Bitcoin Loses 32% of Its Value This Week, Falls Below $4,000 (usatoday.com)

An anonymous reader quotes USA Today: Last year at this time, bitcoin was in the middle of a 217-percent rally that saw its value peak in December near $20,000. Now the largest cryptocurrency can't stay above $4,000 -- losing almost 32 percent in value this week and briefly hitting its lowest level since September 2007 at $3,477.58 on Sunday, according to data from CoinDesk... Other cryptocurrencies also languished. XRP fell 10.4 percent from its 24-hour open, while Ethereum was down 7.5 percent. Litecoin lost 6.7 percent, according to CoinDesk. This week's sell-off marked the largest one-week decline since April 2013 when bitcoin lost over 44 percent of its value, according to CoinDesk...

Year to date in 2018, bitcoin has declined more than 71 percent... The cryptocurrency jumped from $6,088.35 in mid-November 2017 to $19,326.49 on Dec. 17, 2017... Citing three unnamed sources, Bloomberg News also reported last week that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating if market manipulation caused bitcoin's 2017 rally.
Earlier this week, one financial advisory firm's CEO told CNN that they were still bullish on bitcoin. "Savvy investors understand that digital currencies are the future of money and, as such, they will be capitalizing on the lower prices in order to build their portfolios and shore-up their positions."

But not everyone seems convinced. "I bought $10 of bitcoin a year ago. Just to see how it goes," posted Austin-based technology reporter Mike Melanson on Twitter, adding "It's worth $3.45 now. Quite the investment!"

Comments

$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[SuperKendall]

If $10 spent one time is an investment, there are a lot of lottery players "investing" as well.

If you are really treating it as an investment, you might spend only $10 - but every month. When it's way up? $10. When it's super low? $10 more, adding to the slowly growing stash of bitcoins you never sell...

There are a lot of other investment strategies as well, but it seems like all of them have in common that you are doing something over time.

Re:$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[ArchieBunker]

Crypto is not a blue chip stock. You don't buy it and get rich. You make money by day trading just like the real stock market.

Re:$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[Zocalo]

If you're putting money into an investment every month then you sure as hell shouldn't be going with something as volatile as Bitcoin. Regardless of what you are investing in/gambling with, volatile commodities are something you need to monitor continually and really play the market, ideally buying low and selling high with each and every significant rise and fall. If you're titheing a given amount to your commodity of choice on a regular basis then you want something that's going to have a pretty good chance of a return no matter what - blue chips, government bonds, and so on - and even then, keep an eye on it and be mindful of opportunities to sell of exchange for another commodity.

There's also a lot of desperation amongst the institutional BTC bagholders at this point, especially those who were dumb enough to make significant purchases when it was already over $10k, so there's no way I'm going to be taking the financial advise of this Nigel Green of deVere Group unless he makes it perfectly clear what their BTC position is at the same time. Without that information it's kind of hard to tell whether he genuinely believes it's going to rally or he's just another desperate bagholder hoping to cut his losses.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[ShanghaiBill]

Iâ(TM)d like to short 3BTC. Where can I do that on margin?

Five ways to short bitcoin.

Free advice: If you are not an experienced investor, you are fool to short anything.

Re:$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[Anonymous Coward]

Empirically, the vast majority of day traders lose money. Those who haven't just haven't day traded long enough. There's no way to compete with well-trained experts who have computer systems that benefit from milliseconds.

You make money by investing long in index funds.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[sleepghost]

Indeed Bitcoin will recover in a few years.

Re:$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[rtb61]

Actually bit coin is all about trading in beliefs. It's value is purely a matter of faith and reflects, well, to be accurate, nothing more than a measure of the marketing associated with the product. It is backed by nothing, normal currencies are backed by the overall value of the state, it's territories, resources, society and bitcoin is backed by 'believe me, it will be worth $100,000 per coin, believe me, make others believe you, everyone must believe bitcoin == $100,000 per bitcoin in the near future, if you do not buy my bitcoins now because I clearly do not believe it, you will not rake in the profits, that I do not believe will happen because I am selling bitcoin but I want to convince you to buy them'(the lie and truth all mixed up).

