Here is my first art piece inspired by Bitcoin traders: “Market Maker”
I chose the title “Market Maker” because this image takes on two meanings.
It symbolizes the role of market makers, hovering over the bids and asks in a pose that emits a sense of calm control.
It pays homage to the creator of Bitcoin and the crypto market using Satoshi Nakamoto’s most remarked quotes in a sequence that tells a story about bitcoin in his words; from the Genesis block to the early days, fundamentals, and speculating on the future of adoption and crypto economics.
Anyone who’s been paying attention to news about Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market in general over the past year knows how bad of a year it’s been for the market – down well over 80% from December 2017’s highs of nearly $20K USD.
For many of us involved, we held fast to the HODL mentality in a market that, after violently plummeting from the 2017 highs, seemed to be in some sort of accumulation phase with solid support around the $6K USD price. We were comforted by positive news and focused on the long-term and the fundamentals for the market.
Then all of a sudden, in late November, a huge sell-off caught the market off guard and plummeted prices to lower lows, about 50% – all the way down to $3.1K USD. Many refer to this as capitulation. Alas – the geniuses in crypto twitter have enlightened us with a new vocabulary word. Capitulation – the act of surrendering or ceasing to resist.
Finally, all of the “perma-bulls” waiting for a winter rally on all the positive news and developments around the crypto markets began to question their stance on holding at any price. We began to think things like:
“Is HODL really a meme?”
“Do these FUD articles saying that bitcoin will bottom under $1K USD have any validity?”
“Should I sign up for Bitmex and short Bitcoin to protect what I have left?”
Many who entered a bit earlier in 2017 began to reach the levels they entered the market in, and went on alert to protect the little gains they had left. I was one of these people. I never ended up taking short positions on Bitcoin, but I did get pretty heavily involved in trading. It’s an interesting space – the trading world. It’s true that most people lose all their money. One look at the “REKT Bot” feed from Bitmex will give you a glimpse into the world of leveraged trading and all the pain these traders must suffer, getting liquidated on 5, 6, and 7-figure positions left and right when the market gets choppy.
As for me, I may dabble here and there but creating art is what I’m passionate about. There’s nothing like creating and sharing my ideas with the world and the response I get from people who connect with my art.
I’ve been playing with some trader-oriented art ideas since I ventured into the world of Bitmex. After a great deal of time spent chatting with traders, analyzing price charts, watching the oscillation of the order books (bids and asks), and seeing how the price reacts to the strength of each side at any given time, I gained a lot of perspective into the trader’s life. Their mentality – their calculated decisions – their wins and losses – their times of suffering and their times of celebration.
This has inspired a new series of Bitcoin trading art- of which “Market Maker” is the first in the collection and currently available for purchase at lynx art collection in a highly limited edition – 3 metal panels and 10 metallic prints, never to release again on any other medium.
Hope you enjoy the art and the message. And leave a comment below with your thoughts!
“Bitcoin for any party” is an art series I created taking inspiration from Andy Warhol’s work with Campbell’s soup cans. The 6-piece series shows bitcoin as an ideological commodity with selling points for 6 groups with different political views.
The main objective is to “sell” bitcoin to each of the 6 groups for reasons that are uniquely important to them. It is an exploration into the different reasons people have to use Bitcoin and why it’s valuable to each, emphasizing economic, social, and political implications of its adoption.
The images explore which characteristics of the Bitcoin money system appeal the to ideologies of prominent political parties in the U.S. (Republican, Democrat, Libertarian) and also their marginalized counterparts (Alt. Right, Social Justice, Crypto Anarchist).
This spin on Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s soup cans creates a visual aid to both help educate people new to Bitcoin and amuse or spark conversations for people who already understand Bitcoin. It also functions as a signal
I enjoy creating images that challenge difficult subjects, explore hidden relationships, and force myself and others to see Bitcoin from different perspectives they haven’t yet considered. Free speech includes freedom for ideas you disagree with to be spoken without fear of censorship.
These images also demonstrate the right to freely speak ideas that I both agree and disagree with, communicating this core value of free speech. An idea, verbal or visual, void of the threat of violence is free speech!
