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The Cryptocurrency Industry is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

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.

8 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. It's about time ... by sa666_666 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let me start playing the worlds smallest violin.

    1. Re:It's about time ... by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 3, Funny

      Not only the smallest one, but continuously shrinking to boot?

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    2. Re:It's about time ... by hey! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Unfortunately, it's not just people who should know better who get sucked into something like this. You also get people who are just trying to do what they ought to, which is to put some of their surplus income into savings.

      Saving isn't rocket science, but most people don't learn how to do it in schools. Nor do schools equipment them with a functioning understanding of economics, or technology. So in the absence of any educational foundation that would enable them to evaluate speculation in cryptocurrency critically, they turn to the information sources at hand, and that's actually worse than just being completely ignorant.

      The Internet has infected civilization with what may be a fatal bug: engagement metrics equal profit. The system that delivers the bulk of everyone's awareness of the world is not focused on delivering information that they need, but on provoking measurable reactions. Pushing people's emotional buttons, in other words.

      Apply this principle to creating content on something like cryptocurrencies, and you'll quickly see that informing people of the downsides of speculation isn't going to generate profit. Since most people aren't speculating in cryptocurrencies yet, you can't engage them with information about the risks. You can, however, engage those people with this message: you are missing out. Media coverage of cryptocurrencies did a poor or non-existent job of explaining the risks of speculation, and played up stories of people just like you getting rich overnight.

      To an informed point of view the idea of putting money you will actually need into cryptocurrency was extremely stupid; but to a mind pickled in clickbait that actually looks economically rational, because of opportunity costs. If, hypothetically speaking, you could be getting rich quick in an investment which was perfectly safe, then dollar cost averaging into a mutual fund with low risk and moderate return would be the stupid thing to do.

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      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  2. Bubbles and Fads. by Zorro · · Score: 4, Funny

    Good thing Tulips and Beanie Babys are safe investments....

  3. A fool and his money... by nwaack · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know it's an overused saying but it applies perfectly here.

  4. Miners need to be seized by xack · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  5. It really is too bad by ERJ · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:Cryptocurrencies are not going anywhere by geoskd · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted