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The Almighty Buck

Bitcoin, Other Cryptocurrencies Plummet This Weekend (msn.com) 214

Posted by EditorDavid from the what-goes-up dept.
"The mania that drove crypto assets to records as Coinbase went public last week turned on itself on the weekend," report Bloomberg — as the price of bitcoin took a big dive: The world's biggest cryptocurrency plunged as much as 15% on Sunday, just days after reaching a record of $64,869. It subsequently pared some of the losses and was trading at about $56,440 at around 8:25 a.m. in Tokyo Monday. Ether, the second-biggest token, dropped as much as 18% to below $2,000 before also paring losses. The volatility buffeted Binance Coin, XRP and Cardano too.

Dogecoin — the token started as a joke — bucked the trend and is up 7% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.

The weekend carnage came after a heady period for the industry that saw the value of all coins surge past $2.25 trillion amid a frenzy of demand for all things crypto in the runup to Coinbase's direct listing on Wednesday. The largest U.S. crypto exchange ended the week valued at $68 billion, more than the owner of the New York Stock Exchange... Dogecoin, which has limited use and no fundamentals, rallied last week to be worth about $50 billion at one point before stumbling Saturday. Demand was so brisk for the token that investors trying to trade it on Robinhood crashed the site a few times Friday, the online exchange said in a blog post.

There was also speculation Sunday in several online reports that the crypto plunge was related to concerns the U.S. Treasury may crack down on money laundering carried out through digital assets... Besides the "unsubstantiated" report of a U.S. Treasury crackdown, Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto lender Nexo, said factors for the declines may have included "excess leverage, Coinbase insiders dumping equity after the direct listing and a mass outage in China's Xinjiang province hitting Bitcoin miners."
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Bitcoin, Other Cryptocurrencies Plummet This Weekend More

Bitcoin, Other Cryptocurrencies Plummet This Weekend

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  • Anyone else smelling Tulips? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ericspinder ( 146776 ) on Sunday April 18, 2021 @10:42PM (#61288752) Journal
    Tulip Mania [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by inode_buddha ( 576844 )

      I've been smelling tulips since about 1999. The entire damn market is *way* overdue for a correction large enough to make 2008 look like a warm-up act.

      • Not going to happen unless interest rates go way up. When interest rates go down, there's more money sloshing around to put places, like in the stock market.

        • What does it mean to "put money in the stock market"? If I buy stock, I give money to the person who sold it to me. The money isn't "in the stock market" - it's in the seller's pocket.

          • Except that most of the money isn't in their pocket of the money offering the stock. A great deal of the modern stock market is arbitrage, ordering and selling futures on stock, which sucks a great deal of the profit out of the market to deposit it in the hands of the brokers themselve. This is especially true with "high frequency trading".

          • It means you buy the stock. The more people want to buy the stock, the more the price goes up.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            When interest rates are high you can stash money in a savings account where it just sits and does nothing or buy bonds (loan it to a government or large corporation).

            When interest rates are low, more people are motivated to take that money and invest it in things like stocks. When someone buys stock in a new stock offering it's pretty clear the money goes to the company to do stuff. Same if you buy some random stock from a company's portfolio.

            When you buy existing stock it's less straightforward, but the pe

        • And with the biggest world economies (US, EU, ...) trying to keep interest rates low, because they all have huge national debt, they will just keep printing that money, giving it to the banks, banks putting it back into stocks, etc...
      • The problem that I have with bitcoin is that it has nothing fungible you buy in real life at a stable bitcoin price. I wouldn't purchase any 'currency' with only a futures market priced in it. Bitcoin will crash badly, but I've been saying that for years. I've been wrong so far, maybe I'm missing the idea overall.

        Wait if you want, expect the worst, you can even bet on in the market itself. Some of it at least will surely go wrong and regulation will improve over time or will learn to live it it. I'm bull

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

      You know that's mostly a myth, right?

      • "You know that's mostly a myth, right?"

        Mostly?

      • Re:Anyone else smelling Tulips? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by The Evil Atheist ( 2484676 ) on Monday April 19, 2021 @03:55AM (#61289432)
        It's not a myth. There was tulip mania. It just wasn't as widespread as people made it out to be. But, yes, people did spend exorbitant amounts of money on tulip bulbs until no one in the game wanted to anymore.

      • Re:Anyone else smelling Tulips? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Monday April 19, 2021 @05:09AM (#61289534)
        No it wasn't and even if parts of it are apocryphal it is a cautionary tale of "investing" in some make money fast scheme just because everyone else is without looking at the fundamentals. If you don't like Tulipmania, then refer to the South Sea Bubble, the Dotcom Bubble or basically any inflationary investment scheme / scam that eventually collapses when reality intervenes.

