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The Almighty Buck Bitcoin Stats

Cryptocurrency Markets Lost $18 Billion Overnight (yahoo.com) 99

An anonymous reader quotes CryptoCoinsNews: Over the past 24 hours, the crypto market has recorded a loss of $18 billion, as major cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ether, EOS, and Bitcoin Cash dropped by 4 to 13 percent. While Bitcoin ended the day with a 4 percent decline in its value, Ether, the native cryptocurrency of Ethereum, plummeted by 13 percent against the US dollar, becoming one of the worst performing major cryptocurrencies alongside NEO. Tokens recorded the steepest drop in their value on August 11, as most Ethereum-based tokens such as Theta Token, Aion, Pundi X, Aelf, DigixDAO, WanChain, and VeChain recorded a drop of around 14 to 18 percent

For the first time in 2018, Bitcoin, the most dominant cryptocurrency in the global market, has obtained 50 percent of the market share, securing its year-to-date (YTD) high on the dominance index. The sudden increase in the dominance index of Bitcoin which coincided with the spike in the volume of Tether have demonstrated that investors have become reluctant towards taking high-risk and high-return trades, mostly due to the lack of confidence in the short-term trend of the market. Over the past few weeks, tokens have lost over 50 percent of their value against Bitcoin, which has also fallen by more than 20 percent since late July.

"During this 13-day stretch, the total market cap for all cryptocurrencies has fallen $70 billion," reports MarketPlace, in an article headlined "Bitcoin looks 'very sick' and the pain is not over, says analyst."
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Cryptocurrency Markets Lost $18 Billion Overnight

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 11, 2018 @04:40PM (#57108744)
    Using the money I got from shorting TSLA.
  • So? (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How much have fiat money market losts? WAY MORE. This is a good thing for the Cryptocurreny, because it is much more stable than FIAT currency that fluctuates and this emphasizes how much better an investment cryptocurrency is. I know I'll be buying more and more every day because I make A LOT of tax free money already. Guaranteed.

    • Re:So? (Score:5, Funny)

      by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Saturday August 11, 2018 @04:54PM (#57108798) Journal

      How much have fiat money market losts? WAY MORE. This is a good thing for the Cryptocurreny

      What the fuck are you talking about?

      I know I'll be buying more and more every day because I make A LOT of tax free money already. Guaranteed.

      reader poll: Is he joking? Serious? Are there really such people?

      • He's making money by buying heavily into a "stable currency" that "doesn't fluctuate". Sounds like a great plan.
        By the way, BTC is up 3.5% or so again since yesterday's drop. If you really want a good laugh, head over to TradingView [tradingview.com] and check the technical analysis comments.
        • by raind ( 174356 )
          "BITCOIN EN ROUTE TO TRANSFORMING WOLRD ECONOMY - CryptoManiac10"

          First glance from your link doesn't give me a good feeling. LOL
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • Worth mentioning that there is another alternative scenario: bitcoin joins gold as the defacto inflation fear investment. If that happens, demand for bitcoin will increase quite a bit, just as gold prices stay far above what the metal is actually worth.
        • by plopez ( 54068 )

          On Wall Street this is sometimes referred to as the "Dead Cat Bounce".

      • Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Saturday August 11, 2018 @05:00PM (#57108828)

        reader poll: Is he joking? Serious? Are there really such people?

        Yes. The technical term for them is fools; they are very important part of a well functioning market as they provide a steady stream of money for the taking.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Is he joking?

        Yes, the term used to describe it is sarcasm, and if you can't see that then frankly speaking you have no business attempting to engage other humans, either online or in person.

    • How is it tax free? Dont know where you live, but in the US profits from trading currencies are still taxable. If it is in a tax free account then the fact that it is crypo is irrelevant. If not in the US I am curriuous town know the differences in how investments are taxed.
      • by EvilSS ( 557649 )

        How is it tax free? Dont know where you live, but in the US profits from trading currencies are still taxable. If it is in a tax free account then the fact that it is crypo is irrelevant. If not in the US I am curriuous town know the differences in how investments are taxed.

        They think that they are clever and can avoid the IRS taking notice. And what the IRS doesn't know won't hurt them, right? Which might be true if they are truly careful. Sure, few of them actually are, they think they are but it only takes one screw up.

        Oh, and never, ever, actually spend any of it in any real amount. But hey, they can enjoy their fortunes that they can never actually spend on anything meaningful.

    • Rated "troll" but I thought is was funny!

      Good satire!

      • Sadly. I think he was serious. It's almost a version of Dunning-Kruger, where being able to debug Grandma's computer problems convinces nerds that they are someone supremely gifted and smarter than everyone else in other areas.