#1 of 6, Bitcoin for any party
“The Greatest”
The Republican party in the U.S., led by president Donald Trump currently feels very much like they’re on the winning team, with the President fostering a grand sense of economic bullishness and nationalism.
About one half of the U.S. has regained a sense of pride in their country. They feel as if Trump is delivering well on his promises and by supporting him they are Making America Great Again.
Republican voters are in favor of free market capitalism and lower taxes, something bitcoin can provide users with much better than the $USD.
As opposed to the US Dollar, which is fully controlled by the Federal Reserve (a private bank with no reserves) and mandated by the Federal Government Bitcoin is a free-market currency.
With bitcoin, your purchasing power is determined by the cryptocurrency market and number of users who choose to use it.
With government money, you are forced to use it and those who control it create it out of thin air, when they create debt! Bitcoin is the greatest free-market currency in the history of the world.
#2 of 6, Bitcoin for any party
“Liberating”
Bitcoin is now playing a key role in a massive growing movement to take back our right to use sound, non-government money and regain the economic freedom it brings along with it.
Libertarians support the liberty to choose what money you want to use and be in complete control of where it goes and how you store It.
Banks can easily censor you by not letting you withdraw your money if they don’t like what you want to do with it. Many Libertarians follow the Austrian school of economics, which limits government interference in the economy.
Governments and banks use debt-based money systems to keep people saddled with debt, and propaganda to keep people distracted and focusing the time and energy they have left on the wrong issues, and the wrong enemies. To keep them in power.
Bitcoin liberates us from mandatory use of national currency in all our affairs. Now we can participate in a decentralized and censorship resistant money system with no bank or government.
#3 of 6, Bitcoin for any party
“Progressive”
The Democrat party in the US shares values of open borders, acceptance of immigrants and minorities, and progressive social change policies.
Voters and Politicians focus on social issues like public Healthcare, education and equal opportunity.
With slogans like “stronger together”, “fighting for us” there is a sense the lower and middle class are being oppressed by the rich and there is a fight at hand, politically for the people to take back what’s theirs.
With Bitcoin, there are no borders. It’s a currency accepted globally by all, leveling the playing field by shifting economic Power to the people and creating an opportunity for one of the biggest transfers of wealth in our history.
Bitcoin transcends many of the ideas that divide us, giving us common ground to unite behind – a better money for the people.
Strength in Numbers – Veritas in Numeris.
#4 of 6, Bitcoin for any party
“Non-Conforming”
The Pepe frog meme is the most popular, controversial, loved, and hated meme in the history of the internet.
Pepe started on a comic and began to be memed by members of online communities like 4chan and Pepe. Later the frog was used more widely to express reactions and spread ideas virally. There are more versions of Pepe than any other meme.
Like real frogs live both in the water and on land, Pepe also lives in two worlds – the digital and physical. The frog hops in and out of our physical world, taking events and topics from our world into the digital world and spreading them like wild-fires.
Pepe has been seen as a hate symbol by the less informed, and it’s true there have been many racist Pepe memes, but the frog is also used to spread love and laughs… And everything in between. Pepe does not conform to any contributors ideas.
Like a frog can spontaneously change sex from male to female and back, Pepe can spontaneously change from one side of an issue to the other, slipping through the grip of those who want to categorize or censor the meme.
Like Pepe is used on both sides many things, bitcoin is both used for legal and illegal activities, by good people and evil people. It’s backed by a decentralized community who does not conform to using only the money presented to us in our physical world.
In the same way Pepe represents a transition between the water and air, two states of matter, Bitcoin is used in both our physical and digital worlds…and most importantly, is worthy of meme. The dankest of memes. #superdank
#5 of 6, Bitcoin for any party
“Non-Controllable”
The Cypher punk movement of crypto anarchists believed that they could use computers and cryptography to create anonymous systems that are necessary for free societies.
Crypto Anarchists believe that we can’t have a surveillance state that’s also a free state. Privacy is an essential element for freedom. That’s why the cypher punks used cryptography to create digital privacy, and eventually applied these technologies to the creation of crypto currency. You can thank the revolutionary Cypher punks for bitcoin!
