$200 Billion Wiped Off Cryptocurrency Market In 24 Hours As Bitcoin Pulls Back (cnbc.com) 144
Bitcoin and other digital coins tanked on Monday, wiping some $200 billion off the cryptocurrency market. CNBC reports: The market capitalization or value of the cryptocurrency market was $880 billion at 9:20 a.m. ET, down from $1.08 trillion a day earlier, according to Coinmarketcap. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, fell over 12% from a day earlier to $32,576, according to Coin Metrics data. It earlier sank to an intraday low of $30,863. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, was down 23% to $1,005. It briefly tumbled below $1,000, hitting an intraday low of $945. The sell-off in cryptocurrencies comes after a huge rally and perhaps signals some profit-taking from investors. Bitcoin is still up over 300% in the last 12 months and last week hit an all-time high just below $42,000.
Jehan Chu, founder of cryptocurrency-focused venture capital and trading firm Kenetic Capital, said the pullback in bitcoin could be a buying opportunity for new investors. "This short term correction is both natural and needed, and is a great entry point for long-term investors as we quickly reach $50k this quarter and $100k by year's end," Chu told CNBC. Last week, Social Capital's Chamath Palihapitiya said bitcoin could go above six digits. "It's probably going to $100,000, then $150,000, then $200,000," Palihapitiya told CNBC's Halftime Report. "In what period? I don't know. [Maybe] five or 10 years, but it's going there."
Jehan Chu, founder of cryptocurrency-focused venture capital and trading firm Kenetic Capital, said the pullback in bitcoin could be a buying opportunity for new investors. "This short term correction is both natural and needed, and is a great entry point for long-term investors as we quickly reach $50k this quarter and $100k by year's end," Chu told CNBC. Last week, Social Capital's Chamath Palihapitiya said bitcoin could go above six digits. "It's probably going to $100,000, then $150,000, then $200,000," Palihapitiya told CNBC's Halftime Report. "In what period? I don't know. [Maybe] five or 10 years, but it's going there."
Old news (Score:2)
It is already bouncing back up.
The more likely reason is people realizing their profits.
Re: Old news (Score:2)
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Wiped out? No. Changed hands. As usual the people who panic'd and sold lost money.
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Not necessarily. If I bought Bitcoin at $10 and panicked and sold at $30,000 I've made money, even though it was at $40k at some point fairly recently.
Re:Legitimate request (Score:5, Informative)
High Speed Trading was designed to rob the Retail investor.
https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0113/has-high-frequency-trading-ruined-the-stock-market-for-the-rest-of-us.aspx
"According to The New York Times, a top government economist found that HFT firms are taking significant profits from what they call traditional investors, or those who are not using computer algorithms.
Studying the S&P 500 e-mini contracts, researchers found that high-frequency traders made an average profit of $1.92 for every contract traded with large institutional investors and an average of $3.49 when they traded with retail investors. This allowed the most aggressive high-speed trader to make an average daily profit of $45,267 according to the 2010 data. The paper concluded that these profits were at the expense of other traders and this may cause traders to leave the futures market."
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They make profits from other frequent traders. If you bought Tesla at $10 and sell at $800, HFTers are not going to take most of you profits. If you were hoping to buy at 799 and sell at 800, then HFTers might make your life harder.
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"If you bought Tesla at $10 and sell at $800, HFTers are not going to take most of you profits."
They are in the sense that they eat momentum from the rise of the stock which without HF traders might have gone to $1500 in the same period.
Re:Old news (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Old news (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, I love not knowing how much I have saved from day to day.
If you're invested in the stock market, why is that really any different?
A lot of people around the world literally woke up to the news of $150 - 200 billion evaporating from a market. Wouldn't be the first time investors have woken up to news like that, and that's happened long before cryptocurrency came along.
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If you're invested in the stock market, why is that really any different?
