Bitcoin Drops Below $20,000 as Crypto Meltdown Continues (cnn.com) 202
CNN reports:
"The price of bitcoin breached $19,000," reports CNN, "and ethereum fell below $1,000 Saturday morning, extending the brutal crypto bear market to new lows."
Bitcoin plunged nearly 10% in less than 24 hours, adding to a series of sustained losses over the last several months. It now sits below $20,000 for the first time since November 2020, down more than 70% from an all-time high of $68,000 per coin in November 2021. Bitcoin has lost $900 billion in value since that peak.
Ether is also experiencing a so-called crypto winter. The second-largest digital token plummeted 10% on Saturday to $975, its lowest level since January 2021. The coin has lost 80% of its value from its record high last November....
The crypto world is reeling from the $60 billion collapse last month of two other major tokens, Terra-Luna and Celsius. Those losses have increased doubts about the general stability of digital currency....
Still, even at $20,000, about half of all bitcoin wallets are still sitting on profits, according to an analysis by the Columbia Business School cited by The New York Times. The study also found that 61% of bitcoin addresses had not sold anything in the last 12 months, suggesting that a total run on crypto may be avoidable.
Bitcoin has now lost more than 70% of its value in about seven months. But CBS News notes that even then, "many in the industry had believed it would not fall under $20,000." The overall market value of cryptocurrency assets has fallen from $3 trillion to below $1 trillion, according to coinmarketcap.com, a company that tracks crypto prices. A spate of crypto meltdowns has erased tens of billions of dollars of value from the currencies and sparked urgent calls to regulate the freewheeling industry. Last week, bipartisan legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate to regulate the digital assets.
Bitcoin has now lost more than 70% of its value in about seven months. But CBS News notes that even then, "many in the industry had believed it would not fall under $20,000." The overall market value of cryptocurrency assets has fallen from $3 trillion to below $1 trillion, according to coinmarketcap.com, a company that tracks crypto prices. A spate of crypto meltdowns has erased tens of billions of dollars of value from the currencies and sparked urgent calls to regulate the freewheeling industry. Last week, bipartisan legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate to regulate the digital assets.
Race to the bottom (Score:5, Insightful)
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The cotton candy foundations seem to have collapsed.
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Most of the market is not "technical analysis". Indeed, technical analysis is rather mocked by most investors. Maybe you're thinking of high-frequency trading or the like? They're certainly a layer on top of the market that affects the short term, and there's also say activist hedge funds, momentum traders, and all sorts of other groups out there. But most of the market, at least on longer timescales, is giant funds, esp. mutual funds, reacting to analyst reports and earnings statements. All coming down to
Re:Race to the bottom (Score:5, Interesting)
The Neal Stephenson series of books The Baroque Cycle [wikipedia.org] included Sir Isaac Newton and his management of the Royal Mint. It was a turning point in history, as the value of the money being coined was no longer based on the metals that it was coined from.
Up to that point, a silver penny was worth it's official weight in silver. As a result "penny pinchers" would snip off tiny bits of precious metals from coins until they no longer were enough of a coin for vendors (or banks) to accept.
Newton removed the value of the coin from the metal it was being minted from and instead said the coin was backed by the sovereign nation. [wikipedia.org] Similarly US paper money is backed by the "Full Faith and Credit" of the US government since it was removed from the silver standard.
Of course Stephenson also wrote an interesting short story, that pretty much describes cryptocurrency decades ago [electricinca.com], and The Cryptonomicon was loosely based on setting up off-shore data havens to host such systems.
So, probably a months worth of reading if you want a colorful story (and some humour perchance) along with your history.
Re: Race to the bottom (Score:2)
The fact you believe the world lacks new suckers, reflects more on you than anything else. Be it crypto good or bad is itself completely different then the reality "a sucker is born everyday".
Re: Race to the bottom (Score:5, Funny)
There's plenty of suckers out there but they've already been burned by bitcoin, so they're now busy ordering their home trepanation kit for the low low price of $500 so they can become super-geniuses or something.
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I bought the Genius Magnets [mayoclinic.org] , so no holes in my head, at least until they have to fish some tumors out
Re: Race to the bottom (Score:2)
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And the Fed isn't making this easy. They were far too late to react to inflation, so now they're obsessed with inflation above all else, to the point in risking crashing the housing market.