Unbacked crypto is worthless, it has to be backed by something, for global trade, energy is the obvious choice, so energy producers of what ever variety can grind them out and an exchange board can make sure that the number of coins ground out. match the energy worth the company claims and the company will buy back the coins for the stated energy value (which rises or falls against all other currencies, dependent upon the value of the energy type and reliability of the energy supplier in question, it allows them to front sell energy and the buyer to stock up and allows international trade in energy free from national interference). Valenzuela is already trying but it must be international with a trading bodies both international and national for the global trade to occur and then be used for national/international fiscal payments, which could be based around how much energy the trading bodies holds and then issues crypto upon a basic of mixed energy types and suppliers held by the trading body). The worth of this is obvious and is far better than a currency backed by empty belief.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[110010001000]

Why do you doubt that Bitcoin will go under $1000? Is there some magical underlying value, or did you just choose a nice round number? I a sure last week you thought it would never drop below $4000.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[supremebob]

I'm not so sure about that. It felt like a pretty safe bet to short Tesla stock while Elon Musk was going though his public pot smoking phase where was bad mouthing the SEC on Twitter every day.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[iggymanz]

Bitcoin is not money and not currency by definition and fact. It is more ephemeral than u.s. Fiat and an unreliable value store. It will continue to crash

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[iggymanz]

It's not a currency either. It's not a money, too illiquid and unstable. Actual US dollars are mostly digital, only a small fraction physical. Block chain and crypto coins are fads that will soon be dead

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[PopeRatzo]

Bitcoin is scarce; I doubt, it will go under $1000.

That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Why would "scarcity" matter to something that has no practical non-virtual value?

I would love some of these BroCoin boys to join our weekly poker game, but I doubt any of them still afford the buy-in.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[gl4ss]

bitcoins stich was drugs, thats what provided the need for it for transactions. this provided value.

it's not so much of a hard store of value as some people think. the main use was not a store - the main use providing value (need to have transactions) was/is moving irl money from person to person. as a store it's ONLY backed up by a need for it by other people(those transactions). otherwise it's just a collectible numbers game.

without the need of bitcoin to use in transactions it has no value beyond collectability/score. this is what people holding major bitcoin reserves should aim their development/investment efforts towards. it needs to have a practical use in the real world, otherwise it is just the same as having wow gold(or worse).

it might be around, might not. might have value might not. thats not very solid compared to owning something with a practical use.

it could very well go under 1000, it might not. point being, at current, it's a high risk investment to just buy it for investment.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[Dragonslicer]

The 19th century had the Gold Standard; Since the 20th century we have only fiat currencies, and inflation.

There's a reason for that change. It turns out that if you have deflation, people are more likely to sit on cash instead of spend it or invest it, which slows down your economy.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[gravewax]

Indeed Bitcoin will recover in a few years.

Really? Why? This is a simple question that no one has been able to provide a robust answer too. Bitcoin doesn't provide anything that other crypto coins don't and lacks many of the features they do, it also doesn't provide any of the stability of "most" fiat currencies and doesn't seem to solve any problems. So why would it recover?

Re:$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[gravewax]

deVere Group appear to have sunk a large amount of investment into BTC and crypto in general. Any investment advise from them in this area should be considered seriously tainted.

Re:$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[Anonymous Coward]

The obvious intent of the summary is to defend bitcoin. playing on the idiot twitter reporter and is $10 to give as little weight as possible to the loss while changing deVere Group (a group with a vested interest in crypto currency success) to "one financial advisory firm's CEO" in order to make those that don't check think perhaps some legitimate advisory firm without a serious vested interest is making this statement. Very sad effort from whoever wrote that shit.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[sjames]

Platinum plated badger boogers are scarce too, but I don't think they'll ever be worth more than the platinum itself minus the cost to process out the badger boogers.

Meanwhile, a bitcoin contains nothing at all that has intrinsic value, so it can easily go to zero.

The original proposal was that once it enters common use in commerce, it's utility would prop up it's value, but the crazy price swing created by speculators squashed that. Nobody wants to be holding the hot potato when time runs out.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[Anonymous Coward]

ahhhh NO, they did not confiscate everyone over 100,000 EURO. The banks were broke, what they did was payout the insurance to depositers up to 100,000 EURO. Bitcoin can face exactly the same situation with exchanges and various bitcoin "banks", except of course they won't even get the 100,000 EUR as they won't be insured.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[Joce640k]

Why do you doubt that Bitcoin will go under $1000? Is there some magical underlying value, or did you just choose a nice round number? I a sure last week you thought it would never drop below $4000.

This time last year they were telling us it would be over a $million.

Now the exact same people are promising us it won't go as low as $1000.

