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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.
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?
How much did you lose?
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
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 U.S. paper dollar is not backed by anything of value"
So you don't think the US government will collect taxes on US dollars or that the US standing army won' t stand for US's interests starting tomorrow?
US dollar is a fiat currency. US dollar is backed by something of value: USA itself.
Now that's what I call a fitting comparison!
Knowledge is power; knowledge shared is power lost.
That's not a very diverse portfolio, you should at least have some Beanie Babies in there...
Indeed. The thing the cryptocurrency proponent forget (and that those trying to get the scam going conveniently omit) is how and why a fiat currency actually works. There is a large national bank and a national economy tied to it. Of course, it is complicated and market-manipulations in fiat currencies are possible. So are value declines (look at Turkey for a current example) and value increases. But in essence, there is a whole lot of real value tied to it and a whole lot of economic activity depending it being reasonably stable. And that is just what a cryptocurrency lacks: Stability. That is also what makes it unusable as a currency.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
Water, medicine, firearms, kerosene, gasoline, bio diesel will all be much more valuable.
Gasoline spoils within a year or less (even when stabilized) and produces varnishes which will deposit on fuel system components and cause them to fail. Diesel can successfully be kept for around three years, if a water remover and a biocide are used. Not sure about kerosene... but a quick search suggests it's similar to diesel, though it won't freeze or gel like diesel will.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Price for a commodity (and bitcoin is one)
I fail to see how bitcoin can be called a commodity at all. Commodities are generally considered things with intrinsic value, useful in the physical world, such as grain, cattle, and other agricultural product, or mined goods like copper and lead.
Wikipedia categorizes commodities as "Hard" (gold, helium, oil are examples), "Soft" (grown such as rice and corn) or "Energy". Bitcoin falls into none of those categories.
Bitcoin, rather, is more of a financial instrument, investment, or value store. It has no value as a useful good. It cannot be eaten, used in manufacturing, nor does it provide heat or power (in fact it consumes power to even exist.
Such ephemeral things cannot and should not be considered commodities.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia