The Daily: Fake Trezors, Catching Knives, Stablecoins With Everything

There aren’t many prices that cryptocurrency traders can bear to look at right now, but stablecoins are one of the few exceptions. In this edition of The Daily, we consider the latest cryptocurrency niche that dollar-pegged coins are encroaching on, but not before we’ve addressed the serious business of fake hardware wallets and how to call the bottom in a market that won’t stop falling.

Also read: Fear, Loathing and Opportunity: How Traders Are Handling the Drop

Fake Trezors Found in the Wild

As if cryptocurrency investors didn’t have enough woes to deal with right now, there’s a bunch of fake hardware wallets doing the rounds. The Trezor lookalikes are manufactured cheaply in China, the land of knock-off electronics. If an offer looks too good to be true though, it probably is, and traders would be advised not to endanger their funds by storing them in a copycat wallet that could be backdoored or simply insecure.

“You would not entrust your money to somebody who has already cheated you by selling you a different product than you thought you were buying. We, therefore, recommend not to use this [fake] device,” wrote Trezor, before explaining how to tell the difference between the company’s official holographic seal and that used on the ersatz imitators.

Knife Catching Is a Dangerous Game

Earlier today, we wrote about cryptocurrency investors scrambling to sweep up cheap coins as Bitcoin holds its very own Black Friday sale. While the temptation to splurge on discounted crypto can be strong, catching falling knives is a dangerous game. For those brave enough to try and time the bottom in this market, crypto Twitter has some advice. “A crash like this usually ends with a ‘big bang’ and a quick V shape reversal. So far we’ve only seen ‘slow’ decline. Don’t try to fight the trend just wait for confirmation,” urged one source.

Respected analyst Willy Woo got a little more technical, tweeting: “RSI reading more FUD than the Feb 12K->6K crash. We have decent volume profile support in this 4.4K region … very unlikely to slice through… if anything the brave can go knife catching.”

Perhaps Jackson Palmer put it best, though:

Reminder: When someone tells you to buy something, there’s a chance they’re the one selling it. pic.twitter.com/DpaahOjOhC — Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) November 20, 2018

Stablecoin Watch

It’s always interesting to check in on stablecoins during days of extreme market volatility. What’s particularly interesting is noting which way different dollar-pegged coins bend when their volume starts to stack up. At the time of writing, USDC and TUSD are trading at one to three cents over the dollar, while USDT is under, with each tether trading for an average of $0.97. Dai, the stablecoin that is collateralized using ether, is sitting just under $1. Earlier today, a $50 million collateralized debt position had to be liquidated and the eth locked in the contract sold off, after falling cryptocurrency prices left the dai contract under-collateralized.

“In the last few days we’ve seen a drop of more than 30 percent for BTC and even greater for other cryptocurrencies,” said Ronny Boesing, CEO of stablecoin developer Openledger. “One kind of crypto that has not been affected by this is collateralized stablecoins such as dai by Makerdao and our own bitcny, available on Bitshares. Bitcny operates as an ERC20 token, issued by Openledger and backed by the Bitshares network, with an equivalent amount of Smartcoins held in a multisig account. These are issued purely on the basis of supply and demand.”

Lest we needed further proof of how badly this bear market is biting, blockchain conferences are being challenged by a new kind of digital asset convention — the stablecoin conference. The Stablecoin Foundation Conference takes place in New York on Nov. 26. The prospect may sound about as alluring as watching paint dry, but if this market downturn persists, stablecoin conferences could soon become the norm. While day traders thrive on volatility, most cryptocurrency investors would love nothing more than a spot of stability right now.

What are your thoughts on today’s news tidbits as featured in The Daily? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Trezor, and Stablecoin Index.

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