Inventories are rising significantly (deflationary). CPI and GDP deflator are diverging, with GDP deflator showing inflation is under control. The main inflationary CPI components now are almost all energy-related, but producers are actively working on increasing energy supplies to offset the Russia disruptions. Going h
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Re: Race to the bottom (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure they can crash the market, at least not in the sense you're thinking. The 2008 crash was a historically extremely rare event: you have to go back to the great depression to find something similar.
A "crash" implies the asset has inflated beyond what is reasonable given supply. There is little evidence of that, supply is fundamentally tight. And a crash has to be precipitated by a large amount of forced selling, a la the 2008 foreclosure apocalypse. There aren't any metrics currently saying that people are underwater on housing en mass. If low income people had been getting loans they couldnt reasonably pay to buy a surplus of housing that would be concerning, but between constricted supply and tightened lending standards low income people were just priced entirely out of the housing market. And anyone that did buy and lock in a large debt at a fixed rate is actually likely to benefit from an inflationary environment as that debt inflates away.
You might see localized crashes, certainly, in specific markets. I'd also suspect a broader pullback of a few %. But ultimately a crash has to have forced selling, and I think here you'll get the opposite... a broad pullback in already tight selling coupled with a slowdown in new building. That paired with a really punative interest rate increase (think double the monthly payment from a year ago for the same debt) may lock up the housing market altogether. The only inventory coming avaliable may be the narrow margins of truly forced sellers and buyers (from deaths, etc.). Shit, with remote work I wouldn't even assume force selling due to job relocation will happen in any amount if a recession hits.
The answer to housing affordability is more houses on cheaper land. Cheaper land is outside major urban centers. More houses can be done with smaller size and higher density. People are fighting all of those things. Until you see either demographic shifts out of urban areas (where half the cost of a house is the dirt it sits on), or a willingness to remove density requirements in zoning and pack more people smaller lots, there isn't going to be an end to this.
I'm honestly starting to wonder if the answer might be a corporate tax write off for fully remote positions that still employ a US citizen in a US zipcode, coupled with tax rebates/writeoffs for building housing in low tax value zip codes. Create an incentive to shift some of the highest dollar workers out of these very high priced areas, which simultaneously spurs growth in depressed areas and puts downward pressure on assets in high priced areas.
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imo the US economy is far too exposed to manipulation by the petroleum industry
Re: Race to the bottom (Score:2)
I hope they also lose every dime they have.
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You don't catch falling knives. You punch the guy watching it fall, wait for it to drop, then pick it up when he's still seeing stars.
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Bitcoin's all-time high was $68,789.62 in early November 2021. It's currently trading at $19,040.08 (72% drop) but was trading at $17,721.69 (74% drop) a couple of hours ago. I have little faith that it won't drop a lot further, even though the "long term" people are insisting that people should hold on and it's just the scaredy-cats that are getting out of it. (It's not--this is what it looks like when institutional investors bail on something.) Many are encouraging people to buy because it certainly can't
Sustained by belief (Score:4, Insightful)
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Funny you should say this - I was thinking of buying a BC once it has fallen to $100, print the paper wallet, frame it, hang it on the wall, and call "My"NFT" – and then chuckle every time I look at it. I am sure I can afford one tank of gas/petrol for this kind of art installation, even if it wastes a perfectly good picture frame.
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As more crypto bros lose faith from seeing their hopes dashed ("it'll never go under $20k"), how long for it to drop under $100? Since belief was the only thing sustaining it ...
For the record, at this moment, BTC is trading at $17,951, down $2,676, which is another 12.97% loss. Ethereum is down 17.9%. And the numbers keep falling. I had to keep changing them just typing this comment.
Re: Sustained by belief (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re: Sustained by belief (Score:4, Interesting)
I am just curious, if the world changed from the petrodollar to the petrorenminbi, you are saying the solution to a lack of faith in the dollar is to just shoot others up?
Very confused here but would love to better understand how monetary policy is built on violence.
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Don't think to hard about it. People like that surely don't. They will scream that Bitcoin has "no inherent value" but the dollar does because they can make you use it *by force*. The same line of thinking would mean that if you formed a "Bitcoin militia" that purported that BTC DOES have value, then at that point, it magically would
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The dollar has utility. You can use it to buy and sell things that you actually need to live. Since there is no mechanism for the values of those things against the dollar to chainge by the hour, you have some idea what a dollar is worth.
