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Bitcoin The Almighty Buck

Bitcoin Drops Almost 30 Percent To Under $5,800 (forbes.com) 99

Posted by BeauHD from the cause-and-effect dept.
Draconi writes: The price of Bitcoin dropped from it's March 6th, 2020 high of $9,126 to under $5,800 today as market sell-offs accelerated with the S&P and Dow Jones dropping 7% in early hours trading. Bitcoin, long considered to be a safe-haven during times of economic stress, currently costs at least $4,313 in electricity per coin to generate. The latest drop has wiped out all 2020 gains for Bitcoin and sent a ripple effect across other cryptocurrencies, with Ethereum down nearly 35%. While the bitcoin price has recovered slightly to around $6,000, the 24-hour low was $5,721 per bitcoin from just under $8,000 yesterday. Forbes notes that the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market as a whole "is now down a staggering $100 billion in the last seven days -- and has wiped out its year-to-date gains after starting the year at around $7,000 per bitcoin."

"Previously seen as a possible safe haven in difficult times, investors now seem to be selling out to take back liquidity in case the coronavirus spreads even further," said Simon Peters, analyst and crypto expert at multi-asset investment platform, eToro. Bitcoin's crash was also a result of oil cartel Opec's failure to agree to a supply cut last weekend, sending the oil price to historic lows.
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Bitcoin Drops Almost 30 Percent To Under $5,800 More

Bitcoin Drops Almost 30 Percent To Under $5,800

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  • HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Remember when buttcoiners were saying for years how BTC was just wiping the floor with USD, as if the tail was wagging the dog?

    • Re:HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH (Score:5, Informative)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Thursday March 12, 2020 @03:20PM (#59823388)

      long considered to be a safe-haven during times of economic stress

      "Long considered" because Bitcoin zealots kept asserting it was, nothing more. Bitcoin value is based on the same gambling-based system as the stock market, and so subject to the same ups and downs.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Mr307 ( 49185 )

        Was just going to comment similarly, what a joke "long considered", only by ignorant zealots maybe yep.

        The most charitible description of blockchain coins/tokens is unregulated gambling, but its probably better described as a greater fool pyramid scheme.

      • Elements of substance in your [arglebargle_xiv's] comment, but I think you are just feeding an AC troll trying to "claim" FP while poisoning the discussion... FP should be EARNED. (But Slashdot has SO many problems and no hope of fixing any of them.)

        Just read Life after Google , which, notwithstanding the title, was mostly about cryptocurrency with long sections on BitCoin and alternatives. NOT persuasive, but can anyone recommend some better books on the topic?

        Brief summary of why I remain unconvinced? Ac

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jythie ( 914043 )
          While there is nothing stopping people from creating an infinite number of cryptocurrencies, within ones like BTC there is a hard limit on how much BTC can ever be created. The supply is capped by the very math behind it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Ries ( 765608 )
            It's completely artificial and can be changed at a whim. If the big miners group together you can do shit about it.
        • Thatâ(TM)s how every currency ever used works though. The $100 bill in my wallet is just a piece of paper, for which you could (effectively) just make an infinite number of dividing their value down to zero. Some method of artificial scarcity needs to be found, and bitcoins approach is as valid as the security features built into the bill. Where bitcoin gets stupid is that you need a trusted source to manage that scarcity. Itâ(TM)s not that I trust the government, but at least we know who they ar
      • Bitcoin is based on hope and prayers; at least with most stocks, you're buying something based upon actual revenue, profits, and often dividends (payments back to you). Bitcoin is more akin to diamond and art speculation than the stock market - things that have no intrinsic values other than what people arbitrarily ascribe to them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Well no, the stock market is driven by numbers, sure the bullshit about the numbers, revenue, debt, profits, assets and liabilities but they are still used. For bitcoin the two assets are marketing and consumer gullibility (driven my the illusion of scarcity, create by bitcoin mining). A safehaven, that is so far from the truth, it needs to entire internet and global economy running super smooth so the marketing illusion that drives bit coin value can be kept alive with advertising. Bitcoin ain't gold, it's

      • Was coming to comment on the same, what a fucking joke. No one but bitcoin zealots have EVER considered it a safe-haven, betting even a lot of them wouldn't consider it safe either.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      Remember when buttcoiners were saying for years how BTC was just wiping the floor with USD, as if the tail was wagging the dog?

      BTC is still a commodity, not a currency. But even with today's crash, it's not all that volatile by the standard of commodities. It seems to have settled down a lot in recent years.

