Realized cap sits at $129B today, well above its $90B peak in early 2018. What this tells us is that Bitcoin is substant

Just like derivatives first came into existence for farmers to hedge their exposure to crops and lock in a specific price for their harvest (and get liquidity on their future crops so they could buy seeds and fertilizer today), so too are options useful for the producers of Bitcoin — the miners. Miners can tell, roughly speaking, how many Bitcoins they will mine based on their equipment, under reasonable assumptions about hashrate. If they want to get an ‘advance’ on the coins they expect to mine, they can sell calls. This means they promise to deliver coins at a certain price on a certain date — but they get paid for that promise today. And with that cash advance, they can go ahead and finance their operation more efficiently.

One critical chart bearing out the enthusiasm for Bitcoin is the number of units held by the asset manager Grayscale. At the time of writing, this topped 500k BTC, making GBTC the single most popular financialized version of Bitcoin.

Today, the picture looks very different. The supply has significantly churned and a lot of early investors have cashed out, giving way to new blood. These investors, who bought their coins in the last couple years, are presumably not as eager to lock in a profit at $20k as someone who had been holding Bitcoin since it was $1. Thus, a higher realized cap is an indication of greater maturity and capacity for patience in the current investor set.

While most people reading this will have the luxury of saving in dollars or euros, it’s important to remember that inflationary currencies are the reality for a significant share of the world’s population. We measure the Bitcoin in dollar terms, but the dollar is among the least inflationary of all global currencies. Because Bitcoin is such a great non-sovereign wealth store, being highly portable, concealable, and seizure-resistant, when sovereign currencies start to fail, it looks attractive. Bitcoin exchanges in Turkey have received a huge boost this year as the Lira has endured a long slide. In absolute terms, Turkey is the 12th-most popular country for exchange web visits.

The Lira isn’t the only sovereign currency in which Bitcoin is already trading well beyond its prior highs. Other currencies where Bitcoin has already hit new highs since 2017 include the Argentine peso, the Russian ruble, the Venezuelan bolivar, the Brazilian real, the Colombian peso, the Lebanese pound, the Sudanese pound, and several others. Those countries alone account for 523 million people.

The distribution of enthusiasm for Bitcoin exchanges globally is revealing. Other countries topping rankings for crypto adoption include those burdened by onerous capital controls (China, Ukraine) or highly inflationary or unstable currencies (Venezuela, Nigeria, Colombia, Argentina). These are real catalysts driving everyday savers to desert their local currencies for Bitcoin, stablecoins, and other cryptocurrencies.

Investors often track Bitcoin’s performance in dollar terms, but the truth is that much of the world’s population denominates the performance of financial assets in their local currency. After all, they may not have access to the dollar-based banking system. The further away you are from NY, and the more hops correspondent banks have to take to get to your local banks, the more expensive your access to the dollar is. U.S. banks aren’t fond of doing business with individuals overseas. They are risky to service, and risk makes things expensive. Thus, these U.S. banks have a tendency to “derisk” their exposure to non-U.S. clients.

Additionally, the growth of options means that traders, who take the other side of those bets, have more creative ways to express their view on Bitcoin. For instance, using these instruments, it’s now viable to bet not on Bitcoin going up or down, but on an expectation of future volatility (or a lack thereof). These instruments simply didn’t exist in 2017. Fundamentally, by giving sophisticated investors more tools, Bitcoin can accommodate more capital inflows.

Billions of savers worldwide must therefore reckon with inflationary currencies, or monetary repression — a state of affairs where they don’t have the freedom to move their assets around. This latter phenomenon is often imposed by central banks that fear currency flight and accompanying depreciation. It comes at the cost of self-determination on the part of savers.

Three years ago, Bitcoin exchange infrastructure fundamentally wasn’t as well developed, nor were there as many individuals worldwide with accounts on exchanges. Those points of liquidity where savers could exit fiat and move to cryptoassets have developed significantly over the last three years since the last bull run. The data bears this out: the 2nd Cambridge Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study, published in Dec. 2018, found 35 million identity-verified cryptoasset users at exchanges worldwide, while the 3rd study in the series, published Sep. 2020, found 101 million identity-verified accounts. Quite simply, exchange infrastructure has matured and proliferated to the point that exiting local fiat for digital assets is a viable proposition for a meaningful share of the world’s population.

