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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.
I keep silver coins stacked under my bed, right next to unopened Funkopop figurines. My retirement is ensured!
The $640 billion loss that is being reported is against the massive gains late last year. The money appeared out of nowhere when everybody thought a crytocoin was worth something and is disappears to nowhere when everybody realised that they were wrong.
Sure, some people bought in when the market was high and have lost their shirts. 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.
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?
The article is from freakin' Bloomberg. You want to trust the same kind of people as bankers? They don't want people investing in crypto-currencies because it means less money for them to run away with (semi-legally on top of that).
So fuck off, Bloomberg assholes. You can't stop crypto-currencies any more than you can stop gravity from working.
#DeleteFacebook
The tether printer is pumping like Jenny McCarthy in her prime is down there
The good news is that my Ethereum wallet has a virtual bobblehead in it. That's got to be worth something, right? I hope it's enough to pay for bus fare back to my parents' basement.
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Oh yeah. Cha Ching!
...that any crypto-currency is, uhmm, ya know; a currency. It's a store of value. The U.S. paper dollar is not backed by anything of value. The U.S. dollar can be used to buy goods because it is accepted as a medium of exchange.
The problem that is and has been, and I admit to succumbing to this problem, is where we as crypto-currency adopters, holders, users, measure the value of bitcoin or other coins against the U.S. dollar. It's hard not to do that, considering you can't go to grocery store and get groceries with bitcoin; but, it's money.
Treating a currency as an asset to be traded rather than a medium of exchange to be used to sell and procure goods, is, the problem. There are plenty of scammer that use the U.S. dollar. So many of these scammers used a cryptocurrency to do their scamming.
Also, like with the stock market, there are bull markets and bear markets. Your hope is that you buy low and sell high; but, nobody can buy low and sell high unless their are others buying high and then having to sell low.
In short...
1. Crypto-currencies are a currency.
2. Scams and thievery happen when people want money.
3. If some one is buying low and selling high; then, inevitably some one has bought high and must sell low.
4. Bitcoing and the other alt-coins are supposed to be and have always aimed at being currencies. That's what they are. Their value can only be measured against other known things of value. The most common is a government backed currency like the U.S. dollar. It's money. It's not a stock; but, it's traded like stock and for legal purposes is defined as an asset. However, at the end up the day, the goal has always been for it to be a currency. With any new frontier you always have the wild-west to deal with; but, then things settle down, the police drive out all the bank robbers, and society starts to organize against chaos, and hopefully the grandness of that frontier isn't completely wiped out. The goal would be to preserve it's beauty will still being able to enjoy the milk and honey of it's fertility.
So in summary. Cryptos are out there now. They started out as money and they still are money. One of the main goals was to take currency out of the control centralized institutions. I don't know if that goal will be realized. But, at the very simplest, bitcoin still has a LOT of value along with some coming up contending alt-coins. Under the right infrastructure and circumstance, it's money that you can trade for goods and services.
The cost of mining is now a non-trivial percentage of the worlds economy. The miners now have to pay real world money to pay for the electricity and the money they borrowed to buy/build their rigs. This constant selling of crypto currency to finance the mining likely means that we have either seen the last crypto currency rally or maybe there is just one more left.
We have also now seen the limits of what crypto currencies can do and it looks like the existing banking infrastructure does it better...For now. Maybe a highly scalable proof of stake currency will be invented. Maybe one of this existing currencies can already securely do it. It's not going to be bitcoin though.
If you had of bought/made bitcoin for $1 and next week it went to $2.50.. then the value started sliding back, and you sold for $2: would have you patted yourself on the back for your 100% gain?
It could have been the case that when you sold for $2, it kept going down to zero.
The fact it went to $20k is a once in a generation fluke.
Speculation is a mugs game.
46137
The idea that this is its height is just nonsense. Maybe in the short term it is, but that is about it. We haven't seen significant roll out of entities accepting crypto currencies yet outside of New Hampshire and Venezuela. We have at best New Hampshire, Venezuela, and the internet to look at in terms of adoption and actual usage. My company accepts a few crypto currencies explicitly because when people pay for high dollar products from us with low margins our profits double. Even when they don't we can still take advantage of the liquidity in the market and save 34% or so thanks to crypto currencies that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do. Which means we can potentially reduce our costs by as much as 40% between transactional costs and liquidity in the market in some cases. Transaction and fraud costs can save us as much as 12% alone over alternative payment options (PayPal, credit cards, and wire transfers). For the stupid who have "invested" in crypto currencies particularly at the height of being over-hyped things might not be looking good (for everybody else who has been invested for a few years or more your probably doing really well now over those who invested in basically anything else- Bitcoin was around $2,000 this time last year and is at $6,300 or so right now). But the future of crypto currencies remain bright. Here in New Hampshire we continue to see more and more businesses coming on board and increasing usage in the real world.
The fundamentals put Bitcoin's intrinsic value quite a bit higher from where it stands today.
Current prices are below mining costs.
I'm buying on the dips.
Electricity costs for mining? There are proof of stake currencies (lower energy footprint)
Transaction costs? Blocks are now mostly empty.
Transaction friction (too hard to use)? What was the early part of the year about?
So we’re down to those two drivers, which I assert was the proximate cause of this winter (stone cold death?)
1. Taxes on gains for people that didn’t understand that, or plan for it,
2. Downward price pressure as folks with large holdings try to avoid riding the market all the way down (and BTW, see 1 as a consequence also)
IT WILL ONLY GO TO INFINITY!
The U.S. paper dollar is not backed by anything of value.
