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Bitcoin's Value Plummeted Overnight and No One Knows Why (slate.com)
Jacob Brogan, writing for Slate: While the Western Hemisphere slept, Bitcoin plummeted. Just after midnight Eastern Time on Friday, the cryptocurrency was valued at a little over $15,000, on the digital currency exchange Coinbase. At that point, it was already well below the $19,783 all-time high it had hit the week before. Over the course of the night, Bitcoin began to decline erratically, occasionally spiking but following a general downward trend. Around 9:22 a.m. Eastern, it hit a temporary floor, valued at a mere $10,400. By that point, it had declined more than $6,000 from its short-term peak the morning before, having lost more than one-third of its value. Bitcoin wasn't the only currency hit by a sharp drop. Tech Crunch's Jon Russell reports that most other prominent cryptocurrencies also fell, including Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash (which is, confusingly, separate from Bitcoin proper). As Russell notes, it's hard to say why this is happening, "in the same way that nobody knows exactly why bitcoin's price has [shot] up from a touch under $1,000 at the start of the year."
It was overvalued and a bubble. Next question?
Profit taking, I'm sure. That's what often happens when a stock rises quickly; the people who got in earlier sell out to cement their profit.
You're trying to understand why a valuation based on bullshit...plummeted?
Please tell me common fucking sense still has value today...
This is a typical scheme where millionaires sell a bunch of their coins(or stock) to get everyone to jump out and then they buy the coins back much cheaper. Looks like it has recovered some already
I still have two transactions in limbo, from EIGHT DAYS ago.
Everyone knows why Bitcoin's value plummeted. It's because Bitcoin doesn't have any value other than the belief of people in Bitcoin. What I said about Bitcoin is generally true for the Dollar too, but in the case of the Dollar at least the U.S. Government will take it for your tax payments. Nobody has to take Bitcoin for anything.
People confuse creation of money with creation of value. Value is food, materials, information, useful work. Dollars/bitcoins are unreliable media for exchange of value, not the value itself. Creation of $300B in bitcoin won't help the world to feed one more mouth.
Speculators jumped on it as a get-rich-quick scheme to make money from other speculators who would - they hoped - not time the market as well as they did. But inherent in this strategy is that all speculators will cash in on their speculation, driving Bitcoin back to low values as they abscond.
Bruce Perens.
When Bitcoin crashes properly it'll lose 90 to 100%+ of it's value.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
There's no "reason" because there's no rational valuation mechanism. Cryptocurrency without a mechanism for value stabilization is a scam. Blockchains are clearly useful for certain kinds of distributed trust problems, but Bitcoin is merely one instance that was always marketed as a cryptocurrency but has zero use as a transaction mechanism. Nobody wants to use a currency that may be worth 20% more, or 20% less the next day.
The only valid use case for Bitcoin I've heard described is as an improved version of the offshore banking system. In other words, a mechanism for rich people to launder and hide money. Of course, a cryptocurrency with value stability would sure as hell be a lot more useful and trusted for even this grey market purpose.
Ultimately, Bitcoin's value is driven by grey and black market activity. Money laundering, cybercrime, etc. Investing in Bitcoin is essentially investing in a residual claim on this underbelly of the economy, in the same way that regular fiat currencies are residual claims on national economies, with a healthy dose of mindless speculation and bubblemania thrown into the mix.
Bubble + North Korea hacking and theft + loss of confidence probably all play a roll
North Korea Hacking War on Bitcoin Exchanges Is Part of “Biggest Global Sting”
The bankruptcy of a bitcoin exchange has been blamed on North Korean hackers, prompting concerns for the cryptocurrency’s future. Around $72 million worth of bitcoins were stolen from the South Korean exchange Youbit in April, before a second more recent cyber heist forced the exchange to shut down on Tuesday. Cryptocurrency exchanges from neighboring South Korea—which account for 15 to 25 percent of world bitcoin trading—appear to be the main target of the hackers, with the country’s largest exchange platform, Bithumb, hacked in July. Other Seoul-based bitcoin exchanges, including Yapizon and Coinis, have also been the target of cyber thieves suspected of being from North Korea this year.
