from your entry price, the position gets liquidated. It means it gets terminated by the exchange and the trader loses the entire $1,000 deposit. So firstly, how relevant was the $200 million liquidations on December 15? Essentially, not much because the open interest, the total in futures contracts of every exchange and every coin is roughly $21 billion. So it's less than 1% of the futures contracts were liquidated. But we should not dismiss that 1% for two reasons. First, when a leverage buyer is liquidated, the example I gave, each price goes down 10%. And the guy was using 10x leverage. So what happens? The exchange is forced to sell those contracts. The guy was long. He was betting on the price upside. So when he's liquidated, the exchange has to do a market order to sell those contracts in the market. So it causes additional downwards pressure. And second, if a huge chunk of open interest is fully hedged, which is the standard, not every leverage trader or futures trader is a degenerate gambler. Some are using for hedge. For instance, miners are selling Bitcoin futures so they can have the same price for the entire month. There's no oscillation in the price because he's selling future contracts. And there's the cash and carry. It's kind of a fixed income trade. You buy Bitcoin at Kraken or whatever exchange you like to use, Coinbase or whatever. And at the same time, you sell the futures contracts. So you try to get a small premium. It's a fixed income trade. It doesn't matter if Bitcoin prices go up and down. So I don't think that 80% of the open interest can be liquidated. It's not that. It's like 10% or 20% are degenerate gamblers. So when the price moves down, they're going to be liquidated. So it's a risk, but it's not a $20 billion risk. But there's no way to predict how long the bear market is going to last. We say that over across a bunch of shows. So the worst thing that can happen to a trader is getting liquidated in size, meaning you lost your entire bet because you used 10x leverage. So be careful out there. If possible, avoid leverage at all costs, even if you are experienced trader. It's not a market that you can predict what's going to happen next week or next month. So you have to stay alive. You have to stay afloat. That's the most important thing to do during a bear market. So that was my tip for today. Fantastic myself. That was amazing. In particular, not everyone is a degenerate trader. Some of us are out there trading responsibly. Not myself personally. I don't have the skills for that. But that's why we've got Markets Pro to help people like me who really can't really work the way around a telephone, let alone a trading candlestick chart. And that's what we're going to switch to today. Thank you very much, Marcel, for that segment. Let's talk about this week's Market Pro report. This week, it's about a newsquake. This week's newsquake is called Leo or Leo token. It's not a star sign before you get into your study of constellations. This time we're talking about the token, Leo, because as we know, news moves the crypto market and the newsquake services by Cointelegraph Markets Pro helps traders, such as Marcel, such as you watching at home, to stay on top of important developments. So these newsquakes are automated alerts that instantly notify users when market-moving events happen. And thanks to them, Markets Pro subscribers often beat the crowd to the most important news of the day. And maybe people use leverage upon these news. They're free to do whatever they like, but as Marcel says, do trade responsibly and try to avoid leverage where possible. So Leo this week saw a large price movement on the heels of informative news. On December 15th, newsquakes informed the Markets Pro community about Bitfinex staking and a new version of the Bitfinex mobile app. As you may remember, Leo was the token that Bitfinex used to make investors hold again following the Bitfinex hack in which $80 million of Bitcoin that was stolen became $4 billion due to the increase in price over the past six years. Leo token was created off the back of that and clearly listing on Bitfinex, which is the sort of exchange that listed it in the first place, would help to boost the price. You would have got that information had you subscribed to Markets Pro. So soon after this newsquake, the token's price rose from $3.68 to $3.97, an increase of 8%. You buy $100 worth of Leo token, you've got yourself a nice $108 in return. And Leo, as I said earlier, is the utility token intended for use on the Bitfinex exchange. Following Leo token, we also have the Vortex score, which is our sort of grading system specific to Markets Pro. It's a very useful feature and it's an algorithmic metric, which we call Vortex. So it's a comparison between a current market and the social conditions of the market in the past. What does that mean in a nutshell? High score means that judging from historical data, the asset's current outlook is bullish for the next 12 to 72 hours. So very short trading periods. And a Vortex score of 80 and above within this context is considered confidently bullish. So we think the price is going to go up. Conversely, a