        Then you see something like Bitcoin, and it's perfectly clear that the obvious avenues for manipulation weren't even envisioned up front, some of them at least hundreds and maybe thousands of years old. And then they are shocked that someone invoked them.

  • Excellent (Score:5, Funny)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Saturday August 11, 2018 @04:46PM (#57108760)
    Excellent, I'm in the market for a good video card.
  • Slow painful death (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Because their adepts refuse to accept that bitcoins and other coins like it, were a bubble that's slowly deflating and only the ones who got in early made any sort of money worth talking about. Also the ones who are doing "pump and dump", who btw are responsible for raising the price so high in the first place.

    • You could drop more than 50% of Bitcoin's current value and it would still be up nearly 100% from a year ago.

      This is only a popped bubble, just like a few years ago when it went above USD$1000. Back then, people kept saying Bitcoin was dead, too.

      • by NicknameUnavailable ( 4134147 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @02:20PM (#57112588)

        Except Bitcoin has unmitigated issues in the near-term. We're looking at 6 years at most until quantum computers can run Shor's Algorithm. At that point the signature schemes used in Bitcoin are dead. Before that happens (by a few years, at a minimum, to ensure the blockchain is irrevocably altered) everyone needs to convert to post-quantum protocols on a wallet-by-wallet basis (as in, initiated by every single Bitcoin holder individually.) The issue there is that smallest secure post-quantum protocols have signatures on the order of 30KB per transaction. That means a blockchain on the order high-TB to low-PB growth annually. That means mass centralization (at best) because there's no way every user (or even most non-exchanges) can afford that within the next decade given anticipated hardware developments.

        TL;DR: Bitcoin is already dead due to hardware constraints, it exists purely as a pump and dump campagin: the same applies to all cryptocurrencies.

    • Cryptocurrencies aren't one monolithic bubble that gets popped and disappears. BTC has a ten year history with many popped bubbles. The crypto market is a frothy uprising of popped bubbles, but the popped bubbles don't stop the froth from rising.

      So, who cares if the bubble popped? I'm in for the next bubble.

      • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        The real problem with cryto will be, the concentration of criminals as the pool dries out, https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com], starving piranha, without others to feed on and they will turn on each other, quite viciously. They will jump from all sorts of fraud and computer crimes to more direct actions, holders of large value user names and passwords had better be careful, travel would likely become extremely risky. Which is of itself quite dangerous but in the end will force actions to ban the currencies an

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Nt

    • Fiat also has no value, as opposed to minerals, water, energy, food, etc.

      • Fiat also has no value, as opposed to minerals, water, energy, food, etc.

        Something only has value if somebdy else is willing to trade something else for it. Scarcity does not create value, gold is quite plentiful and copies of Ellison's Glass Teat are not, yet people value gold far more than Ellison’s excellent collection of essays.

        • by mentil ( 1748130 )

          Aside from inherent value, of course. The frontiersman who lives alone and hunts, gathers water, and maintains his shelter to survive would agree that food, water, and shelter have value.

      • Fiat also has no value,

        True. Sergio's been trying to find a partner for years and no one's biting.

      • Fiat also has no value, as opposed to minerals, water, energy, food, etc.

        Oh, I don't know. I heard they're bringing out a rebadged version of the Fiat 500.

  • Who Cares (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    We are in it for the technology!

  • Manipulation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Saturday August 11, 2018 @05:37PM (#57108952)

    Bitcoin prices increase = it's a bubble
    Bitcoin prices decrease = it's collapsing
    Bitcoin prices are stable = it's a dead market

    • Well, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. - Bart Simpson

    • by Ramze ( 640788 )

      Actually, if prices remained fairly stable, it would be a currency.

      That's what it was designed to be. These booms and busts are what prevent it from being taken seriously by all the major players in the financial sector.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday August 11, 2018 @08:59PM (#57109612)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • The value of BTC, like that of any fiat currency, is based on the trust placed in it to have future value, which itself is based on trust. The price fluctuates wildly because, like you say, there's no underlying asset to assess fair value or to provide price stickiness. It fluctuates by the mental whim of those placing value in it, which is imprecise and fickle. But that doesn't mean it's all a gamble. Many phenomena are chaotic and it's impossibne to say anything precise about the phenomena in the immediat

    • TL;DR: Bitcoin is not an appropriate means of payment, it is gambling not investment, it is not entirely anonymous and the level of anonymity seems to have a net negative impact on society, and it is an environmental disaster. The sooner we get rid of it, the better.

