News

The Market - Never a boring Moment

The financial sector is always full of surprises, making it an exciting market to follow. Last week's events had a significant impact on the crypto market. Silvergate bank, which served as a conduit for fiat currency in and out of most crypto exchanges, declared bankruptcy. This, coupled with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, resulted in a sharp decline of 25% to 30% in the crypto market over the weekend of March 10th.

Meanwhile, UBS is set to acquire Credit Suisse for $3.25 billion, and First Republic Bank may be taken over by JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley. With at least 20 regional banks in the US facing serious liquidity issues, there is a fear of a cascading effect.

Despite the Federal Reserve hiking rates and reducing its balance sheet for almost a year, as soon as US banks require assistance, the Fed's balance sheet expands by around $300 billion in just 10 days. On March 22nd, Powell will either pause or increase interest rates by 25 bps.

So far, Bitcoin has been the biggest beneficiary of the recent banking crisis and lower rate hiking expectations, with a remarkable 30% price increase since March 11th, reaching 28.2k at the time of writing. Its dominance in the market has also risen to almost 48%, a 5% increase compared to other crypto assets. This level of dominance has not been seen since June 22nd, following the Luna, Celsius, and 3AC black swan events.

Our Strategies

Our active strategies have experienced a rough patch in the last two weeks. Even our top-performing bots, with a high number of winning trades, were not always quick enough to respond to sudden market spikes and reversals since March 10th. To counter this, we've incorporated faster bots with a greater tolerance for losses into all our active strategies.

In the past few weeks, some newly added fast bots, including STX, GMX, INJ, and IMX, have responded well to the recent high-volatility market conditions and have delivered excellent results. We are currently examining these bots to determine how we can potentially incorporate similar bot types to improve our current bots’ portfolio.

Since hitting its bottom on November 2022, Bitcoin has increased by +83%. Looking back, going long on Bitcoin would have been a wise strategy to follow. Additionally, the current high dominance of Bitcoin is negatively impacting the overall altcoin market. Typically, after a significant BTC run, altcoins begin to rise and outperform Bitcoin's price performance within a few weeks. These current market conditions, however, are exceptional, and the recent Bitcoin rally can be attributed to a shift in investors' mindset towards seeking a "safe haven" for their money, moving their assets out of banks and into both gold and Bitcoin. Nonetheless, if history repeats itself (as seen in March 2021, October 2021, and June 2022) and the Fed starts easing up again, providing more liquidity in the market, altcoins may reclaim their position in the market and show significant strength in the coming period.
The next few days will reveal whether the altcoin market will restart its bull run, decreasing BTC's dominance, or if BTC's dominance will remain high, and there will be no substantial bull run for altcoins.

New Feature: “Exclude Your Favourite Coins” - looking for beta testers

Diamond Pigs is rolling out a new feature named "Exclude Your Favourite Coins," allowing you to create a list of specific coins in your wallet that you don't want Diamond Pigs to trade through. This will give you more flexibility to either hold or trade those coins outside of the Diamond Pigs strategy portfolio. We're currently seeking beta testers interested in using this feature, with a minimum wallet value of 4K to be managed by Diamond Pigs at all times. If you're interested in being a beta tester, please email info@diamondpigs.com, and we'll activate the feature and send you instructions on how to use it.

The Market

The month of February has been marked by a highly volatile market, with much more sideways trends compared to what was seen in January. This can be attributed to both macroeconomic factors and ongoing crypto-related events.

It's fascinating to see how news and rumors regarding the legal status of cryptocurrencies in different countries can have a significant impact on the market. The potential legalization of crypto trading in Hong Kong could attract a lot of investors from the east and further fuel the growth of the crypto market. This recent announcement has provided a boost to the crypto market, helping it to recover from a minor correction observed in the previous week. 

After falling to a low of $21.5k, Bitcoin rebounded and reached around $25k, but it corrected once again. This correction was mainly due to the rising fear of a more hawkish approach from the Federal Reserve in the coming period. At present, Bitcoin is trading at 23.5k levels. Assuming the current upward trend persists and Bitcoin surpasses the $25k level, there is a chance that it could reach $28k. However, it's worth noting that the $25k level has been invalidated on five consecutive occasions, which could indicate the potential for a more significant correction. Furthermore, the Bitcoin Dominance index has stabilized, and numerous altcoins have recently achieved new highs for the year.

The emergence of new narratives in the crypto market is also a noteworthy development. The adoption of layer 2 scaling solutions like zkRollup on Ethereum could potentially improve transaction speeds and reduce costs, which could have a positive impact on the adoption of Ethereum-based projects. The recent developments in China have given rise to a new narrative in the crypto market, with a focus on "China coins" such as CFX, DOT, FIL, and PHB. Moreover, the introduction of the Ordinals Protocol, which enables the creation of Bitcoin NFTs, has also contributed to the rise of layer 2 Bitcoin solutions such as STX and RIF.

The standout performer this month is Pennywell - our Green Crypto Selection, which employs a strategy of trading in high market capitalization coins (top 100 market cap coins). In the past 30 days, Pennywell's performance has exceeded 8%, buoyed by recent successes with coins such as SKL, FIL, NEAR, and VET, whereas Bitcoin has seen a 4.3% increase. On the other hand, Hereford - Bitcoin Protection, which trades solely in Bitcoin, is currently underperforming. The team is currently evaluating and making modifications to some of the bots powering the Hereford strategy to enhance its overall performance in the future.

