Тег: Trade

Games with MEREXP products

This post is accompanied by a donation of 30 USDC

On August 31, I released an interview with representatives of the MEREXP company, in which I tried to figure out how to make money trading cryptocurrencies using metrics based not only on mathematical wizardry, but also on economic theory. Even after the interview, I was left with a feeling of some misunderstanding as to how theory translates into practice, so we decided to continue studying the proposed product.

To start, I registered on the website merexp.com. Here, I must say, the process seemed quite insecure to me: the password was simply sent by email, and afterwards, I couldn’t find any way to change it in the personal account. However, as long as the service only provides paid subscriptions to certain indicators rather than taking money under management, it’s not that critical.

In the future, the company representatives promise a large set of analytical tools, but so far only Swallow is on sale. This is an AI that swallows news related to Bitcoin (and separately to other crypto) and spits out an assessment: how many positive and how many negative mentions accumulated during the day. Then the information is displayed as a simple needle indicator, which shows what the news background is right now, in the moment.

For those who want to understand the dynamics of the news background, graphs are provided, which look roughly like this:

A monthly subscription for access to the indicator is 17 dollars. They provided it to me for free for the first month so that I could play around with it and write this review. For those who register via my referral link https://merexp.com/?ref=ankap_tyan, the subscription price will be 12 dollars per month (this is for monthly payments; there is an additional bulk discount for quarterly or annual payments). Payment is made through a third-party service, cryptocloud.plus, in USDT or USDC, depending on your choice.

A natural question arises: how meaningful is it to buy access to a single indicator. Even the service authors are sure that it’s not very meaningful, which is why weekly reviews are included as a bonus, in which analysis is performed using an additional set of metrics (they are not ready to sell these metrics yet).

So, I have the ability for instant monitoring of the news background and detailed reviews, which, however, are released only once a week. I set a task for myself: to find out if this is enough to feel confident while trading. From the sale of DOGS tokens received in an airdrop, I had 0.00123149 BTC (about 65 dollars) lying in my exchange account; these were used for trial trading using the proposed analytical toolkit, as these were definitely funds I wouldn’t mind losing.

On September 4, MEREXP released another review: “Bitcoin: A Time of Uncertainty and Hidden Opportunities.” The content of the review boiled down to the following theses: seller pressure is growing in the market, while buyer activity remains stably low. The news background is consistently positive, so any drawdowns that occur are shallow, and after some time the exchange rate returns to its level. But as soon as the news background becomes negative, that’s it, expect a crash. Thus, an ideal situation was created for testing the news indicator specifically, since the price was supposed to depend primarily on it.

At that time, on September 4, I opened a position—a long with 5x leverage—at a price of 58071, using a quarter of my deposit. The rate almost immediately began to crawl down. Daily monitoring of the news background showed that it remained positive, sometimes shifting toward the yellow zone. Taking what was written in the review on faith, I interpreted this as a signal that “the drawdown is temporary, I can average down, we will go up soon”. And I averaged down. This is roughly what my trading looks like on a chart with daily candles:

The position was closed on September 10 with a slight profit. On September 11, it was opened again at a lower rate and closed finally on September 13 at a price of 58454, as I had to start drafting this report. Taking into account all the averaging, leverage, and trading commissions, the net profit was 0.00009351 BTC (about 5 dollars), which in relative terms means 7.6% over 9 days. Considering that I deliberately chose an unfavorable moment to enter, I consider the experiment successful. Of course, if I had honestly bought the indicator via my own referral link for 12 dollars, the purchase would not have paid off in such a short time. However, if a real deposit of at least a thousand had been involved instead of a toy deposit, the indicator would have paid for itself handsomely, with enough left over for some wine.

It is clear that a single success does not guarantee further profits. However, you know, sitting in a serious drawdown is quite an ordeal for the nerves, when you have to guess: is the rate ready to collapse, and I must urgently close at a loss to avoid liquidation—or is it ready to bounce back, and I should buy more at the bottom. The news background indicator is exactly what answers this question. Without access to it, I would not risk trading with leverage, and you can’t make a serious profit with spot trading.