You can learn more about the cypherpunks and crypto anarchy here in the Crypto Anarchist manifesto.
#6 of 6, Bitcoin for any party
“Non-Discriminating”
Those who fight for social justice, pejoratively termed social justice warriors, are generally aligned with the political left, however focus more heavily on social issues.
There is a call for diversity among the group and acceptance of all humans regardless of their race, sexual preference, religion, gender identity, not tolerating any of the “isms” (racism, sexism, etc.)
Bitcoin is a free and open network to use for all humans, no matter who they are or what they’re into. The community is decentralized and non-discriminating. To use bitcoin you don’t need any sort of identity.
Bitcoin transcends many of the differences that divide us, giving us common ground to unite on – a better money for all people.
Pins & Limited edition Canvases for sale at the HODL CRYPTO art shop.
More and more people are investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies lately. Some are more interested in making money from it, and others are more interested in changing the world. Luckily, investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is a great way to accomplish both goals simultaneously. The more cryptocurrency you buy and hold as opposed to saving and investing in traditional financial assets, the more you will starve the banks, and inevitably they will die from this starvation.
AUM: the Bankers’ most important number
Assets under management (AUM) is the single most important number in the banking business. This number represents the total market value of assets managed by banks and financial institutions on behalf of investors. The definitions vary by company but in addition to investment assets such as stocks, bonds, and other financial derivatives, they often include bank deposits and cash.
AUM is so important because the mix of assets determines the overall strengths and weaknesses of financial institutions (i.e. AIG and Lehman brothers were weighted a tad heavy in subprime mortgage derivates). Financial institutions also use AUM as a marketing tool to attract large investors who want to know the relative size of their assets compared to other competitors.
Bitcoin: a huge threat to Bankers’ AUM
Given the importance of the AUM figures, now let’s take a look at how Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies pose a threat to the assets under management for financial institutions.
For all intents and purposes, Bitcoin and the overall cryptocurrency market has outperformed all asset classes offered by financial institutions. The capital gains clocked by crypto assets are more practically measured in X’s (i.e. 10X gains – or 1,000%) on a yearly basis as opposed to the % increases expected in equities (i.e. 7% for the S&P 500 index).
In addition to acting as a speculative investment asset for many investors, cryptocurrencies has be used effectively as digital cash and are highly liquid. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can indeed be used as a savings account and withdrawn from and deposited to as needed.
There is little point in leaving your money with a bank at this point as interest rates are non-existent. However the banks continue to loan our money out to others for a profit but do not share any of these profits with us.
The need for a global currency
We also need global currencies and don’t trust any centralized body to run this currency, seeing what’s happened and continues to happen across the board with the fractional reserve central banking system.
Censorship resistance
We can spend and transfer bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies without having to give any reason or explanation whatsoever. Once we create a transaction, it is confirmed by a global, decentralized network of computers who all agree on one truth. This is quite a cool thing. In fact, we as cryptocurrencies love it and banks do not offer this.
We actually own our cryptocurrencies
Leaving our wealth in banks in the form of deposits and other investment accounts is quite a risk to take. With crypto, we get to hold and truly own our wealth ourselves without needing to trust any third party.
The banks and proponents of banks will downplay this risk, but it’s quite important to remember what happened to people in Greece and Cyprus in recent years. The banks stole their money to pay for their government’s mismanagement of their economies. People in other countries like Zimbabwe and Venezuela don’t have any protection from this at all, and our friends over there have been quite savvy to join the cryptocurrency movement en masse.
Bitcoin is here to stay. Banks are not.
Bitcoin is not going anywhere. People across the world are all buying more Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Simply put, it’s a better place to keep our money. We get bigger rewards for keeping our money in cryptocurrency, have more freedom to use it, and don’t need to worry about banks lending it out or not allowing us to access it.
The more cryptocurrency we buy in lieu of traditional financial assets and savings/checking accounts, the more banks and other financial institutions will need to borrow from their competitors. If financial institutions don’t adapt to incorporate cryptocurrencies into their services, the banks will surely starve, and eventually die out. Hodl crypto to starve and kill the banks.