No, it's not. And the stock market does not pretend to be a currency replacement like cryptocurrencies do. It's rich coming from people criticizing the government for "printing money" when the stock market and cryptocurrency market literally creates money out of thin air. Cryptocurrency is worse because not only can you "print money", you can "print currency". If governments "print money", then what does that make cryptocurrency which outnumbers all national governments on Earth?
Re:Old news (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're invested in the stock market, why is that really any different?
No, it's not. And the stock market does not pretend to be a currency replacement like cryptocurrencies do. It's rich coming from people criticizing the government for "printing money" when the stock market and cryptocurrency market literally creates money out of thin air. Cryptocurrency is worse because not only can you "print money", you can "print currency". If governments "print money", then what does that make cryptocurrency which outnumbers all national governments on Earth?
It makes it just like the 21st Century stock market. Yet another investment vehicle that is completely unhinged from financial reality. We live in a world that puts value on Clicks and Likes now, so let's stop pretending nonsensical bullshit investments don't go well beyond cryptocoin. Multi-billion dollar IPOs for companies that brag about zero revenue. That is the stupidity of today. BTC bullshit "value" is no different.
It's not a "currency" until the common man running the gas station or grocery store takes it. Until then, it's an investment vehicle that a mere fraction of the world is invested in.
Yeah, governments print money. Governments also weild the power of an entire government to convince a planet it still holds value beyond the paper it's printed on.
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Re: Old news (Score:2)
Little nitpick: the stock market doesn't create money out of thin air, that is beholden to governments and banks. The press just typically dramatises what goes on and when a stock drops, they count the delta of market valuation as a loss of money. Regarding crypto currencies, they are selling illusions at increasingly large prices, no money i
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The whole idea behind the "difficulty" built into crypto generation is that you CAN'T just "print it".
Yes you can. You just create a brand new crypto currency. Did you not read what I wrote? There are more cryptocurrencies than there are COUNTRIES. People are literally creating the financial equivalent of a country every other week. How is that not printing money? You simply create yet another cryptocurrency and voila, you've got another trillion dollar economy.
And you want everyone do buy into that system to replace money that doesn't do that?
If I sold something to an American for 1$ somewhere in March last year, and I wanted to buy something for it here in Europe today, I would notice that I'd get about 11% less goods/services for it than I expected.
And you'd be guaranteed that rate remains stable for months.
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Creating yet another shitcoin is the easy part. Anybody can clone the Bitcoin repo, change a few values here and there, and begin mining. The hard part is getting people to use it. Unless you bring something new to the table, all you'll have is yet another shitcoin among the thousands that already exist and are worth pretty much nothing.
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If you're invested in the stock market, why is that really any different?
Because it's investing and not gambling. You don't pick stocks at random. You pick them based on your knowledge of the company and the industry. On the other hand bitcoin isn't valued on any underpinning principles. It's not tied to a business activity, it's not tied to a resource, hell not even tied to a country's economy. The price is entirely determined by random expenses by others also gambling with it.
Stocks are valued based on business activities and economies. Bitcoin is valued by hopes and dreams. T
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If you're invested in the stock market, why is that really any different?
Because it's investing and not gambling. You don't pick stocks at random. You pick them based on your knowledge of the company and the industry. On the other hand bitcoin isn't valued on any underpinning principles. It's not tied to a business activity, it's not tied to a resource, hell not even tied to a country's economy. The price is entirely determined by random expenses by others also gambling with it.
Stocks are valued based on business activities and economies. Bitcoin is valued by hopes and dreams. That's the difference.
You are speaking of the 20th Century stock market. Today we "value" mutli-billion dollar hype and click entities that practically brag about having zero profits and massive losses, and yet are still somehow "worth" billions. Aligning stock value with good finances and accounting, is become rare these days. There isn't much that makes sense when you look at the massively overhyped value of tech stocks. Given the fact that entire markets can and have crashed, the stock market is far more a gamble than you
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Yes, I love going to my local shopping center and not knowing how much things costs day by day. And I certainly love buying into a system where I'm automatically at a disadvantage.
