| Your decentralized betting exchange. Beta testing on L2 this week. | | Augur Turbo releasing on L2 Elon who? And the 52% BTC Drawdown Vitalik for President; and ETH Price Action | | Augur Turbo Releasing on L2 | The Augur team has been working hard at designing the best user experience for the world's only 100% decentralized, no limit, and global betting platform. Over the last two weeks, we Integrated with Balancer liquidity pools, prepared The Graph for layer 2 contracts, and deployed Augur Turbo to Mumbai, the Polygon testnet. Even though adding additional liquidity was initially a challenge, it didn't take long to wrangle that beast. This week is all about testing and ironing out the last few bugs. If you'd like an early sneak peak, just reach out to team@augur.net. | | | | Odds provided by BetMGM / Odds table via Vegas Insider [Updated Sunday, May 16, 10:30 AM ET] | The 2020-21 NBA season had a tremendous number of twists and turns, and after the unique 72-game season, the 2021 Play-In Tournament is set with seeds No. 7 to 10 battling for the final postseason spots. The unlikeliest play-in team is the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers, who own the second-highest future odds to win the 2021 NBA championship. Injuries led LeBron James’ team to this spot, but we will have to see if having to play more games - like the UCLA Bruins in March Madness - prevents the Lakers from winning this year’s title.
The Lakers are second overall at +475 while the Los Angeles Clippers are at +550 to win the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Those two teams top the Western Conference while the Brooklyn Nets, who are the second seed in the Eastern Conference, are the odds-on favorite to win the 2021 NBA championship at +230. Meanwhile, the top seed of the West is the Utah Jazz, who rank fourth at +700 to win it all. The Philadelphia 76ers (+750) round out the top five after clinching their first top seed since 2001. | | Augur is a set of smart contracts. There are no humans to suspend your account or freeze your funds. | | | | | The Play-In Tournament begins on May 18 with the Eastern Conference games on TNT followed by the Western Conference ones the following night on ESPN. The winner of the (7)-(8) matchup will advance to face the No. 2 seed while the No. 1 seed will take on the victorious team in the following matchup: the (7)-(8) loser vs. the (9)-(10) winner. The East play-in goes through Boston, as the Celtics are hosting the Wizards in the (7)-(8) matchup. The winner will have the tall test of taking on the title-favorite Nets. At TD Garden, there will be an amazing St. Louis battle between Jayson Tatum and Bradley Beal. The Wizards shooting guard finally received a strong replacement for the oft-injured John Wall in Russell Westbrook. Westbrook added to his NBA-record triple-double numbers with 23 points, 15 rebounds, and 10 assists in game No. 82 against the Hornets to vault the Wizards to the No. 8 spot. The Celtics, who took two of the three meetings against the Wizards during the regular season, opened as three-point favorites. The spread has moved to the Celtics by 1.5 points as of Monday morning. Boston is +2500 to win the Eastern Conference, which ranks fifth overall. Meanwhile, the Wizards are all the way down in eighth at +10000. According to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight NBA predictions, the Jaylen Brown-less Celtics have a 90 percent chance of making the playoffs by either (a) winning the (7)-(8) game or (b) losing the (7)-(8) game and winning against the victor of the (9)-(10) game.
The Lakers are by far the best team among the eight play-in teams, and they have a very strong chance of advancing in the Play-In Tournament. The Lakers are the only 40-win team in the play-in, and their positive 2.7 point differential in 2020-21 ranks fifth in the Western Conference. Their (7)-(8) play-in opponent will be the Warriors, and this matchup will be a tremendous one as Stephen Curry has the chance to push the vaunted Lakers to the brink with a one-game masterpiece. Both the Lakers (96 percent) and Warriors (77 percent) have relatively strong chances at making the postseason according to FiveThirtyEight, so there should not be much to worry about for either of these teams until the playoffs start in earnest.