      I just wish there was a was to buy and sell BTC on a real exchange, but there are no American ETFs for BTC, and while there is a futures market it's "experimental", making it frustratingly difficult to find a broker (plus the futures contract is for 5 BTC, which is a hefty chunk of change).

      • Re:HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH (Score:5, Insightful)

        by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Thursday March 12, 2020 @04:05PM (#59823678) Homepage
        Except it is not a commodity. You can't eat it (ex corn), you can't make buildings with it (ex iron), make appliances with it(ex steel), look at it because its pretty(precious stones), drink it(water), ... the list goes on, but I don't see how you can define it as a commodity.
        • intangible. congratulations, you learned a new word today.
        • It's conceptual and then real business uses altcoins to do the heavy lifting if they even use a digital ledger at all. I don't know anybody using it for transactions for goods or services.

  • I'm too old to figure this out. Just someone advise me please!

    • Re:So time to buy or what? (Score:5, Informative)

      by lactose99 ( 71132 ) on Thursday March 12, 2020 @03:29PM (#59823444)

      Screw bitcoin, buy toilet paper!

    • Re:So time to buy or what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Thursday March 12, 2020 @03:43PM (#59823516)

      Don't buy shares in a Ponzi scheme is about the best advice I can give you.

    • Likely buy but I am not your financial advisor - every time I think surely sense will hit everyone with a huge loss there's been huge gains. I'm not greedy though and only gamble with crypto change left over from server rentals. I'd like to say never take that risk on bullshit number magic that could just go to shit in minutes but I've been wrong so far. At a guess you may gain more by waiting it out a bit yet, currently cheaper by 5% per hour.

    • There's a lot os seeming paradoxes in the market. Stocks that did the well last week? Cruise ships and Walmart. Stocks that did poorly: gilead bioscience (maker of Corona virus therapeutics).

      Also going down this week: Gold futures.

      All these have simple though perhaps quatitatively hard to predict explanations. Short sellers were buying curise ship stock to cover their put contracts so the price went up for a while. Walmart fell just a bit oday finally. You'd think that for a place that sells a lot c

      • I think much of the market balloon was people on margin with interest rates so low. That worked ok as long as stocks went up or stayed level. With a fast downward trend, investment houses are going to start selling your securities as they wish to meet margin requirements, tanking it even more. It will continue to deflate until real(not borrowed) money comes in to support it.
        • Great story however, margin is limited in the US to 2:1 on stocks except for intraday which can be 4:1.

      • Well, maybe people are selling gold in anticipation of discounted stock prices...

      • The stock market and gold etc can go up and down on a single day but you need to understand the market a bit. It shoots up then tanks and goes down even just for a little while so that it can resume going up. You can call it getting used to the new price. Bitcoin is partly the same but when people are worried about the end of the free world they don't want to own bitcoins or gold futures. Maybe physical gold and guns and ammo. If people are not flocking to stock up on guns and ammo then not too much to worr

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rgmoore ( 133276 )

      The best advice I've ever heard: if you don't know enough to make your own decision, don't put your money there. You're much better off putting your money into something comprehensible, like an index fund. Leave the inscrutable financial instruments for suckers who are willing to be fleeced.

  • Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Thursday March 12, 2020 @03:15PM (#59823364) Journal

    So if Bitcoin is not decoupled from things like the stock market and price of oil, and if microtransactions are slow and expensive, and the spending of Bitcoin is more traceable than cash or even credit card, then what is the point?

    • then what is the point?

      Distributed, no central authority.

      There's no such thing as a "Bitcoin, Inc" company deciding which transaction are authorized or wich account is frozen (as opposed to Visa and MasterCard deciding to block any donation to WikiLeaks - back when the whole cryptocoin craze started).
      It's basically the same a giving hard cash to somebody else: nobody else can decide if you are allowed to do the transaction.

      • Re:Decentralized (Score:4, Informative)

        by Ries ( 765608 ) on Thursday March 12, 2020 @04:56PM (#59823920)
        Except they did, they removed 184M bitcoin from block 74638.

      • But Bitcoin has become increasingly centralised. A majority of hashing power is in the hands of a few Chinese mining pools and a handful of whales control the supply and manipulate the market. It has ended up as the antethisis of what bitcoin zealots have been espousing.