One last piece of advice for the MEREXP company. Try to set up a test deposit as well and illustrate your weekly reviews by demonstrating how you trade in light of your own analytics. Then, firstly, potential buyers of Swallow or other future indicators will gradually develop a clearer idea of how to use such tools. And secondly, by the time you resolve the legal issues and are ready to accept money for trust management, you will have a proven success story. You don’t need to show trading in real-time so that people don’t copy trades for free, but reporting on a weekly basis looks like a quite viable marketing move.

What ensures the functioning of the NAP and the protection of private property?

Anonymous question

At the end of my book on ancap, I have carefully collected definitions of the concepts from the libertarian lexicon discussed in the book. I will take the necessary ones from there:

Non-Aggression Principle – no one has the right to the unpunished initiation of violence.

Property Right – a claim to the exclusive or preferential use of an object, recognized by others.

The NAP has been observed by people since the deepest antiquity and is based on the concept of justice. Let me remind you how I define it:

Justice – a feeling of proportionality between the damage caused and the value of the object of conflict.

The sense of justice was actually passed down to us from pre-human ancestors; at least, its presence has been experimentally confirmed in monkeys.

So, we can state with reasonable confidence that the non-aggression principle is implicitly embedded in human nature through evolution. On the other hand, historically, the number of people to whom the non-aggression principle applied and whose private property was respected was limited to the inner circle. The more foreign a person feels, the less others care about their claims, and consequently, about their rights.

Any thief knows that stealing from one’s own is the lowest thing to do. What stops him? Certainly not respect for private property—he is already a thief. Nor fear of retribution—he successfully overcomes that when committing risky crimes against the property of strangers. What stops him is precisely the sense of community. These are “their own.” Don’t touch. It’s beneath one’s dignity. In short, ethics versus morality (you know where to look for the definitions).

What, then, made people begin to respect the rights of complete strangers? First and foremost—the development of global trade.

Historically, trade was long considered a contemptible occupation because a trader was perceived primarily as a fraudster and an extortionist. Secretly find out where it’s cheaper, praise the goods to people, sell them for more—fraudster. Or buy while the goods were plentiful, then sell high when the goods became scarce—extortionist. Therefore, it is always psychologically more comfortable for a trader to sell overseas curiosities rather than local consumer goods. No one knows the purchase price of those, meaning they won’t be caught in fraud, and they are always in short supply; people have no memories of this same product being sold significantly cheaper, and therefore the trader is not perceived as an extortionist. It’s simply an expensive, premium segment product.

The higher the trade volumes, the less the trader trembles over maximizing profit from every penny-transaction, and the more they value the throughput of their retail points. And suddenly, they no longer haggle over every bunch of radishes, but publicly state fixed prices for the entire range. Similarly, purchases are conducted under increasingly long-term contracts. An honest merchant’s word begins to be valued in the widest circles, which further reduces trade costs and expands world trade even more.

For a person living in a closed society, it is enough to observe moral norms within their own circle and perceive strangers as natural enemies toward whom everything is permitted. For a trader, everyone turns out to be a potential client, or a potential advertising agent. This reshapes their morality. Those who rely on deceiving strangers lose in the long run to those who care about their reputation.

And now, after all these reflections, I can briefly formulate what ensures the observance of the NAP and the protection of private property. They are ensured by evolutionarily developed mechanisms of human adaptation to life in a global world.

In this regard, it is not surprising that those who wage wars today do so precisely under the banner of fighting globalism.

The fraudster and extortionist, the engine of progress

Blitz-4

Some guys from Reddit bought a bunch of shares in dead companies and ruined “greedy” hedge funds for shorting those companies. Who is more in the right in this situation?

Anal Magician

Those who leave the casino and go play chess are more in the right.

