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Bitcoin was the third-worst performer last year as low cap altcoins showed the biggest returns

Looking at the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap (excluding stablecoins), altcoins showed the biggest returns leaving Bitcoin in the dust.
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Looking at the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap (excluding stablecoins), altcoins showed the biggest returns leaving Bitcoin in the dust.

According to Kraken Intelligence’s Crypto-in-Review report, the crypto market had a huge disparity in returns last year, with Shiba Inu (SHIB) amassing a return of 41,800,000%, while Bitcoin (BTC) recorded a return of just 58%.

And while these numbers might seem high when compared to traditional financial assets like the S&P 500 index, it’s important to note that Bitcoin was the third-worst performer of the 20 largest cryptocurrencies—well below the median return of 646%.

Bitcoin fails to leave a mark in last year’s performance metrics

Last year has been monumental for the crypto market. After a painfully volatile 2020 scarred by the global pandemic, 2021 started with tangible positivity in the air. It reinstated the macro bull trend in the market, bringing much-needed upward price action that revitalized the industry.

In its 2021 Crypto-in-Review report, Kraken Intelligence found that, as a whole, the market finished 2021 up 187%. And while this pales in comparison to 2020’s 310% return, it’s still miles ahead of 2019’s 58% return.

As a beacon of the broader crypto market, Bitcoin’s performance is always taken as an indicator of the de facto state of the market. Just like every year in the past 4-year market cycle, Bitcoin outperformed most traditional financial assets such as the S&P 500, the NASDAQ, gold, government bonds, and high-yield bonds.

However, while Bitcoin showed returns that are highly unlikely in the traditional finance market, its 2021 performance looks bleak when compared with the rest of the crypto market.

Kraken’s report looked at the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization excluding stablecoins and found that Bitcoin was the third-worst performing asset. Litecoin’s (LTC) extremely modest 16% return made it the worst-performing asset among the group, while Bitcoin Cash (BCH) posted returns of just 26% and was the second-worst in Kraken’s list.

The year’s outperformer was, unsurprisingly, Shiba Inu (SHIB) which removed Dogecoin (DOGE) from its throne as the king of memecoins. Launched in 2020, Shiba Inu amassed an astronomical 41,800,000% return in 2021—that’s 41.8 million for those unsure about the number of zeros.

The top 20 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization showed an average return of 2,240,000% and a median return of 646%. However, when excluding Shiba Inu and its unprecedented return, the average and median readings drop to 2,524% and 454%, respectively.

Chart showing the return for the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap, excluding SHIB

A 12-month long alt season

When accounting only for downside volatility, called the “Sortino Ratio,” Bitcoin remained the third-worst performing asset. The Sortino ratio is a variation of the Sharpe ratio that recognizes the difference between harmful volatility and overall volatility. This ratio is calculated by subtracting the risk-free rate from an asset and then dividing that amount by the asset’s downside deviation. As the Sortino ratio focuses only on the negative deviation of an asset’s return, it’s thought to give a better view of its risk-adjusted-performance. Just like the Sharpe ratio, a higher Sortino ratio result is better.

With a ratio of 1.5, Bitcoin ranked extremely low on the list. Litecoin remained an underperformer here as well, posting a ratio of just 0.9, while Shiba Inu’s outrageous return gave it a Sortino ratio of 35.1.

Polygon (MATIC), Dogecoin (DOGE), Terra (LUNA), and Solana (SOL) were among the top 5 cryptocurrencies with Sortino ratios that came in well ahead of the group’s average and median ratings of 5.3 and 3.5, respectively.

sortino ratio
Chart showing the Sortino ratio for the top 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap

Once the main driving force behind every movement on the market, Bitcoin seems to have taken the backseat in 2021. While Kraken acknowledged that Bitcoin had several historic moments during which it sustained revisions to its levels of dominance, it found that the trend in 2021 was defined by altcoins taking a greater share of the market capitalization.

One of the biggest obstacles to Bitcoin’s significant growth this year was the law of large numbers, which states that an asset cannot sustain the same growth as it increases in market capitalization. And with a market cap of more than $786 billion at press time, it’s hard to show the returns we’ve seen among the low-cap altcoins last year.

“The ebbs and flows associated with market participants shifting their preference for altcoins in favor of BTC and vice versa can help explain the short- and medium-term shifts in the market,” Kraken Intelligence reported.

Diving deeper into Bitcoin’s relationship with the rest of the market also shows another interesting trend—the decrease in Bitcoin’s dominance.

The year started with Bitcoin’s dominance sitting at just under 70%—meaning that 70% of the entire crypto market capitalization was locked in Bitcoin. However, shortly after the year began Bitcoin entered into a 5-month downtrend which ended June as its market dominance dropped to just 39%. According to Kraken Intelligence, this downtrend coincided with the broader market sell-off in May, which led to several months of slow rebounding for Bitcoin.