What this chart tells me is that the producers of Bitcoin now have access to more sophisticated financial products which they can use to hedge their exposure. In theory, this should mean that the mining industry is more stable and less exposed to boom and bust periods. It lets miners focus on running their operations efficiently, and frees them from the burden of worrying about their unhedged exposure to their equipment.

Because the GBTC is a trust product trading on the OTCQX marketplace, and newly-created shares take six months to mature, there is typically a mismatch between the market value and the net asset value (NAV) of shares. This difference is expressed as a premium. As of today, the premium stands at 15.8%, meaning that if you deployed $100 into GBTC, you would only be receiving $84.2 worth of exposure to Bitcoin.

A number of trading firms borrow Bitcoin, create new units of GBTC at NAV, wait six months for them to mature, and then liquidate them at market price, pocketing the premium (minus the interest on the loan). Despite this continual slow-motion arbitrage, the premium has lingered for virtually the entire history of GBTC. The lingering premium to NAV is evidence for a continual enthusiasm for the product among investors. GBTC is popular because it is available on mainstream brokerages like Fidelity and Schwab and can be held in a tax-advantaged way, in an IRA or 401k.

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/video-associacao-bauru-v-basquete-cearense-v-pt-br-1trb2-7.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/Video-CSKA-Moscow-Baskonia-v-en-gb-1gba-.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/Video-CSKA-Moscow-Baskonia-v-en-gb-1rdc30122020-21.php

http://news7.totssants.com/zwo/Video-bragantino-v-sao-paulo-v-pt-br-1jbv2-25.php

http://go.negronicocktailbar.com/npt/video-LA-Clippers-Golden-State-Warriors-v-en-us-1ilr30122020-14.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/video-CSKA-Moscow-Baskonia-v-en-gb-1efn30122020-20.php

http://news7.totssants.com/zwo/Video-bragantino-v-sao-paulo-v-pt-br-1iwm2-24.php

http://news7.totssants.com/zwo/videos-bragantino-v-sao-paulo-v-pt-br-1qxf2-6.php

https://assifonte.org/media/hvc/videos-dusseldorfer-v-iserlohn-roosters-v-de-de-1gmo-8.php

http://news7.totssants.com/zwo/v-ideos-Bragantino-Sao-Paulo-v-en-gb-1xpw-.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/videos-cska-moscow-v-saski-baskonia-v-es-es-1grq-12.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/v-ideos-cska-moscow-v-saski-baskonia-v-es-es-1ysi-29.php

http://go.negronicocktailbar.com/npt/videos-LA-Clippers-Golden-State-Warriors-v-en-us-1tac-2.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/video-cska-moscow-v-saski-baskonia-v-es-es-1ncx-14.php

http://go.negronicocktailbar.com/npt/video-Chicago-Bulls-Kings-v-en-us-1nca30122020-.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/video-cska-moscow-v-saski-baskonia-v-es-es-1kep-10.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/videos-Valencia-Basket-Barca-Lassa-v-en-gb-1eze-.php

http://news7.totssants.com/zwo/Video-Bragantino-Sao-Paulo-v-en-gb-1emh30122020-5.php

http://news24.gruposio.es/ydd/videos-Valencia-Basket-Barca-Lassa-v-en-gb-1mkl30122020-4.php

http://go.negronicocktailbar.com/npt/videos-Chicago-Bulls-Kings-v-en-us-1gvh-23.php

context. Browsing pornography on a work computer or while using a work-provided VPN—even while quarantined at home—can land you in serious trouble. It’s also not a good idea to involve other people in your private fantasies without their express consent and in an appropriate way. Basically, don’t slide into random DMs or be creepy with your colleagues, and be respectful to the sex workers whose content you partake.

Open interest in an options contract adds up the value of the outstanding, un-exercised options. (Options traders will grumble at this methodology, because it can be skewed by options trading at silly strike prices like $32k.) While in absolute terms, the numbers are still fairly low, the incipient but maturing options market tells us a thing or two about Bitcoin today.