And where you might wake up any morning to find your wallet and entire bank account just vanished overnight, and you have no way of tracing the crime.
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This is what the Fed is doing with the stimuli (QE...). The value of your bank account is diluted with the new money created, and the new dollars are given to someone else.
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Yes! This is exactly the type of place bitcoin was made for. You no longer have to trust your bank/government/dictator, you can put your trust behind math and code.
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why would that vanish?
From last year.
https://selfkey.org/list-of-cr... [selfkey.org]
Here we provide an updated list of all major cryptocurrency exchange hacks.
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And where you might wake up any morning to find your wallet and entire bank account just vanished overnight, and you have no way of tracing the crime.
That could also happen if I kept my valuables in a safety deposit box. The bank could get robbed and I could lose everything.
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Ding ding ding
There are still undoubtedly some early holders who have hung on to their coin. When these peaks come they undoubtedly take the opportunity to cash in some of their coin. Luckily the world is converging and bitcoin becoming more and more liquid so they soon won't have to convert to fiat during peaks but can rather just spend.
Re: Old news (Score:2)
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Yup. The dynamic changes a bit with a currency doing the job though. Nobody 'sells' when they spend but the invisible pressure their unrealized profit exerts on the market disappears just the same. The more this replaces speculation the smoother the deflation curve will become for BTC. As is it, these periodic drops are a good thing for anything holding BTC since they lower the potential an epic crash is coming.
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This really is a religion, isn't it?
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Actually that was just how speculative markets work but arguably they and currencies of all kind are actually religions... they are entirely built on faith. If I buy your lawn mower for $300 you accept the money because you have faith it will be worth as much as the lawn mower tomorrow and so do I. Of course the mower might blow up tomorrow or you might not know what you have and the market might crash tomorrow or there might be a regime change making all the old currency worthless. Without faith it is just
But Saint Elon! (Score:2)
Do fake and imaginary profits really count? The answer may surprise you. It's "Yes, but only if you're timing is lucky. No smarts involved."
Disappointed the story has no reference to the rapidly changing fortunes of Saint Elon, but I think he actually is too smart to pay a lot of attention. My take is that it shows how bogus and inflated the share prices have become. (And I'm confident that's he's cashed out some millions is safe assets. NOT Bitcoins, unless he wants to gamble a bit on the side.)
pump and dump (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin is the ultimate pump and dump currency.
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Nonsense. It's the preferred currency of Crime(TM) around the world. Criminals of all stripes love Bitcoin; that provides some real backing.
Re:pump and dump (Score:4, Interesting)
Small time criminals, maybe. The big boys already have private banking accounts at Citicorp and Credit Suisse/First Boston and shell companies in Panama, the Bahamas and Lichtenstein, and personal trading accounts with Goldman Sachs. It's not like in the movies, money laundering is big business. Over a Trillion dollars is laundered through the US banking system (we're the world's biggest money laundry), charges average 10-15%. In case you're bad at math that's $100-$150 billion dollars in annual revenue for pretty much completely automated trades, just in the Untied States.. This is one of the reasons why the world doesn't have a sane drug policy, there's way too much money in the status quo.
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> You're aware that the public auditablity of the blockchain makes Bitcoin the WORST tool for criminal behaviour, right?
Well, in spite of that:
"Criminals are becoming more sophisticated in their use of cryptocurrencies to launder money, with hundreds of millions of dollars of dirty funds last year flowing through digital wallets" ( https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com] )
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Well, in spite of that...
There are almost always multiple statements supporting one's cognitive bias, sometimes even in the same article if the author is hedging, like here:
While the total volume of illicit activity in crypto assets has grown in absolute terms over the years, it accounts for less than 1% of all digital transactions, down from 35% in 2012, according to Elliptic.
