The inside cover of The Times today features a two-page advert from BitMEX celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the mining of the first block of bitcoin transactions -- the so-called Genesis block.

If you haven't heard of BitMEX, it's worth reading this article from Amy Castor of The Block to get a feel for it. Based in Hong Kong (through registered in the Seychelles, obv), it's a largely unregulated crypto derivatives platform that offers up to 100 TIMES LEVERAGE on bitcoin trading -- both long and short -- and has unsurprisingly managed to make huge amounts of money from inexperienced retail traders. Its designer-gear-clad, Lambo-driving CEO has "jokingly" referred to his customers as "degenerate gamblers".

So you would think that volatility is kind of important for BitMEX. How funny, then, that it would seek to portay the 80 per cent plunge in the value of bitcoin over the past year or so as a mere edging down in a broader move moon-wards. Don't you just love a logarithmic scale!?

On a linear chart, things look a little different (screenshot from Coindesk):

We asked author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain and all round supergeek David Gerard for his thoughts on the boosterish BitMEX chart, who told us:

Bitcoiners love their log charts, because they can pretend it's less hideously volatile than it really is, and that long-term HODLing is a reasonable concept. Actual trading is so volatile that not only are the charts typically linear, they're linear with a truncated y-axis - because traders care more about the change than the actual number - because that's when your margin gets blown.

So happy birthday bitcoin! Some enthusiasts made you a video and everything. For you're a jolly good fellow and so say all of us.

Related links:

Chart crime as a measure of crypto-desperation - FT Alphaville Bitcoin’s repeated splits undermine its long-term value - FT

The bitcoin price is wrong - FT Alphaville

Year in a Word: Crypto - FT

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