Bitcoin exchange collapses after second cyber attack in a year
Bitcoin fails its test as a haven in times of global turmoil
North Korea bitcoin WARNING: Kim regime hacking cryptocurrency to fund nuclear weapons
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
There was excitement that 2 major mainstream exchanges were going to start trading Bitcoin futures. That suddenly was going to give Bitcoin legitimacy and credibility. Its the best thing since sliced bread. Everyone jumped on board and it rocketed. Now that the futures have started trading, people are looking around and seeing that the world is still the same.
Sell the news.. back down it goes...
There was a little drop after the CBOE started trading futures because of "sell the news" but it was tempered by hope that the CME opening would shoot it back up. Now that both events are past there's nothing to look forward to except organic growth (hopefully).
What did it for me was when that Tea company pivoted to blockchain and went up 2x. If that's not a sign then I don't know what is...
All a company has to do to 2x their value is to >>say they're going blockchain? come on....
that's a pretty sane thought. What gives? ;)
The same thing can be said for day trading in individual shares, options, et cetera. What determines the price of a share, if there isn't any news? Noise. They're trading on noise. And now there's suddenly a trend, and most follow it.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Of course, it is time travelers from the future, cashing out before the inevitable collapse in 2 weeks. Of course this needs to be done in a careful and coordinated fashion, to avoid the inevitable positive feedback. Now the trick is whether they will be able to return to the future, since the early decline in the price might affect the funding that created their time machines.
- Mike
At the height of the tulip craze people were purchasing tulip *futures*. The were purchasing the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of a current high value tulip. Also options as well.
Same as it ever was.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Holy Crap! I am going to blockchain my 3D printed autonomous crypto drones with AI in the agile cloud! It will be bigger than web scale!
then it might actually be useful as a medium of exchange.
Bitcoins take like a week to transfer, right? What price do you get when you sell one, the price at the time the transaction starts, or the time it completes?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
The only reason it didn't plummet further is because of how long these transactions will take to process. Everyone's waiting to see where it all settles.
except for the trades booed by some Big Daddy. "Of course sir, to the front of the line"
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Actually there's been articles that suggest something like 40% of all bitcoins are held by a small rich crowd of about 1000 users who have more money than common sense and they tend to move simultaneously. So maybe that small rich group is attempting to cash in by selling all at once at the cost of everyone else.
Where is coinbase HQ? And will the bank-run scene from "It's a Wonderful Life" be enacted there?
Bitcoin is no different than Pork Bellies.
Except it makes lousy bacon.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"in the same way that nobody knows exactly why bitcoin's price has [shot] up from a touch under $1,000 at the start of the year."
He doesn't know, he's ignorant. The reason it's shot up is because wall street banks started marketing bitcoin to their customers, and now every two-bit 'investor' wants a piece of the action. It's entirely because of marketing, that's why the price went up.
It will go up more because there is still so much hype around it, and the hype is growing. If the price drops, people will say, "This is an ideal time to get in."
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm glad my Treasury Notes don't bounce up and down like that, although the ways things are going that may be coming.
I'ts known as a Pump-n-Dump.
a lot like what I did to your mom....
So, it went down and no one knows why, and also they're saying no one knows why it went up. I think that if anyone really wants to know why, it's very easy to solve this.
Find someone who bought Bitcoin, and ask them.
For example, if you want to find out why it went down, find someone who was paying $15,000 per BTC, and ask "why were you longer willing to pay $15k? What new information came to light that made you realize it was worth only $10k (but still a fuck-ton more than $1k)?" and then just see what they say. Listen.
Similarly, if you want to find out why it went up, find someone who was paying $10,000 and ask "Why was 1 BTC worth that much? Would you pay more for a bitcoin? $12.5k? 15k?" and just see what they say.
The people doing this, are the ones who are thinking about how many dollars it's worth and making decisions. Just ask how they make the decision, and you'll have your answers.
(WTF, why is everyone staring at me like I said something utterly naive? I don't get it. ;-)
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I don't recall Slashdot having a bit coin story yesterday. Bitcoin felt ignored and wanted to do something to get attention again.
