For myself, life over the past few years has seemingly gone from bad to worse - and before I go into the details -this isn’t a “pity-post” or a sympathy searching exercise, this is simply a warning, and hopefully a lesson to others who are entering the crypto scene.
My crypto journey began back in earnest at the start of that famed 2017 “bull run” – I had a little bit in savings and had done my due diligence – this really was the future, and it could potentially set me and my family up for life.
I bought in with every bit of money I had to spare. All told, it was about £6,500, and the price of Bitcoin sat at just under £9,000.
This was exciting. The price continued to increase and I religiously opened and closed the Coinbase website to see the price soar by the hundreds and into the thousands. Work took a backseat and I became consumed with the markets, red and green candles being the first and last things I saw in the day.
I wanted more. I became envious of those that had bought into cryptos years before. So I looked at alternate avenues to increase my Bitcoin holdings… this was going to be the making of me! Sadly it turned out to be quite the opposite.
Scams, Scams everywhere…
The first venture I looked into was a third party bitcoin mining platform which promised exponential growth. It sounded too good to be true (spoiler: it was). I used a credit card to buy more Bitcoin. First mistake. I maxed the card and sent around £6,000 in Bitcoin to a mining company known as Crypterra. The reviews were good, the discord was active, people were seeing payouts – it was all looking legitimate. But of course it wasn’t. Payouts dried up. The devs went silent and the site disappeared and re-appeared sporadically before going offline indefinitely. It was over and I had lost most of the £6,000 from my credit card.
Robots are the future?
The price of Bitcoin was still holding strong and I’d made small gains with my original investment which was still untouched. Perhaps I could increase by Bitcoin gains elsewhere and pay off the credit card I had maxed out.
Again, I looked into ways to bolster my Bitcoin reservesI looked into trading platforms, cryptocurrency bots in particular. How hard could it be? As long as the price of Bitcoin went up, it should balance out any losses as I learned the ropes. There were a few that caught my eye. And following what I thought was sage “youtuber” advice – I dove into the world of trading with bots – linking up a Binance account and setting up my automated systems to work their magic and trade whilst I was asleep/working/sitting on the toilet, you name it.
As you can imagine, these bots weren’t the holy grail they were promoted to be, and I was losing Bitcoin left, right and centre. I became more and more “experimental” with the strategies… doubling my stakes, tripling my stakes to recoup what I had lost. I didn’t see it as real money (despite paying with hard earned money to fund these accounts) – it was magic internet money, just ones and zeroes – so the reality of it didn’t hit home how much I was actually losing. Shock horror, I lost it all.
Taking it to the bookies…
I had effectively been gambling my money away, and in my increasingly agitated state I sought out other communities to try and regain my money. Sports-betting communities, gambling communities, Twitter “tipsters” and Facebook groups who had all the inside knowledge.
I was down over £12,000 from my savings and the £6,500 from the credit card combined. I decided to open another two credit cards. One to fund my betting account and the other for backup. I quickly went through the first card’s funds, but I was ‘still learning’, this was ‘Ok’ – next time I would get it right. The second card (third in total) was quickly exhausted, and I was now close to £20,000 in the hole from when I started, all within just a few months.
The hole grew ever darker
As I write this now I am actually afraid and embarrassed to share the total losses I have made over the past few years (it’s actually much worse than I could have ever imagined). I have no-one to blame but myself; the greed, stupidity and at times, pure arrogance have lead me down this path. A path which at the moment seems irreversible for me.
To see the price of Bitcoin now makes me feel physically sick – if only I had been patient. If only I hadn’t chased my losses, if only I hadn’t played with money that wasn’t mine - I wouldn’t be in this predicament. As the debt mounts ever higher and interest rates on credit cards are crippling me, it will be an incredibly long time before I have any financial stability again. It has made me mentally unwell and I’m still figuring out the next steps which I know include professional support and removing my head from the pile of sand in which I have buried it.
I sincerely hope that those who read this account of my situation don’t fall into the same trap. The world is once again hyped for crypto, and with it come the pitfalls and scams and false promises of financial freedom and becoming rich. Don’t try and cheat the system, don’t chase your losses and don’t use money that isn’t yours in the first place.
TLDR:
To put it succinctly, the above is a very short overview of the financial hole I have found myself due to greed, arrogance and stupidity over the past few years. Hopefully a warning to others. Don’t chase losses, don’t look for the next get rich scheme and don’t invest money that isn’t yours to start with. Basically, don’t ruin your life like me. If only I had just held.
EDIT:
A quick edit to say thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read the above and replied in the comments. I've had some very honest and insightful responses and some incredibly useful suggestions about how I can bring myself back from this dilemma. I'll be seeking professional help both for the gambling and the debt management and hopefully get myself on the right track for the sake of my own sanity and that of my family's.

