Dropping Nearly 20%, Bitcoin Suffers Worst Weekly Drop in a Year (fortune.com) 140
"Bitcoin's rally this year has hit a speed bump, putting it on track for the worst weekly slide in almost a year amid wider losses in risk assets," reports Fortune:
The largest cryptocurrency slumped as much as 20% this week, the most since March, and was holding at about $46,925 as of 10:22 a.m. in Hong Kong. The wider Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index, tracking Bitcoin, Ether and three other cryptocurrencies, is down 22% this week...
Bitcoin's weakness in the face of market gyrations raises questions about its efficacy as a store of value and hedge against inflation, a key argument among proponents of its stunning fivefold rally over the past year. Detractors have maintained the digital asset's surge is a speculative bubble and it's destined for a repeat of the 2017 boom and bust.
While Bitcoin is often touted as the new "digital gold," the yellow metal is winning out at the moment with spot gold holding at $1,768 per ounce, down less than 1% for the week.
Bitcoin's weakness in the face of market gyrations raises questions about its efficacy as a store of value and hedge against inflation, a key argument among proponents of its stunning fivefold rally over the past year. Detractors have maintained the digital asset's surge is a speculative bubble and it's destined for a repeat of the 2017 boom and bust.
While Bitcoin is often touted as the new "digital gold," the yellow metal is winning out at the moment with spot gold holding at $1,768 per ounce, down less than 1% for the week.
Good (Score:3)
Will I finally be able to buy a video card. Not one from 2016 valued used at over $1500 on ebay
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Is that what's driving the graphics cards? I thought that several years ago they started to not be worth it because there were mass-produced specialized ASICs for sale that did calculations vastly more efficiently?
Re: Good (Score:1)
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That depends on which cryptocurrency is being mined. Many cryptocurrencies today now use ASIC-resistant algorithms and are instead being mined by GPU or CPU, including Ethereum and Monero.
What did I tell you? "Investors" buy Bitcoin because its money supply is mathematically limited. Too many Dutch flower traders chasing too few Bitcoin drives the price up. The next thing that happens in these meltups, and it happens every single time, is that gamblers who think they missed the boat on BTC start buying other, lesser known cryptos, purely because they're cheaper. The market is only too happy to sell new cryptos, each with its own mineable millions of coins, into the teeth of the faddish deman
Re: Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Bitcoin is just a pump and dump item. That's why it's swinging.
ASIC-resistant is only until someone figures out a better design.
But all cryptocurrencies only work because they can be exchanged to real money. If they no longer can, then they become worthless.
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It's not ASIC-resistant because it would be hard in ASIC. It's resistant because it's easy in GPU. Bitcoin algorithm is sufficiently hard neither CPU nor GPU are particularly efficient at it, and so ASIC can outpace them by strides, gains of order of 100x the speed. For Ethereum there's very little you can do to get any more efficient than with GPU. Any ASIC would be essentially a GPU without video output, possibly optimized to match the requirements strictly. You'd get maybe 20-30% savings providing the sa
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To be more accurate: Bitcoin's algorithm is compute hard, while Ethereum's is memory hard.
Either way, both ASICs and graphics cards being used to mine cryptocurrencies have been taxing the capacity of foundries as of late. If you think it's hard to get a graphics card, look at what automakers are going through trying to get cheap automotive chips (the sort of low-margin low-tech stuff that foundries prefer not to be making)
Re:"worth it" (Score:4, Informative)
Say what now? [wikipedia.org]
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You did better than me. There were plenty of opportunities early on to have an interesting little hobby with the potential to lead to fabulous money in the present day. I never took them. I have to remind myself that there were a lot of minefields along the way, a lot of scary events that would have made me think it was over, and some events that resulted in people losing all their coins because an online exchange was more convenient.
The last peak at $20k was actually a great exit point though--conside
Re: "worth it" (Score:2)
Re: "worth it" (Score:2)
Re: "worth it" (Score:2)
Re: Good (Score:1)
Clearly, ....*buying* it is the problem here. :)
Have you tried ... smarter options? ;)
I mean with so many morons out there, with too much money. I'm sure even a basic. "You give me money, and then I give you nothing. Basically you just give me money. Because you want to. In fact you insist. You force me to take it!" would work, if worded the right way. ... Oh wait! ;)
No, to be serious: A media industry bank equity selling job coin loan licenses sounds about perfect. Just make sure you are the boss, so you d
Re: Good (Score:2)
Put on some shoes bruh. You are clearly drunk.
Re: Good (Score:1)
Did someone hack your login?
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I was talking about that with someone today. I bought a 750ti for 100 dollars in 2016, and I sold it two weeks ago for 85 dollars.
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This post shows how informed slashdot is when it comes to bitcoin. Mining bitcoins with a GPU hasn't been profitable in many years.
