Bitcoin, Other Cryptocurrencies Plummet This Weekend (msn.com) 214
"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."
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."
Anyone else smelling Tulips? (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
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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.
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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".
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It means you buy the stock. The more people want to buy the stock, the more the price goes up.
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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
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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
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You know that's mostly a myth, right?
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"You know that's mostly a myth, right?"
Mostly?
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Like Unicorns aren't real, but horses are.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Anyone else smelling Tulips? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anyone else smelling Tulips? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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
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"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]
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"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]
Crypto won't drop unless and until (Score:2)
Re: Crypto won't drop unless and until (Score:2)
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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.
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My understanding is it is the sellers that prefer fentanyl or analogs, especially during the pandemic. It is much easier to acquire 10 grams of fentanyl or a gram of whatever it is called then a kilo of heroin.
For the users, they probably most want consistency so that they are not getting poisoned by the unknown nature of what they are buying.
Re: Anyone else smelling Tulips? (Score:2)
Re: Anyone else smelling Tulips? (Score:4, Funny)
yeah, 10% volatility is Bitcoin every tuesday.
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Nope (Score:2)
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.
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There are also hints of Ponzi.
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Nobody who's sane invests in real currencies that are this volatile.
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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)
The Ethereum I mined for free at $8/each at the time, it only worth $2,200/each.
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Somebody's mad that people buy blockchain tokens other than BTC. Cry me a river.
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They're all doomed to be replaced by something more advanced, churn for nascent society-changing technology is inevitable. Make sure you have your bags packed before it's time to jump ship.
Getting robbed of Crypto (Score:3)
Re: Getting robbed of Crypto (Score:2)
Dogecoint has "no fundamentals" (Score:5, Insightful)
So, Dogecoin has "no fundamentals". What are the "fundamentals" of any other crypto, pray tell? Salty much?
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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.
Re: Dogecoint has "no fundamentals" (Score:3)
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Facebook makes money by selling advertising, not by just persuading people it's magically worth more
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It does now, but originally it literally just persuaded people it's magically worth more.
Awesome (Score:5, Funny)
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Have you got a few thousands dollars lying around? eBay is waiting.
Dogecoin — the token started as a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Dogecoin — the token started as a joke (Score:2)
And BTC is almost a trillion dollar joke
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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
Re:Dogecoin — the token started as a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
A shitload of guns, in case you weren't paying attention.
Re:Dogecoin — the token started as a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait 'til you learn with the US Dollar is backed by.
350 million people, the worlds' largest economy and the worlds' largest military?
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The number of people with a hunting license in just one state is more than the number of people in the US military ....
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Which state is that? Texas seems to have the most hunting license holders (about 1.1M), which is fewer than the number of active duty service members (almost 1.4M).
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You might want to check your stats about largest military. China has almost double the amount of active members. We might spend more but judging how Vietnam went over that doesn't mean shit.
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You might want to check your stats about largest military. China has almost double the amount of active members.
What matters most in military vs. military conflict isn't number of men, it's equipment. One serious piece of equipment used correctly can let you kill fairly dazzling numbers of soldiers.
Men are important for holding regions, but not so important for killing men.
China having twice as many enlisted is what doesn't mean shit.
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*cough* Vietnam *cough*
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The US's war with Vietnam showed how impractical objectives can hamstring a military and drive it into failure. There are just too many competing requirements for a even a massive military to have a chance when joining in a civil war or in an attempt to reverse a revolution.
Weirdly it would have been easier to conquer and occupy Vietnam and turn it into a US territory than the vague objective of simply exhausting the Viet Cong (by killing them all) while also trying to keep life and political structure of S
Re:Dogecoin — the token started as a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait 'til you learn with the US Dollar is backed by.
Pretty much the whole US economy and some others besides. Next stupid statement?
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The USD is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States along with it's massive GDP. Bitcoin is backed by people who don't understand basic economics.
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Mostly to ourselves.
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> The USD is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States along with it's massive GDP.
So, if it fails and we get massive inflation, we'll get paid with faith? Or credit - they (the Federal Reserve, not the US government) can print more money to pay us.
The debt is already larger than a full year of GDP, and the debt is growing much faster than GDP.
What basic economics are you talking about?
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"never leave your friend's behind".
My friend used to make this joke all the time when he was serving his mandatory time in the military. Always cracks me up.
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Stop trying to equate these things with currency, they are not.
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The police and the IRS.
If you do business in the US (currently 24% of the global economy) you have to pay taxes. Those taxes must be paid in US dollars. That's what backs the US dollar, the threat of imprisonment for tax evasion.
Not enough - another 20% fall and I can buy (Score:5, Insightful)
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)
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.
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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.
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Exactly. This is an institutional pump and dump, nothing more.
Re:If institutional investors pull out - game over (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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This is the problem with blockchain application proposals. It's all handwaving.
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
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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
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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?
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No different than the stock market. What would happen to Apple if every shareholder decided to sell today?
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They'd have nothing left besides their 100 billion in cash, all their inventory, their Apple app store and other worthless stuff.
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Apple would use their cash reserve to buy all the shares and Tim Cook would get another yacht or three.
Re:Freedom money Manipulated money (Score:2)
It appears that the only one who has no idea what he is doing here, is you.
Lost only 4wks of growth (Score:5, Insightful)
Bit coin plummets! To values not seen since *checks notes* four weeks ago...
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> 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.
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Considering how long it takes to transfer BTC anywhere, you might starve to death waiting for the completion of a transaction.
A turd by any other name (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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These people can't understand that this is not Bitcoin which is rising, this is just the USD which is crashing.
That is a theory, i'll conceded it might even be correct, I just don't think so. Commodity based or pure fiat for any money to work *enough* people have to trust it to create a functional market place. Right now that just isn't the case and we are long way from there. When the guy with the circular saw building houses will take something as money - then you are there.
I don't think the USD is 'crashing' either, I think its being revalued somewhat in light of all the stimi money running around. As usual the
Welcome to the unregulated market (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Markets should not be regulated by anything other than the sum actions of all market participants.
Great thinking!
So if you have some property and I want it, then it would be wrong to have regulations that prevented me from offering to not shoot you in the head in exchange for it?
And it would be totally wrong to have regulations about willing vs unwilling participation in the market. Who needs that kind of nanny-state fascism?
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This week in crypto news ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Crypto went up! Crypto went down. We're not really sure why. Dogecoin wtf?
This badly needs fixing (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:This badly needs fixing (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet, everyone who bought bitcoin seconds before the 2018 crash at about $20k per coin, if they held, now their coins are worth about three times as much.
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And tomorrow, they could be worth 0 if the whales start pulling out.
Explain why the power outage would make it go down (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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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.
What else is new (Score:2)
How much mining in China? (Score:2)
Did we give China a weapon of economic mass destruction?
Is this a national security issue?
A hording currancy. (Score:2)
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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I was gonna say, the low point for Bitcoin value every week is Sunday at some point. And this week's drop was just a tiny fraction more than the usual drop, and it's making it up as we speak. Calling this a crash is like saying a stock value dropping by .001 cent is a crash. It's a blip on the radar that anyone paying attention to the trend would sip coffee at rather than run from the room screaming that the sky is falling.