      Bitcoin has been fluctuating violently and unpredictably (for those not manipulating the market) for years, which proves that for the last few years, Bitcoin has been completely useless as a means of payment - and makes me believe it will contin

  • by Qbertino ( 265505 ) <moiraNO@SPAMmodparlor.com> on Saturday August 11, 2018 @05:51PM (#57108994)

    I see problems with long-term feasiblity. Power consumption is through the roof, as is ineffciency in validation/resolution.

    Digital currency is a very, very good idea, but a massive simple one-dimensional set of tokens managed by a single trusted service is way more likely to offer real-world advantage over bitcoin and Co. I believe digital currency will take off when we get one that doesn't require obscene amounts of processing power to handle and transfer via transactions. When you can have an app on your cheap-ass asian semi-feature-phone and transfer 50 cents with a push of a button and the guy selling you his fruit can see if on his phone in 3 seconds. This isn't going to happen at a global scale with any of the current cryptocurrencies. Hence their real-world usefulness is notably limited and thus they won't succeed as currency IMHO.

    • Problems for power consumption of proof-of-work coins, yes.

      Reddcoin, for example, does not have that problem.

    • You do realize that most U.S dollars are just bits in computer systems recorded in financial institutions databases. Essentially digital currency
  • by GovCheese ( 1062648 ) on Saturday August 11, 2018 @05:56PM (#57109016)
    It's always a fascinating story when connected communities come up with an idea, especially when "connectedness" might provide an opportunity for transforming wishful thinking into currency, or anything else. But goddamn I'm impressed by work they've put into it and the energy of their unusual convictions.
    • and the energy of their unusual convictions.

      The same amount of energy as the country of Austria to prop up a market that in no way can achieve the goals of a functional currenty all the while the world is already buckling under the weight of man-kind's energy use.

      If I ever meet Satoshi Nakamoto I will punch him in the face and then feed him to an endangered Orca.

      I'm all for community ideas. But this is one that will likely have the biggest negative impact of any community project every, except if you were one of the few at the very top of the pyramid

  • You fools! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Saturday August 11, 2018 @06:15PM (#57109062)

    Meanwhile, everyone who has Dogecoins can still rely on the one and only 100% reliable 1:1 trade ratio of Dogecoin-to-Dogecoin.

  • that's all.
  • by jdoeii ( 468503 ) on Sunday August 12, 2018 @01:01AM (#57110078)

    Blockchain exists for ~10 years and still there are no mainstream use cases where it replaced the incumbent tech, other than illegal activity. There is a fundamental reason for that.

    BCh offers a single unique feature: distributed trusted transaction (DTT). DTT competes with a centralized transaction == transaction with a trusted third party (T3P). DTT is by definition distributed and as such is *always* more expensive than a T3P all other things being equal: reaching consensus with multiple parties is harder than with a single party. In order for DTT to be competitive with the old tech T3P, the distributed nature of DTT must offer some advantage for people to be willing to pay the required premium. So far the only use case where people or willing to pay this premium is circumvention of regulation, when the trusted third party does not exist. This brings us to this list of use cases:

    1. Circumvention of regulation.
    This is the only meaningful use of DTT.
    China has capital flow controls which effectively bar companies and individuals from moving money out of China. To get around these regulations people buy video cards and electricity in China for CNY, mine cryptocoins, sell them in the States for USD. That's the largest market right now, much bigger than buying drugs on the likes of Silk Road. This use case also includes ICOs and other pump and dump schemes.

    2. Selling picks and shovels.
    Derivative of (1). If 1 goes away, 2 will go away too.
    https://finance.yahoo.com/quot... [yahoo.com]

    3. Marketing & FMO
    Add blockchain to the company name and see your valuation pop.
    "We must work on blockchain because it's the future".
    All kinds of blockchain projects in banks, etc which are going mainstream "any time now". All of them can be done easier/cheaper/more reliably with a T3P, no exceptions.

    • You forgot two major demand drivers in your account that are the important one.
      a. A method of imbuing a currency with trust. If you live in a country with an economy in free-fall and hyper-inflation, you can earn $1000 this month, only to see what you earned become worth $750 the next because your government is over-printing. Often such a government also places legal prohibition on forex trading, and your options boil down to watching your wealth vanish, getting mauled on rates on the black market or move y

      • by jdoeii ( 468503 )

        a. Categories 1 (circumvent government restriction on circulation of fiat foreign currency) and 3 (use US dollars instead).
        b. You are not describing a use case. You are describing a feature. Describe a use case and it will fall into one of the 3 categories.

        Did I ever say bitcoin?

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