GM and welcome to The Crypto Nutshell! 🫶 🥜 

The crypto newsletter that won't question your consumerist lifestyle or make you create an imaginary friend...🛍️👥

Today, we’ll discuss:

• Recapping the last 24 hours in the world of crypto 🌏

• Why this expert believes Bitcoin is set to drop 50% 📉

• What is “Mining Difficulty” in the Bitcoin Network?💰

• And more…

MARKET WATCH ⚖️

BTC Dominance is currently at 50.33% and the current crypto market cap is $1.16T  ▲0.07%

Biggest Winners of The Day 🤑

• Bitcoin Cash (BCH) ▲6.35%

• Avalanche (AVAX) ▲1.03%

• Chainlink (LINK) ▲0.85%

Biggest Losers of The Day 😭

• Shiba Inu (SHIB) ▼5.51%

• XRP (XRP) ▼2.00%

• BNB (BNB) ▼0.99%

Only the top 20 coins measured by market cap feature in this section

Before we get into it, checkout this pic thats been doing the rounds on Twitter… 👀

Do you see the pattern? If history repeats itself, 2024 and 2025 are going to be BIG. Now add the BlackRock Bitcoin ETF into the mix and who knows what could happen. 🤷‍♂️

All price data as of 8:25am ET

EXPERT OF THE DAY 💰

This expert has a contrarian view from everyone else - he believes that Bitcoin is heading lower.😱

A LOT lower.

Today’s expert of the day is Gareth Soloway, who is the Chief Market Strategist at In The Money Stocks.

If you haven’t heard of him before, here’s some of his accolades:

• Decades of experience in trading equities ⏰ 

• Claims to have over 80% success rate on swing trades 🤔

• Calls himself a master trader 📈 

Now although we aren’t huge fans of traders and technical analysis, we do want to share a contrarian view to show that not everyone is bullish on Bitcoin & Crypto at this current moment.

To give credit where credit is due, Gareth was extremely accurate in calling the 2021 top for Bitcoin & crypto and he hasn’t accumulated over 200,000 loyal followers for nothing - he has been spookily accurate with some of his calls.

In his latest interview with Kitco News, Gareth broke down why he believes that Bitcoin is going to $15,000.

He believes that although regulatory hurdles have seemingly been overcome for Bitcoin, as well as the Bitcoin ETF approval to look forward to, there’s one thing that could send BTC lower.

Liquidity.

He thinks that interest rates are going to stay higher for longer than anyone expects and that the money printers aren’t going to turn on any time soon which will lead to drying up liquidity in markets.

This drying up of liquidity will send both the stock market lower and then Bitcoin & crypto markets too. 📉

Gareth argues that Bitcoin has been rejected multiple times at the $30,0000 - $31,000 level and that if Bitcoin falls below $27,000, it opens the door for it to fall all the way to $15,000. 😱

Gareth does however claim that this is his worst case scenario, and even if this does play out, he does see Bitcoin eventually going much higher.

Nutty’s takeaway: I don’t agree with Gareth’s take here but at the same time it’s ALWAYS going to be positive to look at all view-points & opinions surrounding your investment thesis. The best investors don’t just listen to opinions that reinforce their own thoughts, but they attack their thesis from all angles.

Although Gareth has been accurate in the past, he was also calling for a $12,000 Bitcoin at the bottom of the crypto market following the collapse of FTX in November 2022.

There are just too many positive developments for Bitcoin coming up in the next 12 months for us to see a scenario in which it falls 50%.

• BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF

• Bitcoin halving

• Favorable regulatory landscape

• Falling inflation

But I’m interested to hear your thoughts! Reply to the poll at the end of today’s newsletter with whether you are Bullish or Bearish on BTC over the next 12 months. 🤷‍♂️

Just remember, absolutely NOBODY has a crystal ball. 🔮

ON CHAIN DATA DIVE 📊

Bitcoin Mining is crucial for the network, without it Bitcoin wouldn’t exist. Today we’ll be going over the relationship between Mining Difficulty and Block-time. Now pay attention here… Bitcoin Mining is one of the most interesting but least understood parts of the network.

We won’t be explaining all the intricacies of Bitcoin Mining here, but if you’d like a refresher on how it all works check out this video.

Mining Difficulty is pretty much just the complexity of the puzzle miners must solve in order to find the next valid block. The difficulty will change once every 2016 block (~14 days) in order to maintain a constant time between blocks (~10 minutes).

• Blocks are being found faster than 10 mins = Difficulty will increase 📈

• Blocks are being found slower than 10 mins = Difficulty will decrease 📉

This self regulation is so that the Block time (more on this later) remains constant no matter how much mining power there is in the network. Isn’t that pretty cool? We think it is.

Taking a look at the chart above you’ll notice that Difficulty has been constantly increasing, clear indication that the network has been expanding with the overall mining power increasing as a result.

Putting all of this together, the chart below is super useful in visually understanding what the self regulating algorithm is doing.

The solid horizontal black line is the target block time of 10 minutes (600 seconds). The orange line represents the actual block time and the blue line is the 14 day median block time. So you can see how this algorithm is constantly adjusting difficulty to ensure that block time is as close to 600 seconds as possible.

• When the blue line dips below the black line, difficulty will increase.

• When the blue line goes above the black line, difficulty will decrease.

Nutty’s Takeaway: These metric’s are pretty interesting to keep track of and help us get a better understanding of the how strong the Bitcoin Network currently is. Stayed tuned for tomorrow’s edition where we dive into how much Miners are earning.

CRACKING CRYPTO 🥜

TRIVIA TIME ✍️

What is Bitcoin’s all time high market cap?

• A) $1.46 Trillion

• B) $1.02 Trillion

• C) $1.27 Trillion

• D) $1.32 Trillion

Find out the answer at the bottom of this newsletter 😀

MEME CORNER 😂

Because what would the crypto world be without its share of memes?

Trivia Answer: C) $1.27 Trillion 🎉

Bitcoin reached its all-time high price of $67,549 in November of 2021, putting it’s market cap at $1.27 Trillion.

NUTCASE REVIEW OF THE DAY 🔍

DISCLAIMER: The content of this newsletter is not financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice. Please be careful and do your own research.