This is not true of Bitcoin, and everybody involved with Bitcoin long ago gave up on caring. Bitcoin proved that certain things could work, then forgot to actually be useful. There was a time when you could actually buy and sell a little bit in Bitcoin, but hodlers destroye
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If you don't think that's already happened, then you are either new on the planet or you haven't been paying attention.
It’s a prime example of how poorly history and current events is being taught and absorbed by people.
Re: Sustained by belief (Score:5, Informative)
They're pointing out the simple fact that the dollar is backed by an actual revenue source: the ability to levy taxes. Which is backed by the court system. Which is backed by the police. Which are backed by the National Guard. Which is backed by the most powerful military on the planet.
Bitcoin is backed by literally nothing except the crypto bros that speculated on it.
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You left out a national economy of over a hundred million workers generating over $20 trillion every year, and continent full of physical assets.
Odd thing about Libertarians, they mock "fiat currency" as backed only by "men with guns" ultimately, yet assert that only private property is sacrosanct and property ownership is the only real human right, but ignore the fact that that "property ownership" exists only because of the rule of law backed by those same mocked "men with guns".
Re: Sustained by belief (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Sustained by belief (Score:2)
I have never owned > $100 in BTC or gold. BUT, gold scarcity, for instance, is backed by the laws of physics, which trump the national guard: if the guard battles the laws of physics they will lose. The laws of mathematics also mean the US govt. can pursue, and enforce a monetary policy that will devalue the currency relative to things like gold, which BTC wanted to be a digital version of. The same laws promise environmental and resource issues ending the economic growth the current monetary model depen
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They're pointing out the simple fact that the dollar is backed by an actual revenue source: the ability to levy taxes.
But the taxes themselves are in the form of dollars, so your argument is kind of circular. If the government had the power to demand payment of taxes in gold, for instance, that would be another matter.
GP is a troll (Score:2)
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For Americans the dollar has the fact you need to pay your taxes with them.
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Re:Sustained by belief (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone that lived in Peru in the late 80s early 90s when the Inti imploded, let me assure you this is not enough. Neither of those economies are big enough to maintain the value of BTC. Heck, neither of those economies is big enough to pay for the electricity used to continue mining BTC.
Interestingly enough the other official currency in El Salvador is the U.S. Dollar. That's the currency that actually gets used. You could pay your taxes in BTC, but the value that you owe is measured in U.S. dollars. So if you purchased BTC in the last few months with the idea that you would use it to pay taxes you are now very sad.
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Re: Sustained by belief (Score:4, Insightful)
Note well: the value of Bitcoin is described in terms of dollars.
The values of dollars is generally not described in terms of bitcoins.
That should tell you something inportant.
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Note well: the value of Bitcoin is described in terms of dollars.The values of dollars is generally not described in terms of bitcoins.
That's a very good point (which will be ignored by all the crypto-bros).
They never equate its worth to any tangible item, like jars of pickles or the price of 2x4s. It's always dollars. Hmmm.
If had $250K in real money last November, you'd still have that $250K. It's in your bank, safe and sound.
If you'd had $250K in bitcoin, however, you'd still have...$80K. Whoops.
Sure, there are changes in the buying power of the money in the bank due to inflation, but the same goes for bitcoin (assuming you could actuall
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The thing about the dollar is that it really is too big to fail. Quite literally so. Too many countries hold too much of that currency to allow it to drop into the bottom, even if it would.
The Dollar is pretty much like a strap-less dress on an 80 year old. It's kept up by the collective will of everyone in the room, because everyone expects the worst if it should drop.
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It's value is the American economy.
Symptom of the economy (Score:5, Insightful)
How is bitcoin an asset of any value? (Score:3)
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It's the economy, but it's something very different.
Bitcoins, and crypto in general, was only interesting because it was volatile, yes, but at the same time it was the only way to actually get some interest out of your money. Gold and other precious metals are overvalued thrice and more over. Same for real estate. Stocks and bonds are laughable. It was something to invest in because nothing else had any ROI.
Now with increasing interest rates, the risk/reward ratio of crypto currencies just ain't interesting
Re:Symptom of the economy (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. As much fun as it is to laugh at people who invested in a clearly speculative and ultimately worthless fake "asset," this is merely a symptom of the larger economic collapse brought about by Biden and the Democrats
lol. the whole world is dealing with this . try looking past your nose
Nobody listens to huff po (Score:5, Informative)
Turns out giving all the money in the world to the 1% and letting them act like 18th century robber barons is a bad idea, who knew?