        And in the case of Bitcoin it's not like this isn't obvious - it has inflated and collapsed so many times that it actually raises red flags for deliberate market manipulation, insider trading and fraud.

        • Bitcoin serves only a few purposes. Primarily this is a way to transfer money without government agents knowing, which is very useful for the criminal enterprises. And to scratch that itch for anti-government ultra libertarians who have developed home grown alternative economic theories, which is probably the most minor segment but it's also a highly vocal one. In the middle are poeple who just want something new to "invest" in (ie, throw money at things and see if it sticks). Coinbase is trying to get m

      • "You know that's mostly a myth, right?"

        Mostly?

        Like Unicorns aren't real, but horses are.

        I was just wondering if you had anything to back up your unsubstantiated claim that Tulip mania* was mostly a myth.

        * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]

      • "You know that's mostly a myth, right?"

        Mostly?

        Like Unicorns aren't real, but horses are.

        I was just wondering if you had anything to back up your unsubstantiated claim that Tulip mania* was mostly a myth.

        * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ [wikipedia.org]

    • Marijuana's legalized in 1st world countries and the money laundering is cracked down on. That's where the base of it's value comes from. It's what drew the speculators.
      • Sounds like the Canadian housing market
      • Ok so you're saying that international marijuana dealers are spending the $50 transaction fee (each way) for dime bags of weed? I think you're a little high on your own supply, rsilvergun.

        • Marijuana is selling in the US for over $200/ounce. To avoid taxation and regulation, buying a pound of weed at $3200 with a $50 transaction fee could indeed be profitable. Simply concealing it from a spouse or an accountant could be worth the money.

          • Right, buying weight could possibly make sense (unlikely though), but selling can't. I think there's a myth that BTC is for criminals and that's no more true than it is of buying art or beanie babies, or tulips, or Action Comics #1's. Things that are finite have value for as long as people believe they do. Criminals store wealth in art, but that doesn't mean that art is worthless or that it is primarily a criminal enterprise.
    • I was just about to buy some tulips, but the price of BTC already recovered.... So it wasn't much of a crash...

    • Still sitting at $57,000 right now. You'd be doing great if you bought in during the last "crash" in February when it was $35K.

    • Well, cryptocurrency does behave more like a volatile commodity than a currency.

      There are also hints of Ponzi.

    • I think that it's time to bring back Jesuscoin. That joke cryptocurrency had a brief run during the last crypto mania in 2017/2018, so now might be a good time to find some suckers.... er... buyers for it.

  • This is terrible... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The Ethereum I mined for free at $8/each at the time, it only worth $2,200/each.

  • Getting robbed of Crypto (Score:3)

    by Canberra1 ( 3475749 ) on Sunday April 18, 2021 @10:48PM (#61288776)
    Nice to know very bad people are breaking in and forcing owner to give them their virtual bitcoin wallet. Hopefully it will be just as risky as keeping gold bars. Technically the US govt must do something if 'more corporates' are coming on board. Will the IRS please explain if they have collected what they should have, on bitcoin profits?

  • Dogecoint has "no fundamentals" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ugen ( 93902 ) on Sunday April 18, 2021 @10:52PM (#61288780)

    So, Dogecoin has "no fundamentals". What are the "fundamentals" of any other crypto, pray tell? Salty much?

    • For example: Bitcoin was originally proposed to be a digital system of payments. Don't listen to the "store of value"/"alternative to central banking" idiots. It was really meant to let you buy a pizza or a cup of coffee. As a proof-of-concept, it was (and still is) quite interesting, but it has proven to be mostly non-functional in that role.

      Bitcoin's fundamentals are, therefore, quite bad. It doesn't do the thing it was meant to do very well.

      Dogecoin, in contrast, was never meant to function at all.

  • Awesome (Score:5, Funny)

    by ChangeOnInstall ( 589099 ) on Sunday April 18, 2021 @10:59PM (#61288794)
    Can I buy a #$!^ing video card now?
    • Yes, that was going to be my comment also. I just need newer card for video editing but have put it off for 6 months now, not going tp pay $600 for a $160 card.

    • Have you got a few thousands dollars lying around? eBay is waiting.

  • Dogecoin — the token started as a joke (Score:5, Insightful)

    by S_Stout ( 2725099 ) on Sunday April 18, 2021 @11:02PM (#61288802)
    Every token started as a joke, and is still a joke. Wait till it's discovered Tether has no reserves.