Day Trading is making me suicidal

PSA for new Dogecoin / Crypto buyers

Some points to newcomers after reading some frightening comments over in dogecoin:
·If you don't hold the keys to the crypto, you don't own the crypto. If you can't even withdraw the crypto, you definitely don't own the crypto. RH doesn't sell crypto, period. They sell supposed unwithdrawable custodian rights to crypto, and we are hopefully now all aware that RH is full of crap.
·Setting price targets like that of Bitcoin (30k or whatever) is completely nonsensical. Bitcoin has 18M coins out of 21M total possible mined coins. Dogecoin has 128B coins right now, thats 7100x as many. DOGE also doesnt haven't a hard cap due to regularly halving rewards, so its not deflationary in the way BTC is. It would need a market cap of $4Quadrillion to hit Bitcoin levels. In other words, bigger than all equity markets combined afaik. Dollar cost average (DCA) sells on the way up unless you want to drop off the cliff of euphoria into a 50-90% loss like Jan 2018 for a lot of people here. Its already x8 in a week. Bull runs rarely take coins more than x20 or so in a single major rally, and rallies are normally spaced a couple of years or so apart.
·Don't chase rallies. Buying significant positions after a 800% rally is a good way to be left holding bags. You should be DCAing buys, not throwing all of your savings at it at once. Its also pretty stupid to be all-in on a 9B mcap coin. That's high risk gambling if you're dropping most of your assets into it. It will legitimately most likely throw you into a year or two long depression if you lose half of your savings on Fing Dogecoin.
·Crypto should not be a significant part of your investments. If you're throwing most of your assets in this, and especially at one coin at the end of a major rally, you're not only placing yourself at an insane amount of risk, but you put steady growth of the asset at risk when you inevitably panic sell once the momentum runs out or a big seller enters the market. Everyone in crypto has done this to some degree. Its easy to say diamond hands all you want, and convince a thousand other sardines to buy in, and then have a whale decide they want to sell $200M worth over the next month who doesnt give a shit how it effects you. People have their own motives, and most whales probably aren't on Reddit. The people posting six figure holdings aren't remotely close to whale territory. There's 15 addresses with more than 1 Billion DOGE, and more than 100 with over 100 Million DOGE. Those people could potentially wipe out a rally solo.
·Diversify your bonds. Have other investment vehicles, AND other coins. My favorite analogy is that of a castle. You want to build your castle with stable assets, this is your emergency cash fund, index/mutual funds, maybe some large cap stocks, real estate, bonds. That should comprise at least 50%, ideally 80-90%, of your assets. Speculative investments are the raiding party that you send out to loot shit once the castle is built. That's riskier stocks, options, cryptocurrency, etc. Yes, its possible to get lucky if you're solely doing speculative gambling, but its fucking reckless and stupid, and for every DeepFuckingValue, theres 20 people posting loss porn about how they took out a loan for a crypto/options play and got destroyed. It's rolling around with a small army with no defensive position. Really easy to get annihilated by shifting tides in the market, particularly when its all in ONE position.
·Time in the market > timing the market. Quit trying to get rich in 3 weeks, or you'll end up constantly desperate for get rich quick schemes because you never bothered to build a stable base. Having a large emergency fund, and a significant amount of assets because you played it safe is a peace of mind that you cannot know until you have it. Don't throw away the possibility of that in a few years because you wanted to YOLO into Doge and be rich next month.
·The diamond hand thing is really...unconvincing, in case you're wondering. If you're trying that hard to convince yourself and others that you can hang on, you won't. Because anyone who's trying to convince themselves of it is clearly not used to having investments go +100-2000%, especially at the speed that crypto does it, so you won't have any instinct for when to take profits. Greed will set in, and you'll convince yourself that it can survive any correction, and you'll still be waiting for the quick recovery once it drops 60-80% and sits there for 2 years. People who do well in this market have limited exposure, and thus can basically forget about their coins for months or years, because they have other investments and secure finances whether crypto does anything or goes to 0. Euphoria and blind optimism doesn't keep someone holding until something goes x100+. Indifference, apathy, and patience are the more frequent catalysts, because you arent checking Blockfolio every 20 minutes and goading yourself into a panic sell when it corrects hard or crashes. Living in an emotional state thats constantly tied to whether the market is red or green blows. Most of us in crypto experienced at least a little of that in our first year or so. In a away, its exciting because the risk doesn't let you focus on anything else, but its a horrific way to live. The mania eventually gives way into broke disillusionment if you don't have at least a partial exit strategy.
Good luck and be safe. I'm sure this sub would really prefer not having to sticky the suicide hotline number again
Edit: please take note of ajaxhacker who has posted numerous comments to this thread spamming amc, nok, gme. This is shilling 101. "We the people have spoken"...lmao. Okay buddy. If the people had actually spoken it would involve financial regulation, not trying to make a quick buck. You think we haven't seen this crap before? People were doing this nonstop in 2017 with crypto. Your know what happened? Whales gobbled up everyone, a few shrimp got minted into sharks, but mostly...the rich got richer. Institutions will happily take profits off these before all retail investors have the opportunity to. Who, once again, don't give a shit about "holding the line with their diamond hands" and you losing money, because they've been holding since fall of last year and are already +10s of millions or whatever. Don't be naive and don't get stuck holding bags. This type of sentiment is your worst enemy in trading and is one of the earliest and most painful lessons in speculative markets. These are the whales Im talking about:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-27/reddit-day-trader-army-fattens-fortunes-of-world-s-super-rich

Is bitcoin an investment/speculation/gamble or is it a store of value and a means of trade?

The next BTC crash could be something to behold

Also on my blog with better formatting, cute footnotes and inlined images.
Note that not much here is new material, mostly rehashing existing points.

Disclaimer

This article started out as research for my betting against Bitcoin on the stock market. This isn't financial advice. As a matter of fact, I encourage all readers you to not buy or short crypto, through any market or derivative. Use your money for productive uses.
Here's a TL;DR:

The current parabolic price increase in Bitcoin is a bubble that has started popping.
A stablecoin called Tether is either one of the largest frauds or money laundering operation in history, and is providing most of the liquidity in the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
A BTC bubble pop, incoming regulation on stablecoins or the current NYAG investigation into tether will expose tether's insolvency to the crypto market. This is bigger than it sounds.
(Speculative, but one can hope) Current prices to mine BTC could end up higher than BTC market price, exposing BTC to a 51% attack.