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Also, if he would've bought bitcoin last year, he would actually be able to afford himself a graphics card.
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And now informed you are about cryptocurrency in general. Or associated markets and economics.
Bitcoin rises, so do associated cryptocurrencies - namely, Ethereum.
ETH mining is done on GPUs and the vast majority of GPUs bought up are doing ETH.
Bitcoin falls, ETH falls as well. I can't tell you how much, because there's no perfect relationship, but in general the cryptocurrency ma
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Except that many other cryptocurrencies like Ethereum are mined with GPUs, so perhaps you should not be so quick to damn others for having bad information.
Either way, ASICs or GPUs, it all comes down to foundry capacity. A foundry can tool to produce a new product in just a couple months, but it takes years to build a new foundry.,
Where's my Covid-sized violin? (Score:1)
Live by hype die by hype.
bitcoin has way to much volatility (Score:1)
bitcoin has way to much volatility
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Re: bitcoin has way to much volatility (Score:2)
Until they sell. The big institutional investors, hedge funds, etc, tend do tweaks along the way and potentially sweeping changes after quarterly review (obviously policy varies per place but in general).
Once some predefined trigger point is hit there will be mass Bitcoin dumping from one which will send Bitcoin down which will trigger a cascade of automated selling from the others forcing Bitcoin down further and faster and so on until the price per coin normalizes as something less ridiculous but not yet
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tbh it sounds like you decided what you wanted then looked for something to support it, rather than thinking of it scientifically. To think scientifically, create a hypothesis (e.g. bitcoin will tumble) and then look for evidence to attack your hypothesis.
Re: bitcoin has way to much volatility (Score:2)
I don't want anything. Bitcoin up or down has absolutely zero impact on my life. My emotional stake is zero.
I think Bitcoin is yet another textbook tulip craze but on computers. A Bitcoin has zero intrinsic value, it is backed by nothing, it can not be spent like real currency and yes I'm aware a few bleeding edge companies are willing to take an edgy risk by accepting them. Try paying your rent with a Bitcoin. At least tulips are pretty.
Every single other equity or commodity or unit of agreed upon eco
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"I think Bitcoin is yet another textbook tulip craze but on computers."
That's your hypothesis. What should you do about it?
Re: bitcoin has way to much volatility (Score:2)
Some people don't value tulips at all. To them, tulips are worth nothing. But tulips are not free. Just because you think it's worth nothing doesn't mean anything about what its value is.
Re: bitcoin has way to much volatility (Score:2)
Say that again when your $120 is a $1.20
Voiltitity is for day traders and pocket days. You can make money but you have a 50% chance of losing it all too.
As far companies that accept bitcoins if you track the wallets they often cash out their positions almost immediately. Better to have the cash than risk losing it
Relative Value (Score:5, Insightful)
If it had gone from $40,000 to $46,925, the story would be its strength. Since it's gone from above $50K to $46,925 the story is its weakness.
$46K is a very high price for bitcoin given its price history. Judging its strength or weakness based on one week of price movement is hardly the basis for a compelling thesis. But I guess they have to make up a story in order to fill words on pages.
The problem is it moved 20% in 1 week (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine you're a business that accepts Bitcoin. Your entire inventory just dropped in value 20% unless you manage to reprice it before new orders come in.
Or Imagine if you were one of those futuristic people paid your salary in Bitcoin and it's value dropped 20% this week, meaning you just took a 20% pay cut. Rent / mortgage's still due and you can bet you won't be getting a discount to compensate.
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Meaning you shouldn’t store money in it you can't afford to lose.
Plenty of people place their life savings on a single gamble, but rarely considered a good idea.
Don’t worry, if bitcoin has taught me anything, it’s that it almost assuredly will drop to 11k before shooting the moon at 70 but no one has any idea when either will happen.
Not by choice (Score:3)
Human beings are very, very risk adverse, especially about basics.
BTC's problem though is that it's so tiny relative to our economy that it's prone to market manipulation. There was just an article saying the $11 billio
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>Plenty of people place their life savings on a single gamble
Yep. Count me in. We sold the house, rented one instead and put the profits into Tesla stock mid last year. No regrets. I'm facing retirement with adequate funds. The alternative (surviving off the crappy 401k fund performance, the crappy company pension performance, the social security that won't even be available for a few years) was not going to be a happy outcome.
Re:The problem is it moved 20% in 1 week (Score:4, Funny)
Yay, 20% off sale on Teslas!
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You've missed the point of the article in your rush to post.
"Bitcoin's weakness in the face of market gyrations raises questions about its efficacy as a store of value and hedge against inflation"
The point is that investing in Bitcoin is a gamble. You can't be certain that the value will go up because it swings wildly. You don't put your life savings in an unstable investment like that.