Starting February 1st, 2023, a limited number of users can now opt for automatic monthly invoicing collection. To access this feature, go to the "Billing" section in your dashboard at https://members.diamondpigs.com/billing and follow the steps to set up automatic collection using your credit card or iDeal debit card. If you're interested in this feature and it's not yet available on your dashboard, please send a request to info@diamondpigs.com, and it will be activated within 24 hours.

We plan to enable this feature for all users by the end of February.

Diamond Pigs will be introducing a new feature called "Exclude Your Favourite Coins" in the upcoming weeks. This feature allows you to create a list of specific coins in your wallet that you do not want Diamond Pigs to trade through. This will offer you greater flexibility to either hold or trade those coins outside of the Diamond Pigs strategy portfolio. However, it's important to note that an estimated minimum wallet value of 4K managed by Diamond Pigs will be required to utilise this feature. The exact amount will be communicated once the feature is officially launched.

Following a thorough evaluation of the situation including a consultation with our contacts at Binance, we have determined that it is currently appropriate to continue trading in the BUSD pair for our users who utilise the Binance exchange.

 

Last week, many important financial figures were published on both sides of the ocean. It looks as if the US may experience a “soft landing” for their economy, avoiding a recession. Fed Chair James Powell was less hawkish than anticipated and triggered the on-risk markets, including crypto, to soar to levels we have not seen for months. 

 

 

On a weekly timeframe, BTC had some resistance at the 24k level and is currently correcting to find support at 22.5-8k to find some liquidity and possibly continue its bullish move. Assuming BTC doesn't break lower than 22.5k, the next important resistance level to break will be 25k.

 

 

Meanwhile the BTC dominance starts dropping, which clears up the stage to alt coins to start their run. A few strong narratives are playing out right now:

●      Artificial Intelligence (FET, GRT, AGIX) 

●      Ethereum Liquid Staking Platforms (FRAX, LDO, FIS)

●      Perpetual Decentralised Exchanges (DYDX, GMX)

●      Infrastructure Protocols for Meta Verse (RNDR, MAGIC)

 

Looking at the last 30 days, most of the Diamond Pigs strategies have performed like the BTC price performance (+30-36%). Good to know! In periods where bullish momentum begins, the front runner will be BTC. Followed by Ethereum and other alt coins. We expect a higher alt dominance in the coming period; particularly for Ethereum-related projects due to highly anticipated Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade.

 

We see some Diamond Pigs members “playing” with the management switch (turning it on and off every other day) and the various strategies. Please be aware that this might have a negative effect on your results not only due to the rebalancing of your portfolio and an increase in transaction cost as a percentage of your result, but also in situations where management is off at moments when some coins might grow in value. We highly recommend you not to switch that often. Diamond Pigs has been developed for long term results.

As of February 1st, the option to set up an automatic collection of your monthly invoicing is available for a selected number of users. You can find it in your dashboard under “Billing”. You can set up the automatic collection by using your credit card or iDeal debit card. If you are interested to use this feature and it is currently not available in your dashboard, mail a request to info@diamondpigs.com and it will be activated within 24 hours. 

 

We expect to activate this feature for all members by the end of February.

 

          

 

Dear valued Diamond Pig member,

With our Bots getting better and better, our connections with Binance & Bitvavo up and running and many other Exchanges to follow, we offer you a unique opportunity to join in our succes. Please consider this great offer and gain a 25% discount advantage on our upcoming Series A round next year!

Our financial roadmap;

Contact vincent@diamondpigs.com for more information and join our road to succes!

First, we would like to welcome all new members that joined us since the announcement of our partnership with Bitvavo. The numbers are amazing! Those who are still looking for some answers are welcome to visit our knowledge base page

For those of us who have been in crypto for a while, this has been an extremely difficult year. The pivot that the US Federal Reserve announced 12 months ago, triggered a chain of events that none of us (not even crypto veterans who experienced the Mt. Gox Hack at the beginning of 2014) could have dreamed of in our worst nightmares.

The shift in the Fed’s monetary policy which started raising rates in March this year in response to the high inflation has led eventually to a substantial price decline in risk-on assets, including crypto, and triggered a reaction chain of “black swan” events starting with the collapse of Luna,  the bankruptcy of one of the biggest Crypto Hedge Funds - 3AC and Crypto loan platforms such as Celsius and block-fi. The “cherry on the cake” was the fall of FTX - the 3rd biggest centralized exchange - just a few weeks ago, which led to what seems by now, the last big Crypto crash of this year.

So? What next…

Macroeconomic conditions are improving!

At this moment it is clear that the crypto market performance has been closely correlated to other on-risk assets such as tech stocks. Recent macroeconomic data in the US suggests that the inflation rate may have seen its peak and started to decline. The November US CPI (Consumer Price Index) data that will be published today will be an important event to watch and hopefully will confirm the continuously declining inflation rate trend. The Fed meeting that will follow the publication of the CPI data later this week, may very well signal the beginning of a reversal in the Fed monetary policy and for the first time in a few months will increase the rate only by 50 basis points and no longer by 75.