Crypto20, The World’s First Tokenized Cryptocurrency Index Fund
Crypto20 is a new index fund that that holds a portfolio of the top 20 cryptos by market cap in the same way as the Vanguard 500 maintains a portfolio based on the market cap of the S&P 500.
Top 20 Excluding Scam coins, Ponzis and Tether
Currently the top 20 coins capture >90% of the overall market cap.
Top 21 Coins on Coinmarketcap – March 2nd, 2018
As you can see, the market cap sizes start dropping off after the top ten or so, to below $5 Billion USD. Most coins outside of the top 20 are currently under $1 Billion in market capitalization.
Sorry Tether, you didn’t make the cut.
USDT – faker than the real thing – hodl artist shop
How the CRYPTO20 Index Works
The Crypto20 asset portfolio is adjusted through weekly re-balancing to track the market over time.
As you can see by the Portfolio weights below, it is not weighted by market cap, but uses a scaled approach to weights based on the rank within the index. Bitcoin gets a modest 11.6% weight, and Ethereum gets 10.5%, scaling all the way down to Icon, which gets 1.1%.
Crypto 20 Portolio Weights March 2nd, 2018
If Crypto20 were to weight their portfolio using a market-cap based weighting system, then portfolios would be weighted with roughly 41% Bitcoin and 19% Ethereum.
Coin Market Shares – March 2nd, 2018
The Crypto20 Index gives investors more exposure to the smaller cryptocurrencies within the top 20
Since the Crypto20 index only gives a combined weight of 22% to Bitcoin + Ethereum compared to the the 60% of Market Capitalization the two coins represent within the actual crypto market, the Crypto20 Index gives investors higher exposure to smaller altcoins.
*this may (or may not) result in higher upside potential.
Whether the method of weighting chosen for the Crypto20 index is a good strategy or not simply depends on how well the smaller coins in the index (i.e. $BCH, $LTC, $EOS, $XMR, $IOTA, $NEO) do in relation to larger coins (i.e. $BTC and $ETH).
CRYPTO20’s Nov 2017 ICO and C20 Tokens
The Crypto20 ICO in Nov 2017 closed with $38m raised, making it the 22nd largest recorded ICO at the time.
C20 Tokens launched on exchanges Jan 22nd and are currently available on Bibox, HitBTC, and IDEX.
Crypto20’s performance to date vs. BTC and the Total market
So far, the C20 has performed quite well since its launch. It’s outperformed both BTC and the total Market Cap in % terms since December.
Invictus Capital Launching 2 New Funds Alongside Crypto20
Invictus Capital is the crypto investment management firm behind the Crypto20. They believe that data science, machine learning, etc. will outperform actively managed funds.
The team is aspiring no less than to become the Vanguard of blockchain investing.
Invictus Capital – The Umbrella Company
Yesterday, March 1st, the team announced the launch of Invictus Capital, “a global company defining the leading edge of the cryptocurrency financial services industry.”
A few of the Invictus Capital team members at work in their offices
Invictus provides end-users direct access to funds in the form of tokens. This eliminates all third-party fees that take a share of investor profits, such as broker or platform fees.
They are very much pushing the data-based approach, which many investors, myself included are quite big fans of.
“Transparency and the scientific method are core tenets of our philosophy at Invictus. We believe that all funds should be developed and justified with a data-backed approach. We do not rely on guesswork and intuition.”
2 New Funds: Kinetic (Passive) and Hyperion (ICO’s)
With the launch of the umbrella company, two new funds join the ranks alongside CRYPTO20 — namely, the Invictus Kinetic fund (passive) & the Invictus Hyperion fund (pre-ICO/ICO).
The Invictus Kinetic Fund
The first open, passively managed tokenized fund to be launched by Invictus Capital. The Kinetic fund leverages our expertise in machine learning in the creation of a dynamic, algorithmically rebalanced fund designed to navigate the constantly changing cryptocurrency market.
At the heart of this fund is the Kinetic function that strictly defines its governing rules, enabling it to increase positions in tokens exhibiting growth, while closing positions in tokens in decline, all without being subject to human bias, emotion and interference.