Re:Symptom of the economy (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, it's ALL Biden's fault!!
Biden broke into my home, ate all my ice cream, and turned up the temperature in my fish tank and they all died! Biden even left the toilet seat up!
That bastard- is there anything he won't do??
I also hear he started the War of 1812, sank the Titanic, and devalued my Beanie Babies®.
(It's hilarious to see him living rent-free in your head, lol)
Re:Symptom of the economy (Score:5, Funny)
I also hear he started the War of 1812
That one is unfair.
He had barely entered politics back then!!
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That bastard- is there anything he won't do??
He turned me into a newt!
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Yes.
*looking right, looking left*
That was Biden. Biden was that. The stain on my shirt? That's not ice cream, that's cum.
Trump wrecked the economy (Score:5, Insightful)
The massive tax cuts resulted in huge stock BuyBacks and tons of mergers and acquisitions. The tariffs also left us in a precarious position without supply chains weakened (the baby formulas shortage was caused because there's only three companies left in America making the stuff and Trump's tariffs made it virtually impossible to import it, to the point where it took an emergency executive order by Biden to do it). The ultra low interest rates which should have been raised during an already overheated economy allowed billionaires to buy up all the apartments and single family homes resulting in the highest rents and mortgages in American history with all that money essentially black holed out of the American economy doing nothing but sitting in some wealthy assholes bank account.
The economy looks a little more vibrant because of high employment. The reason for the high employment is that covid either killed or forced into retirement a hell of a lot of baby boomers and Gen M couldn't afford to have kids and so there aren't enough young people who can be paid like shit. The result is record low unemployment but because of the mega mergers and the stock BuyBacks and their effect on inflation any wage gains have been eaten up. Trump's absolutely terrible foreign policy where he let Vladimir Putin do literally anything he wanted is likely because Putin has dirt on him didn't help matters either. We should have been sending weapons to Ukraine so that the Soviets couldn't invade without heavy costs but we didn't do that and so we've got $5 a gallon gas thanks to a massive war that didn't need to happen.
Like everything Trump touched the economy looked attractive on the outside but was completely rotten on the inside. Like his steaks it was all gristle and no meat.
just to add detail : (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually it is a little bit worst than that. See most of those 3 companies are "regional" you don#t have 3 company competing on national level, you have in most area one single company and the nation divided in 4 : 3 mostly regional area for each companies, and a few
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I think there's some blame to go around, but a good deal falls on Trump policies and propaganda killing off 1 million Americans. Even if only half of them could work, their presence would have severely reduced inflation.
Please re-read my post (Score:5, Insightful)
Trump's economy was a gilded dog turd. And shortly after the election the maggots were going to burst out of it. He knew that (or rather his advisors did, Trump doesn't know his ass from a hole in the wall, yes, I'm old) but he didn't care. All he cared was tricking marks like you into voting for him.
The only TDS around here is you and your obsessive defense of the guy. I get it, you like pushing people's buttons. Is that worth dying for?
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Making this into left-vs-right politics is not helpful. Both sides had plenty of crypto "investors".
Where blame does lie is on all of the regulators over the past decade who saw this as a giant pyramid scheme which aided tax and sanctions evasiona nd could eventually pose a threat to the economy as a whole, yet chose to do nothing whatsoever to reign it in because they didn't want to be seen as "disrupting or taking sides in technological innovation".
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So wait, you contend that markets are inflated but consider any reduction in that inflation to be "a symptom of a collapsing economy"? Meanwhile U.S. GDP shrank by 1.4% (annu
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In your world, the Fed has a goal of propping up the price of crypto? ;) Here's some news: the Fed doesn't care about crypto. At all.
While there are indeed feedback mechanisms such as margin calls, the ultimate source of the decline is that it's the ultimate in speculative assets: infinite duration, infinite P/E. And these are the sort of assets that are hurt most by rising treasury rates. Rising treasury rates devalues long-term, high P/E, speculative assets the most, while affecting short-term, low P/
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In your world, the Fed has a goal of propping up the price of crypto?
That was just a side effect of during money into the market.
the ultimate source of the decline is that it's the ultimate in speculative assets:
Yes, that is as I said, buyers are not coming in for that reason, but again that is not the source of immediate decline.
Valuation (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoin has lost $900 billion in value...
Please, stop claiming that bitcoin is losing value, you wrongly say it 5 times in the summary. It is its valuation that is sunking. The value is inherent, the valuation can be (as in this case) completely speculative.
