Cryptocurrency Markets Drop $200B, Bitcoin Down 50% Since November (cnbc.com) 250
40 days ago Bitcoin sold for $47,454. It's price now is $34,007 — a drop of 28%.
About a third of that drop happened this week, as "Bitcoin, ethereum and other major cryptocurrencies have fallen sharply," Forbes reports, "wiping around $200 billion from the crypto market in just a matter of days (though some fear the bitcoin price could fall far further)." Bitcoin is now at its lowest prince since last July, "in the aftermath of the Federal Reserve's biggest interest rate hike in years". Ethereum and other top ten luna, solana, cardano and avalanche are also struggling with market sentiment falling to lows not seen since January.... Smaller cryptocurrencies that have outpaced the likes of bitcoin and ethereum in recent months have fallen harder during this latest crash. "The future of individual coins or tokens remains dubious, the law remains in control of such solicitations and the approval of social media giants such as Elon Musk," added Tammy Da Costa, an analyst at DailyFX.
CNBC notes the drop occurred "after a broader stock sell-off in the U.S. last week," but points out that bitcoin "is now down 50% from its peak price of $67,802.30 in November 2021."
About a third of that drop happened this week, as "Bitcoin, ethereum and other major cryptocurrencies have fallen sharply," Forbes reports, "wiping around $200 billion from the crypto market in just a matter of days (though some fear the bitcoin price could fall far further)." Bitcoin is now at its lowest prince since last July, "in the aftermath of the Federal Reserve's biggest interest rate hike in years". Ethereum and other top ten luna, solana, cardano and avalanche are also struggling with market sentiment falling to lows not seen since January.... Smaller cryptocurrencies that have outpaced the likes of bitcoin and ethereum in recent months have fallen harder during this latest crash. "The future of individual coins or tokens remains dubious, the law remains in control of such solicitations and the approval of social media giants such as Elon Musk," added Tammy Da Costa, an analyst at DailyFX.
CNBC notes the drop occurred "after a broader stock sell-off in the U.S. last week," but points out that bitcoin "is now down 50% from its peak price of $67,802.30 in November 2021."
Unpossible! (Score:5, Interesting)
I was explained that crypto always goes up!
PS: Apparently Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy (MSTR) is facing margin loans on a shitton of debt against their Bitcoin if it hits ~$25k. Fun times.
Re:Unpossible! (Score:5, Interesting)
I was explained that crypto always goes up!
PS: Apparently Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy (MSTR) is facing margin loans on a shitton of debt against their Bitcoin if it hits ~$25k. Fun times.
Actually $21k. https://markets.businessinside... [businessinsider.com] Fingers crossed it goes down!
Re:Unpossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
> 40 days ago Bitcoin sold for $47,454. It's price now is $34,007
The amazing part to me is that 1 bitcoin is worth $34K instead of $0. It's just a bunch of people wishing something to be true without anything to back it up with, unlike say the US government that backs up its own virtual currency, the USD, with assets and force.
Maybe I'm wrong saying they have nothing to back it up with but I don't see what they could do.
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The US dollar is backed up by the US government's promise to repay the debt - using existing assets and force.
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*less inflation while the printer goes "BRT'
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As long as the US can keep the USD as the global international trade currency, printing money is essentially collecting global tax. De-value everyone's USD they hold, and at the same time reduce your foreign debt.
That works great until someone has the idea to trade internationally in a different currency. Then again, the US is very sensitive to someone announcing that, And sends very strong messages [theguardian.com] to those that dare to.
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Yeah, those are harder to invade...
But what made Saddam such a red flag was that he actually intended to create an international oil exchange based on the Euro. The US can deal with two countries handling their deal between them in one of their currencies, especially if that currency doesn't really have the potential to threaten the USD as the international trade currency.
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So... just like with bitcoins? it's backed by the collective suspension of disbelief?
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So... just like with bitcoins? it's backed by the collective suspension of disbelief?
Pretending the US military is not a thing or that we will hesitate to use it is not a good look. It represents suspension of thought.
Re:Unpossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin is a lot like the strapless dress on an 80 year old. It's mostly kept up by the collective will of everyone in the room, because everyone is terrified of the prospect of it dropping.
Re:Unpossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no intention of defending Bitcoin, though I do hold some, but holding dollars has been a reliable way to lose money for over 50 years because although the US government backs it they can also print as much as they want for themselves, diluting the value.
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> Maybe I'm wrong saying they have nothing to back it up with but I don't see what they could do.