Many independent investors find themselves exhausted and emotionally depleted from trying to manage a portfolio of cryptocurrencies in a market that never sleeps.
Some of us have seriously become “Crypto Zombies” waiting for those juicy 3AM-4AM trades on US Eastern time when there is action in the Asian markets.
Invictus Capital seeks to help with this.
As a passively managed fund, use of the Kinetic function allows the fund to navigate the shortcomings common to more basic funds, while still benefiting from the low fee structures characteristic of passive funds.
The Kinetic function continuously processes a stream of market data. The seven parameters and three hyper-parameters of the Kinetic function have been optimized by machine learning and back-tested over past market data.
The full function, underlying mathematical model and backtest results will be described in detail in the whitepaper release on March 16th, 2018.
The fund utilizes a variety of kinetic indicators characteristic of a given cryptocurrency’s performance relative to the rest of the market to assign it a score.
Ranking the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by their Kinetic score results in a Kinetic Rank.
This rank is used to create the Invictus Kinetic fund by selecting the top cryptocurrencies in the Kinetic Rank weighted by their Kinetic score.
The fund is rebalanced at fixed periods.
Over the coming years, we can expect there to be considerable changes within the market cap rankings of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies.
Smaller market cap cryptocurrencies will likely rise steadily up through these rankings — naturally an investor would want to be able to identify these rising stars and capitalize on their growth by investing in them early on.
Similarly, over time we expect to see some of the historic top performers, those cryptocurrencies that have exhibited meaningful, even meteoric, growth in their market capitalization to date begin to exhibit decline relative to the growth of the rest of the market.
Even more, some of the cryptocurrencies with the largest capitalizations may be displaced by the rising stars who disrupt their business model or use cases, possibly causing them to plummet into obscurity.
In these scenarios, it would be favorable to divest from these assets early in their decline to realize the returns from their previous growth, and to avoid the loss associated with holding a declining asset.
Kinetic Fund Token Structure and Fund Utilization
The token structure is very lean in terms of fund utilization (only 1% to operational expenses) and token distribution (97.5% to ICO investors).
Annual Management Fee: 0.75 % Token Structure: 1.5% of tokens for team, 1% for Invictus Capital, vesting over two years. 97.5% to ICO participants Fund Utilization: 1% of funds raised for operational expenses, 99% for purchasing underlying assets Token Price: $0.10 per token at live exchange rate from BTC/ETH/LTC Hard Cap: None — open-ended fund Soft Cap: $2M
Invictus Hyperion Fund
The Invictus Hyperion fund is a closed, tokenized venture capital fund designed to function as a syndicate for investors looking to gain exposure to the earliest stage of blockchain investing.
The Hyperion fund will focus on early-stage investments in blockchain technology. The fund will not invest or trade in projects that already have a listed token.
The fund will operate with Invictus’s typical data-driven investment methodology. Predictive models and tools will be utilized to determine the potential of investment opportunities.
The blockchain revolution has ushered in a new era in the financial sector, but it has also left many feeling overwhelmed.
With over a thousand coins to choose from and so much information, FUD, and shameless coin shilling to dig through to get the right information, it’s no wonder some investors just resort to the top currencies that seem to have the lowest risk.
Independent investors are simply unable to allocate the time, energy and mental bandwidth required to understand and navigate all of the new investment opportunities — and traps.
Development of new investment protocols like Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), token pre-sales and Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFTs) have redefined and democratized early stage investing. Independent investors now have the opportunity to invest in projects across the globe while they are in their infancy — investment opportunities that historically were only available to wealthy accredited investors and first-world venture capitalists.
While these changes, enabled by blockchain technology, have provided people with access to a wide array of new investment opportunities, they have also exposed people to the significant risk of early stage investing. The undertaking to perform the necessary due diligence to make informed investments has become onerous.
Hyperion seeks to break down barriers to early-stage crypto investing
Even though blockchain technology has transformed the early stage investment landscape, the independent investor still faces barriers. Large bonuses or discounts are often offered exclusively to very early investors or partners with significant capital and connections to the project.