Subtle difference, but relevant to highlight that bitcoin has no value as a coin (for its lack of stability, its transaction fees and delays, among others) or as an investment (for its lack of stability and its purely speculative nature). Indeed, once you discard applications of dubious legality, you can claim that bitcoin has no real value.
Re:Valuation (Score:5, Interesting)
Please, stop claiming that bitcoin is losing value, you wrongly say it 5 times in the summary. It is its valuation that is sunking. The value is inherent, the valuation can be (as in this case) completely speculative.
Sadly, I can't mod you up as I have no points, but a few others are doing so. I suspect one of the real problems going on in the crypto world is that all these exchanges that are freezing withdrawals don't have the actual money on hand, nor can they get enough of it, to fully pay all their customers off if all of them cashed out at current prices. I'll make a wild guess that maybe between 10-20% of the current "value" of customer holdings could actually be paid out if everybody cashed out at once. I strongly suspect that what actually happened with the Terra/Luna fiasco is that some very large investor/speculator simply decided to cash out while they had turned a nice profit and amount of the cash out overwhelmed the system for Terra/Luna and it wasn't a malicious attempt to crash them.
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Well... (Score:2)
The value is inherent, the valuation can be (as in this case) completely speculative.
I totally agree with this, however for BitCoin the value is always zero, with BitCoin all you have is valuation...
I say that as someone who thinks BitCoin will always have a non-zero valuation, just not sure where it will end up.
Re: Valuation (Score:4, Insightful)
Bitcoin has no utility other than as a means of exchange that someone might accept, which means it has no intrinsic value unless your trading counterparts says it does. Gold, silver, seeds, iron, etc can be made into things which gives them utility and thus value. Fiat currency is willed into existence by the state for the purpose of acting as a means of exchange, giving it value.
What can you really do with Bitcoin? Trade it around and MAYBE exchange it for fiat currency? Ok whatever
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Somebody made a good point (Score:3)
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or even negative value wrt the whole of society
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If you want a fast, cheap BTC transaction,
Errr, no.
It's like recommending people shoot themselves in the foot with a 9mm instead of a BB gun because "the 9mm is faster".
How about we just don't shoot ourselves in the foot in the first place?
Re: Valuation (Score:5, Insightful)
You expect the government to bail out a currency they do not control?
Wait wasnt the point of crypto to say F U to financial authorities and banks, now crypto is screaming for a bailout?
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TARP was done to prevent otherwise structurally sound corporations from going belly-up. Corporate exposure to Bitcoin is minimal. Bitcoin is purely an asset of speculators. Far moreso than even gold. Nobody bails out gold. Nobody is going to bail out Bitcoin. If you're dreaming that's going to happen, keep dreaming.
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Bitcoin is valuable enough that we have a good chance of seeing a TARP style bailout, because of the importance of the currency. Congress has no choice, either bail it out, or watch the world economy collapse.
The only part of the world economy that a Bitcoin collapse will affect is the vital ransomware sector. Nigeria, Albania and Colombia will file for bankruptcy and be bought out by travel-oriented hedge funds.
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Why the hell would any government bail out a currency that's not theirs?
Governments around the world would rather have a lot of interest to see this crash and burn, the more spectacular the better.
Cash what you can. (Score:2)
I'm afraid the cynical economist in me says 'cash what you can cash while you can'.
The rest of me is happy that this hype is finally coming to an end.
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I don't get all these people acting like Bitcoin and crypto are "coming to an end." BTC has been boom and bust from the beginning. It's not a surprise that such a wild unregulated asset is tanking as a recession looms. It's not ending by any means.
The lawsuits are only beginning (Score:2)
While BTC and other crypto plunge in made up value, some of those suckers who bought into the bro crowd hype are now seeking legal remedies [marketwatch.com] for their losses claiming fraud and pump-and-dump schemes.
However, because crypto was designed to be outside the normal banking industry, it is unclear if the SEC has any jurisdiction because crypto may not be a security.
The question of whether the celebrity pitch people could be held liable is an open one. First, the courts would have to decide if crypto is a security, and then if that security was promoted fraudulently.
As commentators pointed out this week as the crypto markets crashed, no cryptocurrency has registered as a security and exchanges or lenders through which they may pass are not backed by the government’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) insurance guarantees.