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I didn't miss it, but I didn't talk to it either. I never considered it a stable store of value. It's an investment or hedge right now. I has the potential to become more stable as others have pointed out.
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But I guess they have to make up a story in order to fill words on pages.
It's amazing how many people don't understand this simple concept.
Future Headline (Score:1)
In the very near future, the headline will state that bitcoin has hit a new all time high and has a market cap of over $1.5 trillion.
After Bitcoin's amazing upsurge... (Score:3)
Interest rates (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is the amusing part, all of the bitcoin advocates shouting that bitcoin is a "hedge against inflation". Rates go up (correlated with an expected increase in inflation, which FYI is too low at present), and bitcoin goes down. Because it's a speculative asset, and speculative assets get dumped as treasury rates rise.
If you want an actual hedge against inflation: buy land, durable goods, etc, and companies rich in them (particularly ones that have indebted themselves in dollars to buy such things). Thi
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You can still transport gold with a mule (Score:1)
Even a carrier pigeon won't move your bits...
Re:You can still transport gold with a mule (Score:5, Funny)
You're obviously not familiar with RFCs 1149 [ietf.org], 2549 [ietf.org], or 6214 [ietf.org].
Context (Score:2)
The entire market has a massive downturn this last week - pretty much everything. Commodities (like Gold), Bitcoin, stocks, all of it pretty much fell.
What is basically means, is that a lot of people decided to move into a larger cash position so they could take advantage of falling prices eventually.
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Commodities (like Gold), Bitcoin, stocks, all of it pretty much fell.
It says, right there in the summary, that gold was down less than 1%.
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Indeed. I hold to APPL and TSLA and when i went to check, I was in the red.
But since I'm not a hyped idiot I know market fluctuations are entirely normal.
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Indeed. And while I don't care about the short-term either, I think the market has overreacted significantly and may be due for an upwards correction. Namely, unemployment is still far too high and inflation far too low; it's not in the Fed's interest for interest rates to rise this soon. Wouldn't be surprised if they tamp this down.
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Well i'm in Argentina
trade ya a lil inflation for some USD, deal?
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Re: Context (Score:2)
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My point is you said "Yeah, unless you bought BTC very, very recently, you're still way ahead and you'll continue to be way ahead even if they slide by another 50% or so." Which, since Bitcoin is speculative isn't a real thing since the total thing is zero-sum.
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Speculation is zero sum. If I make $10, that's because you didn't. All of Bitcoin is like that. If I make $10 on Bitcoin, that money came from somewhere. And it came from some other "investor."
This is as opposed to say a stock investment where the $10 can be dividends that is profit from the business.
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If I own stock, I own a piece of a company. Presumably, that company gets more valuable over time because it is a profit-generating enterprise. That value can be captured as a dividend or increasing retained shareholder equity (and thus higher price.) It's entirely possible (and likely) for everyone to benefit - non-zero sum investment.
If I own bitcoin, it shouldn't get any more valuable - in fact the total bitcoin in circulation should increase over time. The only way for my bitcoin to get more valuabl
Happy times (Score:3, Funny)
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Why wouldn't you be? Seeing a crash is a great opportunity for investment. I hope bitcoin plummets and takes TSLA down with it. That way we can by TSLA shares and watch them ride the hype train up again.
"News" that isn't (Score:1, Redundant)
Are we going to get a /. post about Bitcoin every time it swings? Because a quarter of the posts are going to end up just being "oh boy Bitcoin prices have changed!" and Bitcoin fetishists will already find that out somewhere else.
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Are you new here?
Whenever bitcoin is on a tear Slashdot has at least one story daily. If it goes up, it's awesome and going to the moon! If it goes down, it's a great time to buy in, quick don't miss your chance!
Suspicious? Yes.
About Bitcoin (Score:1)
Here's a couple of good Twitter threads [twitter.com] by Stephen Diehl (@smdiehl) about what Bitcoin really is (with an earlier one further down below).
Re: ...and before ArchieBunker asks again... (Score:2)
It's gamestop (Score:2)
But instead of a few days, it takes a decade to go up then tank
China must be laughing (Score:2)
Re: China must be laughing (Score:2)
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So the dumping has started... (Score:2)
Obviously it is a careful, slow dumping, they may still manage to get more idiots to give real money for hot air. But this is what the have worked towards all along.
Meh, boring (Score:2)
Another story about the continuing saga of a digital pyramid scheme.
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It's not a pyramid scheme! You need to read the whitepaper by the coin's inventor, Satoshi Amenhotep.
"Dropping Nearly 20%....." (Score:2)
In other news, the tulips are starting to wilt.
There is only one secure hedge against inflation (Score:2)
Inside information and/or influence with major governments at the very highest level is the only hedge against inflation. TPTB will always leave some doors open to escape from for their own, but you can never know which ... and they have the power to close all others.