    • And BTC is almost a trillion dollar joke

    • USDT may be in the clear now, albeit for awful reasons. Bitfinex and their shell corporations may well have issued USDT and used it to directly or indirectly buy BTC. BTC has attracted so much money since the bizarre BTC run of 2017 that any BTC Bitfinex found itself in control of at that time has at least tripled in value, giving them the opportunity to sell some of that BTC for currency to park in reserve of the USDT they printed. Unless they just printed more USDT without matching deposits. Which is

  • Hopefully it will fall another 20% so I can buy... But what if it falls even more ? :( Probably best to wait like I've been doing since last 5 years

  • If institutional investors pull out - game over? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Sunday April 18, 2021 @11:16PM (#61288836)

    It's just a matter of time before the big money pulls out of the market, which will make the 2018 bear market look like a walk in the park.

    It's all been said before - that fundamentally, pretty much the entire market is a ponzi scheme.
    There is absolutely at least some value in the many companies using blockchain solutions - but not the kind of value that can see a "joke" of a coin increase so dramatically in price.

    The very fact that a decentralized immutable ledger can exist just fine without tokens on an exchange seems to escape many investors - and that in general, the tokens exist to finance startups.

    When this market eventually crashes - and it will, HARD, there will be some winners in the wreckage - but it sure won't be all the bag holders.

    • There is absolutely at least some value in the many companies using blockchain solutions

      Yeah but any company or group of companies can create their own blockchain and use it without the need for relying on bitcoin or ponzicoin or whatever.
      Being a global ponzi scheme doesn't mean it isn't a ponzi scheme, it just means it will take longer to run out of of suckers. Tbh it could be another 10 years, but it will collapse eventually, then there will be tears.

    • Exactly. This is an institutional pump and dump, nothing more.

    • Re:If institutional investors pull out - game over (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday April 18, 2021 @11:29PM (#61288884)

      After a close look (and some security consulting work) in the blockchain space (non-"currency"), I am pretty much convinced the blockchain idea has some value but is still very overrated. Essentially it is just revision-proof storage with an uncertain distributed admin access. You can buy revision proof storage from the major cloud providers these days, with none of the risks and uncertainties. As to the admin access (can change things), the standard approach of an independent fiduciary that can do emergency things in an audited, controlled way does work.

      The blockchain is mostly a solution in search of a problem. The crypto-"currency" thing is not more than money-laundering and speculation on hot air though.

      • I can think of plenty of potential applications for blockchain. For example, tracking shellfish. They already have to be tagged and tracked from collection to the final seller because bad shellfish can kill you, and blockchain would be a more secure, reliable and accurate way to track them than the current method of swapping tags and keeping a physical ledger. But at the same time, that doesn't mean it would really be a better way. I'm sure though that there are logistical applications where it would be

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          This is the problem with blockchain application proposals. It's all handwaving.

          and blockchain would be a more secure, reliable and accurate way to track them than the current method of swapping tags and keeping a physical ledger.

          Okay, sure. An excel spreadsheet would also be a more secure, reliable and accurate way to track them than a physical ledger. Or a conventional database and a barcode scanner. What does *blockchain* add, and don't say "it's immutable" because a blockchain is immutable in exactly the

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          You can do exactly the same with high-availability write-once storage. Basically, you do a "blockchain in a box" with that. (No, the blockchain idea is anything but new. Distributing it and having automated majority-decisions on it is, and the solutions for it are dicey at this time.) No need to distribute things. Revision-proof storage used to be really expensive (for example, a large bank may have a $1'000'000 revision-proof tape library from IBM, I have seen these). Not so anymore. And a centralized solu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      There is absolutely at least some value in the many companies using blockchain solutions

      Is there? I have yet to see an actual application that's not some blockchain enthusiast waving their hands about "supply chains" or something. Hash trees are useful, but an actual blockchain with all the mining stuff?

      Didn't IBM sell their blockchain division because they couldn't find anyone who actually wanted to buy anything from them?

  • Lost only 4wks of growth (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ljw1004 ( 764174 ) on Sunday April 18, 2021 @11:42PM (#61288914)

    Bit coin plummets! To values not seen since *checks notes* four weeks ago...

    • Imagine if the money I use to buy food and do other things to stay alive did the same thing.

      • > Imagine if the money I use to buy food and do other things to stay alive did the same thing.

        Seriously, in that dystopian hell the price of lumber would be up 5x year-on-year and basic shelter repairs would be unaffordable.

      • Considering how long it takes to transfer BTC anywhere, you might starve to death waiting for the completion of a transaction.

  • Has anyone considered that all this BTC speculation whereby people "make" money simply by virtue (sic) of "having" money is the textbook definition of Usary?

