BBR was in a downtrend for so long it became far too undervalued relative to its twin XMR, and the market ran out of cheap berries.
The Supernet hype reversed that trend with a vengeance, although the steady release of improvements (miners, price chart in wallet, etc.) played a role as well.
Another factor was an uptick in XMR prices, to which BBR offers leverage as silver does to gold.
Go ahead and short BBR, you could possibly make some money in the short term. But many of us are accumulating, and you might get your teeth broken instead.
(BBR) was drifting down around .00015 for a looooong time. All of a sudden, starting last week (August 28th), volume on Polo is wayyyyyy up and the price is up to .001.
What caused this?
edit: Supernet, maybe? If so, where can I short the fucker?
My take: Risk is poison. BBR is controlled by a lone anonymous actor, possibly Andrey Sabelnikov, probably a member of the team that produced the bytecoin scam. In contrast, the XMR team includes several well-known persons, some of whom identify by legal names openly. BBR just has a lot more risk baked in. The market priced the caps at a 32:1 ratio as a result (and ended up oversold due to momentum). This made hedging XMR with BBR cheap. That, and CZ's well-deserved reputation for development, kept attention on BBR. (Also the bytecoin gang's sockpuppet theatre raging against XMR kept using it as a foil, which drew attention.) SuperNET was all it needed to pump. Regardless of James' intentions he certainly seems to be surrounded by a cloud of PnDers. Now the hedge is no longer attractive, and only momentum and the pump keep price flying here.
I won't comment on how to short SuperNET. Look at its components. I have a lot of skepticism of SuperNET myself, but it's based on circumstantial factors rather than substantive ones. I find it difficult to locate the substance. Something about the copy always makes my mind rebel if I try to read it. It's like trying to look into your foveal blind spot. I probably have too much training in "legacy" finance to understand it properly. I'm too old, and I'll die soon, so that innovators can sail smoothly over the rainbow to crypto-valhalla without my trollish philistinism to harsh their mellow.
To short BBR, you need to find someone who will loan it to you. The interest rate will probably be exhorbitant. When I shorted I did fairly well but paid out a large chunk as interest. My short performance was degrading rapidly at the end, which means I was taking increasing risk, so I lost interest. Also I think I was making volatility worse, rather than better, at the end, which is bad for BBR, so I knew it was time to stop. Good mean-reversion strategy performance should result in lower volatility in the underlying. If it is doing the opposite, you're doing it wrong - or you're trading momentum. I may do again, but not until I have more clarity on the fundamental and technical situation in BBR - which may never happen since it is just not very interesting to me. I want to buy future reserve currency, stack it high, and hold it long. Anything else is just a distraction.
Thanks, gentlemen. That's helpful info. Definitely not interested in fighting the tape or breaking my teeth!
For what it's worth, I agree about distractions. I, too, want to buy and stack. I'm not trying to buy and sell to a greater fool, sell short, or anything along those lines.
I don't own any BBR right now, but I was patiently considering a buy (as you said, a hedge to XMR) before the run up.
Back to waiting mode.
