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Bitcoin Watchers Running Out of Explanations Blame Slump on Moon (bloomberg.com)
If regulatory concerns aren't enough to explain Bitcoin's 50 percent slump from its record high reached last month, how about blaming it on the moon? An anonymous reader writes: The Lunar New Year, which marks the first day of the year in the Chinese calendar, is being cited by some as contributing to Bitcoin's slump as Asian traders cash out their cryptocurrencies to travel and buy gifts for the holiday that starts Feb. 16 this year. The festivity is celebrated not just in China, but in other Asian countries including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea and Thailand. "The January drop is a recurring theme in cryptocurrencies as people celebrating the Chinese New Year, aka Lunar New Year, exchange their crypto for fiat currency," said Alexander Wallin, chief executive officer of trading social network SprinkleBit in New York. "The timing is about four to six weeks before the lunar year, when most people make their travel arrangements and start buying presents."
Bitcoin is not the 'cool' one anymore.... there are too many other options.
Just compare the charts for the last 5 years. It drops off like this every year about this time. This is not that unusual.
lol
The moon gets blamed for everything. People blame the moon for causing the ocean tides. Warewolf attacks. Increased crime. Now people blame the moon for bitcoin slumps.
I've got news for you: It is the ocean tides that are to blame for causing the moon! Proof is their direct correlation.
I couldn't do my homework because . . . . the moon! (Because Windows 8 my homework no longer works.)
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Build a wall around the bitcoins and make the bitcoins pay for it!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
They're wrong, of course; it's obviously the boogie...
Yes, you genius, to buy presents for the Chinese newyear, as the article stated.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
It certainly isn't rich people racing to cash out and stop from losing more money then they already have. Because that wasn't foreseeable.
Bitcoin's transaction fees were higher than paypal unless you wanted to wait days for a transaction to go directly to the ledger. Of course it's a stupid time to be investing.
Who are these people?
Everybody knows you shouldn't buy Bitcoins when Mercury is retrograde. Wait until the moon is in the seventh house, and Jupiter aligns with Mars. Then blockchain will guide the planets and cryptocurrency will steer the stars.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'm pretty skeptical of cryptocurrencies in general and of the viability of BitCoin in particular, but--my goodness--what a needlessly loaded headline.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
I hate this bitcoin fanaticism as much as the next /.er, but the headline is stupid. The reasoning behind the slump is based on the Lunar New Year, which yes, is based on the moon. But that's as moronic as blaming a mid-March alcoholism rise on the death of a 5th Century Irish dude.
That meteor over Michigan last night? That was the BitCoin flashbang. Turn out the lights, the party's over....
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Posted a reply instead of on the topic. Apologies.
News at 11.
The Moon: A Ridiculous Liberal Myth
It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)
Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.
Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!
Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.
Go look at CoinMarketCap's historical charts. Pretty much every cryptocurrency moves in almost exact lockstep in rises and dips. That wouldn't happen in a diverse crypto economy, the fluctuations would be much more varied instead of nearly perfectly identical. This is a dead giveaway of inside manipulation and cashing out while the cashing out is good.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Bitcoin bulls are always yelling about the moon, so why shouldn't it get the blame when it turns the other way.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
100 thousand in electricity and 900 thousand in new hardware, USD per hour. That is the current investment in all crypto mining. That required 1 million more in people to invest every hour. The total market cap for crypto currencies wasn't very high, about half a trillion which in financial terms is nothing. Assume crypto is mostly invested in by only wealthy, male geeks between 25 and 55 who have maybe 20K to play with then the total investment pool would be maybe 10 million people, world wide. That's 200 Billion to waste on electricity and mining hardware or 20 years at the current rational stupidity*. Trouble is the 1 million an hour is very erratic. So we will see large swings.
There is currently a huge sell wall. That is a huge amount of people who want to sell at 5 to 10% higher than the current trading prices. This effectively means the price can't rise very much in the near future (next 12 to 24 hours). So given the huge sell wall no one wants to buy and at the same time we have the miners who still need their 1M every hour.
*rational stupidity - the current mining method is extremely wasteful, the transaction costs are so high and transaction times so long that Bitcoin is useless. However bitcoin is controlled by the miners not the people who own the coins. The miners are actually being rational. They have to pay for their mining equipment in the next 6 months. High transaction fees are good for them. They know the long term viability of the current situation is zero but they aren't in it for the long term.
My prediction - one of the proof of stake currencies will become dominant in the next 18 months and the proof of work currencies will either die or their block rewards will be closer to $1000/hr. I doubt the market will sink more than another 20%. No one remaining has to sell anymore.
They often look really good when you look at the charts but remember the coins in positions 150 - 200 likely were not there 3 months ago. You are looking at the top performers from positions 150 - 400 from 3 months ago, so of coarse they look great. (Well except for the coins that were in the top 150 that fell.)
Imagine that someone invented a method
of converting Terawatts electricity and human intellect
into a symbolic currency with no intrinsic value,
with no link to any material asset,
not backed by any government (except North Korea),
and which you can not actually spend at the local store.
Oh, wait ...
Generates pollution without generating value.
Exxon should love it.
It's dropping like a rock because the smart ones got everyone else excited about it to inflate the price. ( OMG look how fast its jumping in price ! I gotta get in on that. )
Once they hit their target price, they sold.
Leaving all the chumps holding an empty bag at the end of the day.
This is true of any crypto currency and / or stock.
For those who want to get out, they face another problem: a transaction takes days!
One is part of a financial standard that has evolved over millennia. The other looks a lot like a ponzi scheme.
It's cold outside.
Credit card bills coming due from Christmas.
I had a sucky sig.
Just compare the charts for the last 5 years. It drops off like this every year about this time. This is not that unusual.
Sort of, but not the time of year, its the reaction to an extremely fast exponential rise. If I remember an Ars Technica article correctly ... there have been four huge exponential spikes and they are typically followed by a 75% drop. Recall 2014, exponential rise to $1,100 followed by a drop to $250, followed by hovering in the $250-300 range for years. If the current exponential risk to $19,000 keeps this pattern then something in the area of $5,000 can be expected.
Of course there is something different compared to the past 4 spikes and collapses. The geek speculators have been replaced by wall street speculators and ordinary people speculators. We'll see how the new masters of bitcoin's fate behave compared to those true believers of previous years.
He says "exchange their crypto for fiat currency" as if there is something different about the two, but there's no more 'intrinsic' value to cryptocurrency than there is to paper greenbacks (or whatever plastic funny money it is that other countries use). In fact, the bills in my pocket are backed by the 'full faith and credit' of the U.S. government -- yeah, yeah, I've heard the jokes before, but Bitcoin doesn't even have that!
BINGO!