I have already analyzed the topic of market manipulation, and even more specifically, the pump and dump scheme. My reflections boiled down to the fact that if traders are doing this, it is a strategy as risky as any other. And attempts to regulate it are exactly the same kind of market manipulation. So, if a trading platform in principle implies the possibility of closing trading to prevent someone from making a profit, then there is no point in being on such platforms. It’s not surprising that the Reddit guys eventually ignored the stocks and went to trade crypto. Over time, the smartest among them will even understand which crypto is better for buying and holding, and which is only for speculation. But on crypto exchanges, at least their toy won’t be taken away, even if there is a danger that they might upset someone with it.

I am reading the translation of The Mechanics of Freedom. Very interesting, thank you. My English is at the level of reading an English-Russian dictionary, so this will not be criticism, but rather a question. At the end of the chapter Rare means exhaustible, the “problem of abundance” is mentioned. This really triggered me. Abundance is the best thing humanity can hope for, and calling it a problem is blasphemy.

Then I remembered that “false friends” of the translator exist, and the meaning of “problem” is much broader than the Russian “проблема” — it can be a task, a question, or even a situation.

I’m still triggered. I want to understand: is this just a translation inaccuracy, or does the author really think that abundance has some kind of problems?

Dnar

From the text, it seemed quite obvious to me that the author is being ironic about leftists who claim that the emergence of abundance will cause problems for the existence of private property. Yes, indeed, many things that were once paid will become free, and this only means a transition to other monetization schemes, as we see, for example, in the case of copies of texts. Property as a concept will not disappear. It is precisely competition in the production of goods and services that drives their price down so much that it can even become zero. But in order for the problem of how to get money for something cheap and easily accessible to arise in the first place, capitalism is exactly what is needed. This paradox is, in fact, the theme of the chapter.

Should abortion be banned or not?

I have analyzed this topic — once and twice. I can only add to what was previously stated that the question of whether one should have an abortion is as unpleasant as the question of whether one should perform anesthesia by hitting the back of the head with a mallet. As long as we do not have available methods of anesthesia that do not cause a concussion as a side effect, there are a huge number of situations in which such a barbaric method would be better than none at all. But when science has already stepped far enough forward, mallet anesthesia may only be required in a very exotic situation. The same goes for preventing the birth of a child. Should it be banned to surgically remove it from the body without a chance of survival for the fetus? As long as there are no less barbaric methods at hand, there are a huge number of situations in which it is better to do it this way. But when science gives us a wide variety of contraceptive means, surgical abortion becomes a much rarer procedure than it could be.

How should one treat those who, on principle, force people not to use protection and to give birth? Offer them appendicitis treatment without anesthesia.

Will contractual jurisdictions, each of which involves only individuals with similar views, lead to the eternal conservation of all social institutions and the cessation of the development of philosophical thought?

Siberian Extremist

This question had been pending for a while, and it came back to me in connection with the publication of Farid Khusainov’s review of Rodion Belkovich’s book on the history of American radicalism. The main point of the review (though not necessarily the reviewed book itself) is that individual freedom must be defended both from the central government and from enthusiasts of cozy conservative communities. I agree with this general conclusion, but now I want to understand how real the danger is that philosophical thought in a world of closed communities will cease to develop.

Indeed, isolated communities—as far as we can judge by the isolated communities we can observe—are not prone to a riot of ideas. This could be the Amazonian Indians, the aboriginals of the Andaman Islands, or the Amish beloved by Mikhail Svetov. These are very stable societies, capable of existing for centuries without any changes at all.

The example of ancient Hellas is quite telling in this regard. It consisted of many compact poleis, meaning territorial jurisdictions, united into leagues, which were contractual jurisdictions of a higher level; within the polis, there were phyles, demes, and other heteriai, which turned out to be extraterritorial jurisdictions, some contractual and some not. We know ancient Hellas as an example of a society with an exemplary explosion of philosophical thought. But even there, there was an island of stability: Lacedaemon.

It is well known what protected the Spartans from the corrupting influence of outsiders: a radical reduction of external trade contacts. You cannot trade much when your obols—monetary units with a value roughly equal to “one snack”—consist of hefty iron bars. Other poleis traded actively, and through this, they were open to mutual cultural influence. It is easy to see that the same characteristic is observed in modern stable communities: their external trade turnover is extremely low.