    • Re:Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Thursday March 12, 2020 @03:22PM (#59823408)
      To buy your way out of ransomware infections. The Russians only take BTC for that.
    • Traceable but that needn't mean as identifiable as say a credit card. It's only when trying to cash out or otherwise connect your wallets with a real entity that it's really an issue. A large pool of wallets set for specific users is a robust part of opsec, requiring an interfering party to infer information a different way to gather the addresses to track, block etc. No one need know it's you or what you're up to, they just know that a transaction happened

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      People hoping they will be the next generation of bankers?

    • The point is for to do crimes with.

  • ...COVID-19 is going to result in less illegal narcotics transactions, not more?

    • Story is humming around of increased domestic checks, particularly in places where so far they've never been known to check. Quite possibly lack of flight passengers has left some k9 units at a loose end

  • I suspect, like the stock market it'll drop at least another 10%. At which point it could make sense to buy them.
    Last time they crashed I also got a bunch since they were on sale. Went back up.
    Eventually stocks will also go back up, so it's an easy 20% gain. Like with any investment, just don't spend more than you are prepared to lose.

    • How are stocks going to go back up when profitability has been on a downward trend since the 1600s?

      • How are stocks going to go back up when profitability has been on a downward trend since the 1600s?

        It depends on how you define profitability. Companies are much better now at hiding profits, moving profits to holding companies, etc.

        One way to solve this would be to reset all tax and reporting laws to a fixed tax rate with no loopholes and huge penalties for anyone who hides profits. It's never going to happen, but it would be the only way to get true visibility.

        • Global profitability of all enterprise. It was like 46% then. It's been decreasing steadily since and is now around 11%.

  • Long Considered? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Thursday March 12, 2020 @03:19PM (#59823384)
    By whom? The dumbass bitcoin cheerleaders?

  • Who gives a flying fuck? The real story here is that worldwide economic markets are currently plummeting due to both coronavirus fears plus oil market manipulation, with fears this could herald a new global recession. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are just along for the ride, like everything else.

    Haven't we agreed that Slashdot doesn't have to necessarily find some tenuous tech link to cover stories under the header of "stuff that matters"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )

      plus oil market manipulation

      Actually, whats happening in the oil market is actually a lack

  • Margin call, gentleman (Score:4, Informative)

    by istartedi ( 132515 ) on Thursday March 12, 2020 @03:24PM (#59823420) Journal

    Sell everything that isn't nailed down. Seize all assets of Randolph and Mortimer Duke. [youtube.com]

  • Just a month ago, the world economy was slippping steadily into inflation as the pace of trade exceeded the supply of new money in national fiats. In such an environment, Bitcoin tends to go up because its money supply is almost constant (hardly any new mining) and in an inflationary economy, investors bid up the price of any assets they see as not increasing in supply. In normal times, inflation causes central banks to increase interest rates to damp down the excess. This eventually leads to a cyclic reces

  • Courtesy https://www.trinsicoin.com [trinsicoin.com]

    Doesn't include infrastructure costs; just a value based on average global industrial electricity costs + Proof of Work mining rig efficiency.

  • You can't ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Thursday March 12, 2020 @03:42PM (#59823510)

    ... wipe your ass with Bitcoin.

  • A lot of what has been driving the price of bitcoin has been its use as a transaction medium, so a wide-spread economic slowdown was bound to cause a drop.

  • long considered to be a safe-haven during times of economic stress

    This is not a time of economic stress aka Inflation / loss of value in the national currencies; Not YET; this is a time of investor/asset holder turmoil in the capital markets and Deflation where the fiat currencies have gone up in value.

    So of course the cryptocurrency markets will be affected short term similar to the equities markets -- the crypto markets are part of the capital markets.

    Right now is not the time of the actual tur

    • gold lose value in that scenario? I think not, that's historically inaccurate to say. The physical stuff will be sought as safe haven.

      Nope, I don't have any, so don't anyone start chanting "gold bug."

  • I have to laugh when I see the relentless whiplash that Bitcoin puts its user through.

    When you buy Bitcoin it should come with a free neck brace and a bottle of aspirin.

  • The latest drop has wiped out all 2020 gains for Bitcoin and sent a ripple effect across other cryptocurrencies, with Ethereum down nearly 35%.

    Most, but not all other cryptocurrencies. One Dogecoin is still worth one Dogecoin!

  • beanie babies (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Thursday March 12, 2020 @05:16PM (#59823988)

    *coin holds value as well as any other collectible, like beanie babies. Just need to find the *right* collector to get the best price.

  • The market value is rapidly approaching the electricity cost to create coins (https://www.trinsicoin.com) $4,313

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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