Throughout the second half of 2021, Bitcoin’s dominance was largely range-bound between 40% and 50%. This is a result of a rather interesting phenomenon—the majority of market participants see Bitcoin as a safe-haven asset within the crypto ecosystem. This view of Bitcoin means that most traders tend to trade back into Bitcoin to preserve their wealth and avoid drawdowns that hit altcoins the hardest.

The post Bitcoin was the third-worst performer last year as low cap altcoins showed the biggest returns appeared first on CryptoSlate.

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Government

Mike Pompeo Doesn’t Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Mike Pompeo Doesn’t Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former Secretary…

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Mike Pompeo Doesn't Rule Out Serving In 2nd Trump Administration

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a new interview that he’s not ruling out accepting a White House position if former President Donald Trump is reelected in November.

“If I get a chance to serve and think that I can make a difference ... I’m almost certainly going to say yes to that opportunity to try and deliver on behalf of the American people,” he told Fox News, when asked during a interview if he would work for President Trump again.

I’m confident President Trump will be looking for people who will faithfully execute what it is he asked them to do,” Mr. Pompeo said during the interview, which aired on March 8. “I think as a president, you should always want that from everyone.”

Then-President Donald Trump (C), then- Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L), and then-Vice President Mike Pence, take a question during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus at the White House in Washington on April 8, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

He said that as a former secretary of state, “I certainly wanted my team to do what I was asking them to do and was enormously frustrated when I found that I couldn’t get them to do that.”

Mr. Pompeo, a former U.S. representative from Kansas, served as Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2018 before he was secretary of state from 2018 to 2021. After he left office, there was speculation that he could mount a Republican presidential bid in 2024, but announced that he wouldn’t be running.

President Trump hasn’t publicly commented about Mr. Pompeo’s remarks.

In 2023, amid speculation that he would make a run for the White House, Mr. Pompeo took a swipe at his former boss, telling Fox News at the time that “the Trump administration spent $6 trillion more than it took in, adding to the deficit.”

“That’s never the right direction for the country,” he said.

In a public appearance last year, Mr. Pompeo also appeared to take a shot at the 45th president by criticizing “celebrity leaders” when urging GOP voters to choose ahead of the 2024 election.

2024 Race

Mr. Pompeo’s interview comes as the former president was named the “presumptive nominee” by the Republican National Committee (RNC) last week after his last major Republican challenger, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, dropped out of the 2024 race after failing to secure enough delegates. President Trump won 14 out of 15 states on Super Tuesday, with only Vermont—which notably has an open primary—going for Ms. Haley, who served as President Trump’s U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

On March 8, the RNC held a meeting in Houston during which committee members voted in favor of President Trump’s nomination.

“Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump on his huge primary victory!” the organization said in a statement last week. “I’d also like to congratulate Nikki Haley for running a hard-fought campaign and becoming the first woman to win a Republican presidential contest.”

Earlier this year, the former president criticized the idea of being named the presumptive nominee after reports suggested that the RNC would do so before the Super Tuesday contests and while Ms. Haley was still in the race.

Also on March 8, the RNC voted to name Trump-endorsed officials to head the organization. Michael Whatley, a North Carolina Republican, was elected the party’s new national chairman in a vote in Houston, and Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, was voted in as co-chair.

“The RNC is going to be the vanguard of a movement that will work tirelessly every single day to elect our nominee, Donald J. Trump, as the 47th President of the United States,” Mr. Whatley told RNC members in a speech after being elected, replacing former chair Ronna McDaniel. Ms. Trump is expected to focus largely on fundraising and media appearances.

President Trump hasn’t signaled whom he would appoint to various federal agencies if he’s reelected in November. He also hasn’t said who his pick for a running mate would be, but has offered several suggestions in recent interviews.

In various interviews, the former president has mentioned Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Vivek Ramaswamy, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, among others.

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 17:00

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International

Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Riley Gaines Explains How Women’s Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and…

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Riley Gaines Explains How Women's Sports Are Rigged To Promote The Trans Agenda

Is there a light forming when it comes to the long, dark and bewildering tunnel of social justice cultism?  Global events have been so frenetic that many people might not remember, but only a couple years ago Big Tech companies and numerous governments were openly aligned in favor of mass censorship.  Not just to prevent the public from investigating the facts surrounding the pandemic farce, but to silence anyone questioning the validity of woke concepts like trans ideology. 