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But the fact that legal use has grown, is not evidence that illegal use has dropped. It just shows that the DISTRIBUTION between legal and illegal has changed.
Admittedly, after the invention of blockchain audits, it is easier for police to trace if currency came from an illicit transaction (given they know of one, like say a ransom). That doesn't mean that ALL cryptocurrency is as easily readable as bitcoin.
AND, that doesn't mean that the recipients hasn't found some way to launder their bitcoin anyway. Onl
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When was the last time you heard of, say, ransomware gangs using anything other than cryptocurrency to demand payments in?
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It was a serious question. Apparently you don't want to answer it.
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In terms of a percentage of total transactions (ratio of cryptocurrency to non-cryptocurrency purchases), your examples are disproportionally represented by cryptocurrencies compared to legal activities. And when said things are done over the internet (for example, dark net drug purchases), they're usually paid for in cryptocurrencies. By contrast, a barely-greater-than-zero percentage of legal transactions are ever paid for in cryptocurrencies.
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And steal gold's job? But despite all the conventional wisdom, gold pretty much goes up and down for no discernible reason, just like bitcoin.
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The value of gold is way, way higher than its utility value, even its decorative value. Just like Bitcoin's value is way, way higher than its curiosity value.
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Precious metals aren't really changing in value, though at least not by much. It's fiat currencies that are more or less valuable in relation to them. In the '60s, you could've bought a gallon of gas for about a quarter, give or take. Until 1965, that quarter contained .18375 troy oz. of silver. Today, that amount of silver is worth $4.73, which will buy well over a gallon of gas most places (maybe even two gallons in some parts of the country)
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No... the value of gold does some crazy stuff.
https://www.rmegold.com/blog/g... [rmegold.com]
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Yup. But the little people can still make lots of money in a pump and dump. Of course the majority by definition won't, but some will, and everyone thinks they can 'beat the market'.
I still remember when the only way to 'get ahead' was to save hard and work on increasing your earnings. That was barely 15 years ago. Just crazy where we are now.
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If you're watching the graphs and noting what people are offering as buy and sell prices, you can get a sense of what's going to happen over the next few minutes and hours. I'm just "little people" but last night I could feel the BTC/ETC wave was cresting and I bailed. This morning I could feel the dip was bottoming out and I got back in. So far so good.
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Over the weekend, I decided to pay off my mortgage, and I used some of my BTC stash to do it. I had been watching the steady uptick in value since December, but held off until it had topped $40k (twice its previous all-time high). Coinbase tells me my trade last Friday was at about $40750. I used less than half of my holdings, so it's back on the uphill climb for the next record. :)
As a bonus, the four-GPU mining rig I built three years ago is profitable to operate again. I might even add more, as GeFo
pump and dump yes currency no (Score:2)
Bitcoin is the ultimate pump and dump currency useless commodity for sucker to lose money in.
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It probably is. In fact, I think what's happening is that the drops happen because someone cashed in a few Bitcoins.
It's likely a thinly traded thing, so you can cause big swings in the market by moving very little bitcoin around. If you have a few bitcoins, you likely can't sell them all without the market making huge moves - you probably have to sell them in tiny bits an pieces because there's not enough market liquidity.
erratic price = normal (Score:2)
They throw about figures like 15% in a day here and $50 thousand in a few months there as if these massive swings are just totally normal. Sane people are staying away until some actual normality comes into play. But then, maybe some people just enjoy riding rollercoasters.. As long as it's their own money and not some gullible wannabe investor's.
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It has been a relatively consistent roller coaster for better than a decade.
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Yup, but over the longer term there is an undeniable upward growth. Demand and usage only continues to grow so I doubt it is going to change anytime soon.
https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/price/
HODL (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: HODL (Score:1)
Re: HODL (Score:2)
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False, you can spend the BTC. I've never put money down on BTC speculation. I've used it as a transaction currency (both for accepting and making payment) and mined for relatively immediate profits.