The US dollar (paper or otherwise) is backed by something of power, the US state and that state's ability to raise taxes. Think of it as a share in a company with the exclusive monopoly to a business method that consists of legally taking a cut from everyone else's profit ... and then tell me it "is not backed by anything of value."
The U.S. dollar can be used to buy goods because it is accepted as a medium of exchange.
The reason it is accepted as a medium of exchange is precisely because it is backed by the power of the US state. That state compels its usage inter alia in the payment of your tax liability. Important also is that you cannot sue for the satisfaction of a debt (between private persons) in anything other than legal tender. The idea that the value of legal tender rests on some tacit, arbitrary agreement among market participants to employ the currency of state (rather than some other random exchange technology) as a medium of exchange is "nonsense walking upon stilts." The state, (if necessary by means of force), insists upon your using it.
you can't go to grocery store and get groceries with bitcoin; but, it's money
Money you can't go to a grocery store and get groceries with isn't very good at being money really, is it? It's more like a token for a limited selection of goods and services.
The problem with crypto-currencies was that is was created by a bunch of geeks who didn't fully understand what 'money' is ... not that anyone necessarily does. The most signal failure however, has been a design that fitted the supply of coin to time rather than to demand (we all know what happens when the money supply falls too far out of alignment with demand! And this was the problem that ultimately killed the gold standard after all). That's why bitcoin and most well known cryptos (I'll reserve judgement as to future developments) are better thought of as 'collectables' rather than 'money' or 'currency' the best intentions notwithstanding.
Meanwhile, Dogecoin is doing relatively well. It's down since yesterday up 300% form last month!
=Smidge=
These are bargain prices!!!! This is a huge opportunity!!! It can only go up from here!!!! Buy!!!! Buy!!!!! Buyyyyyyyy!!!!!
This judgement day for the shitcoins as been both predicted and expected for some time.
The interesting thing to watch is the relative performance of BTC and it's market dominance.
I continue to acquire BTC, and we'll see what the future brings.
..don't panic
Cryptocurrency Wipeout Deepens To $640 Billion As Ether Leads Declines
Imaginary thing without tangible value continues to not be worth shit. Film at 11.
Seriously... shit, the gold standard, if you'll pardon the metaphor, in worthlessness, is ironically, pretty valuable, especially compared to cryptocurrency. I think of this as like someone standing on a street corner with a battered paper bag, inflated and seemingly holding something, then with the top folded over and stapled. He tells passers-by that the bag could maybe contain something that at some unspecified point in the future, could be very valuable, and asks if any of them would you like to buy it from him.
Then someone with FAR more money than sense, somehow, says, "SURE!" and buys the empty bag. When he complains, the seller says, first, he never guaranteed the bag had any specific thing in it, nor what its future value would be. Incidentally, the bag WAS full of air, and damnit, that could be really valuable. Just ask anyone who's choking, for example. Then the poor deluded fool who bought the bag turns around and starts, after publicly complaining that the previous asshole sold him a worthless empty bag full of air, MAYBE, trying to sell someone ELSE the bag. Eventually another dumbass comes along, and the process repeats.
How to do really well in the cryptocurrency marketplace: Don't. Buy. The. Empty. Fucking. Bag.
Ever.
You're welcome.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
MUH TULI^C^C^ BUTTCOINS!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Price for a commodity (and bitcoin is one) rise only if somebody buy and there is an exchange. Price are not "set" by an external person which decide magically bitcoin demand is rising. it rises because people were willing to buy at an icnreased price. If there were not the price would have stayed stable. So yes, you are wrong, people and a lot of them lost a lot of money, because they bought at an higher price and sold at a lower. It is nearly never a zero sum game as some values are lost (e.g. A buy BT at 11$ price rise to 12$ B buy BT it rise to 13$ but when A or B sell it will almost certainly sell at 11$50 rather than 12$ because nobody is willing to buy anymore, result : loss of money to the market).
...as always, is "Is it more a Pyramid or a Ponzi?"
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
lol turdcoin cryptards lol
lol, a currency that fluctuates 4% a DAY as a way around the 3% fees :)
I see no problems there
1849. Relive The Dream. Again. Ignore History. Make 'murka Greedy Again.
Yeah back in 2011 when silver was at it's all time high I'm sure people who were invested were pretty pleased with themselves that week.
You however weren't one of them since you just repeat shit you hear on the radio and conspiracy websites.
Gamblers have a peculiar type of self-delusion. I saw this in my Uncle who liked betting on horses.
They will talk about their "winnings", but not their table stakes. It's always "I won $20,000 one night", but they fail to mention that it cost them $1,000 in bets to make that $20,000, so their net was actually $19,000. Still, a $19,000 payoff is fantastic, right?
Nope. They are also obsessed with their best days, their high water marks as a gambler. They never talk about that losing streak where they lost every day for a month and it cost them thousands. They don't like to spend any time on the losses, only the winnings.
In short, it's like a pathological case of optimism, where only the good parts matter and the bad parts don't exist at all. And they always think that a new high water mark is "just around the corner" too. There's no room in this psychology for the fact that the house always wins in the end. It's a delusion and it's useless to try to talk them out of it.
So many of the current e-currency speculators are little more than gamblers in this regard and they think that e-coinage "can only go up". Yeah, right.
Looks like cryptocurrency continues to be just a useless scam, as I've been saying for years. Feels good to be right.
This is just the Chinese again, using their crypto-coins to buy presents and moon cakes for the big Mid-Autumn Festival in two weeks.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Only the government will tolerate their own fiat currency backed by nothing. Gangsters hate competition.