Cryptocurrency Wipeout Deepens To $640 Billion As Ether Leads Declines (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The cryptocurrency bear market plumbed a fresh 10-month low on Monday as Bitcoin's biggest rival tumbled and U.S. regulators suspended trading in two securities linked to digital assets. Ether, the second-largest virtual currency, slumped 11 percent from its level at 5 p.m. New York time on Friday, according to Bloomberg composite pricing. Bitcoin declined 2.4 percent, while the market capitalization of digital assets tracked by CoinMarketCap.com shrank to about $197 billion -- down almost $640 billion from its January peak. Cryptocurrencies have declined for five of the past six weeks amid concern that a broader adoption of digital assets will take longer than some had anticipated. That worry was underscored over the weekend after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission temporarily suspended trading in two exchange-traded notes linked to cryptocurrencies and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin told Bloomberg that the days of explosive growth in the blockchain industry have likely come and gone.

Comments

Re:"Loss"

[DRJlaw]

Most of the losses though are from people who paid $300 for their coin years ago and now it is only worth $9000 instead of $25000.

CItation needed. Especially since literally everyone would sell you their coin for $9000 at this point.

Greater fool theory

[Kohath]

You bought a security with no inherent value, based on the idea that someone else would, for some reason, pay more for it than you did. It worked out for some people, didn't for others. But why would you think you had more than a 50/50 chance? (Very skillful traders can beat those odds by trading trends in price action and being extremely disciplined.)

Meanwhile, there are lots of assets and securities with real underlying value to trade. You can understand the value and even learn to anticipate changes in that value. Why not trade those instead?

Re: Greater fool theory

[Opportunist]

You are aware that you're looking at a price floor in a market where that floor drops faster than the elevator in a 200 levels skyscraper, yes? And that processing time is curiously on par with the processing time required to mine more of the stuff.

In other words, funny as it may sound, that means that with this kind of inflation, you're better off holding Turkish Lira.

Re:Greater fool theory

[sacrilicious]

You bought a security with no inherent value, based on the idea that someone else would, for some reason, pay more for it than you did.

People can't stop thinking about cryptocurrency in terms of get-rich-quick, or even get-rich-period. Cryptocurrency is NOT ABOUT INVESTING, no more than Euros are about investing. Cryptocurrency is a transaction facilitator, the novel thing about it being that said transactions are beyond the control of the banking industry. Ah well; in the same way that lotteries are taxes on people who are bad at math, crypto has the apparent side effect of being a tax on people who are bad at finance. Having been harassed for being a nerd in middle school, I'm feeling a certain sanguinity about it all.

Re:"Loss"

[DRJlaw]

Not me, and I only have half a Bitcoin.

Yep. It'll come back up. Just like Cabbage Patch dolls and Beanie Babies did!

Wanna buy half a bitcoin for $4500?

Re:"Loss"

[Anonymous Coward]

It's disingenuous to suggest there hasn't be a lot of actual loss.

I'd say the loss of planetary health due to the waste of energy, some portion of which was provided by fossil fuels, is significant.

Re:I have a much better store of value

[Archfeld]

Hard to eat silver, and it makes a lousy medium to a blacksmith. You're better off with pennies and a book on how to make penicillin, gunpowder, and alcohol.

Re:Well, duh

[SigmundFloyd]

You can't stop crypto-currencies any more than you can stop gravity from working.

Now that's what I call a fitting comparison!

Re:Well, duh

[PopeRatzo]

I lost about minus $15K so far. Damn you, crypto-currencies! /shakefist

Does anyone else find it interesting that not one single person has ever lost money on cryptocurrencies? I mean, basic logic will tell you that there is someone out there who bought bitcoin at $16,000 thinking that it was going to $20,000, right? Not long ago, it went UP to $7k before going DOWN to $6k. Somebody's got to be taking a bath in there somewhere.