Trust. Every had your bank account frozen because you transferred money out of it to an account you also own? I have, twice, this year.
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It's just a bunch of people wishing something to be true without anything to back it up with,
Hey, it's worked well for the past 3000+ years for various religions
Re: Unpossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
Things I learned today.
1) Spends too much on cars = good with money (note, I'm not saying spending money on a nice car if you have it can be worth it, but owning a nice car does not mean you have that money, in fact it can be evidence of bad with money).
2) Costa money to produce = has intrinsic value. Ok going to start using my soldering iron to burn random patterns on torn rags, because using the energy to do so means they have intrinsic value.
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Ok going to start using my soldering iron to burn random patterns on torn rags, because using the energy to do so means they have intrinsic value.
Get "on the internet" somehow into this and you may have invented NFT 2.0.
Re:Unpossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
That isn't true, Bitcoin isn't "backed" by power consumption at all. You see difficulty vs. price trends and interpret them backwards.
Investor interest is the sole reason why BTC rises or falls in value, and difficulty tracks the current price accordingly as people bring hardware on or offline to chase profitability.
Re:Unpossible! (Score:4)
A guaranteed hard limit of what? Because value it ain't.
The value of Bitcoin is at its core the same value that art has: Whatever someone else is willing to pay for it. Just because something is in limited supply doesn't automatically mean that it must have a value. I cannot easily multiply the original Mona Lisa. And that makes the painting valuable, because only one person or organization can own it. But that is only true as long as we agree that there is someone who wants to own it. Should nobody want that painting anymore, it's value is essentially the material value, which is probably measured in BTUs.
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Re:Unpossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
The price of something is what someone is willing to pay. The value can be something very different. There are a few things my mother left me which have a value to me that goes far beyond the price they could fetch.
That's not the point, though. Money, as well as bitcoins, and also art, does not have a utility value. Water does. I can drink it. I can use it as a solvent. I can use it to clean myself or my belongings. Money and bitcoins don't have utility value. Which means that, yes, they can well have a value of zero. Something with utility value will never have a value of zero because even if not useful or required here and now, there is a nonzero chance that it will be required at some other point in time or space.
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The value of everything is what someone else is willing to pay for it
No, you're thinking of "price". Which is related, but not the same, as "value".
Re:Unpossible! (Score:4, Insightful)
It is backed up by proof of work, the energy taken to mine the currency.
Can you redeem Bitcoin for energy?
If not, i think you don't understand what "backed" means.
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Can you redeem Bitcoin for energy?
Can you buy electricity with bitcoin?
Re:Unpossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you buy electricity with bitcoin?
No. You can, however, sell Bitcoin for US dollars, then use that to pay for electricity. At a net loss.
You could also do this with, say, 1968 Dodge Charger bumpers, which i guess makes those energy backed as well.
Re:Unpossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
The energy used had intrinsic value - until it was uselessly wasted to do a pointless calculation that did nothing to advance human knowledge or contribute to any tangible asset.
Once it was used to perform the calculations for that one blockchain, it's value has evaporated and only exists in the shared delusion that it's still worth something.
Re: Unpossible! (Score:2)
Proof of work does not equal value unless that work has some use. You have taken electricity and made a lot of heat, and what exactly? Maybe someday in the future someone will accept it as a means of exchange. I would rather buy heirloom seeds and maybe precious metals
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It is backed up by proof of work, the energy taken to mine the currency. This means it has an intrinsic value, like gold or silver.
Not sure if this is meant to be funny, or if you're really this dim. As it's posted anonymous, I'm leaning towards "dim." The core problem being: you don't understand the meaning of the word 'intrinsic'.
Here's a hint: if you have to repeatedly convince people that something has value, it's not intrinsic value.
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> It is backed up by proof of work, the energy taken to mine the currency. This means it has an intrinsic value, like gold or silver.
Wrong, because you cannot get that energy back out of bitcoin. Bitcoin itself does nothing, produces nothing, only holds value when people believe it holds value. Bitcoin is more like religion than money.
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Moral of the story: Don't buy Bitcoin 'cause you know it's going to crash again.
Especially as a safe haven against the stock mkt (Score:2)
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You know I forgot about those loans (Score:2)
Come on let's go collapse! Papa needs a new GPU!
Clearly this is the future of finance (Score:5, Funny)
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Market crash (Score:3, Informative)
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Recession? Try depression. Hell, we've been in a depression for the last ten years except they've not told us that or we'd have riots in the streets.