A Recap: Bitcoin is useless and should go away

Bitcoin serves no purpose. Let's just rehash that by quickly debunking the major claimed uses over time as seen here

Proof of concept: No argument here, but now that the market cap of cryptocurrencies is closing in on a $700B, this seems moot.
Cheap Payment Network: Nonsense, since BTC transactions are currently >$10 and this worsens the more people use it.
Anonymous Darknet Currency: I'd have said "no argument here", but apparently it's surprisingly easy to trace BTC nowadays. However, crypto ecosystem as a whole seems to do a decent job at laundering money as we'll see later.
Reserve Currency for Crypto: Since a reserve currency should be useful as a means of exchange, and I wrote several thousand words on how BTC is not that, my position is pretty clear. Also, the fact that a cryptocurrency indexed to the US dollar has trounced BTC as the main means of exchange in the crypto ecosystem speaks for itself.
Programmable Shared Database: You know what's programmable, shared and a database? The database we use at work. Just learn to implement access control lists on your SQL server.
Uncorrelated Financial Asset: Given BTC crashed just like the rest of the market when COVID showed up, this doesn't hold up

The stupidest version of the "uncorrelated asset" argument I hear is "Bitcoin is a great hedge for inflation!"
You know what's a good "hedge for inflation"? Literally anything. The definition of inflation is "the price of money". If the price of money goes down (inflation) then everything else has a positive return by comparison.
People who say "bitcoin is a good hedge for inflation" shouldn't be trusted to manage their own money, let alone give financial advice to anyone.

Censorship Resistant e-Gold: This is a roundabout way of saying "BTC is a store of value"! Which, again, can only be said by people who've never read the definition of "store of value" in a textbook.

I already went into detail into this, but BTC is a terrible store of value because it's volatile. Assets that can lose 20% of value overnight don't "store value". BTC is a "vehicle for speculation".
The only way price is sustained for BTC is that you can find some other idiot to sell it to. Just as a reminder, 50% of Gold is used for things that aren't speculation, like Jewelry, so you'll never have to worry finding a seller there.
Here are some real uses for bitcoin:

Gambling is fun. You buy BTC, the price might go up! Or down! This is exciting.
Hackers, money launderers and other criminals certainly find cryptocurrencies useful.

Reminder: BTC is an ecological scourge
The current cost to mine a BTC is around $8000 in electricity. This electricity mostly comes from subsidized coal in China.
And given the current amount of BTC generated each day, we're using about equivalent to the electricity from all of Belgium, largely in coal, to keep this going.
I don't mind wasting time on intellectual curiosities, but destroying our planet for glorified gambling is not something I'm happy about. I want cryptocurrencies to go away entirely on this basis, philosophically.

Current BTC prices are a bubble

Before we go into tether, reminder that at the time of writing, the plot of BTC price against the S&P500 looks like this
BTC price has increased by ~800% since March. Still, no one uses it for anything useful since the last bubble in 2017, or the other one before that in 2013. This is another bubble however you put it.
BTC is not "new technology"
10 years the internet became popular, Google and Amazon already existed. We're 8 years after the popular emergence of deep learning and it has already revolutionized machine translation, computer vision and natural language processing in general.
You could argue that deep learning and the internet existed before their emergence, but so did cryptocurrencies. Look up b-money and hashcash for instance.
Bitcoin has existed since 2008 and emerged in popularity around the same time as deep learning did, yet we're still to find actual uses for it except speculation and criminal uses. It's a solution waiting for a problem.
Institutional investors are also idiots
The narrative this time is that "institutional investors" are buying into BTC. This doesn't mean it's not a bubble.
Many of the institutions were buying through Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. Rather, many of them were chasing the premium over net asset value that hovered around 20%. Basically, lock money in GBTC for 6 months, cash out and collect the premium as profit. Of course, this little Ponzi couldn't last forever and the premium seems to be evaporating now.
Similarly, totally-not-a-bitcoin-ETF-wearing-a-software-company-skinsuit Microstrategy (MSTR) trades at a massive premium over fundamentals.
There will always be traders chasing bonuses from numbers going up, regardless what is making the number going up. The same "institutional investors" were buying obviously terrible CDOs in the run-up to 2008.

Tether is lunacy

Tether is a cryptocurrency whose exchange rate is supposed to be pegged to the US Dollar. Initially this was done by having 1-to-1 US Dollar reserves for each tether issued. Then they got scammed by their money launderer, losing some $800M, which made them insolvent.
Anyway, now tether maintains their reserves are whatever they want them to be and they haven't gotten audited since 2017.
You know, normal stuff.
There's a problem to backing your USD-pegged security with something that isn't US Dollars. Namely, if the price of the thing you're backing your US Dollars against goes down, you're now insolvent. If you were backing $10B in tether with $10B of bitcoin, then the bitcoin drops by half, you're insolvent by $5B.
And then this spotlessly clean company they somehow added $20B to their balance sheet in the second half of 2020
Reminder: one side of that balance sheet is currently floating around the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Cryptocurrency traders own it as an asset and sell it to others. The other half of the balance sheet is whatever tether wants.
There are only two possibilities that explain tether's growth:

Massive unbacked issuances, because they're afraid their scam has run its course.
Money laundering. Lots of it.

It could also be a happy mix of both.
One particularly interesting date is 30/8/2020, where tether added $3B to its balance sheet overnight. This is interesting because it predates the subsequent movement in bitcoin price and large movements in other cryptocurrencies.
The story from tether and tether's bank's CEO is that this money largely comes from foreign nationals through an OTC desk which implies the transaction goes as following:

A foreign national sends money in a foreign currency to an OTC desk. This is exactly as clean as you'd think -- often raw cash transactions in the millions.
That OTC desk converts the money to USD and sends it to tether's correspondent US bank. The OTC desk gives tether to the foreign national.
Wait tether has a correspondent US bank?