Uhuh.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[slashways]

Bitcoin can't face the same issue. Private property in Bitcoin is enforced by cryptography; If you have your private keys, you own your Bitcoins. Keeping its own keys is taking Bitcoin seriously. What happened with Mt. Gox is a lesson for everyone

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[Kiuas]

There is nothing that prevents something to go to $0. Millenials are dumb

Yeah, us dumb millenials. Never before have people erroneously believed that a value of a commodity will not be able to come down, which is why this is the first time in economic history that we have bubbles.

If we only had people other than millenials managing investment banks and hedge fund the '08 crash would have been avoided. Those damn 15 year old CEOs falsely assuming housing prices cannot come down. Same with Maddof for example: had his clients not all been gullible millenial millionaires and billionaires a he'd have never been able to pull his con off. In fact, millenials also caused the stock market crash of 1929. Curse them. When will the older generations come to our rescue with their superior economic insight?

"Help us generation X and baby boomers, you're our only hope!"

Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and current President of the United States.

Well, fuck. I'll take my request back, you can stop helping now.

Re:$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[DaveV1.0]

You are conflating trading and investing. Those are different things.
Day trading, where one buys in at the beginning of the day and sells out by the end hence the name, and trading in general are about short term gains and while one can make a lot of money doing it, one can also lose a lot of money.

Investing for significant gain is done by buying stocks that are not blue chip stocks, which are often megacap corporations, but rather by buying up and comers.
Because blue chips generally aren't going to increase in much over the intermediate and long term and have a nominal yield, they are generally used to protect assets over the long haul as opposed to making significant gains on those assets.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[ctilsie242]

Probably because Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to hit the mass market. There were many cryptocurrencies before it (Chaum's eCash, for example.) However, when the local TV station needs filler material, this is the first thing of its ilk mentioned that has mindshare with Joe Sixpack.

Bitcoin is a great 1.0 currency, but there are many others, ideally ones that use proof of storage or perhaps proof of protein-folding, so the energy used for calculating stuff isn't wasted.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[ctilsie242]

We are at that spot already. To mine Bitcoin requires a hefty investment in ASICs, as well as a cheap, cheap energy source, either by building a hydroelectric or geothermal plant, or find a way to skirt around billing (have a BTC mining apparatus located somewhere with subsidized electricity.) Even at current prices, there isn't really that much financial incentive for people to buy dedicated BTC mining rigs, and if Bitcoin hits a certain threshold, it won't be worth the energy to mine.

When no new coins hit the market, coupled with the fact that transactions can take an indefinite amount of time because of no new miners, this could be a show stopper.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Perhaps. But you are trusting that greed is intrinsically good under these conditions. The claims that non-centralized non-gov't actors make Bitcoin trustworthy has been proven wrong.

Re:$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[Comrade Ogilvy]

In fact, some of those well-located servers can react to the day traders' orders before they are even executed, scoping up little bits of profit at very minimal risk. The day traders are not really beating the system, they are now first in line to pay for the system.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[ctilsie242]

It can happen. A lot of people still use Bitcoin exchanges, even though history has seen many exchanges fall flat with their coins winding up in anonymous wallets. Other wallet apps can get compromised. One would hard-pressed to tell if a wallet's private key was generated with a re-creatable source of randomness versus a CSPRING like /dev/random.

The Bitcoin protocol in itself is pretty secure. However, the attacks made will always be at the endpoints. One could always make a wallet app that has the source code public, but the compiled version on the app store has a few routines not in the published code. Even something as simple as not using /dev/random, but using the milliseconds since the epoch would be all but untracable for wallet key generation.

I would say both sides are "right" in this case. Especially if one stores stuff in an exchange, and the exchange gets "hacked", with all the coins winding up transferred to an anonymous wallet.

Re:$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[rundgong]

It's perfectly fine to invest monthly in something volatile, if it is a LONG TERM investment. It's much better than putting everything in at once. Monthly savings acts as a low-pass filter and makes sure you do not put all your money in when it is already at a local high. The important thing is that is has an upwards trend. And that is the reason Bitcoin is a shit investment right now. It has a downwards trend, and there is no fundamental reason that trend would change.

Buying low and selling high, on something volatile, is almost impossible to do, even for pros. If it was easy everybody would be doing it...

Re:$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[TsuruchiBrian]

Buying lottery tickets is not an investment because it has a poor expected value (most of the time). This is why playing slot machines or black jack is also not investing. Maybe playing poker is if you are good at it. It is very possible that bitcoin currently is a poor investment from a speculative perspective, given that we don't know what it will do, it's not strictly a bad investment from a mathematical perspective.