What does it all mean to Crypto?

If a shift in the Fed monetary policy is signaled, a relief rally in on-risk assets is expected. Usually, the crypto market will be part of this party. But the recent “black swan” events may have scared many investors to get into the crypto space till regulation both in the US as well in Europe will be in place.

Our opinion is that it will not be as strong and long as one can expect after a decline of more than 80% in value for the crypto market since the beginning of the year. For the coming days, we can expect an increase in volatility where usually the altcoins are not doing so well and the BTC dominance is increasing. If a relief rally occurs, many of the altcoins that were moving sideways for many weeks now will start moving in upward trends as well.

A Word About the Binance FUD..

For those who work with us via a Binance account and read the latest news regarding Binance’s financial health and the recent incomplete proof- of reserve audit conducted by  Mazar- an external accounting firm. It has been known for a long time that Binance is not regulated in every country and as such, is not publishing their books every quarter like other regulated publicly traded companies and while we have no way to change that, we in Diamond Pigs have no reason to suspect that Binance’s financial position has changed substantially and that Binance is currently in financial problems. However, we would like to point out that each of us with a Binance account should be able to make his own decision on whether to keep his assets on Binance. Diamond Pigs carry no responsibility for any Binance future action and our bots act based on technical analysis trends and not based on FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) news.

“Save the Date“ : Upcoming Ask Me Anything Session

Thursday 27th of December at 20:00, an online AMA (Ask Me Anything) session will be conducted. More info will follow.

Dear member,

By now, we have activated the bots for all our active strategies.

Then, the multi-exchange feature is now enabled for all members. You can connect to Bitvavo on top of your existing connection to Binance or instead of. You can link the Bitvavo exchange via the menu option "Manage exchanges". The direct link to do is: https://members.diamondpigs.com/wizard/exchangeSelect

We offer 4 strategies on Bitvavo: Duroc, Pennywell and Hereford as well as Berkshire- our 10 Top Crypto strategy. Also, on Bitvavo, you may choose 1 strategy only to manage.

If you have any more questions on the above, please send us a mail to info@diamondpigs.com

In light of the recent extreme events in the crypto market with the bankruptcy of FTX and the expected 2nd-order and 3rd-order effects in the coming period, we have decided to pause the trading activities in all our active strategies (Duroc, Jinhua, Pennywell, and Hereford). That means that as of now, all active strategies have sold all of their long positions that were still open and will remain on 100% BUSD (Binance customers) or EUR (Bitvavo customers). Our Index strategy Berkshire remains without change with 10 long positions containing the 10 top crypto coins. Our decision to halt the trading activities in our active strategies will be reassessed daily and we will send updates accordingly. For any questions, please send us a mail directly to: info@diamondpigs.com.

As of today, we introdcue a change to our monthly billing; The monthly management fees of our active strategies (Hereford, Jinhua, Duroc and Pennywell) will be lowered from 0.5% to 0.167%. In case you have chosen one of these strategies, your bill for November will be 3x lower!

Unless.....

Your wallet balance (in dollar equivalent) has grown thanks to the performance of our bots. In this case, we charge 15% performance fee only on the profit made; in the financial world, this pricing model is also called "based on a high watermark". The purpose is to protect you from paying a fee for poor performance.

So...how does it work?

Your high watermark is based on the value of the strategy at the time you joined Diamond Pigs and activated your "portfolio management" button . If you have added an additional amount to your wallet in the interim, we calculate a "weighted average". If you joined in 2021, your high watermark is based on the January 1st, 2022 values. 

If your wallet is currently at a loss, you will only be charged the performance fee till the value of your chosen strategy exceeds your starting level again. After the performance fee has been determined, a new high watermark is determined. So you never pay twice for the same profit.

We calculate the performance fee per month at the same time we prepare the invoice for the monthly fees, unless you have withdrawn crypto from your wallet in the meantime (the calculation is then based on any realised profit).

A change of strategy has no impact on your high watermark as long as you are still at a loss. Not even if you switch between strategies without a performance fee. If you are in a profit, it works differently: In that case we calculate the performance fee on the share of the profit that you realised on that strategy at the time of adjustment.

We have chosen to introduce a performance fee based on, among other things, a survey we conducted among our customers last summer. It showed that a combination of low fixed and performance-based fees was the prefered choice.

The price of our index strategy (Berkshire) - which offers no protection and always remains in the top 10 - remains unchanged (0.25% per month). This also applies to our stablecoin strategies Lagarde (EUR) and Powell (USD) and our BTC HODL strategy (Satoshi). The price remains 0.1% per month.

If you have any questions on the above, please reach us out at info@diamondpigs.com

Good afternoon,

for those who were there last Friday; thanks for coming! Thanks to the hospitable reception of our host PCI Nederland, of course, but also because of your enthusiastic presence, we look back on a great event. Here is a short impression of the event.

For those who were unable to attend, below is a link of the entire session that was live on LinkedIn and which you can watch via YouTube via this link.

Of course, the upcoming support of Bitvavo - the largest crypto exchange in the Netherlands - was our biggest announcement, in addition to the multi-language support with which we also become available for foreign customers. If you are interested in participating in the Bitvavo early birds test pool this month; let me know and I can invite you to that.