low Vortex score below 30, for example, historically would mean bearish conditions on the horizon. So you probably want to long the 18 above and short the 13 below if you're into trading. This week, we saw a top gain at RAD, RAD token. Once again, see a remarkable price movement after a line of green Vortex scores. So the green Vortex scores are of course confident bullish. We think the price is going up. Early in the week, the token was trading at the $1.52 mark when high scores alerted market price subscribers of historically bullish trends for the token. A few days later, the price jumped to $2.19, a rapid 44.1% jump. So again, if you're there trading and you get these Vortex scores through, it's another tool as part of your trading toolkit that could give you the upper hand on the market. As mentioned a few times already, please subscribe to Markets Pro. And if you drop a comment in the chat, which is quite lively today, I'm just having a look through. We've got lots of people saying hello, such as Rong again and the Queen. You might win a Markets Pro subscription, which is worth $100 and therefore gain access to not only the Vortex score, but the Newsquakes alerts. Fantastic. Let's get back to the show and back to these fine gentlemen and their experiences with Bitcoin in the crypto markets. Now gentlemen, it's been a bit of a whirlwind week once more. Do you have any advice, tips or maybe some holiday cheer to share with the audience before we bring the show to a close? I'm really having a struggle with words this week. Sam, what do you think from Snowy Canada? What about some Christmas cheer? The Christmas cheer is that you shouldn't be advocating crypto to your family at this stage. I think those of you who were telling people to buy the top during Thanksgiving of 2021 probably aren't showing your face around the holiday table. Let's avoid that. We can talk about the economy, the financial markets, the great Ponzi, the imploding bond markets, all of that. And then you could potentially talk about how Bitcoin could save all these things, but never try to convince someone. That's what I've always said. Stake your claim, make your case, but don't try to convince anybody of anything. They'll figure it out for themselves or not. If you're a Bitcoin holder, I think that you're in a very good spot in the long term. Since we can't change the market dynamics now and since we're in the brutal bear market winter, just enjoy the holidays and don't focus too much on the markets. We'll have plenty of time in 2023 to dissect all of that. Enjoy the holidays in the New Year. Thanks. Fantastic. Nice note there. And yeah, just to hammer that point home, this isn't financial advice. This is just a couple of gents sharing information about what they see going on in the world and the fires and in some places the spots of light in this weird darkness. Right, Marcel, that got a little bit weird. What are your messages for this winter, this Christmas period? Well, Joe, first of all, my hearts and prayers for everyone in California. Looks like we had an earthquake, strong one out there a few hours ago. And secondly, my message is everyone has an agenda. Your wife, your mom, your daughters, your friends, Vitalik, the influencer you love. Everybody has an agenda. So you have to figure out stuff on your own. Yeah, so do your research. It's hard. It's not easy. I used to believe that US dollar was the biggest economy in the world and etc. And then when I started studying that 30% of the Americans live in poverty levels. They have no assets. They only have debt. If they don't have income for the next 30 days, they won't be able to pay their bills and they're going to be evicted. They're going to be living on the streets. So you cannot say that that's the wealthiest country in the world. At some time, you have to do your own research and get to your own conclusions. So stop believing everything people, television, the Twitter or whatever, she leads to you. Do your own research and happy holidays for everyone. Great advice. Everyone has an agenda, even me just saying. So watch what you read on on Twitter. Okay, fantastic. We've just got time before we wrap things up to announce this week's winner. Drum roll, please. And I think it's going to go to Michael. Where was Michael's Twitter handle? If not, please, please drop it in the chat or DM us on Twitter, and we can give you your markets prescription, which is fresh off the press and will include those vortex scores as well as the news quakes. Yeah, I think that's I think it's to Michael this week. Fantastic. Thank you to everyone who's tuning in from around the world. It's great to be with you during these rather dark times. It will get better. You know, humans have an amazing capacity to adapt to evolve and to flourish eventually. And we'll get there with tools like Bitcoin at our disposal. Thank you, Marcel. Thank you, Sam. I think this is the last show before Christmas. So happy Christmas. I hope Santa brings you all the presents you so wish and, you know, Bitcoin 200K. I think we will wrap up and leave it there. So thank you so much, everyone, and Merry Christmas. I want sats for Christmas.