*Yawn* this is just Bitcoin being Bitcoin.
Buy what you can afford to lose (Slot Machine/Cigarette/Beer money); then don't look at it for at least a month.
Smart money manipulating Bitcoin so it can buy in.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Inhabitants of many Latin American countries have clear memories of the country's currency plummetting overnight to ~60% of its previous value. In my lifetime, it has happened at least three times (and losing 10% overnight? Oh, too many to count).
Of course, nobody wants to save in national currencies then... But it's not like we have much of a choice!
Coins are not lost if the transaction isn't processed. The sender still owns the coins until the public distributed ledger says otherwise, which it won't until the transaction is confirmed and included in the block chain. The protocol has a "replace-by-fee" (RBF) where you can just re-create a new transaction with a higher fee than the old unconfirmed transaction and the new transaction, once confirmed, becomes the fate of the sender's coin, and the old transaction, if it ever gets processed, will be rejected as that coin has already been spent.
But the line between (feigned) ignorance and shill is still pretty clear if you know what you're looking for. Clearly no one can know *why* until OP sells off their holdings, then it'll be crystal clear why.
The one benefit I can see to the slowness of transaction resolution on Bitcoin is that it makes it useless for HF trading. If you have to wait days for your trades to clear OR pay a huge transaction fee to jump the line, it's a lot harder to cash in on sub-penny swings to rook investors who are more hops away from the exchange than you are.
...please invest $ 22.95 for this book.
It is well worth the cost, and - if you understand the logic behind financial bubbles - you will spare plenty of your money in the future.
Government fiat currency will always have one fixed intrinsic value: People with guns will come and lock you up if you don't pay them the correct amount of it every year. As long as fiat pays taxes, it's guaranteed to be worth something. BTC, not so much...
Bitcoin, like everything else, is worth whatever someone will pay for it. Since the recent nuttiness surrounding it means that it's effectively ONLY useful for speculation, what did people EXPECT was going to happen?
The Greater Fool theory only goes so far - eventually you run out of Greater Fools and the price goes back down.
It's REALLY not complicated, folks. Trying to ascribe meaning to this kind of shit is no more sensible than planning your year based on goat entrails.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
demand and supply
aaaaaaa
There is something you guys should understand about Wall Street (particularly Goldman Sachs a.k.a. The Vampire Squid) getting into the cryptocurrency futures market. You would think on the surface, if you write (or go short) a Gold, or Oil, or even Cattle contract, that you have to come up with the goods when the futures contract matures. However, there is the little discussed option of "Cash Settlement". If you can't meet the obligations of the futures contract, you can simply pay the owner of the contract what those goods are worth in US Dollars. The markets tout this as good thing for all market participants, but in reality, it is a gross perversion of the market in general. It effectively turns your Cattle, or Oil, or Gold market into a US Dollar market.
And now they're doing the very same thing to the BTC market. When people are short BTC futures and have to come up with the goods, they don't have to worry about spiking the spot market looking for BTC. They just have to shell out USD. And the Powers That Be have LOTS of USD to spend on either side of that trade.
Bingo !
aaaaaaa
Great. So I'm a local electronics store. I sell someone a laptop for .1 BTC. Fair deal. That transaction is queued for a few days. He wants to walk out of the store with the laptop today. Either the store takes a huge risk of fraud (or even mistake), or the user can't get what he buys for days. Which is why anyone who thinks this is a workable currency is a fucking idiot.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Actually the tulip mania is way over hyped. It didn't destroy the dutch economy and it didn't affect all layers of society. The bullshit you're spouting about tulip futures and options is bullshit.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...
For those not familiar with either the term or the practice, here's a primer:-
Imagine you think that Bitcoin is in a bubble and hugely over-priced. All it would take would be a sharp pin to burst the bubble and the price will plummet... Well, good for you if you don't have any in your portfolio, but how can you use that to make a shed-load of money?