I actually began my first use of BTC in the office where one guy would pay for lunch and the other repay in crypto since nobody carried cash.
Re: HODL (Score:2)
Question: What happens when you deposit $50 in the morning and it becomes $40 by lunchtime? Someone doesn't get a beer, that's what. Who's all smart and clever (and thirsty and needs something to wash down the last oyster) at that point?
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Does the price of my lunch in Euros change when the market changes? Nope. The only time that matters is if I'm converting Euros to dollars and vice versa. What is the rush, by the time I actually spend that lunch money I'll be able to buy lunch and still have $50... wait a couple months and I can buy the $50 lunch again and still have $50... etc.
Who pays? Suckers like you who think the dollars are worth more.
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At that point it was essentially nothing to transact and took about 20min... which was more than fast enough for its purpose. Payment cleared and settled in under an hour is faster than pretty much anything but cash and you have to have the right change, have to account for cash, have to manage to get to someone physically, etc.
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If you were dropping only 5% of your income into it every paycheck you'd have made a shit ton of money by now.
Today, sure. What about tomorrow?
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80% of a shit ton of money?
First the pump... (Score:2)
...then the dump.
You are confused (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you found them, then since the supply of idiots is finite, the value would drop because you wouldn't find that many idiots again.
In other news... (Score:1)
A few whales gather for caviar and Cristal as they take profits from the ponzi scheme....laughing all the way to the bank where they store their "fiat currency". You know...that stuff that 99.99% of the world uses for actual commerce.
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Definitely looks like a Ponzi scheme. I've been getting a huge amount of spam in the last few weeks telling me to buy XBT before it's too late, and how it might go. It struck me as a sign of desparation towards the end of the Ponzi scheme cycle before it collapses again. The quote from TFA is more in that vein:
it's peanuts (Score:5, Insightful)
compared to $1.5 trillion in federal student loan debt.
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And?
This is what selfishness projecting looks like.
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Au contraire mon frère, my PhD in underwater basket weaving didn't come from an accredited university.
More seriously, I'm looking for an online university to get my Baccalaureate in Divinity. Ideally in a non-Christian theology, but any will do because they're all the same.
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On the other hand, the average age for a new car buyer is now 53. Young people aren't buying new cars. All that college debt might have something to do with it.
Market cap for cryptos (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Bitcoin matters - Altcoins are irrelevant (Score:4, Informative)
Gold has real value and real uses. It can be used even in a total economic collapse and has properties that make it very useful in both a Stone Age and a computer age society. Bitcoin has a negative value and burns resources just to exist. The only difference between Bitcoin and any other altcoin is momentum. That momentum could end at any time.
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In a partial collapse (USD collapse while other economies keep chugging along) you'll actually see Bitcoin explode in value relative USD.
Just as you would virtually any other currency that wasn't tied to the USD. So, if you're betting on a US market crash to inflate the value of your holdings, you're probably still better off investing in the Euro or Yuan, as one of those would likely become the primary commodity currency should the USD collapse(my bet is on the Yuan).
You don't say (Score:5, Informative)
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I needed someone to build me a custom PCB for a keyboard. They are a Brazilian student who was known in the community for doing good work. When I tried to transfer the money with Paypal they took money out of my bank account, sent it to him, and then locked his account so he wasn't even able to withdraw it. For me it was a trivial amount of money but for him it was food for a month.
So then we did the exact same thing with Bitcoin and guess what happened? He got his fucking money.
https://www.westernunion.com/u... [westernunion.com]
Your issue was trying to use Paypal.
Sad reality of cryptocurrency (Score:3)
It would be very easy for the Democrats with the help of their tech allies to demonize investors. Anybody who resists their dictates runs the risk of having their crypto rendered worthless. Something to think about.
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Money laundering laws basically stop my bank allowing me to fund any major cryptocurrency provider or even accept funds from it.