I wish you all a nice weekend!

Kind regards,

Michiel Bonte
+31-6-51159482

Last Friday we announced our new multi-exchange strategy and the partnership with Bitvavo. As of November 1st everyone will have the option to select and manage multiple exchanges from one single Diamond Pigs account. 

Although Binance is by far the largest crypto exchange in the world, offering the most extensive trade options for the lowest prices, depositing and withdrawing fiat money can be cumbersome. Bitvavo on the contrary is a fully regulated exchange in the netherlands, offering easy fiat - crypto transfers. In addition, it’s important to know that Bitvavo customers’ deposits are held by a separate entity (stichting Bitvavo Payments) and therefore safeguarded from bank runs and bankruptcy. 

For Diamond Pigs customers this is especially important because if the market trend is negative, our strategies will sell crypto assets and go back to a stable coin. In the case of Bitvavo we don’t use stable coins but go directly back into EUROs. Since all fiat deposits are being held within the Stichting Bitvavo Payments and they cannot act like a bank or reuse the money for other purposes your funds are safe. For more info click here.

Vincent Everts, CEO of Diamond Pigs said: “We are very excited about the partnership with Bitvavo. They are by far the largest and most advanced crypto exchange in The Netherlands. They have taken the heavy regulation here very seriously and benefitted from it by quickly building a fully featured crypto exchange that is both easy to use and safe, catapulting them into the number one position in the Dutch market."

Kevin Stam, Bitvavo head of onboarding & support added: “We know that our customers have a strong interest in automated trading features that can protect and grow their investment by selling and buying at the right moment. At Bitvavo we have made the strategic decision to focus on growing and scaling our trading platform and work with partners to develop bot-based trading solutions that can easily be executed in our users’ wallets.”   

During the announcement, we launched a beta program for early adopters that will last until November 1st. If you’re interested to join please send a mail to info@diamondpigs.com. 
Existing Diamond Pigs customers will be added to the test group which will allow them to connect to Bitvavo as a second exchange. And even to easily create a new Bitvavo account. 
Bitvavo customers that are not yet on Diamond Pigs will receive a link with which they can set up and connect a Diamond Pigs account.  
Participation in the Beta program is free of charge. 

For those who missed the live broadcast of the event. It’s available on youtube 

The Bitvavo announcement and Q&A with Kevin Stam starts at 19:32 (the event is in Dutch). 

3:30 Welcome - Michiel Bonte

4:40 Overview Announcements & Outlook - Vincent Everts

33:57 platform technology - Bart Mellink

50:36 SYNAPSE Bot platform - Ronald van Woensel

1:23:30 Afsluiting

Dear Pigger,

Of course you can go to The Bitcoin Conference on October 12 for 449 euros. But you can also come to our first meet-up on October 7 for free! We present our new trading bots, show you new features of our beautiful dashboard and present a lot of other (crypto) news. And of course a nice drink before the weekend starts. In 1 afternoon you will be completely up to date when it comes to crypto, the market and the Diamond Pigs in particular.

We would love for you to join us at our meet up on October 7th at 16.00. Nice to catch up, nice to meet other Piggers and discuss the news together! Register now at Eventbrite , we only have 100 places available;

Dear Pigger,

Of course you can go to The Bitcoin Conference on October 12 for 449 euros. But you can also come to our first meet-up for free on October 7! We present our new trading bots, show you new features of our beautiful dashboard and present a lot of other (crypto) news. And of course a nice drink before the weekend starts. In 1 afternoon you will be completely up to date when it comes to crypto, the market and the Diamond Pigs in particular.

We would love for you to join us at our meet up on October 7th at 16.00. Nice to catch up, nice to meet other Piggers and discuss the news together! Register quickly at Eventbrite, we only have 100 places available;

Big days ahead of us with with upcoming publication of important US Consumer Price Index data later today and the ETH merge.

The Crypto Fear & Greed index is moving slowly from extreme fear to fear level (currently on 34). The Crypto market has recovered from its lows since last week and Bitcoin is currently trading at $22,300. It seems as the market anticipates relatively low CPI data (inflation) which will be resulted in a more dovish Fed monetary policy in the months ahead. That may also continue to weaken the strong dollar and trigger a bullish move in risk-on assets such as tech and crypto. 

It remains to be seen if the highly anticipated upcoming ETH merge which expect to occur on the 15th of September will go according to plan. Some describe this merge as upgrading a rocket ship after its launch to illustrate how complex this merge is. 

The ETH merge event is by far the most significant event in crypto in the last couple of years. With no major issues occurring during the merge, the price of Ethereum as well as coins in its ecosystem can see a nice run as well.

As always, the crypto market is volatile and highly unexpected and we remain cautious. Our bots have chosen by now to take long positions in various coins and it remains to be seen how well each strategy will perform in the coming days. It is absolutely not a boring period right now and let's hope that the CPI figures will be favorable and the ETH merge will be completed with no significant issues.

Vincent and I are heading tomorrow to the Binance Blockchain Week held in Paris hoping to learn more about the upcoming trends in the industry, new Binance products' development and hold interviews with some interesting people from the industry. 