That said, Bitcoin is a long lasting mania. Buy low, sell high ... that's all it's for.
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How about a Tom Brady football?
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Unless you really like Tom Brady, also buy low, sell high.
Well, yes (Score:3)
Cryptocurrencies remain good for three things, and three things alone:
1. Speculation.
2. Money laundering.
3. Consuming vast a mounts of electrical power.
That's it. Maybe one day they will be useful for something else. As of today, they are not.
A 75% drop after big runs is normal for Bitcoin (Score:2)
Anti-Bitcoin Sentiment on Slashdot (Score:2)
If there's one thing I've learned is that people always seem more money and more power and will fight tooth and nail to prevent losing either.
Bitcoin is both money (spendable) and power (decentralized from controlled
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Shit, I have competition now.
-Dweebcoin owner
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BTC is pegged, to zero. Anything more than that is foolish investors playing with a game token. Don't be a bag holder.
"It is not a currency. It is not a unit of account, it is not a means of payment.â¦it is not a stable store of value. Secondly, it is not even an asset. There is no income. There is no use. There is no utility. The only thing is a speculative, self-fulfilling kind of rise, and that rise is driven totally by manipulation.â -- Roubini
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Because it is the truth, and you are delusional about a gaming token and getting triggered when people point out the gaming token's difference from money.
Bitcoin's pegged to money laundering & drugs (Score:3)
That said the 1% seem to be moving into Bitcoin. I'm not sure if this is just greater fool theory at work or if there's something nastier at play. e.g. trying to turn Bitcoin into a new kind of company script. There's been talk of paying employees in it. And it would be child's play for a billionaire to manipulate the price of it. If that happens BTC isn't
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> that's it's floor. If the US legalizes pot on the national level expect a crash.
I would not expect it to crash because of its legalization, for it is essentially legal and easy to get for most of the population. But if it were *deregulated* the price would crash for it's nothing but a plant.
We still do a *lot* of Marijuana arrests (Score:2)
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A currency needs to be pegged to something physical to become stable. Bitcoin if anyone ever uses it as a currency rather than a speculative trading platform would automatically get pegged to the currency of the most traded goods that also are traded in bitcoin.
Until you can buy a car for "1BTC" rather than for "$50000 by the way we also accept bitcoin" it's price will fluctuate wildly with speculative investment. When we can buy that car for 1BTC, then the currency will be pegged to the USD, assuming that
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so.. stablecoins [wikipedia.org]?
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Yeah. If you actually want to make an electronic currency, that's probably the way to go. Although at that point you have to ask how it's different from what PayPal, Western Union or your local bank does, but there you go.
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PayPal is extremely regulated in all markets. Currently paypal is completely blocked for argentinian credit cards, for example. PayPal support and their websites don't mention any of this and work really hard to make you believe it works in Argentina, but it doesn't.
Western Union is also extremely regulated. Here in Argentina to send or receive money, the first thing they ask you is a photocopy of your ID card.
Local banks are that. Local. Try sending money abroad with your local bank and see how it goes.
Cou
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Proof of stake cryptocurrency is going to be super regulated. So is any other kind, as soon as the regulators grind through their regulator inertia.
I can send money internationally from my local bank no problem. Maybe it's because your country is trying to deal with crippling corruption?
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What are the fees you have to pay to send money internationally?
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Paypal is $0 - $5 depending on the destination. Bank is $6 for $1000, $10 for over.
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Paypal is not a bank, so it doesn't really count. Paypal can only send money to "select destinations". Or usually it can send money to any paypal account, except the receiver may not be able to cash it locally and can only buy stuff online with it, or "sell" his balance to someone for cash. Only a few countries have "full paypal" (basically only US/EU/Commonwealth and SOME asia).
With the banking system (via SWIFT) you can send money to any country. But i'm suspecting that $10 fee you mention is valid only t
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You've got a narrative you're telling yourself, that's great. Have fun.
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https://www.valuepenguin.com/b... [valuepenguin.com]
Have fun making shit up online.
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Re: Everything has been crashing after the FAKE pr (Score:3)
Right... the local Republican, Independent, and Democrat overseers in each county just sat there while their own neighbors' & families' votes just got dismissed by an unaccounted set of ballots. And they sat there again looking the other way when a recount happened.
In your mind it's more likely there are many many county officials, and even more locals who cheated their own neighbors & family members than the idea that the neighbors just didn't want to vote for two senators that represented Trump o
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Wonder how many crypto coins were used in Texas during their recent energy issues.
Damn, that's a tough one. Can't burn them for warmth and can't mine them for warmth. The true value of a currency is how it handles tough times...
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...and can't mine them for warmth.
That may not be true. Put a few Athlons in a room, and start them mining. I'm sure the room would be warm in short order.
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