However, when previewing this contest, there is a lot to unpack. The Lakers won two of their games this season against the Warriors. While Curry has been dealing with a tailbone issue recently, he should be good to go for this important game against the Lakers. The 33-year-old future Hall of Famer led the NBA with 32 points per game in 2020-21 and became the oldest player since Michael Jordan to win the scoring title. Unfortunately for Golden State, he is averaging just 23 points in games against the Lakers this season. There is not much value at this time in betting the Lakers at +230 to win the Western Conference – for reference, the Clippers are second at +240 while the Warriors are eighth at +10000. Curry, who put up 37 points per game in April and May, should be ready for a battle against LeBron, Anthony Davis, and the Lakers, who are favored by 7.5 points. We will see if Curry, Draymond Green, and company can pull off the upset. | | Elon Who? And BTC Price Action | | | BTC slipped to $29,800 early Wednesday morning and the total crypto market touched $1.21T, down from the local high of $2.58T last Wednesday (5/12). While this is a 30% 24-hour decline in BTC, it's a 54% drawdown from the ATH of $64,900 on April 14th, which was just about a month ago. The decline is being attributed to Elon Musk, who reversed his pro-bitcoin stance when he announced that Tesla will not accept BTC as a payment method. This shocked the BTC community, that had accepted Elon with open arms just months ago. Musk has a Twitter following of 55.2M and an ever growing influence thanks to him hosting Saturday Night Live, which attracted 7.3M viewers. What is further fueling the sell-off is fear, doubt, and uncertainty around China's ban on cryptocurrency though it has been well-known since 2013, when the law was first established. While the pandering Musk will remain at odds with the BTC community, pullbacks have been historically healthy for long term price action. Without missing a beat, MicroStrategy stepped in and acquired an additional $10M BTC at $43,663 after having bought $15M BTC just days before. BTC broke through all levels of 2021 support, including the 250 EMA, after the Musk tweet and landed at $29,800. If the daily candle closes above the $30,600 region today, BTC may have finally found support, although, as of now, a sole red wick is touching the region. Other regions of support are $24,436, $19,050, $10,000. On the upswing, "bagholders" may create resistance with sell pressure at $41,000, $46,500, and $50,000. It would be prudent to observe the daily closing prices this week to determine support strength and if BTC is finally being accumulated. Caution is warranted since the accumulation is part of the larger downtrend. Will BTC respect the support at $30,000 or go lower? | | Augur takes no fees. Market creators set their fees, usually around 1%. | | | | | Vitalik, who received 50% of SHIB tokens by the creators, burned 90% of his holdings, an amount worth $6.7B. He also pledged to send the remaining 10% to a charity dedicated to preventing "large-scale loss of life." This comes after he had already given $1.2B SHIB for to COVID relief in India. Where Elon and others may crave fame and power over the rest of us, Vitalik's actions clearly signal that he is not interested in these games. Vitalik's move didn't seem to affect ETH, which generally trends with BTC anyway. ETH managed to set a new ATH at $4380 the day before the Musk tweet, which ended the upswing that began the last week of April. ETH and BTC are highly co-related and ETH has been following BTC price action as expected. As of Wednesday morning, it seemed to have found support near the $1850 region, which is 56% off the ATH. ETH broke the 50-EMA support along with 3 other supports. Now it looks to be curling up on the 15-minute chart but it's worth nothing the daily candles are arranged in a confirmed downtrend since the ATH. It would be welcome news if ETH ranged for a days or weeks, after which, it could break out in either direction. If it breaks down, ETH may find support in the $2100 region or the 250EMA. It's worth noting the support level at 2018 high of $1592 as well. If ETH was to breakout, it would contend with bag holders at $2606, $2781, and $3450. Given the three black crows and today's long bodied red candle, there could be "bagholder" sell pressure at most levels above $2888. | | Augur is 100% global and has no limit on size. Bet on anything, anywhere, anytime. No restrictions. | |
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![Odds provided by BetMGM / Odds table via Vegas Insider [Updated Sunday, May 16, 10:30 AM ET]](https://multimedia.getresponse.com/getresponse-wPh1v/photos/65e9f481-304c-478e-af34-e6aa23a78e1a.png)