We have just finished a 12 minutes Diamond Pigs TV show. Discussing the latest crypto market analysis, how global macroeconomic impact the crypto market, an update on the Ethereum merge, the Binance move to remove USDC stable coin and of course how is Diamond Pigs strategies doing! This time, I was on my own and despite some hiccups in the beginning, it went fine. Please let me know in the comments how you thought the show went and what should we do differently to make the it more interesting for you in the future. Enjoy Watching

Vincent and I just finished another 30 min. fun episode of DPTV on Diamond Pigs TV.

As always, we analyse the market, look at the reasons why September may become horrible or a great month for crypto; Hints: inflation in the US, the Dollar Index, the upcoming ETH merge, and go through the main crypto news of last week.  Enjoy the show!

On another note, we are in the final stage of deploying the Dutch language as an additional language on the members’ platform. As of early next week, you will be able to select your language preference (English or Dutch) via the settings screen. 

For those who signed up to the Play Mode and are still not yet fully onboarded - a new feature will be added to your dashboard's chart comparing each of our investment strategies performance with Bitcoin performance over a selected period of time.

In this post, we describe the unique characteristics of our strategies and the main differences between each of them.

The Berkshire strategy - is a passive index strategy that doesn’t trade actively and is rebalanced each month by updating the portfolio with the current top 10 coins with the highest market cap. This strategy fits best for long-term investment.

The Duroc and Pennywell are active strategies. Both strategies trade with fundamentally strong coins; Pennywell will only trade with environmentally friendly coins. Both strategies’ bots’ parameters are set to trade on relatively high time frames (1D and 4H candles) which means that the trading pace will be moderate and will be optimally performed during upwards trend periods. On the other hand, it may be a bit slower to close positions during corrections or downwards trend periods.

The Jinhua strategy is the most active in our portfolio. It trades both fundamentally strong coins as well as small market cap coins. The Jinhua’s bots' parameters are set to trade on relatively low time frames (4H, 1H) which means that the trading pace is high and the strategy will be suitable to protect your portfolio during bad times . On the other hand, it may be take quick profits during upward periods. Which mean that it can miss out some profits during prolonged upwards periods. 

A few days ago we have directed your attention to the fact that Binance is requesting you to verify your account by the 19th of September. The Subject of the mail was: Action Required - Verify your Binance account on time

Please be aware that numerous customers of us have received a scam mail with the Binance logo and look & feel with the subject:  Re-verify

In case you received such a mail or another mail from Binance with similar or other strange subjects, please do not reply and simply delete them. You can always reach out check it with us directly to be 100% certain. 

In addition, the official emails sent by Binance will always lead you to the official Binance log-in windows and never to any other site. 

Good day,

Recently, you should all have received an email from Binance notifying you to verify your account.

The email title is: Action required: verify your identity, your Binance account will soon be restricted

If haven't done it so far, you should log in to your Binance account and follow their instruction.

If you have not successfully completed this verification process by Monday 19th September 2022, your access will be restricted and we will no longer be able to trade on your behalf.

Last week when the CPI figures were published in the US and were higher than expected (9.1%). The consensus in crypto twitter land was that the market will be trending south again. But as the market sentiment is very often difficult to anticipate, the opposite seems to be happening. Bitcoin price is steadily recovering and it's now around 22k. It is now facing resistance and we want to see it heading to 23.3k before confirming a long-term positive trend. 

The Ethereum announcement last week that the long-expecting merge to Ethereum 2.0 will occur in mid-September triggered a nice run for ETH as well as for other layers 1 and layer 2 chains. This move is also reflected in the Bitcoin dominance chart which is a measure of how much of the crypto market cap is composed of Bitcoin vs. other coins. Bitcoin dominance has weakened in the last few days and is down to 42%. (on June 12th during the 2d big crash - it was as high as 48.5%). The Fear & Greed index is recovering as well and is up to 30 ( at its highest in 2.5 months)

We are also monitoring the DXY which is a measure of the value of the U.S. dollar against six other foreign currencies. The dollar has shown real strength in the last months and was highly correlated with weak risk-on assets such as Bitcoin and tech stocks. The dollar is now facing resistance and we expect a reversal once the ECB decides to raise interest rates later this week. As soon as the Euro and other major currencies shows more strength, a positive momentum for risk-on assets may take place.

So there is a sense of relief in the markets, while not much has changed in the macro-economic conditions. We remain cautious and as always monitor the crypto as well as the economics indicators market carefully.

For now, our strategies are showing a positive trend as well with Berkshire (our passive index strategy) leading the trend with a 30% increase in the last 30 days. It is worth mentioning that Berkshire has suffered the most during the 2 big crypto crashes in May and June and it has still a lot of catch up to recover from its heavy losses in the last months. 

Hi Everybody,

I want to thank those who took the time to complete the Diamond Pigs questionnaire.
For those who haven't done it, please be so kind as to take 3 minutes of your time and fill it in so we can consider your valuable input for future decisions.

Dutch version: click here  
English version: click here

Thank you in advance for helping us with your valuable feedback.

Best regards

Diamond Pigs Team

Yesterday, we published a new article in our blog section with the title. "Is crypto relief rally coming soon?"
Today at 13:00 Vincent and I are going live to discuss the latest market developments and the signs that indicate that the worst may be behind us!