You sell short in the hope of starting a run. Here's how it works. You go to the market and you sell say, $100,000,000 of Bitcoin that you don't actually possess... Markets will allow you to do this, as long as you settle all your accounts by the end of the current trading period [i.e. by market close on the day]. So what happens is this:
You have no cash to buy, and no Bitcoins, but you "sell", $100,000,000 of coins in to the market at say 20% below the currently trading price. Let's keep the numbers simple - imagine the prevailing price was $20,000/coin and you sell for, ooh... $16,000, which is the 20% drop point. The sheer size of your transaction - perhaps done because you've seen a couple of other big sales do the same thing - spooks the market. Suddenly all the traders who have been buying in to the currency are worried and they want out as quickly as possible. They start to offer their holdings for sale at steep discounts, each sale taking place way below the buying price.
In no time the price of Bitcoins falls through the floor... Everyone wants to sell, nobody wants to buy. Except, perhaps, the suckers who had "buy orders" programmed into their trading platforms if ever the price was "foolish" enough to dip below their target price. Suddenly all those folk with automated buy positions get their trades executed, even while the price continues to tank.
You watch the price plummet. $19,000, $18,000, $17,000, $16,000, $15,000. Eventually it hits $14,000 and the "dead cat bounce" starts - the price starts to look soooo stupidly attractive that more nuanced traders begin to buy back in. The price rallies. You buy enough coins to cover the "sale" you made at the beginning of the day. Except that you "sold" for $16,000, but you bought back in at $14,500...
Now let's do the math and figure out how much you made [before transaction fees]. You "sold" $10,000,000 at $16,000 each, which means that you sold 625 coins. Then the price dropped to $14,500 and you bought 625 coins to cover your earlier sale. But because you only had to pay $14,500 for them, you actually pay out $90,625,000. So you've made $9,375,000 with "Other People's Money" - all in a single day.
Congratulations, you've just passed "Banking 101"....
Oh, and for those who read this and think, "That's all well and good in theory, but it would never happen in practice..." I'd remind you that roughly 20 years ago, "Black Wednesday" happened, which absolutely devastated the value of UK Sterling on international exchange rates - and in the process made George Soros, who bet "against" the Pound in *exactly* the way I've just described here, a billionaire.
Until the practice of "short selling" - what I've just described in this post - is made illegal, there is *nothing* to stop this happening with Bitcoin, or with any other traded commodity. Bitcoin is no longer operating like a currency [if it ever truly did], but is now operating exactly like a "bubble" commodity, just like the dot-com boom, like antique cars, like works of art, like vintage wine.
It's difficult to know for sure, but this event has all the hall-marks of someone attempting to burst the bubble and make a killing. I reckon if there was some short selling in this window that someone might have made a noteworthy profit, but unlikely what we saw George Soros make. Whoever it was, they'll get it right next time...
... sold high and parked their shit in cash.
When BTC went to $12,000 the cash-holders started buying back.
That's how it's done.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Selling a lot of BTC, quickly, and more importantly reliably, needs the cooperation of bitcoin miners to process your transaction quickly, ahead of others, instead of waiting until... whenever.
So, look who processed all those BTC sale transactions and how they are connected with the sellers.
Clearly, BTC trading benefits from insiders because it is so illiquid.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Have you ever consider that maybe Full Block, Replace by fee, Segwit and LN are new things that got added and create the problem? Bitcoin Cash is not a new idea, it's not a new concept, it's the same old thing as described in the original white paper. That's why the name is the same. Bitcoin Cash IS Bitcoin. Bitcoin core is trying new stuff that don't work. We see it right now! More reading: https://www.bitcoin.com/info/w...
So now it's back up to 14,777 as I type this comment. Does that mean this story should be updated?
Four things happened starting on Tuesday. Coinbase added BCH, margin accounts and interest became unsustainable, margin calls, exit strategies.
Coinbase added support for Bitcoin Cash on Tuesday. They also gave everyone 1 BCH for each BTC you had at the time of the split. This should have flooded the market with BCH and driven the price of BCH down. Also the sellers of BCH should have invested in other currencies and pushed those prices up. The opposite happened. News that coinbase was accepting BCH actually pushed BCH's price up and the shift to BCH caused other currencies to fall.