It took me several days to cash in the remainder of my Bitcoin (tiny amounts, not investments, just literally what I had left in my wallet that I found)... my bank would refuse incoming transaction from all the major cryptocurrency exchanges.
Money-laundering laws require them to know the identity of both parties in the transaction, which destroys the anonymity of Bitcoin anyway but
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It is not safe from government control.
There's nothing sad about that. The only thing an attempt to be completely independent of government control has achieved is money laundering and screwing of poor people. You're deluding yourself if you think otherwise.
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No one "losses" with bitcoin (Score:1)
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Oh, good, you completed Economics 101 The reality is that large groups of humans act like herd animals, and financial traders more than most. Automated transactions just make it worse, amplifying small movements into larger swings, which then prompt human traders to respond. A single trader in Santiago wiped out 10% of the market value of the Chilean stock market in one day by mistake.
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Cute story.
Those that "invested" in BTC did so about three weeks ago. You know, right before those same investors started the whole "Will it reach $XX by 31 December" speculative bullshit that was nothing more than a marketing stunt to feed an obvious pump and dump.
And learning about basic economics in school is like learning about Microsoft in the classroom. Shit never works like that in real life.
Currency (Score:2)
This is what people want from a currency that they will be using as a medium for exchange. Wild fluctuations.
We should just give it up and start using beanie babies or Magic cards as our currency.
Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
This short term correction is both natural and needed, and is a great entry point for long-term investors as we quickly reach $50k this quarter and $100k by year's end
I'm going to call complete and utter bullshit. There are zero fundamentals to base this off.
He's basing this purely on the principal of "the next sucker is going to be even bigger, and pay even more, than the last sucker".
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I'm going to call complete and utter bullshit. There are zero fundamentals to base this off.
He's basing this purely on the principal of "the next sucker is going to be even bigger, and pay even more, than the last sucker".
He may be right. It's been demonstrated over and over that stupidity is a huge unstoppable freight train.
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This short term correction is both natural and needed, and is a great entry point for long-term investors as we quickly reach $50k this quarter and $100k by year's end
I'm going to call complete and utter bullshit. There are zero fundamentals to base this off.
He's basing this purely on the principal of "the next sucker is going to be even bigger, and pay even more, than the last sucker".
To be fair, the overall value of the US stock market kept climbing in the middle of a fucking pandemic. Everything in our economy is tied to the assumption , and therefore requirement of, unchecked, unceasing growth. Our country is literally based on an economic form of cancer.
Bitcoin. (Score:2)
Well I don't claim to be a millionaire or stock market expert at all, but looks like I timed that one right.
Tulips, anyone? (Score:2)
For those nursing losses from bitcoin, I offer investments in tulips, or dotcom companies, or some really good consolidated mortgage options. All with a guaranteed profit (for me, that is).
Because of course (Score:3)
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So did McAfee ever make good? (Score:2)
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The interesting thing would be to add a system to allow BTC to be borrowed and shorted....
You bitch about the instability of BTC, and being some kind of church run by financial fanatics, but then your end your rant with a you know what would be cool here? A cult. statement. I remember a time when people thought CDOs were cool too.
Then the inevitable happened.
The only thing "interesting" about inventing more bullshit investment vehicles and tactics (as if HFT wasn't bad enough), is watching the ENTIRE concept of investing become more and more corrupt and unstable. Greed is never satisfied beca
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BTC is not an investment, BTC is money. Gold was the reference as money for 1000+ years. BTC is the digitization of Gold. Money is a winner take all game. Bitcoin is the best on every aspects.
There is a finite amount of BTC.
There is a finite amount of gold.
Both of them can be used as a mechanism for barter (as damn near anything can), but in reality both are more investments than currency. Plenty of people invest in gold today. It holds high value largely in part due to hype and scarcity (copper is practically worthless by comparison, but often as useful).
"Money" requires regulated lubricant through global financial systems. I'm paying for my gas with BTC about as easily as I am gold.