Oh, I forgot to mention, no bank wants tether as a customer because they obviously break KYC/AML compliance. So tether first ~~bought~~ invested in a bank called Noble which then lost its relationship with Wells-Fargo when they realized tether were lying to them about AML. Poor tether lost its legal access to USD.
Tether has been banking in the Bahamas with a bank called Deltec since. First they had a money launderer called Crypto Capital Corp to send funds to customers, who stole the $800M from them and subsequently went to jail.
But worry not! Tether found a way to get banked in USD afterwards. Curious coincidence, an executive at Deltec was randomly blogging about buying small US community banks in 2018. You know, that thing money launderers do.
So tether's story is that in 2020, they took in roughly twenty billion USD of shady foreign money into the small community US bank their deltec bankers bought. These transactions are necessarily breaking KYC/AML. The foreign parties to those transactions wouldn't take such a rickety route to convert billions into cryptocurrencies if they weren't laughed out of the room in serious banks.
But of course, Deltec will say it did KYC on tether. Really solid KYC, clearly, since they're the last bank on earth taking tether's business. Tether says they do KYC on their customers (the large OTC desks). And I'm sure the OTC desks would be shocked, shocked if the cash money they get in Russia and China turns out to be dirty. So everyone can pass the buck of responsibility down the road and claim "We do KYC on our customers".
Sure you do, tether. If you did such great KYC, you wouldn't have such problems finding banking relationships. I mean when even HSBC is not doing business with you you're apparently more obviously moving criminal money than fucking drug cartels.
And, according to tether's people, this money is what's backing tether's reserves. Money that will get frozen the instant a prosecutor even looks at it.
Reminder: the above is the charitable, positive case for tether.
The less charitable case is that they took crayons and added zeros to their balance sheet, and that there's a couple billions waiting to burn a hole in the crypto ecosystem.
Anyway, the $25B garbage fire that is tether will make a great book/netflix series at some point and their hilariously stupid CTO going on podcasts while flinching on questions about how BTC ended up on their balance sheet will be a fun part of it.
But I'm not here to write a book, I'm here to make money by shorting all of this. For my purposes, even in the positive case tether is a ticking time bomb waiting to burn a hole in the crypto ecosystem, because...

KYC and AML are coming for cryptocurrencies

If you listen to "crypto news", all incoming crypto regulation is just great, because that means crypto is becoming legit. However, companies investing in crypto are very angry about them.
This is because crypto transactions break the FinCEN travel rule, where KYC information should "travel" along transactions, to prevent money laundering obfuscation schemes.
Of course, according to the crypto industry this is "stifling innovation". A more reasonable take is that by being leaving the crypto industry outside normal financial regulations, we're enabling a "race to the bottom". As we saw with shadow banks in the 2000-2007 era this leads to "creative banking". I don't want my bankers to be creative, I want them to be solvent.

Tether's effect on the crypto ecosystem

When tether implodes, it's taking most of the crypto industry along for a fun ride. Tether can implode in one of a few ways:

A BTC price crash triggers it. If
Regulators decide they've had enough of AML avoidance and regulate them.
The NYAG investigation, which is waiting for an update in a few weeks, finds something and shuts them out.

Let's assume tether falls to $0 for simplicity. The analysis is the same directionally if tether significantly "breaks the buck".
This doesn't happen instantly, but it happens quickly. The peg breaks, and most people holding tether will try to sell it for other crypto (BTC, ETH, etc.). This puts downward pressure on the price of tether, incentivizing even more people to "pass the buck". Automated inter-exchange arbitrage bots might try to exploit emerging gaps in bid-ask spreads, only to end up with worthless tether instead, as their operators rush to pull the plug.
Then, we have a small village of cryptocurrency enthusiasts being out some $24B. With the trading bots turned off and the trading lubricant (a dollar pegged asset) gone, the bid-ask spreads blow up. You get a predictable flight to safety -- that is, to real money. This puts downward pressure on BTC.
While all of this is happening, there are all sorts of fun second-order effects happen. A lot of DeFi derivative products are priced in cryptocurrencies, so having normally stable prices shuffle around (eg. USDC price moving above $1 in a flight to safety) triggers a tsunami of margin calls. Some exchanges might insolvent (they're the ones redeeming tether for USD after all).

If BTC price drops below $8000, fun things happen

Currently, the price to mine a BTC is roughly $8000. Most of the mining comes from huge mining farms using subsidized coal in China, and mining costs more the more hardware there is to mine it.
Since the price of BTC hasn't substantially dropped below cost to mine we're in for a fun experiment if the price drops below this threshold. Most of these farms should turn off so that the price to mine comes back to breakeven in a case of prisoner's dilemma.
But if too much hardware turns off, this leaves mining hardware idle and the door becomes wide open to a 51% attack. It's not clear at what price below breakeven cost to mine a 51% attack becomes a serious threat, but once this threshold is crossed, we're in the "irreparable harm to BTC" risk zone.
And for a person like me, who just wants to see crypto disappear forever this is very exciting.
Maybe those mining farms could be replaced with nice forests soaking up all the carbon they emitted for posterity. One can hope.

How do I bet against all of this?