Most of the trading is now automated trading. You can also buy on margin. However the margin has a 1.5% interest per day. Then funny things happen. If someone borrows 1 BTC and shorts it, and then buys an equivalent amount of 10 other more volatile coins using that money they could cover the interest. For the past 2 months this worked really well. Most smaller cap currencies have gone up more than BTC by more than 1.5%. It seemed like low risk investing. People treat crypto like the stock markets treat stocks assuming that having 100 different stocks has less variability than 1. Unfortunately like the stock market, there is a high level of correlation in price change.
Now after Tuesday, people who had margin accounts had to top up their margins. This caused a slow sell but the interest rates made borrowing for more than 3 days difficult so starting late last night a lot of people had no choice but to sell.
Exit strategies - eventually everyone has to actually use their money. I know a lot of people who have made 10x their investment. Their exit has been if it falls 30%, I sell 50%. So if they put in 100K, they had 1M yesterday, 700K this morning and then sold to have 350K in fiat and 350K still in crypto. You can automate that sell.
The weird part. There are no natural sellers in crypto currencies. They aren't backed in any meaningful way anymore. After this crash all the remaining people who own crypto are non-sellers. They are greedy and will hold indefinitely. The margin people who had to sell are gone, my friends with exit strategies are out. The only sellers left are people who are moving money between crypto currencies. The prices of most currencies not in the top 10 market cap are going to jump 15% before the day is done. In a week the money will be poring back in and zero money will be being pulled out.
Coinbase effectively stopped trading Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ethereum, and a couple others. They suspect insider trading has happened. This is the most likely reason for the drop, trust in exchanges has been damaged.
If it turns out to be insider trading, ouch for Coinbase, and the market. Maybe good for future investors as they can get a lower price now than what they've seen recently. If it doesn't turn out to be insider trading, then faith in the market will resume and the irrational bubble will inflate again.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"No one goes there, it's too crowded"
There are enough transactions to fill the blockchain, obviously someone is using it.
My last post predicted most coins would jump 15% from this morning (EST morning). With all the sellers gone I have no idea what the gains will be but looking at the charts most are already up over 20%
Kim needs cash?
Currency cross rates don't move like that
That still seems slow. When I made a large transaction for a deposit on a house, it went through in 2 hours. Cost me less than a bitcoin transaction fee as well.
The whales are cashing in.
Whoever bought them in the past months is screwed.
We told you so.
It wasn't shorting. You would be a fool to short bitcoin. It has no real valuation, it's price is between zero and infinity. Shorting it and not buying something with a strong correlation in value is opening yourself up to unlimited liability. No one will currently let you borrow without a very large margin and your borrowing costs are over 1% per day.
Let's do the math.
You have 50M in BitCoin, you borrow another 50M. You sell all of it for 80M, and later spend 30M to buy back enough to return the 50M you borrowed. You now have 50M in cash. So for unlimited risk you came out even.
Oh and 100M would be the very least you could use to start a short. The trading volume in the last 24h was 22 billion.
make money. Pigs go to slaughter.
Anyone with any brains has pulled half their money and will let the rest run.
The reason has been known for hundreds of years.
But we will never learn that a bubble is a bubble is a bubble.
Bitcoin is a bit of technology/algorithms that would be useful if it weren't so cumbersome. There are better, more recent, solutions for the same problem, and Bitcoin will fall by the wayside.
In the meantime, none of these things are actual currencies. It's just people playing chicken pretending there's something to back the "currency" and passing the hot-potato along until somebody gets stuck with it.
Some day, governments or others that can act as a store of wealth may use similar technology.
Its price is notoriously volatile.... why are you surprised that it's Down a small amount after being Up a large amount?
The market is cooling down a bit, especially at the close of the year, and when its price was up there on the precipice it takes only a small push to result into some regression towards the mean.
In this case, the Litecoin founder being bullied into selling his coins -- the media playing Roger Ver's statements, the BCASH appearing on Coinbase, and some other recent events add up to a fairly significant Push, THEN the push gets even stronger with some initial price motion as some people react to a small dip by selling even more until it reaches a critical selling-off mass, and we have a minor price correction on our hands.
A bunch of fools showed up with money, and somebody took it away from them.
I don't gamble.
.