Lower commodity prices, higher dollar and rising inflation. Will people move money in or out of the crypto world? Whales are keep buying  BTC at $20k levels and the fear index is slowly moving up.
Cardano is getting ready for their big fork. Solana Saga comes with their own Web3 phone. And how did Defi lending protocols (AAVE, Uniswap) perform versus Cefi lending protocols  (Celsius, Blockfi)?
Our strategies are outperforming the market in June and much more...

Join us for a 30 min.new DiamondPigs show today at 13:00. 

Dear all,

While the crypto market has landed in a bear period, we in Diamond Pigs are working hard on improving our services and products. As part of this process, we are sharing with you a short questionnaire asking you to provide us some feedback on a few matters related to our service so we can consider your valuable input in our company's future decisions.

Hereby, sharing with you 2 links of the questionnaire  - one in dutch and one in english to fill in: 

English version

Thank you in advance for taking 5 minutes of your time and providing us with your valuable feedback.

The Diamond pigs Team

It seems as the link to the dutch version is not working well.

Here is the correct link

Apologies for that.

As the Crypto market is very nervous, I thought of highlighting a few of the major events that are currently taking place:

 
So the market is currently consolidating due to high extreme fear of a cascading effect that will result in more liquidations. I thought that CZ - CEO Binance summed up the situation nicely by drawing a distinction between two types of leverage within the crypto ecosystem: Fast, and slow.

"Fast leverage is often related to futures products trading on centralized exchanges. If there’s any kind of liquidation cascade, it tends to begin and end very quickly with this leverage. For example, on March 12th, 2020, Bitcoin crashed from $8000 to $3000 in a single day due to this leverage but quickly recovered.
On the other hand, today’s market seems to be plagued by slow leverage – where funds lend to other funds and defi protocols to invest. The cascading effect of this leverage can often spread much more slowly, while also taking longer to admit to by troubled platforms. I believe we have not seen the end of these yet, concluded CZ".

The good news is that our fast active strategy Jinhua has been doing reasonably well during these challenging market conditions. Jinhua which is a fast active trading strategy is ending up this week with no real price change and with a minor gain of 1.2% in the last 2 weeks and a small loss of 4% in the last 30 days. Jinhua is applying a sophisticated meta-bot technology to enter and exist long positions. From all our strategies, Jinhua appears to be the best performing strategy at this time.  

This week was a good week for crypto and for our strategies.

Jinhua and Berkshire are the best performing strategies this week with 8% gain on average so far. Jinhua is already 82% in long positions in 10 different coins.

During our recent 30 minutes Diamond Pigs show, Vincent and I are discussing the current crypto markt condition, latest news, Vincent's interview with CZ - CEO Binance and why we expect some recovery in the coming weeks. Our shows are short and informative and are recommended to watch or listen to when you have some time to stay up-to-date on the crypto market and Diamond Pigs. If you like the show, please subscribe to our channel on Youtube. 

ON another note, after receiving feedback from some members, we have updated each of our investment strategies' description. 

Dust refers to small fractions of cryptocurrencies that are left from trades. The amount is generally so small that it is often forgotten or ignored.
Since last week, Diamond Pigs software is automatically converting the dust in your Binance wallet to the BNB coin. The BNB coin will be then  automatically traded to reflect your actual coins' portfolio.  

Yesterday during the DPTV we discussed the craziest week ever in Crypto. Started with higher than expected (CPI) Consumer Price Index figures published last Friday, resulting in a sharp price drop and triggering a big FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) market reaction. That pushed many crypto investors to withdraw their money from lending, staking, and exchange platforms to sell their positions. On Saturday evening, Celsius - the biggest crypto lending platform announced a withdrawal pause raising the rumors that the company may become insolvent. Which resulted in an even bigger crypto sell-off. On top of that, there are rumors that a big Crypto VC in Singapore based - Three Arrow Capital may be at risk to become insolvent as well. 

On Wednesday the Fed announced an interest rate increase of 0.75 and it seems that since then the market is calming down and may have finally found a strong bottom. If you haven't seen our 30 minutes DPTV show yesterday, together with Joel Happe and Hugo Leijtens - highly recommended. 

While the fear & greed index has never been as low as yesterday (7), our active strategies have taken some long positions in the last 48 hrs and, and so far the market is in green territory. Hopefully, the trend continues during the weekend and we may see a nice relief rally. 

The recent CPI figures published in the US last week Friday (8.6%) trigged a new downtrend in the equity market due to the fear that the Fed will be more aggressive with raising interest rate in the coming 3 months. As a result, Bitcoin fall from 30K to 28K from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning. During the weekend, a new event started playing out involving a company called Celsius which is one of the largest players in the crypto lending space, with more than $8 billion lent out to clients and almost $12 billion in assets under management as of May 2022. Celsius announced last night that they are pausing all withdrawals from their platform, triggering the rumors that the company has become insolvent. That has triggered the market to tumble once again with Bitcoin going as low as 24k at the time of writing. The recent price crash, may be the much-anticipated crypto market capitulation event(see my recent blog post) where Bitcoin and the rest of the crypto market will finally find a real support level and can start heading back north right after. 