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If you didn't have to buy a first home in the last 5 years or so it wasn't so bad. If the last 10 years were a depression what is coming is suicidal, outside the US at least.
US has the cleanest dirty shirt, hovering up all the capital in the world regardless of government deficits, most other nations will get fucked and forced into either crippling budget cuts or crippling currency depreciation. The Fed is playing a dangerous game.
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How dare you say the D word? Saying the R word is already forbidden!
Re:Market crash (Score:5, Insightful)
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The "markets"? The value of currency doesn't correlate with equity markets. The value of crypto doesn't doesn't go up or down because some companies reported good or bad earnings. At the moment it's completely driven by irrational speculation and the psychological pressures that influence that speculation.
False. The markets had excess liquidity, it was being dumped into everything. Mainstream stocks and markets often don’t make sense either, just explain Tesla or GameStop, much less that New Jersey deli that pulls in 37k gross earnings and is valued at $100m. Crypto markets are only a very small fraction of the overall insanity though, and when the money dried up, people pulled their money out of crypto just like everything else. If anything, I’d say tons was spent in real estate because it w
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Ah good, looks like someone's got it.
Yes, crypto markets were (and are) inflated by QE, just like everything else.
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Yes, crypto markets were (and are) inflated by QE, just like everything else.
The alternative was a deflationary spiral, and ultimately, QE doesn't cause inflation if used specifically to offset deflation [cnbc.com].
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Fed started talking rate hike in January, market started dropping in January.
They think rising inflation expectations are a bigger problem than the biggest fossil fuel plus food supply shock in half a century coming on top of the aftermath of a global epidemic. I think they are fucking idiots.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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The fact that all they do is money is the problem.
I'm talking about everyone outside the US who needs a job, I'm talking about all the investments which need to be made due to energy and food supply disruptions, I'm talking about world stability. Exporting a depression (because the US is sucking up capital world wide) is fucking dangerous in a way people who think just about America's currency can't capture in their models.
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Know how to catch a falling knife?
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Let it drop to the floor, then pick it up. Should someone try to catch it falling, wait 'til they are distracted enough because they need all their attention on the knife, then kick them in the balls.
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Let it drop to the floor, then pick it up. Should someone try to catch it falling, wait 'til they are distracted enough because they need all their attention on the knife, then kick them in the balls.
This guy capitalisms.
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Capitalism is like megacorporations. Just because I hate the game doesn't mean I don't know how to play and win.
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Name completely checks out.
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It used to be a joke back when I created it. The older I get, and the more cynical I get, the more approprate it gets.
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Don't forget to make sure your feet are out of the way.
Leverage and Manipulation (Score:2, Redundant)
I personally believe BitCoin is a good thing to have, and that some day it will be really useful.
But I don't own any at the moment. That is because there is just too much leverage in the system, and a lot of manipulation of price.
The people that say BitCoin has no intrinsic value are right from a strict monetary since, so I'm really waiting to see leverage get shaken out of the system and see if a more stable, real price can be found - even though BitCoin has no intrinsic value, I think the utility as a tr
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Monero, my dude.
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"But... but... the dollar is hyper-inflated!!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm... if the dollar is so 'hyper-inflated', shouldn't the price of Bitcoin have shot up instead of trending down??
Re:"But... but... the dollar is hyper-inflated!!" (Score:4, Informative)
Hyper-inflation... guess that's why - at my local Winco - a loaf of Dave's Killer Bread is $4.49 today, while a week ago it was way down at... $4.49.
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Crypto values have been inflated by printing of USD that has been spent on crypto. There will be continued bleeding from crypto markets as the QE money is slowly squeezed out of the system.
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Still waiting on an answer to my question: [slashdot.org]
Umm... if the dollar is so 'hyper-inflated', shouldn't the price of Bitcoin have shot up instead of trending down??
Because inflation does not have to be reflected in the price of a given currency. Prepare to have your mind blown: click [wikipedia.org] and note how different countries in the eurozone have different inflation rates. Same exact currency (euro), so by definition Slovakia's currency has 1:1 exchange rate with France's currency, and yet, different inflation rates.
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So what you're saying is that drugs and ransoms have gotten a lot cheaper while everything else has gotten more expensive?
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You'd think, except Bitcoin "hyperinflated" by six times as much.
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Only depends on how much risk you're willing to accept for those 9%.
See, that's the part people tend to ignore when comparing interest, the chance of actually ending up with fuck all.