Microstrategy (MSTR) is, at this point, a bitcoin ETF wearing the skinsuit of a dying software company.
Michael Saylor, MSTR's CEO, is quite the character. I wrote a lot about his lack understanding of what a currency is, but it's on another level to look at the early stages of a bubble pop and decide this is a good time to buy $10M more of the stuff, as seen here
However, this bubble is tame by Michael's standards. Look at the historical stock of his company
What's happening on the left is that Saylor pumped the numbers with accounting fraud then the SEC took issue with the fake numbers. The stock dropped 90% practically overnight. Their accountants, PWC, paid $51M in fines. Saylor and friends paid fines, partly with company stock.
You could also short GBTC, but when Mr. Saylor provides you with an options market instead, why not use it? Shorting on crypto exchanges that might become insolvent in the very event you want to happen with this bet is a bad idea, on the other hand.

Mike can't cash out

The bitcoin market is illiquid and leveraged when it comes to real money coming in and leaving the ecosystem. Buys in the $10M-$100M seemingly move the price of BTC by upwards of $1000 in the last weeks. This means hundreds of millions of real money means tens of billions in movement in BTC market capitalization.
Now imagine what cashing $1.1B of BTC into real money would mean for the price. And this is purely in market terms, before the PR damage from bitcoin's demigod abandoning ship would have second-order effects.
Saylor has painted himself into a corner. Even if he wanted to cash out, he can't.

MSTR fundamentals: Why it should be valued below $10

In early 2020, MSTR was a slowly dying business. The EBITDA has been rapidly evaporating in the last 5 years
At that point, MSTR a stock price of $115 meaning a market cap of $1.1B. This included some $560M of cash they were sitting on. I presume the remaining $550M was an implicit sales premium for the inevitable private equity firm investors expected was going to relieve them of this stock and make the business profitable again.
Of course, they didn't sell.
Instead, they took the $560m they were sitting on and bought $400m of BTC at prices $11k and $13k in late summer 2020. Then, in early December, they took on $600m of debt to buy BTC with at $23k. They also bought $10m more in January at a price of $30.5k.
At this point, we can mostly value MSTR like a trust.

Price the underlying software business as being worth $600M, as the market did before the bitcoin nonsense. If BTC went to $0, this is what we'd value it at, and the MSTR stock should be around $65.
But wait! MSTR took on $650M in debt in December. Their actual value with a BTC priced at $0 should be much, much lower than $65 depending on how you value the debt. You could make an argument it should be in the single digits.
They hold 70,784 BTC. At current prices ($32,000) this is worth roughly $2.2B. With the current market cap of MSTR ($577 stock price), this means MSTR is currently priced at an eye watering $3B premium over fundamental value.

GBTC's 20% premium-to-NAV is a joke compared to the MSTR premium.

Ark Big Ideas 2021: Read Through to SPACs

Ark has been a big name in SPACs, investing in general in 2020/2021, and followed closely on this subreddit. They have invested in SPACs including HIMS, OPEN, LGVW, and EXPC, which often saw an increase in trading price after Ark's involvement. Names such as SRAC and NPA also received a boost with the announcement of the Ark Space ETF. So it is helpful to understand what Ark is looking at when investing in SPACs.
Ark released their "Big Ideas 2021" presentation last week. The below goes through the high level industries and ideas Ark is looking at, as well as relevant SPACs to those industries/ideas. While these SPACs are not listed by Ark in the presentation, they are my summary of those that fit, and poised to benefit from, the themes Ark lays out.