Through the power of syndication, the Invictus Hyperion fund has been designed to break down these barriers facing the independent investor.
A portion of the returns from the sale of tokens will be paid out to token holders as dividends and the rest will be reinvested in new blockchain projects, repeating the cycle.
Hyperion – Distributions of quarterly returns
The analysts at Invictus will actively solicit and evaluate funding applications from entrepreneurs, performing extensive due diligence in the vetting process.
The Titan AI tool will be used to evaluate proposals and gain additional insights into factors influencing the success of early-stage blockchain investing.
The Hyperion fund will offer simplified access to early stage investing in a broad, vetted portfolio of promising blockchain projects. Entrepreneurs in need of pre-ICO support in the range of $0.25M to $1M can already apply through the funding application portal at InvictusCapital.com.
The fund utilization and token distribution structure is identical to that of the Kinetic fund.
Dividend Phase Activation: Dividend payments will be activated once the fund has grown to an invested portfolio of $30M. In the Dividend Phase: 50% of returns realized within each quarter will be paid to token holders, a 12.5% performance fee will be leveraged by Invictus and the remainder of 37.5% will be re-invested into the fund.
Titan AI Tool — Making Crypto Investing Safer
1st Stage
The tool analyzes ICO white papers and is capable of identifying plagiarized content — Titan is even capable of detecting cases where plagiarized content has been restructured and synonym substitutions have been made.
They have already indexed thousands of ICO white papers for comparing white papers against — but as users upload papers, this corpus will grow automatically. With this tool, we aim to empower users to make more informed investment decisions and help to form a community driven watchdog service.
2nd Stage
The second stage of the Titan tool will provide users with a visual representation of the degree to which an ICO is related to others in terms of their business model and sector.
The tool empowers users and Invictus analysts with the ability to evaluate the originality and legitimacy of early-stage investment opportunities within the ICO space and specific sectors thereof. The second stage will be released in the first week of March (this week).
Titan is an example of the company’s commitment to legitimizing the broader cryptocurrency community, in this case, by rooting out frauds and copycat projects.
For those interested in the ICOs for the new Invictus Funds, there is no date announced yet, but they have indicated it will be announced with the whitepaper releases on March 16th.
Whitelist for the ICOs of New Tokenized Funds
The funds will begin to raise in April — the exact dates will be announced when the whitepapers are released on the 16th of March 2018 at 18h00 GMT.
The funds will open to the public after a short initial phase dedicated to the below two groups. For priority access to our new funds you will need:
A.) To be an investor in the CRYPTO20 ICO.
OR
B.) Prove ownership of more than 500 C20 tokens using our verification tool. The justification for this amount is that it is approximately the median investment in the CRYPTO20 ICO.
Justification for this amount is that it is approximately the median investment in the CRYPTO20 ICO.
Conclusion
The Crypto20, Kinetic, and Hyperion funds offered by Invictus Capital are all potentially strong options for those interested in index style (passive) and pre-ICO investing.
Disclaimer: I do not hold C20 and but plan to invest in Kinetic and Hyperion based on a final assessment once the whitepapers are released. This is not financial advice.
Always Do Your Own Research. Hold on for dear life.
Voting started yesterday (02/21/18) and will end Sunday (02/25/18). 0.1 BNB (Binance Token, currently worth about $0.97 USD) is required for each vote. WePower will re-compensate you for your 0.1 BNB if you fill out the bounty form.
You can vote for other coins too, but you allowed a max 1 vote per candidate.
If you don’t have a Binance account, registration is fast and easy and requires no ID requirements.
WePower’s Bounty for 200 Free $WPR Tokens
Each participant of the bounty campaign gets 200 WPR if WePower wins this competition, so there’s the catch.
The good news is that $WPR is definitely in the running and a close second place to Elastos $ELA.
WePower Voting Screenshot
How to participate in the bounty:
1. Apply for bounty here: “WePower Binance bounty” https://goo.gl/dVoh7e. 2. Vote for WePower and make a screenshot 3. Fill in “Bounty report” form https://goo.gl/SWDNyw
Please note, that rewards in WPR will be distributed only if WePower is listed on Binance.