In a computer driven fast moving market like we have today, and with completely unpredictable governments turning on a dime, its hard to feel at ease with whatever things of value they are currently holding. The more uncertain the market is, then the more certain some people are going to be of its eventual devaluation, and will then be fearing that the market may soon tank, and that starts a downward trend. When others see the value declining, they too begin to think it is worth less. Once you cash out, others will follow. Its a self reinforcing feedback loop. The bad thing is that computers can algorithmically panic trade much faster, and even more completely, than their human counterparts, if not specifically coded to stop trading.
The bottom line is you are gambling against what other people will think tomorrow. You can't control what other people think, unless you own the media, or can do so by adjusting a commoditys scarcity.
Next time don't buy tulips, k?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"I still have two transactions in limbo, from EIGHT DAYS ago."
Now there's an incentive to use blockchain for real currencies. "The check's in the mail" will be replaced by "The payment's in the queue" (Which is currently 14 weeks, 3 days and 33 minutes long)
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
"coins concentrated in a few hats"
Who may be much less numerous than folks think. If I were going to set up a scam involving trading in a cryptocurrency, one of the steps might well be to create a number of sock-puppet identities to give the impression of a broader market than actually exists.
Not saying that's happened. Just that it's one of the contingencies anyone involved in this stiff would need to consider.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Yes, speculators and criminal organizations looking to funnel money without having official bank transactions that can be traced. Nobody is using it to buy anything other than illegal drugs.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Show of hands, who here is not surprised?
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
Why the heck did you not just use the national currency of whatever country your store is in?
Bitcoin is not a currency. It's a payment network, and its properties make it best for transactions between two distant people, i.e. online shopping. If you can meet in person then just use cash.
I remember exactly when the tech bubble was popped back in March 2000.
1) Back on March 6, 2000, Nasdaq reached it's high, 5048.
2) Watershed event: MafiaBoy had taken down major sites like Yahoo, Amazon, ETrade, Ebay back on February 6, 2000, a month earlier.
3) Dawning realization: If these magic sites could be taken down like that, and then later discovered by a teenager, could they really be worth the 10s of billions at which they were valued?
With crypto's:
1) Watershed event: Litecoin founder cashes out.
2) Dawning realization: If one of you gentle readers buys something, it's got to be recorded on the crypto database/ledger on my computer. And every other crypto holder's computer. Not so efficient. Plus a host of other shortcomings vis a vis other physical or financial assets.
All asic mined coins will consolidate to centralized control.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Scroll down to where they talk about cash settled futures https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/0...
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I do trade but I'm not fucking stupid. I don't do bit coin because of all the nasty dealing involved like I don't by bond funds whose trading symbol is JNK
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I can trade on line with a market order and fill it within a few minutes after the bell. Price locked in, just a little bookkeeping to do.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Not liquid enough.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
...the passing of Trump's tax plan? This is not so much about BC value falling as it is about the value of the Federal Reserve notes in your pocket rising, amirite?
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Great. So I'm a local electronics store. I sell someone a laptop for .1 BTC. Fair deal. That transaction is queued for a few days. He wants to walk out of the store with the laptop today. Either the store takes a huge risk of fraud (or even mistake), or the user can't get what he buys for days. Which is why anyone who thinks this is a workable currency is a fucking idiot.
Which is why bitcoin isn't a real currency - it's like Gold, with the added liability that it is intrinsically worthless. But the same problem would occur if you tried to buy say, a million dollar house with a million dollars worth of gold. On what day.
This is just the money freaks finding the latest way to screw things up.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
For me, it was primarily 3 things. 1. LiteCoin was already declining throughout the past couple days. It started to lose a lot more value yesterday around noon PST. We all know they are overvalued and everyone is looking for the spark to sell. I was on edge and didn't want to lose the last 3 outstanding month's profits. 2. The adoption of BitcoinCash by Coinbase - this is like just another alt coin being placed on coinbase, so why not add ripple and doge to coinbase? When will it end? What happens with the next bitcoin fork? The money from the 3 coins on coinbase from the last year that had been doing so well because of their exclusivityu (etherium/litecoin/bitcoin) were essentially washed out and diluted by the mad rush of everyone to dump ether/LiteCoin/bitcoin for the FOMO of bccash. 3. The investigation of insider trading by coinbase. This left a lot of distrust with people about coinbase's motives.