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Shocking (Score:2)
It's truly shocking that the most speculative of investments which keeps ramping up its energy requirements and which has no coverage in goods or services is so volatile! Who could have predicted that?!
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Western governments are moving in to regulate (Score:3, Interesting)
Meanwhile the nft market has collapsed. It turns out the reason nfts took off was because in 2020 governments passed laws to reign in common tax dodges done with art. Those laws took effect in 2021 and the wealthy or hoping to use nfts to replace the tax Dodges they lost. I gather the governments are just applying the same laws to nfts as they are to art in general making nfts useless for tax dodging unless you're going to use them for money laundering. And there are much better ways to wander money that don't leave a perfect paper trail behind.
On top of that there have been so many cryptocurrency thefts that there's a website dedicated to them, web3isgoinggreat.com. but the real problem is not the thefts but the fact that the exchange is have started to seize cryptocurrency they can trace back to thefts. I understand the desire to recover stolen property but it means that if you happen upon currency that the exchanges declare stolen and you use one of the exchanges then they just take your currency and you're just out the money. This is exposed to Major flaw in the entire scheme that's sending shock waves across the entire market. The kind of shock waves that should have happened when tether and ethereum forked their chains and left thousands with worthless assets.
I don't think there's going to be a bubble burst because I think the governments are being careful to prevent that and because there's a whole bunch of people like Peter thiel who are super wealthy and well invested in crypto and not the kind of people who are allowed to get caught holding the bag. But at this point it's painfully obvious we're at the stage where the people in the know are getting out and leaving the suckers behind with massive losses.
It sucks because a whole bunch of people who can't afford it or about to have their savings wiped out. It was bound to happen sooner or later, at least the broader economy should be relatively strong so that they have a chance of recovering. I wish them luck
Re:Western governments are moving in to regulate (Score:5, Interesting)
I never "got" the point of NFTs anyway. All one is buying is a signed link to a URL via their wallet. With Ethereum gas all over the place, buying and selling NFTs can be dicey, just because if there is a spike, that $20 NFT that one wanted to buy now costs $3520, until the trading ceases... and there are times when one wants to buy/sell now. Imagine if stock brokers had surge pricing where if the market has high trading, commissions go up over 100%.
The parent is right about crypto thefts. If a business needs $100,000, they will have an armored car drop off the cash, the cash would be stored in a TL-30 or a TL-60x6 safe, with a camera and alarm system that is able to deal with duress events. It is also insured, so if the cash does vanish, it is a mount of paperwork, but it is recoverable. Now, lets look at $100,000 in Bitcoins, which is about 3 BTC at this time. Most people use their phone, an app on their computer, or at absolute most, a hardware dongle. None of these are rated by insurance, none of these have any real solid security, especially with attackers that have a lot of resources, and endpoint security is abysmal, barring a hardware wallet (and even then, finding a trustworthy hardware wallet is dicey... as none of them have any audited, only a few have open source support, many don't even have updated apps, and even then, you have zero assurance that a firmware upgrade doesn't take your private wallet info and send it back.) Insurance is hard and expensive to get for crypto.
For an average user, there are so many concepts for cryptocurrency that have to be done 100% right, or else massive losses happen. For example, using someone's Monero key when they meant to sent Bitcoin can lose the currency forever. Or, if someone used a paper wallet (which were a big thing a few years back), and it got waterlogged. Or, someone using a service to have their BTC private key engraved on a brass plate, only to discover that all their currency vanished after they divulged their private key.
Exchanging cryptocurrency can be difficult. KYC/AML rules, threats of export sanctions, or the fact that for some currencies, finding someone in the area to exchange the currency for something else, or perhaps a currency that actual stuff can be bought with, can be dicey, and if it is illegal, that person offering the exchange can easily be a LEO doing a sting operation.
Crypto has a lot of people trying to prop it up, but it is starting to get some grievous wounds. Governments are closing in on it, there are no real players coming in at the bottom of the pyramid, so growth is limited, and the ability to use it for trade is being curtailed in many places.
Will BTC go to $0? Probably not. However, BTC is a "1.0" currency, and it might just drop into insignificance, while some other currency that is more easily mined, takes up less energy, has less "gas" charges, even when the network is saturated, has build in anonymity, so transactions made 20 years ago wouldn't haunt someone (not all countries have statute of limitations), and has the ability to have its block chain pruned, so one doesn't have to parse every single transaction to ensure they are not double-spend. However, one never knows... BTC could double in value in two months if a major national currency collapses.