In short, if crypto is not a security then these suckers might have little to no remedy to recover losses. Even worse, with crypto "exchanges" now slo
Re:The lawsuits are only beginning (Score:4, Insightful)
Crypto Speculator: Hahah... stay out of my way, government! You're not wanted!
(Market crashes, speculator loses everything)
Crypto Speculator: This isn't faaair! I've been swindled! Government, help!
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This is amazingly similar to those "souvereign citizen" dimwits.
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collectibles and recession (Score:2)
When people have less money to spend the value of collectibles goes down.
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When people have less money to spend the value of collectibles goes down.
I never heard of Bitcoin described as a "collectible" before. (??)
In a way, I suppose it is.
When will it be too expensive to mine? (Score:3)
With the fact that energy for all but the most connected mining outfits (the ones who are located where hydroelectric is available, or have an extremely large solar array) is expensive, I wonder what will happen to BTC's price when it becomes too expensive, both in buying the ASIC mining equipment, energy in running the equipment, as well as energy to cool everything down? When more mining outfits pull out and shut down, will that help or hurt BTC's value? Mining outfits also have a lot of overhead for data centers, so even if they stop running the ASIC miners, they still have the data centers to pay for, as well as the land, and in today's FOMO real estate prices, the state taxes for it can be expensive.
Of course, people say now is the time to move in buy BTC... but people said the exact same thing about GM stock before the company went bankrupt and reissued all new shares, where anyone who had stock lost it all.
Once the energy for mining is too expensive, what then? Especially come the next reward halving, which only makes the situation worse.
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With the fact that energy for all but the most connected mining outfits (the ones who are located where hydroelectric is available, or have an extremely large solar array) is expensive, I wonder what will happen to BTC's price when it becomes too expensive, both in buying the ASIC mining equipment, energy in running the equipment, as well as energy to cool everything down?
The unprofitable will turn off their machines and the network difficulty will ajust and things will keep on trucking... like it
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Agreed, the difficulty level will go down... but turning off and on mining equipment isn't easy. You can do it, and it will save the energy in mining costs, but there is still overhead of keeping a data center ready to go, and it isn't a trivial cost. In general, once miners start leaving the market, it is going to take a lot to get new ones to come back, buy capacity, ASIC mining equipment and such to get going again. It isn't like the oil market where oil companies can just lower production to keep the
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In general, once miners start leaving the market, it is going to take a lot to get new ones to come back, buy capacity, ASIC mining equipment and such to get going again
It literally won't. The difficulty will adjust. They aren't needed. The gap doesn't need filled when they leave.
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Agreed, the difficulty level will go down... but turning off and on mining equipment isn't easy. You can do it, and it will save the energy in mining costs, but there is still overhead of keeping a data center ready to go, and it isn't a trivial cost. In general, once miners start leaving the market, it is going to take a lot to get new ones to come back, buy capacity,
The crypto mines will not be abandoned. They will be repurposed to mint NFT images of bats.
Is it over yet? (Score:2)
It would be a _good_ day if this bullshit speculation had an EOL.
A finality.
Dead.
There's only _one_ decent idea that has come out of this decade long "experiment", the idea of DeFi - and even that has so many questions swirling around it.
If we are to say the only positive outcome would be the promise of cutting out "the middleman" in terms of actually holding the keys to what we have financially, that would be a good day, right?
So, your bank can no longer hold back your funds - can no longer put a stop on y
Re: Is it over yet? (Score:3)
Re: Is it over yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Or things will bottom out, money will flood back in, and the new pump will begin a new
Well sure, that's always "the big sell" when it comes to this market - acting like it's been around forever and "history" will repeat itself.
It's SO MUCH BULLSHIT, it beggars belief.
Just 13 years ago, Bitcoin came onto the scene, yet "Crypto Bro's" act as if it has been around forever.
"Well, if you do a TA on the trends, the market always does XYZ at this point."
I cry BOLLOCKS.
There is already some amazement that Bitcoin and the market have - shock! horror! /s - not actually followed a trajectory - an ancient trajectory, of an ENTIRE 13 years /s - "dropping below its previous halving cycle's high for the first time in its history"
FFS, a history of fucking 13 years is NOT a history - it's a blip. A tiny little blip.
Yeah, I'm a bit shouty here, because the sheer hubris is mind bendingly stupid - because? Greed, as a human emotion, has no equal.
The entire market is like greed at it's most primal - and in that, it will self-destruct itself.
It'll eat itself up, in a feeding frenzy of vanishing returns.
