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The Cryptocurrency Industry is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says (bloomberg.com)
Echoing sentiments of mainstream economists, Juniper Research is warning that many of the metrics in the cryptocurrency world are pointing to a market implosion. From a report: Industry bellwether Bitcoin had seen its daily transaction volumes fall from an average of around 360,000 a day in late 2017 to just 230,000 in September 2018. Meanwhile, daily transaction values were down from more than $3.7 billion to less than $670 million in the same period, Juniper said in the study, The Future of Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin & Altcoin Trends & Challenges 2018-2023. The market as a whole has contracted quickly as well. In the first quarter, cryptocurrency transactions totaled just over $1.4 trillion, compared with less than $1.7 trillion for 2017 as a whole, Juniper said. However, by the second quarter, transaction values had plummeted by 75 percent, with total market capitalization falling to just under $355 billion. "Based on activity during the first half of Q3, Juniper estimates a further 47 percent quarter-on-quarter drop in transaction values in that quarter," the researcher said in an accompanying white paper.
Let me start playing the worlds smallest violin.
Good thing Tulips and Beanie Babys are safe investments....
I know it's an overused saying but it applies perfectly here.
Seriously, governments should make it illegal to blatantly waste electricity. People cry about net neutrality, but electricity neutrality should be discussed too. In any other industry, wasting resources for no reason but to print electronic tokens would be cracked down on. It's is coming up to the 10th anniversary of the bailouts of the financial crisis that was caused by funny money mortgages, we need to arrest the designers of asics for environmental terrorism. I hope 100 years from now when our great grandchildren have to suffer in a climate changed world to ask that why didn't our generation stop the bitminers.
Let me start with, crypto as an investment is stupid. But, it really is too bad if it fails. It would be nice to have a replacement for cash that has a similar anonymity to cash.
Look, I'm not looking to do anything illegal or illicit but the situation of today where Visa could conceivably sell my purchase history to Google who would then target advertising to me or be able to provide the number of Snickers bars I ate this past year to health care or insurance providers doesn't sit particularly well with me either. So being able to purchase some groceries, clothes, etc through electronic means but in an anonymous fashion has a certain draw for me.
That sounds like it passed the "brink of an implosion" about 65 percent ago.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Maybe all those obnoxious "Youtube economists" will crawl back to their mom's basements...
You laugh, but I bought a pair of nice GeForce 1080 Ti's from a day trader who thought he was going to mine bitcoin and then decided that there was no such thing as free money. I see him sitting at the Starbucks with his Macbook, wheeling and dealing. Meanwhile, I've got a nice gaming card in my rig and a second one sitting here in case the other one blows up.
I wonder how his move back to the stock market is going.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So some folks with more dollars than sense dumped a bunch of money into the cryptocurrency market trying to make a quick buck. Some won, some lost. It's been long accepted that most of the alt-coins available today will eventually disappear, leaving only the strongest and most useful cryptocurrencies. Speculation is what drove the market up to unsustainable levels. I believe it has come back down where it belongs, if not a bit lower, against the U.S. Dollar. But remember, we're talking about currencies, not stocks. People need to get out of the investment mentality and see the technology for what it is: Digital CASH. Blockchain will never die. Cryptocurrency as a whole will never fail. The genie is already out of the bottle. It just might take a little time for people to change their mentality about it.
They talk about the market imploding and correcting itself as though that's a bad thing. This happens with Bitcoin every couple of years. The system and the market always comes out stronger at the end of the cycle. This isn't news.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Ok, I'll have a go:
1: There is nothing intrinsic to crypto that makes it go up. If demand (i.e. utilization) is not growing as fast as new coins are mined, then the value drops. This is even more pronounced when the utilization growth goes negative. See yesterday, and last month, and this whole year. BTC is currently worth less than half what it was last year, and has the potential to drop all the way to zero without major changes to the world we live in. USD by contrast would only be capable of dropping to zero by way of the apocalypse.
2: They are only as secure as the software that is used to handle it. Software in general is notoriously insecure. Also see 51% attack.
3: You can achieve this same effect using a brokerage service, of which there are millions in every flavour you could want. The easiest to use variants are Credit Cards which are accepted almost universally. Visa handles 150M transactions per day, or approximately 3 orders of magnitude more than bitcoin, and in spite of that high load, they handle individual transactions in seconds. Nothing about cryptocurrency is inherently faster, better or safer.
4: Oh Really?
5: Only if they are universally accepted. If people stop accepting them, then they loose utility, and less people will be inclined to use them, which makes them even less useful. This is known as a death spiral, and the research cited in this story seems to indicate that bitcoin is headed in exactly that direction. This phenomenon is not unique to cryptocurrency, and is one of the reasons that AmEx plays dirty pool to force retailers to keep accepting their cards.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
Wow, since 2012 I've heard this roughly 1337 times. It must be true this time......