The point of NFTs is to replace a tax dodge (Score:5, Interesting)
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Stop doing that. Unless they announce that as their policy we can assume that it's not because that would shoot them in the foot.
"Stop saying things I don't like" (Score:2)
If they can do it once they can, and will, do it again. And they'll do it every time. The point is they have the power to do it. They weren't supposed to have that power. That was the entire point of this system. And it broke down for the same reasons (market consolidation) that it always does. Markets always consolidate. It's inevitable. Tech d
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There isn't enough market exposure for blockchain tokens/NFTs to threaten the broader economy.
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I'm fairly sure that people who are invested in BTC and well conneted also know well in advance when to jump ship before it sinks, so don't worry about them, they won't be the ones who get to foot the bill.
That's our job, after all.
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Meanwhile the nft market has collapsed.
Opensea just posted it's best week ever, kiddo. 600m or so in daily trade volume. You're somehow mistaking the recent spike in demand over otherdeed mints for a bad thing. It's a little complicated but you'll get there if you put in the effort.
Wow! People finally get what Buffet said... (Score:5, Interesting)
Buffet said it best, if he bought all the bitcoins in the entire world, what would he actually have? For what reason would someone else want to purchase one? What intrinsic force would provide a method for it to have some value to someone who doesn't own one (other than to say, "hey I have one of those")? What do you actually "own" anyway? What would even keep it's algorithm working if that ever happened since no one would use CPU/GPU cycles on maintaining the ledger because all the coins have been mined and are now all "owned" by a single entity?
Even fiat money at least has some level of value because governments accept it for payment of taxes and trades. If all the US Dollars in the world were somehow owned by a single person, they could still be used to pay others because the US government backs them and laws in states allow them to be used as payment. No such thing exists for bitcoin or the other altcoins. The only "value" they have is the motivation of the people who own them selling them to the next sucker who is willing to buy it for more than they may have paid for it originally.
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>quote>They have no intrinsic value...
That's incorrect. Crypto coin systems can be used for other things besides transferring value. They are (very particular) communication networks and can, on a base level, be used as that. That's an intrinsic value that you won't get from paper dollars.
... and do not produce any value.
Money, by itself, doesn't produce value. It represents value. It's the economy that produces the value. That and the printing or destroying of the tokens (which is being done with fiat money).
Even fiat money at least has some level of value because governments accept it for payment of taxes and trades.
That's not intrinsic va
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Doesn't negate the OP's point though. Fiat money is useful because it's commonly accepted as a currency, and in fact its usage as a currency is mandated and enforced by the government, through the use of force if necessary. Bitcoin and its peers are not used as a currency today, they're simply commodities, and unlike other commodities (e.g., gold, or bacon) it has no
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> Bitcoin and altcoins are a solution looking for a problem
Oh they had a problem. The problem was how to cut out visa and PayPal when accepting payments and due to speculators it’ll never get used that way.
But wait! (Score:2)
It's a hedge against inflation, wait no! It's better than gold!
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Well... no. Gold at least does have a few applications. Also, it has been considered valuable by people throughout the ages, since times immemorial, because it seems that for some odd reason humans like shiny stuff.
Whaaaaat? (Score:2)
You mean all the things with zero intrinsic value and doesn't exist and has no backing has dropped in "value"? Oh, noes, what ever will I do?
better double down (Score:2)
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Use simple math (Score:2)
Core inflation has only been about 33.5% since 2008, which is when much of the current QE nonsense started. The earliest recorded prices for BTC of $.01 go back to late 2009/early 2010. Since then it's been up by ~336159700%. Do you think it's just inflation of USD that's been driving its price?
It's QE money, duh.
That shouldn't be surprising (Score:2)
Re: 0 to 0 in 60 SWASTIKAS!!! (Score:2)
Re: 0 to 0 in 60 SWASTIKAS!!! (Score:2)
That would require them to invest in development - do you see any evidence that theyâ(TM)re inclined to do that? Looking at the bug when iPhone users post (see this very comment!), I expect them to do nothing. This site probably doesnâ(TM)t generate enough revenue.
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Found the furry. Good use of the Russian Reversal, though! Not many have the courage to be seen using one since the whole Ukraine thing.
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It's the money formerly known as Bitcoin.
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But ... when it's at 0, it really can't fall any further! Perfect time to buy!
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I'd buy that for a zero dollar!
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To pass the time, help yourself to some more bitcoins.