I would not buy bitcoin now. But if I had a choice between buying bitcoin and lottery tickets, I'd take the bitcoin.

Re:$10 once does not seem like "investment"

[TsuruchiBrian]

And FYI there actually are lots of people "investing" by playing lotteries (not "the" lottery). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prize-linked_savings_account

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[TsuruchiBrian]

Bitcoin is less stable than the most stable fiat currencies and more stable than the least stable fiat currencies. It doesn't seem so much more volatile than other assets that lose and recover (e.g. gold, stocks, etc).

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[jeremyp]

It only has cross border transfer value if it is worth more than $0. So, that's a circular argument.

It's not harder than gold. It's an abstract entity. At least when the price of gold plummets, you still have some shiny yellow metal that looks good when fashioned as jewellery and is a great electrical conductor,

The total number of bitcoins is irrelevant if nobody wants to buy it. The total number of turds I have crapped is finite and will remain finite unless I achieve immortality, and yet, people don't pay me for them.

The authentication and trust issue is bollocks. I don't have to trust a third party, true, but I do have to trust the other party in the transaction. If I give them bitcoins and they fail to supply the goods, there's no way to get my bitcoins back. If I use a credit card, I can get a refund from the credit card company when I am defrauded.

So tell me, what is the real reason, if any, why b bitcoin could not go to $0.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[gravewax]

and none of those are a reason for it to recover. also show me any period in golds history where it lost 80% of its value in under a year? for that matter the stock market, even the biggest stock market crashes in history only amount to about 20% so how is that "less volatile"

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[TsuruchiBrian]

There are individual stocks that have lost that much. AMD stock went form $40 to $3 in 3 years. Now it's back up to $20. I just refer to that stock because it is one of a few that I have traded in. But I'm sure there are even more extreme examples.

Furthermore, I don't know that it needs to recover. It was obviously way too high when it was $20K. It's probably still too high now. That was a correction that had to happen. If it "recovered" back to $20K, that would probably just be another bubble.

I almost bought some bitcoin when it was $130. If I had, I would have still made $38,700 after this crash. Whether a s5tock needs to "recover" is a function of when you bought it.

Re: $10 once does not seem like "investment"

[gravewax]

how is that any different to someone keeping their cash under their bed instead of a bank? A lot of people have already lost their bitcoins FOREVER because they took bitcoin seriously and decided to manage their own keys. Bitcoin has exactly the same problem, actually in many ways it is worse as they don't have any government backing or insurance to give even a token amount back.

The fact that...

[Type44Q]

The fact that it's taking this long to finally reflect its true value... is the only reason this is even news.

Re:The fact that...

[phantomfive]

The fact that it's taking this long to finally reflect its true value... is the only reason this is even news.

What is the true value of bitcoin? If you can actually answer that, you can make a ton of money by buying when it goes below the true value, and selling when it goes above. =

If your answer is that bitcoin is worth $0, you are wrong.....at a minimum it has value as a money laundering and malware ransoming exchange medium.

Re:The fact that...

[timholman]

If your answer is that bitcoin is worth $0, you are wrong.....at a minimum it has value as a money laundering and malware ransoming exchange medium.

The "true" value is probably a lot closer to $4 than $4000. After all, it isn't as if alternate cryptocurrencies couldn't substitute for BTC. For that matter, gift cards and Western Union money transfers remain very popular with criminals. BTC isn't a requirement for anonymous currency transfers.

The drop in BTC is hardly a surprise. BTC only rose in price while more money was flowing into the ecosystem than out of it. When BTC was a "thing", lots of suckers lined up with their money. But now its reputation is in the toilet. The general public sees it as nothing but the domain of criminals and scammers.

BTC simply isn't news anymore. If you think 2018 was a bad year, wait until 2019.

Re:The fact that...

[Kjella]

If your answer is that bitcoin is worth $0, you are wrong.....at a minimum it has value as a money laundering and malware ransoming exchange medium.

It's a reason why users could put up with fees but it doesn't give one Bitcoin any particular value. If you're only converting back and forth to dollars it doesn't matter if it's 100 BTC or 0.01 BTC in the middle, only if you put $100 in does it come out as $99, $95 or $90 on the other side. And there's no inherent reason to use Bitcoin over any other crypto-currency, as long as someone will put a dollar value to it.

Re:The fact that...

[phantomfive]

If you're only converting back and forth to dollars it doesn't matter if it's 100 BTC or 0.01 BTC in the middle, only if you put $100 in does it come out as $99, $95 or $90 on the other side.

I think you should develop this thought further, it's not complete.