Namaste
Which exactly describes how Bitcoin exchanges work. Congratulations.
I appreciate that. I sold them to you, then took your money to buy at $11k.
I don't think most Bitcoin speculators are computer nerds. Quite the opposite if the small sample I've met is representative.
The order books were thin, several coins had risen with a feverish influx of cash, and the CME launch didn't signal wildly optimistic expectations.
After a couple of days of mild ups and downs, things looked poised to slide down hard enough to run into everyone's stop-loss orders. The buyer side if the LTC book looked especially thin.
I converted everything back to USD about two hours before the shit hit the fan. I did not, sadly, play much in the run back up, but I'm doing family stuff around Christmas.
Plenty of people knew. It was overheated and ready for a correction. The bounce back has been impressive, though. I'd pegged $260 as LTC's pull out, and it's been dancing around $275. I'll live with not maxing out.
What happened is that BC is now traded by the financial industry (or parts of it), and thus has turned into the same casino as the financial markets.
I predict that fluctuations will continue as regular folks, who read all those magazine and newspaper articles, are fleeced by the professional traders who already know this game from all their other markets.
I used to work at a broker house for a short time. Here is one life lesson I learnt: Traders make the fastest money on the down. Whenever you see a stock price crashing, someone just made a killing. The media makes it sound like a disaster and a loss - notice how literally every word that journalists use to describe a market going down fast has negative connotations? But for pros, that is a goldmine. They go home rich that day. Going up is boring, going down is where you can earn your new car, or house.
Someone wanted a new car. That's why BC is crashing. It needed to crash to get all that sweet money that normal folks invested in the past days out of the market and into trader pockets. That's how the casino works.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Yeah, I think most computer nerds got in years ago or chose to stay out completely.
Some of us wish we'd got in years ago so that we could get out now :)
People cashed out to buy Christmas presents.. mystery solved.
I predicted this over 2 months ago.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency will keep increasing in value in the coming year.
Here you go. China passport? You need a visa to come to the US. Hong Kong passport? No visa required to enter the US. Oh, and Hong Kongdoes the same thing. US passport? No problem, enter across the border! Chinese passport? Oops - you need a special visa permit.
My wife was a Chinese national (she just naturalized as an American on the 21st), and now she will no longer have to get her annual Hong Kong visa - because she is now a US citizen.
Now, if words are too hard for you:
Chinese passport - says the People's Republic of China only and is RED on the outside
Hong Kong passport - says Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It is also BLUE on the outside.
Lastly, look up the exchange rates between the HKD, RMB, and USD, If HK and China are the same, then why are their currency exchange rates always varying? Why can I do legal business in Hong Kong in English only, or Cantonese but in China it must be in Mandarin? Why can I have freedom to move as much currency internationally as I want - yet to do so in China, above $50,000 USD cumulatively annually, I have to register and get a permit from the Government? Why is being a member of Falun Gong legal in Hong Kong but illegal in China?
You've probably never been to China OR Hong Kong, your ignorance shows as much...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
except it seems to take days to do a transaction. BitCoin et. al. is not a liquid market.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Wow, different parts of the same country have different rules. That never happens. No, wait, it does and you're just an ignorant American.
If words are too difficult for you try this pretty picture Hong Kong passport
I wonder why you didn't link to this picture like you did the Chinese one...
Is it because it clearly says Peoples Republic of China on the cover? Oh damn, we've already established you can't read...
I guess you will just have to keep being ignorant.
So - get the red one and no visa and go to the US! Then get the blue one and no visa and go to the US! Notice anything different in how you are treated at the US border? If so - they MUST be different passports!
Go to China, and try to start a Falun Gong chapter. Go to Hong Kong, and do the same. Notice the difference? Must have different laws!
Go to China, break the law, and demand a trial by jury. Go to Hong Kong, break the law, and demand a trial by jury. Notice the difference? Must have different legal systems!