Will a world of many ECUs exist without trade relations between members of different ECUs? Highly doubtful, except perhaps as an exception. The extraterritoriality of jurisdictions further facilitates various connections with participants of other communities. And where there is trade, there is a search for profit. Where there is a search for profit, there is entrepreneurship. Where there is entrepreneurship, there is a constant readiness to observe and adapt others’ ideas. Rest assured, philosophical development will not disappear under panarchy.

Philosophers in search of new ideas

On the Harm of Free Trade

Free trade leads to a wide variety of goods appearing on the domestic market, and they are cheap. This is not surprising, because free competition reaches an ideal state. Everyone has equal access to the market. There are no hints of anyone’s monopoly.

Free trade has a strong negative consequence. Many local producers cannot withstand competition from foreigners, go bankrupt, and leave the market. In critical cases, this phenomenon can become mass. Entire industries perish, and the population becomes impoverished. Goods are sold cheaply, but this pleases no one. There is no money to buy them. The second negative consequence is that the money of local residents ends up in the hands of foreign sellers and flows abroad.

How to solve this problem without the state?

Anal Magician

I tried for a long time to imagine a situation in which this internally contradictory set of statements could be observed, and I succeeded!

I take a boat, a tent, a laptop, a solar panel, a shotgun, cartridges, a net, fishing rods, and a couple more dozen kilograms of gear—and I head to a small island a kilometer from the nearest shore, where a village stands on the coast. The island is uninhabited, and I declare it mine, although fishermen and vacationers often hang out here, but it hasn’t occurred to anyone to settle here yet.

Then I begin to manage the household.

I can catch fish; it will be enough for fish soup, and if I build a smokehouse, I can preserve some. But in the village, they smoke fish in the same way, and my goods brought from the island are not in particularly high demand. I could plant a garden, but the soil is mediocre, manual non-mechanized labor is unproductive, and everyone in the village has plenty of such produce.

I could go to the shore with a shotgun and demand money from vacationers for the right to hang out on my shore, but they don’t take the threat seriously and are only willing to pay if I provide some service in return. In response to my warning shot in the air, they tell me that I’ve gone crazy and that they will, of course, sail away, but tomorrow they will return with weapons, because they are willing to tolerate my presence in a place where they are used to vacationing only as long as I don’t interfere with them. I reply that I was joking, bring out some smoked fish to go with their beer, we hang out together, and the incident is resolved.

Eventually, I arrive at the following business model: I catch fish for personal use, continue running this channel, occasionally write articles for hire, and begin to play the role of a hospitable hostess of the island, who entertains vacationers with conversation, and in return receives donations, primarily food, and occasionally, depending on the mood, sex. From time to time, I swim to the village to buy everything I need. The goods there are inexpensive; I cannot compete with their producers in any category, and my money gradually runs out. Eventually, I realize that I have begun to spend too much effort and time on activities that bring me a disproportionately small income, and too little remains for writing texts for money, and the internet here is half-dead. So, I end this prolonged vacation, pack my things, and return to where there is internet, a hot shower, and other blessings of civilization that allow me to focus on what I am more competitive in.

Yes, under ancap, any business model can well turn out to be unprofitable. Free trade is precisely what allows one to quickly realize such things and switch to more profitable activities. And if profitable activity with existing competencies is fundamentally impossible in a certain area, then one must change locations and go where those competencies are more in demand.

At the same time, I will note that in the same example with the island, having capital and knowledge, I could have opened a yacht club, or a hotel, or a diving school, or organized a larger-scale fishing and processing operation—and turned a profit. Singapore itself was dirty and poor until it attracted investments, so the same place under different conditions can turn out to be either completely prospectless or a gold mine.

And in conclusion, I will finally answer the question posed in one phrase. How to solve the problem of market inefficiency without the state? Entrepreneurial initiative.

Ancap-chan came to homestead an island