From 2020-2022 was the closest the west has come in a long time to a complete erasure of freedom of speech.  Even today there are still countries and Europe and places like Canada or Australia that are charging forward with draconian speech laws.  The phrase "radical speech" is starting to circulate within pro-censorship circles in reference to any platform where people are allowed to talk critically.  What is radical speech?  Basically, it's any discussion that runs contrary to the beliefs of the political left.

Open hatred of moderate or conservative ideals is perfectly acceptable, but don't ever shine a negative light on woke activism, or you might be a terrorist.

Riley Gaines has experienced this double standard first hand.  She was even assaulted and taken hostage at an event in 2023 at San Francisco State University when leftists protester tried to trap her in a room and demanded she "pay them to let her go."  Campus police allegedly witnessed the incident but charges were never filed and surveillance footage from the college was never released.  

It's probably the last thing a champion female swimmer ever expects, but her head-on collision with the trans movement and the institutional conspiracy to push it on the public forced her to become a counter-culture voice of reason rather than just an athlete.

For years the independent media argued that no matter how much we expose the insanity of men posing as women to compete and dominate women's sports, nothing will really change until the real female athletes speak up and fight back.  Riley Gaines and those like her represent that necessary rebellion and a desperately needed return to common sense and reason.

In a recent interview on the Joe Rogan Podcast, Gaines related some interesting information on the inner workings of the NCAA and the subversive schemes surrounding trans athletes.  Not only were women participants essentially strong-armed by colleges and officials into quietly going along with the program, there was also a concerted propaganda effort.  Competition ceremonies were rigged as vehicles for promoting trans athletes over everyone else. 

The bottom line?  The competitions didn't matter.  The real women and their achievements didn't matter.  The only thing that mattered to officials were the photo ops; dudes pretending to be chicks posing with awards for the gushing corporate media.  The agenda took precedence.

Lia Thomas, formerly known as William Thomas, was more than an activist invading female sports, he was also apparently a science project fostered and protected by the athletic establishment.  It's important to understand that the political left does not care about female athletes.  They do not care about women's sports.  They don't care about the integrity of the environments they co-opt.  Their only goal is to identify viable platforms with social impact and take control of them.  Women's sports are seen as a vehicle for public indoctrination, nothing more.

The reasons why they covet women's sports are varied, but a primary motive is the desire to assert the fallacy that men and women are "the same" psychologically as well as physically.  They want the deconstruction of biological sex and identity as nothing more than "social constructs" subject to personal preference.  If they can destroy what it means to be a man or a woman, they can destroy the very foundations of relationships, families and even procreation.  

For now it seems as though the trans agenda is hitting a wall with much of the public aware of it and less afraid to criticize it.  Social media companies might be able to silence some people, but they can't silence everyone.  However, there is still a significant threat as the movement continues to target children through the public education system and women's sports are not out of the woods yet.   

The ultimate solution is for women athletes around the world to organize and widely refuse to participate in any competitions in which biological men are allowed.  The only way to save women's sports is for women to be willing to end them, at least until institutions that put doctrine ahead of logic are made irrelevant.          

Tyler Durden Wed, 03/13/2024 - 17:20

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Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-March 2024

Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-March 2024
A brief excerpt: This 2-part overview for mid-March provides a snapshot of the current housing market.

I always like to star…

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Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Part 1: Current State of the Housing Market; Overview for mid-March 2024

A brief excerpt:
This 2-part overview for mid-March provides a snapshot of the current housing market.

I always like to start with inventory, since inventory usually tells the tale!
...
Here is a graph of new listing from Realtor.com’s February 2024 Monthly Housing Market Trends Report showing new listings were up 11.3% year-over-year in February. This is still well below pre-pandemic levels. From Realtor.com:

However, providing a boost to overall inventory, sellers turned out in higher numbers this February as newly listed homes were 11.3% above last year’s levels. This marked the fourth month of increasing listing activity after a 17-month streak of decline.
Note the seasonality for new listings. December and January are seasonally the weakest months of the year for new listings, followed by February and November. New listings will be up year-over-year in 2024, but we will have to wait for the March and April data to see how close new listings are to normal levels.

There are always people that need to sell due to the so-called 3 D’s: Death, Divorce, and Disease. Also, in certain times, some homeowners will need to sell due to unemployment or excessive debt (neither is much of an issue right now).

And there are homeowners who want to sell for a number of reasons: upsizing (more babies), downsizing, moving for a new job, or moving to a nicer home or location (move-up buyers). It is some of the “want to sell” group that has been locked in with the golden handcuffs over the last couple of years, since it is financially difficult to move when your current mortgage rate is around 3%, and your new mortgage rate will be in the 6 1/2% to 7% range.

But time is a factor for this “want to sell” group, and eventually some of them will take the plunge. That is probably why we are seeing more new listings now.
There is much more in the article.

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