Currency, visa requirements, languages (Mandarin only in China; Mandarin, English, Cantonese - anyone or any mix of, is legal and binding in Hong Kong), judicial systems, laws, etc. At this point Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China - and is totally different from China. Functionally they are radically different.
But hey, I get that you are hung up on a word "China".I guess to you that The Demcratic People's Republic of Korea and that the Republic of Korea are the same, since they both are "Republic of Korea". Right?
You probably still believe - like the GP that started this thread - that you can run BTC trading in China, since you can in Hong Kong! What's that? BTC trading is allowed in one and not the other? You mean the GP was WRONG when he took me to task for stating that you cannot trade BTC in China?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
"Nobody knows why" is inaccurate and poor journalism. Also, in crypto-currency, there is no overnight, it's traded around the world 24/7.
What part of different rules did you not understand? I tried typing it really slowly for you. Maybe go back and read it again, very, very slowly this time. Get your wife to help you if you need, she sounds smart.
Everything you just mentioned is different rules. I already told you that they have different rules. It's literally the first thing I said to you. Everyone knows this. Even you!!
Hong Kong is a part of China. If you are born in Hong Kong you are a Chinese citizen, your passport will say as much.
Are you really going to claim 'Republic of Korea' prints 'The Democratic People's Republic of Korea' on the front of their passports and lists the owners nationality as that as well? Or is it the other way around? Because that is absurd and easily checked.
Why doesn't HK just put HK on their passport and HK as the nationality? Hint HK isn't a country, there are no HK citizens...
It will rise again.
Only boring people are ever bored.
Price is a function of supply & demand. Simples. There is always some pundit prepared to tell you why, like many here. But even in more regular markets, usually nobody knows why. Currencies fluctuate against one another in some seemingly random walk, and usually nobody really knows why. And it all depends on one's perspective. When gold crashes against the reference USD does not instead USD rise against gold? Given the puffed up amount of fiat currency is not the rise in the bitcoin price this last year merely a reflection of an inevitable price inflation the fear of which drives the wise into bitcoin? Well, I'm not sure I believe that myself, but my once modest holding of bitcoin was made because of despair of anywhere safe to park a little surplus wealth. And that collapse in bitcoin price of which we write here? Already recovered, almost. Bitcoin might be a bubble but the hot air bubble here, this topic, is something you cannot sell before it collapses.
Paul Beardsell
I appreciate that. I sold them to you, then took your money to buy at $11k.
Of course you did. We all believe you.
Facts and evidence just wash over you and you continue to believe whatever nonsense you want.
Keep mentioning irrelevant things, it wont change the facts. Hong Kong is part of China. You haven't show anywhere that it's even a country, just that different rules apply. Everyone already knew that. I told you that at the start.
If you do ever go to China or Hong Kong, with whatever visa you choose, make sure you don't go the wrong way and fall off your flat Earth.
Price dropped because people needed money for Christmas shopping. ... really? As people now warming up to "hey I can send you money by scanning your QR code from your screen to pay you" realize bitcoin ain't gonna cut it ... yet they are confused which "cryptocurrency" will become mainstream and see the futile use of bitcoin at the moment.
Second reason is purchasing bitcoin is very difficult, go ahead see if you can purchase it in 30 minutes or less...not easy unless you have a seasoned coinbase account.
Third reason, 11 Transactions per second worldwide
That is interesting, you keep mentioning Hong Kong residents. Why don't you mention Hong Kong citizens?
Could it possibly be because they don't exist?
Is that because Hong Kong isn't a country?
If they are not Chinese what country do you think they are from? And why do they put Chinese citizen on their passports?
losing value because it is becoming mainstream, and i don't mean you can use it to pay everywhere.
not only everybody knows about bitcoin now (xmas dinner was fun answering all those bitcoin questions, right?), but also governments and 'real' banks are joining the discussion. just last week it was announced that the government is now taking a 33% (!) tax on earnings made with bitcoin ( https://tweakers.net/nieuws/13... - article in dutch), chinese government is also starting to meddle on bitcoins and let us not forget about the banks who now want to cash in on it.
too much regulation, too much involvement of higher powers, means bitcoin is losing its advantage and appeal.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.