    Prior to 1680 when the Bank of England legalized the charging of interest on loans, the Catholic church would take great pleasure in excommunicating you and then torturing you to death for perpetrating this crime against nature.

    I can sorta see where they're coming from.

    • You gotta admit though that give us your money and we'll give it to the poor and then keeping it was a stroke of genius?

      • Don't get me wrong--the Catholic church ruled for over 400 years and made the Nazi's look like amateurs. But there are some very good reasons for forbidding usary in an economic system--namely, if one group is doing all the lending, and they're lending with interest attached, its a mathematical certainty that on a long enough timeline that group will own ALL the money.

        Today, that one group is the modern banking system and it will not end well for anybody.

  • Welcome to the unregulated market (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Required Snark ( 1702878 ) on Sunday April 18, 2021 @11:56PM (#61288938)
    This should not be a surprise to anyone. Crypto-currency is overtly unregulated. Both the investors and the originators want it that way.

    Unregulated financial markets inevitably have scams and wild volatility. Sometimes it's impossible to tell them apart, and sometimes the volatility is the scam.

    Note the the so called acceptance of Crypto-currency by traditional financial institutions has a big exception: established Wall Street players don't hold crypto. They'll help trade it but they shy away from putting on their balance sheets. That's because regulators won't allow them to hold anything so volatile. The only way this will change is if there is significant crypto regulation.

    Crypo-currency is the Wild West. Jackpots, wipeouts and scams are normal occurrences. If you can't deal with this reality you should stay away.

    Note: Wall Street regulation is a joke. The recently departed Bernie Madoff was the Chairman of the Board of the National Association of Securities Dealers, for example. Wall Street is a cesspool of insider corruption, fleecing the gullible, tax avoidance and having taxpayers bail them out when their greed wrecks the market. Even so, there is enough residual regulation so that's is not quite as bad as the world of crypto.

  • This week in crypto news ... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by adfraggs ( 4718383 ) on Monday April 19, 2021 @12:36AM (#61289062)

    Crypto went up! Crypto went down. We're not really sure why. Dogecoin wtf?

  • This badly needs fixing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stikves ( 127823 ) on Monday April 19, 2021 @02:01AM (#61289232) Homepage

    There is a terrible precedent here. People not knowing how to "invest" all run to speculation at the same time (fear of missing out), and then they once again run for the exits crushing everything down. This has happened so many times in the past (2007 housing market, 2000 tech boom, 1930 great depression -- once again stocks, and of course 2018 bitcoin crash).

    A few years ago, during the prior bitcoin "boom", everybody and their uncle started asking how to "invest" in bitcoin. At that time I had a small amount in crypto, and realized it was time to exit. And soon, predictably it crashed. I heard some of those friends losing $100K in bitcoin afterwards. That was crazy.

    Today people take their savings, 401ks, and of course stimulus money and put all of it on random things, crypto being one of them. It will not end well.

    (For the record, I am not against stimulus, there are real people hurting, but we have probably given not enough to those who need, and too much to people who don't. That is another story).

  • Why would the Chinese power outage make it go down? If there are fewer miners, that's less supply so isn't that supposed to make it go up? I'm guessing it's less to do with the supply vs. demand, and more to do with the fact that some participants were reminded that BTC is worthless without electricity, and being reminded of that at a time when it had just made a big bull run.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      because the active participation of the miners is needed to actually process the transactions. Ultimately the model will shift to pay people to do blocks but for now the incentive is mining. If the mining stops the cost of settlements could skyrocket. If the cost to transact rises the utility goes down.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Because it happened at around the same time as the price of bitcoin changed, so clearly it caused it.

      Regular financial reporters and pundits engage in this wild making shit up all the time. With bitcoin it's just bigger.

  • Cryptocurrencies stubbornly remain good for three things, and three things alone: consuming vast amounts of energy, money laundering, and speculation. No wonder stability is a concept alien to them.
  • If an outage in China has this much of an effect on the market, that must mean there is a massive amount of mining going on. How much of it happens in China? Are they within reach of controlling 51% of transactions?

    Did we give China a weapon of economic mass destruction?

    Is this a national security issue?

  • The problem is people don't buy things with bitcoin.
    Back in the mid-late 1990's Comic Books and Beanie-Babies were a fad, where people collected them, hoping that they will be worth a lot in the future. So you got a lot of people getting Comic Books that were never read, and Beanie-Babies that were never played with, and were horded in a safe place, hoping that when they decide to retire they will be able to sell them for millions. The flaw with these were the fact that because there was a high demand,

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