Deep Learning: AI/Computer written software code
1. Key SPAC Names: SAII, ACEV, THBR
  1. Ark mention autonomous vehicles (among many other end markets). While this is focused more on software, SAII recently rumored to be in talks with Otonomo, an Israeli startup that operates a data platform linked to millions of connected cars.
  2. Ark also mention a jump in specialized chips in this section (don’t specifically say FPGAs [ACEV] or SOCs [THBR], but could be applicable).
2. SPAC names I wouldn't include, but related: GRAF/VLDR, GMHI/LAZR, IPV, CLA, CGRO, CFAC (rumored)
  1. While autonomous is mentioned, the focus is more on deep learning software and chips enabling it than the LiDAR players, so don’t include them here.
The Re-invention of the Data Center: Data centers shifting to new hardware, such as ARM, RISC-V, GPUs, TPUs, and FPGAs
1. Key SPAC Names: ACEV
  1. A lot of this section is about ARM processors. But, they specifically mention accelerators, including FPGAs, replacing CPUs. ACEV target Achronix is one of the few independent FPGA producers.
2. SPAC names I wouldn’t Include, but related: THBR
  1. FPGAs specifically mentioned, but no mention of SOCs or autonomous, so don’t think THBR as applicable here.
Virtual Worlds: Virtual reality, augmented reality, metaverse, and other futuristic steps in the design and monetization of video games
1. Key SPAC Names: FEAC/SKLZ
  1. Virtual Gaming: Around virtual worlds, Roblox IPO is a prime target, although this section talks about areas outside of just Vmetaverse. They talk about different methods of monetizing video games, which SKLZ (former FEAC SPAC) fits well with.
2. SPAC names I wouldn't include, but related: LCA/GNOG, DMYD, DMYT/RSI, DEAC/DKNG
  1. Online Gambling: While the online gambling players are technically “gaming”, this section seems more focused on video game monetization than gambling, so I don’t include them.
Digital Wallets: Online first financial accounts, banking, and lending platforms
1. Key SPAC Names: VIH, IPOE, FUSE (rumored), FTOC (rumored), NEBU/LPRO, FSRV, BFT
  1. VIH immediately comes to mind as the SPAC whose presentation talks specifically about digital wallets. But it appears that they are also talking about online-based banking services here, which can broaden potential targets to include IPOE/SoFi (only SPAC explicitly mentioned by Ark), the rumored FUSE/MoneyLion deal, the rumored Payonee FTOC merger
  2. They also mention digital lenders, which could include NEBU/LPRO or FSRV (don’t mention either, but mention FSRV partner AFFM)
2. SPAC names I wouldn't include, but related: FTAC/PAYA & SPRQ
  1. Fintech payment enabling fintech SPACs, but they aren’t really digital wallets/consumer focused.
Bitcoin: No explanation needed on this, they dedicated a section to the world's largest cryptocurrency
1. Key SPAC Names: VIH
  1. Digital Wallet: While crypto exchanges and other bitcoin-related names have been rumored to potentially be evaluating SPACs, VIH is the only crypto-related name currently in the SPAC universe
Electric Vehicles: An area well covered on this subreddit, EVs are another key sector pointed out by Ark.
1. Key SPAC Names: SHLL/HYLN, DPHC/RIDE, SPAQ/FSR, HCAC/GOEV, VTIQ/NKLA, ACTC, CIIC, NGA, FIII, GIK, PSAC, CCIV (rumor), KCAC/QS, PIC/XL, RMG/RMO, ALUS, CLII, TPGY, SBE, FVAC/MP, AMCI, THBR, ACEV
  1. EV OEMs: The major EV OEM SPACs are obvious candidates here, being SHLL/HYLN, DPHC/RIDE, SPAQ/FSR, HCAC/GOEV, VTIQ/NKLA, ACTC, CIIC, NGA, FIII, GIK, PSAC, CCIV (rumor)
  2. EV Parts: Parts suppliers, such as KCAC/QS, PIC/XL, RMG/RMO, and ALUS are also all poised to benefit from electrification
  3. EV Charging Stations: The EV Charging stations, such as CLII, TPGY, SBE, are all going to see great benefit from further EV adoption
  4. Raw Materials: FVAC/MP is also exposed to broader EV trends via NdPr output at the mine, which is currently used in 90% of EVs
  5. FCEV Parts: AMCI is acquiring a fuel cell provider, which are used for FCEVs and mentioned throughout their presentation
  6. Semiconductors: THBR’s semiconductors are being used for electrification, among other auto-based end markets. ACEV is similar, with their FPGAs being used for the future of the auto-market.
2. SPAC names I wouldn't include, but related: TRNE/DM
3. TRNE talks about how additive manufacturing enables EVs, among many other industries, although it’s not a key focus/driver.
Automation: Robotics factories, production, and manufacturing. Do not know of any SPACs in this area currently.
Autonomous Ride Hailing: Specifically looking at robo-taxis
1. Key SPAC Names: GRAF/VLDR, GMHI/LAZR, IPV, CLA, CGRO, CFAC (rumored), THBR, ACEV
  1. LiDAR: While Ark’s thesis is looking more at the platform providers, any autonomous driving will be enabled by the LiDAR providers GRAF/VLDR, GMHI/LAZR, IPV, CLA, CGRO, CFAC (rumored)
  2. Semiconductors: THBR is looking to produce semi’s for “safety systems” for future vehicles (autonomous). ACEV is similarly looking to use their FPGAs for the future of cars.
2. SPAC names I wouldn't include, but related: SHLL/HYLN, DPHC/RIDE, SPAQ/FSR, HCAC/GOEV, VTIQ/NKLA, ACTC, CIIC, NGA, FIII, GIK, PSAC, CCIV (rumor)
3. EV OEMs: While it’s possible the major EV OEMs could have autonomous vehicles, and some even mention this, it is not as key to their investment thesis as the electrification side
Drone Delivery: Autonomous air travel, mostly for ecommerce delivery and passengers
1. Key SPAC Names: Haven’t seen any SPACS that really relate to this theme
2. SPAC names I wouldn't include, but related: EXPC, ASPL (rumor), ZNTE (rumor)
  1. The Ark presentation seems to mostly be mentioning eCommerce-type fulfilment, although there is some discussion of autonomous passenger deliver
Orbital Aerospace: Space-related names including connectivity and hypersonic point-to-point travel
Key SPAC Names: SRAC, IPOA/SPCE, NPA
1. Satellite Launch/Positioning: SRAC is likely the most relevant, as it specializes in putting satellites into their proper orbit.
2. Space-based Connetivity: NPA also helps enable space-based communication, which Ark mentions.
3. Hypersonic Point-to-Point: And finally, Ark mentions hypersonic point-to-point travel, which IPOA/SPCE is looking to get involved in
3D Printing: Another straight forward one, Ark thinks additive manufacturing will revolutionize manufacturing
Key SPAC Names: TRNE/DM
1. 3D Printing: DM is a 3D printer, this one is clearly the most applicable
Long Read Sequencing: DNA sequencing (think ILMN), the next step is those who can perform longer "reads" of DNA (PACB, Oxford Nanopore). I have not seen any SPACs targeting this area.
Multi-Cancer Screening: Looking at liquid biopsies/blood tests for early cancer detection.
Key SPAC Names: CNAC/DMTK
SPAC names I wouldn't include, but related: VGAC
1. Genetic Testing: VGAC is rumored to be in discussions with 23andMe. Their current product is mostly around ancestry testing, but they also are looking to do health screening per the Bloomberg article. Still, Ark is focused mostly on cancer testing, and there is no evidence they are specializing in cancer screening.
Cell & Gene Therapy Generation 2: Self-explanatory, cell and gene therapies, Ark looks at the next stage shifting from liquid to solid tumors, autologous (cells from yourself) to allogeneic (cells from anybody) cell therapy, and ex vivo to in vivo gene editing.
Key SPAC Names: GXGX
1. Allogenic Gene Therapy: Ark specifically talks about allogenic therapies, of which GXGX is acquiring one.