All our active strategies (Jinhua, Duroc, and Pennywell) have closed their small positions and experienced a very minor loss during the weekend. The Berkshire index fund (Top 10 coins) has been suffering the most with more than 20% loss since last Friday.

We are now offering iDeal as an alternative payment to Binance Pay.

How to pay via IDeal:

You can visit your billing section on the Diamond Pigs dashboard and use the green link next to each invoice pdf. to make the payment.

For any support questions on this matter, please send me a mail directly at idan@diamondpigs.com 

This morning both Jinhua and Hereford strategies took a long position in BTC  for an average price of $31,627.
By now:
58% of the Jinhua strategy is long in 5 coins (BTC, CELR, SYS, AXE, AAVE). 42% is still in BUSD.
40% of the Hereford strategy is long in 1 coin ( BTC).  60% is still in BUSD, 

The last months have been tough for the crypto market. The high inflation followed by the central bank rate policies lead to investors pulling out of risk-on assets. 
On top of that, the LUNA crash has added fuel to the fire and helped Bitcoin to move from 38k to 30K trading now below 29k. We may expect to go even lower and once capitulation will be over and there will be a sense that the inflation is under control, we may see that the market start going up. This is how a real bear market feels and our moto these days in Diamond Pigs is the famous Churchill say "Never waste a good crisis" which means that we are moving fast in changing our business in areas that needs improvement. 

With the introduction of our meta-Bot technology, we are now confident that we offer strong market protection from the high market volatility while entering long positions as soon as the market starts trending upwards.  

We are also excited to introduce a new "Bitcoin Only" strategy that uses the meta-bot (bots that analyze and create bots) technology to enter long positions in an upwards trends and exit positions when the market starts declining. Looking at the historical performance of the new strategy called "Hereford"  ( since the 1st of August 2021)) the new strategy has gained 25% in price while at the same period, Bitcoin lost 25%. Hereford will be available in the dashboard as of tomorrow.

We recently published an interview with Ronald van Woensel on how the trading bots are working in our active trading strategies (Duroc, Jinhua, Pennywell). As an example. the Jinhua strategy which is working on a 4th time frame is likely to step in faster than other strategies in case it picks the right signals from the market. However, it will not necessary step in directly each time that prices start going up. All bots are currently optimized to maximize the number of winning trades and minimize the number of losing trades. It means that the algorithm looks for a strong validation for an upward trend to avoid dead cat bounce events and ensure market protection from downwards trends. 

The description of all 3 strategies has now been updated to reflect the new algorithm-based trading bots that have been implemented in each of the strategies in recent weeks

I wanted to quickly share a short update on what is happening right now in the crypto world as we have seen a massive sell-off starting this WKD; 

Here are the main 2 reasons: 

- Fear of  high Consumer Price Index (CPI) which will be released today, resulting in still high DXY (Dollar Index) as well as yields that are still running upwards heavily as well . This put selling pressure on all equity and bond markets as well as on the crypto.

 -LUNA foundation is pushing down the markets as they forced to sell their Bitcoin reserved assets due to the unpeg of their stable coin $UST to the dollar. This has been evoking an additional crypto-specific sell pressure, which may be temporary but may drag the market even lower in the coming days.

Here is a good article explaining what happened with LUNA and it's UST stable coin in the last 72 hours
https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2022/05/10/ust-stablecoin-veers-wildly-from-dollar-peg-heres-the-latest/

Both our active trading strategies are heavily out of long positions - Duroc is on 100% BUSD stable coin and Jinhua on 67% at time of writing this post.

Dear all,

In the last months, the team has been working hard on the introduction of new trading bots for each of our active trading strategies (Duroc and Jinhua). The main objective is to mitigate the affect of the negative market sentiment that resulted in poor results for our strategies and optimize the returns in periods with positive market sentiment and upwards trend.

The introduction of the bots come in a highly turbulence moment where the index fear and greed has reach an extreme fear of 22%. Unfortunately, most of our strategies have suffered a big decline in the month of April and the beginning of May and with the introduction of the trading bots, we are confidant that the performance of each of our active trading strategy will improve despite the continuation of the turbulence in the crypto market. We are certain that the only way to achieve positive results in these market conditions (with strategies that are actively trading), is to work with sophisticated tools such as the latest algorithmic trading bot that was introduced. The automated bot will mainly support the decision to take a long or an exist position.

The Jinhua bot is programmed to support a swing trading method strategy and the Duroc’s trading bot is programed to support a market sentiment strategy. The coins and their own weight % in the portfolio are selected by the trading desk team based on fundamental analysis. Each bot is fully monitored and can always be overruled by the team when necessary as well.

For those who are interested to learn more about our bot tradings. We will soon publish a blog on our site where Ronald van Woensel the "brain" behind our bots, will be interviewed on this topic and elaborate on how the bots are working.

Last month we have successfully tested payment of service fees via Stripe. This alternative payment method will allow you to pay pay the invoice using a fiat account without having to put in the balance in your Binance wallet. A much requested feature by our users. From now on reminders will have the option to pay using Stripe. As of next month the option to use Stripe will be showed on your invoice.  

A new week is ahead of us and the crypto market is still very shaky with hyperinflation expected in the US and Europe and a higher correlation (than ever) between the crypto market and the Nasdaq. I expect that the high volatility will remain for the coming period.