13 years? - Jesus H Christmas, that's a TINY time scale - and the reason it hit such dizzying heights in the first place?
It was played with. Just another asset for the "big boy & girls" to toy with, not giving a damn shit about any highfalutin crypto-bro drivel.
It was _there_ to be fucked with, to take the rubes for a ride, to make money out of _nothing_ expect taking money off other people.
And my story? I've followed this market since 2017, dabbled, speculated and ended up fortunately no worse off financially, but also wiser - I drank a tiny bit of the coolaid, I got a tiny bit greedy.
Out of all that experience? - yeah, I'd like to see some DeFi action _without_ speculation - I really would like more control over the money I actually own, because right now, it's all in the bank - and the bank calls the shots. I don't actually have custody over my own money, really.
Does anyone? - hell no.
But FFS, we could do without this speculative circle jerk - and I reckon it's about to crash for good... hopefully.
Re: (Score:2)
..It's complicated, but to me, it's frikkin' obvious that 99.9% of the cryptocurrency market is NOT complicated, despite its ridiculous complexities - it is speculation - it has NO pegged value to anything physical..
Cryptocurrencies are all just made up "currencies". Because they're not based on any tangible asset and no major Government is mandating it's use, people just have to agree that they have any value at all. Imho. where cryptocurrencies failed is they were never seriously meant for conducting online transactions for goods and services. It's a chicken and egg thing; if I can't buy anything useful with crypto, then why should I bother owning/mining it??? The only reason is for speculation. But speculation for t
Re: (Score:2)
..It's complicated, but to me, it's frikkin' obvious that 99.9% of the cryptocurrency market is NOT complicated, despite its ridiculous complexities - it is speculation - it has NO pegged value to anything physical..
Cryptocurrencies are all just made up "currencies". Because they're not based on any tangible asset and no major Government is mandating it's use, people just have to agree that they have any value at all. Imho. where cryptocurrencies failed is they were never seriously meant for conducting online transactions for goods and services. It's a chicken and egg thing; if I can't buy anything useful with crypto, then why should I bother owning/mining it??? The only reason is for speculation. But speculation for the sake of speculation will eventually collapse because the underlying asset has no real-world use and no real-world value.
Exactly.
The _only_ reason for getting "on board" is the hope of timing, of getting in early and still finding a seat to sit in as the musical chairs or "pass the parcel" continues.
To be able to sell ATH and leave others with the bags - and those bags are FIAT. Simple as.
NONE of those bags are really this make believe money, because it took "real" money to buy-in.
And everyone, unless they are liars, fools or cultists that drank the cool-aid, did it for anything more than greed.
I've spent enough time on the s
Re: (Score:2)
Cryptocurrencies are all just made up "currencies".
And they're not even currencies.
They are basically collectables.
in other news... (Score:3)
... the value of that star that is named for you in some "Registry" remains at zero
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The Truth About Bitcoin (Score:4, Funny)
Q: How do you make a small fortune from investing in Bitcoin?
A: Start off by investing a large fortune in Bitcoin.
Re:The Truth About Bitcoin (Score:5, Funny)
Q: How do you get a Bitcoin investor off your front porch?
A: Pay for the pizza
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There was a certain someone who sought my advice (Score:2)
There is somebody who routinely asks for my advice about markets. On the way up in tech I was always a bit reluctant to say "don't buy" because I didn't want the burden of making them miss out on the next Amazon or Apple; but I was open about the fact that I owned no tech because I thought it was overvalued and it didn't fit my relatively conservative strategy.
The one time I said "Absolutely do not touch this stock", was the Coin Base IPO. I feel pretty good about that now.
Uhm. (Score:5, Interesting)
The study also found that 61% of bitcoin addresses had not sold anything in the last 12 months, suggesting that a total run on crypto may be avoidable.
I didn't RTFA, but this seems like a fundamental misunderstanding that assumes all wallets are controlled by living breathing people capable of making transactions. You know, instead of the by-design artificial scarcity of lost foreverness in BTC.
I personally know at least one guy who is dead, who owned some amount, which is now gone forever, this also ignores that most coins have never moved. [fortune.com] Saying this as someone who fucking loathes the whole thing and has never had any stake in it.
Finally (Score:2)
With apologies to Steven Lisberger (Score:2)
I'm old. Old enough to remember the bitcoin when he was just a cheesy computer program! He started small, and he'll end small!
This might be around the bottom (Score:3)