None of the above is supposed to be investment advice, a recommendation to buy, or suggest Ark is or will be involved at all in any of the above names. Do your own due diligence.
I and others I advise own positions in some of the above securities

Edit: Added BFT to "Digital Wallets" and CNAC/DMTK to "Multi-Cancer Screening"

Why Dogecoin to $1 is Only a Matter of Time

Why Dogecoin to $1 is Only a Matter of Time

The Bubble
It’s February of 2021, and let’s be completely honest: We’re in a bubble. It’s kind of like 1999 but not the same. In 1999, interest rates were much higher. Today, they are nearly zero. In some countries, they are even negative. From a long-term perspective, this is very bad.
The Federal Reserve is completely to blame for this. Their policies are entirely reckless, and officials refuse to acknowledge what is going on here. The Coronavirus hysteria caused by the media and enabled by officials made the crash last summer the worst man-made disaster in the history of our financial system. The Great Depression was caused by over-speculation and a lack of regulation in an emerging financial system. The Great Recession was caused by greed and fraud (strangely, no one is in jail for this). This market collapse was caused by elected officials and the fed, who got trigger-happy and cut rates to zero back in the spring of 2020.
Whatever we wind up calling the burst of this bubble is to be determined. It will, however, be entirely manmade because the fed refuses to acknowledge the speculative behavior currently going on in SPACs, Cryptos, Penny Stocks, and anything else that serves as a legal Ponzi scheme for inflating the bubble. Even real, dividend-paying stocks have gotten way overvalued in some sectors. Also, since the fed has no plans of raising rates within the next two years (so they say for now, at least), if you’re searching for yield, you have nowhere else to look than the equities markets or one of these legalized forms of Ponzi schemes. It’s extremely unfair to conservative or retired investors looking for an honest return on their savings. This all is actually why it is a great time to look at Dogecoin, as I will get to in a moment. So long as rates are near zero, the bubble will continue to go on for longer and longer. And while it continues, people will constantly look for the next big thing.
For How Long?
Now, this may sound all doom and gloom, but that’s not my point. One day the bubble will burst, but I’m not making a prediction of when that will happen. Anyone making up dates for when the bubble will burst is either clueless or a con artist. No one knows when this bubble will burst. It could be weeks, months, or even years. One thing is for sure, the bubble will not burst just because things are overvalued. That’s not how bubbles work.
There needs to be a catalyst to burst the bubble. A major military conflict. An unexpected move or comment by the fed (raising rates, calling out the bubble for what it is, etc.). Another nationwide lockdown. I can go on with examples, but a little selloff here and there (August 2020) that causes the financial media to lose its mind is not enough. Just because you claim the bubble is bursting isn’t enough either. If you follow the media, you will get burned over and over again. That’s how it works. They want you to go to their sponsors for help, and once they burn you (sell you gold, overcharge you for poor investments, etc), you’ll come back to them hoping to figure things out. It’s a shell game. When the bubble burst, it will happen extremely fast and unexpectedly. There’s nothing wrong with playing the bubble, but you need to be mindful of when it ends because once the music stops, there will be a mad rush for the exits. You don’t want to be stuck holding the bag because everything will get crushed when the bubble burst. Even the blue-chip stocks that pay solid dividends will get hammered.
Fundamentals Don’t Matter (For Now)
In this bubble environment, fundamentals don’t make sense and, quite frankly, they don’t matter. You can argue back and forth all day long about whether something has a practical future or whether something is overvalued. I’m not here to do that about Dogecoin, Bitcoin, or any other crypto. The same could be said about Penny Stocks right now. (Hint: virtually all of these companies are way overvalued). You can find tons of articles of that nature, and I’m not likely to change your preconceived notions anyway. If we look at all the irrational bubbles that have occurred lately, you are a complete fool if you believe that TSLA or BTC is worth nearly a trillion dollars. It’s worth nowhere near that valuation.
How do I determine what something is worth, and who do I mean? It is called the market cap. In layman’s terms, that is where you take all the stock shares and multiply it by the share price. And I’m not recommending buying or selling TSLA or BTC, I’m just pointing out that these valuations are absurd. Does that mean they will not pass 1 trillion dollars? Of course not. There’s a very reasonable chance they do pass a $1 trillion market cap. That sounds absurd to write but it’s true. When the bubble bursts, you better believe fundamentals will be back in play. This disconnect can’t last forever. But it can go on for a while. And while it lasts, we all want to make some money
A Quick Word About ALL Cryptos
While I don’t believe Cryptocurrencies are going anywhere (as in, people will always buy and sell them), I also do not see any APPLICABLE future in them other than trading with other people. In fact, the biggest use I see of Cryptocurrencies is for illegal and untraceable transactions. The government will do all they can over the next several years to bring in lost tax revenue and track transactions better, but that’s the extent to which Cryptos will have relevance. How do I know this? Because the federal reserve, which is backed by the taxing authority of the US Government and the might of the US military, isn’t about to let some alternative currency usurp the US dollar. How do you think we can afford to provide all this government stimulus to fight Covid? If you think about this, you will see why other countries are much worse off. They must play by our rules, while we get to export our inflation to other countries because they must use the USD to buy commodities on the international exchanges (look at what happened when Saddam tried to circumvent this). If they print more money, their currency gets devalued. That’s why as bad as things look, relatively speaking, the US isn’t in terrible shape compared to the rest of the world.