Since the beginning of the year, the team has been working on adding various algorithms to our strategies. While the initial coins' selection is done by the team, future trades will be executed automatically.
Hereby, a brief update on each strategy:

Pennywell.The first deployment was completed 2 weeks ago in which an automatic algorithm was integrated into the Pennywell strategy. This algorithm supports the decision of going into a long position in the best performing green project from the top 50 market cap coins.

Duroc. Last week, the first phase of the market sentiment algorithm was deployed for the Duroc strategy. By Now, Duroc is automatically selecting the coins that should remain long out of a selection of fundamentally strong coins. Since last week, Duroc has chosen to sell 80% of its portfolio and currently holds 2 coins in its portfolio.

Jinhua. By the end month, we are going to deploy a swing method algorithm for Jinhua as well. The new algo is going to support the decision of stepping in and out of long positions based on a low time frame of 4h chart for a selection of strong coins; The first phase of the implementation was deployed in a testing environment and we continue to test.

In the last weeks, the team worked hard on improving our strategies.
Next to integrating algorithms in our trading activities to identify the market sentiment faster and ultimately improve the overall performance, a few strategies components were redesigned to offer a clear differentiation between each one of the strategies.

The Berkshire strategy remains an index strategy of the top 10 largest coins. Duroc is a trading strategy based on market sentiment and Jinhua is a trading strategy based on a swing method. Pennywell will become an active strategy (but not a trading one) that invests in coins from the top 50 market cap coins that are environmentally friendly and fundamentally strong.

Both Duroc and Jinhua may decide to sell the entire position and keep the balance in BUSD stable coin. While Pennywell and Berkshire will not pursue this type of trading activity.

Your comments or/and questions and likes are welcome.

Below, you can find a full new description of each of the 4 strategies:

Berkshire

Follows the DP10 index, a carefully crafted index developed by Diamond Pigs consisting of the 10 largest and most liquid crypto assets based on market cap. Berkshire is rebalanced periodically to reflect the latest market developments. The individual weight ratios are optimized based on their risk profile. Berkshire is comparable to an index fund or tracker of the stock market. Due to its diversified strategy of backing the winners.

The strategy has a moderate risk-reward opportunity level.

Duroc

A broadly diversified strategy consisting of coins representing companies from all sectors of the crypto ecosystem. We invest in layer 1 and 2 protocols, oracles, Defi solution, gaming, Metaverse, and other blockchain projects supporting the crypto ecosystem. The coins selected represent companies that have a powerful strategic vision backed by a strong management team, aiming to provide real solutions for real problems. Duroc is an active sentiment trading strategy that is based on market condition and technical  analysis.

The strategy has a high risk-reward opportunity level.

Jinhua

A broadly diversified strategy consisting of coins representing companies from all sectors of the crypto ecosystem. We invest in layer 1 and 2 protocols, oracles, Defi solution, gaming, Metaverse, and other blockchain projects supporting the crypto ecosystem. The coins selected represent companies that have a powerful strategic vision backed by a strong management team, aiming to provide real solutions for real problems.. Jinhua is an active swing trading strategy that is managed based on market conditions and technical analysis.

The strategy has a high risk-reward opportunity level.

Pennywell

An active strategy that invests in coins from the top 50 market cap coins that are environmentally friendly and fundamentally strong.

The strategy has a moderate- high risk-reward opportunity level.

If you have trouble activating or using Binance Pay to pay the invoice due, please refer to a new article we just published in the knowledge section of our support pages. The article is titled "We downloaded the Binance App. However, the QR code that appears on the invoice doesn't work."   

In general scanning the QR code on the invoice works best if you display the invoice on an other device than where you have Binance pay activated...

The Binance Pay application prompts you to manually enter the amount of the invoice. Please note that you are always free to enter a larger amount. If you do this the extra amount will automatically be subtracted from your next invoice. If the amount you paid extra is greater than the service fee due for the following month, you will receive a zero invoice for that month. By allowing you to make prepayments you are released from the obligation to pay each month.

As of this week, we will post a weekly market overview looking at the overall market performance and our investment strategies: 

The market is moving upwards and that’s great. For the first time since November last year, it looks as there is bullish momentum in crypto. Bitcoin managed to break an important resistance level of 46k and is heading towards 53k where the next resistance level is. Alt-coins are following suit with many of them waking up and start showing some real strengths; All our strategies are fully invested 100% in coins. On average, we see an increase of more than 21% in the last 2 weeks in all of our strategies. In the coming weeks, we will also provide more in depth analysis on each of our strategies.

Last but not least, last week Thursday, we had a great  Diamond Pigs TV episode with lots of news, interesting guests, and good discussions on some burning topics. Highly recommended to watch it here. and please leave us your feedback, subscribe and click on the like button if you enjoyed.

Yours for now, Idan and the rest of the team.  

A new Diamond Pigs TV episode with a special guest @Checkmate from Glassnode. As always, market overview, the latest news from the crypto world, video of the day, an update on the algorithm used for Diamond Pigs strategies, and more. You don't want to miss that one. 

As of today, we are starting to post messages on the Diamond Pigs platform. Messages will be used to update you on your memberships, new enhancements, interesting crypto news as well as specific updates and news on each strategy.