If your financial future is so married to Bitcoin, ask yourself this: what happens if your account gets hacked? Who will you call? Who will make you whole again? If you have a brokerage account with legitimate stocks, there are regulations in place. There is the SIPC which protects again brokerage failure. With Bitcoin, you are completely gambling. This lack of regulation and lack of price stability means that there is no viable path to Bitcoin being a legitimate currency. Does it mean people can buy and sell it? Of course. But if you are in the cult of believing that Bitcoin is the future world reserve currency, you need to get your head examined.
Gold and Silver con artists have been trying for decades for people to get on this alternative currency train. At least gold and silver have some practical industrial applications. And hundreds of years of history on its side. Crypto isn’t anything but something people agree upon as having value. Why do I point this out? Because the one thing you need to do is separate yourself from what you think you know about Crypto and Blockchain, etc. While it all sounds cool and revolutionary, it really doesn’t matter. The US government could easily create their own form of Crypto that gives them more control. The decentralized part just doesn’t jive with our current global hegemony. If you don’t understand this, you should think more and read less. Once you accept this, you can start to see all Crypto as fundamentally worth the same: virtually nothing. The technicals, however, are why we want to look at Dogecoin.
Relative Valuation of Dogecoin
Now that you understand a little more background into where we are, I believe Dogecoin is extremely undervalued. Why? It’s simple. Relative valuation. This is one of the easiest and most efficient ways to compare investments. Ok, so maybe this isn’t really investing anymore; it’s gambling. Still, we can apply the same concept. Imagine two companies: they are in the same industry and have similar margins, earnings, growth prospects, etc. One company is valued at $50 billion and costs $120 per share, and one is valued at $85 billion and costs $80 per share. Which one would you invest in? Of course, you would invest in the one that is worth $50 billion at $120 per share. The cost per share means absolutely nothing. It is psychological.
Now, you say Dogecoin isn’t on par with Bitcoin and that where I’m going with this isn’t a fair comparison. Go back and read the last section. That’s why I wrote about the practical applications of Cryptocurrencies in general. None of that matters. The only thing that matters is the general sentiments shared by people that buy and believe in Cryptocurrency. So, let’s look at the current valuations:
Bitcoin – Price $40,500, Market Cap $755B (estimated as of 2-6-21)
Dogecoin – Price $.05, Market Cap $4.4B (estimated as of 2-6-21)
(Source: Yahoo Finance)
Now, I’m not saying Dogecoin is worth what Bitcoin is. I’m not even saying it's worth half or a third of Bitcoin. Who really knows? No one does. You certainly cannot say for certain that one is better than another. One is more “established” and has more name recognition. What I am saying is this: if Dogecoin goes to $1, it will have a market cap of just over $85 billion. Even at Bitcoin’s current market cap, that’s just over 1/10 of its value. And that isn’t even pricing in more appreciation of Bitcoin’s value over time. This means I see tons of room for Dogecoin to run. (I know some will mention dilution via minting of new coins, but that’s another discussion and not entirely relevant to the points I am trying to make in this piece.)
Could Dogecoin match Bitcoin? That sounds absurd, but let’s look just for fun: if Dogecoin were to have the same market cap as Bitcoin, that means it would have a current price of $8.55. So, what am I saying here? You must know the range of possibilities (within reason, if that even exists anymore) before you start thinking about price targets. To say Dogecoin is going to $100 is just absurd; things need to be put in the proper context.
Why Dogecoin?
Using relative valuation, I believe you could make a case for any Crypto. Will they all run to Bitcoin’s level? Of course not. The last question is why Dogecoin? This is the most important one that we have to answer before deciding on buying Dogecoin. The answer is simple: hype and name recognition. If I look at the most valuable cryptocurrencies by market cap, Dogecoin is number 12. I have taken an informal survey of probably 100 people over the last two weeks. I showed them the top 15 Cryptocurrencies by market cap to see which they were familiar with: Stellar, Binance Coin, Cardano, Polkadot, XRP . . . almost all of these were completely unheard of. But, somehow, they have valuations of 2-3 times Dogecoin.
Dogecoin has a few things going for it. First, hype. Elon Musk and many other prominent celebrities are pilling in. Mark Cuban has said he’d buy it over a lottery ticket. That alone can help aid a very quick lift off. Second, the name Dogecoin is very easy to remember and a trendy thing. What the heck is Cardano anyway? XRP? I mistakenly called it XPR before I edited this piece. And if you are still hung up on the practical use of Dogecoin or other Cryptos, you are missing the point of this piece entirely. Look at the story behind Bitcoin. An anonymous person online created a decentralized platform for money movement or something like that. What? How in the world did that idea ever take traction? It’s just like people online arguing over which Penny Stock is the next big thing. Neither person is right, but the perception is really all that matters.
Third, stimulus checks will be hitting within weeks or months. This naturally promotes price inflation when people have more dollars chasing few goods. People will inevitably pile into whatever they think is the next great thing. Dogecoin has momentum right now. And this brings me to number four.
Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, FOMO is very powerful right now. There are people all over the world that know people who have won big money in this bubble. Penny stocks, GameStop, Bitcoin, and many others that you can name. How many people do you personally know that have won big in the lottery? Probably none. This is a unique time in history. People have won big in this market and are looking for the next thing.
Dogecoin is something that could pick up steam quickly. It could blow up overnight. It may not, and that is the risk you take. At the end of the day, it’s just money that you can always make more of. Life-changing money is worth the risk when you find the right risk-reward ratio.
Do your due diligence, but also think ahead to a scenario that you could imagine. Would you be that surprised if Dogecoin reached $1? And if it did, would you be surprised if it started running towards multiple dollars? $1 is a psychological number that typically leads to a further breakout. The current market cap suggests this is all very possible. Now imagine getting in at four or five cents.
Disclosure: Long Dogecoin with Diamond Hands. No positions in any other things mentioned. -BJ

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