Re:The fact that...

[Kjella]

I think you should develop this thought further, it's not complete.

I thought it was easy to follow but let me spell it out further:

1. I have USD and want to buy drugs
2. I buy BTC for my USD
3. I buy drugs with my BTC
4. The dealer sells BTC for USD

Even if the price of BTC stayed flat we'd be paying transaction and exchange fees, the seller would get less money than I started with. Like I pay $100, dealer gets $90 out and the cost of going via BTC is $10, compared to me handing him a $100 bill. Neither of us care what a bitcoin is worth. Or that it's even Bitcoin in the middle and not some other alt-currency. It's just a dollar sale by proxy.

Re:The fact that...

[phantomfive]

So what is the value of bitcoin affected by then? What are the factors that determine it in that scenario?

Re:The fact that...

[Espectr0]

personally for me it is worth 10 cents or maybe a little more but definitely less than a dollar, and it will stay at that value until i can use it everywhere as currency. because in my opinion if bitcoin is going to take on fiat currencies it must be able to be used for the same purpose

Re:The fact that...

[sacrilicious]

(I'm not GP, but wanted to comment.) I agree with GP that crypto-coins should be thought of as transaction facilitators, not investment mediums. Any given crypto-coin could disappear, but individual coin stoppages are circumstantial and beside the larger point that -- economically speaking -- SOME crypto coins will always exist (unless outright prohibited by law at some future time), because they enable transactions that can't be micro-managed; e.g. if a government dislikes a particular foreign political candidate for whatever reason, people can still donate to that candidate using crypto-coins... which means (as GP points out) that there will be demand for crypto-coins, which means that people will be willing to pay non-zero amounts for them.

As to what price gets set for a given crypto-coin, it's really just demand. BTC demand went way up in the past few years because a bunch of people thought it was an investment medium, which lead to demand, which lead to the price going up. It was a foregone conclusion that the price would flatten somewhere (if for no other reason than the total amount of wealth available in the world with which to buy it, but of course it didn't even get that far), and once it flattened people realized there was no way to argue it was worth a particular amount and investors fled, and viola the price is coming back down. In the long term it will even out to whatever sustainable level feeds its ecosystemic usage for facilitating transactions... but between here and there, watch for other narratives being overlaid on it by people looking to mass manipulate demand again.

In my view, there are two kinds of people "investing" in crypto-coins: naive people and con-men. Other people (non-investors) are, generally speaking, in and out of a given amount of bitcoin as individual transactions require.

Re:The fact that...

[gravewax]

Yep agree. I found the funniest and perhaps most telling piece of information is earlier this year the news here added BTC/USD in their list of currencies news, it was finally removed a month or so ago. The public no longer has an interest in it, Crypto currencies, exchanges and scammers have burnt all the interest and good will towards them and I doubt we will ever see that return without some fundamental change or exciting evolution.

Re:The fact that...

[hackertourist]

If your answer is that bitcoin is worth $0, you are wrong.....at a minimum it has value as a money laundering and malware ransoming exchange medium.

So, for law-abiding citizens the value of Bitcoin is below zero. The only way they'll come in contact with BTC is when it provides criminals with an easy way to untraceably demand a ransom.

Good for the environment

[enriquevagu]

There are studies showing that bitcoin's power consumption is (theoretically) proportional to its value. This will significantly reduce its (huge) carbon footprint, higher than many countries.

Re:Good for the environment

[BeerMilkshake]

True - as bitcoin crashes then miners leave, causing the difficulty to drop which means the blockchain overall requires less hash power. This is good as long as a 51% attack is impossible.

But look at bitcoin's carbon footprint compared to the systems it could replace. Computers flipping bits has a far lower footprint than the sum of the carbon emitted for gold mining, minting, transport, storage and trade plus the carbon from the world's financial system running on paper. Think of all the carbon from having armored trucks, bank vaults, ATMs, and all those financial paper-pushing-professionals commuting into their cubicle farms each day. In this context, lack of crypto adoption is worse for pollution than the increase in miners that comes from adoption.

Re:Good for the environment

[phantomfive]

1. BitCoin can't replace sovereign or community-controlled currency - it is not the same thing and cannot serve the functions they do (for better and worse).

The way it would work is paper money would be "backed by bitcoin," just like it used to be backed by gold (you didn't have to go around carrying a sack of gold).

I can only see this kind of thing happening if there is such horrible inflation that no one trusts governments anymore. It would have to be really really bad inflation, though, to the point that it seems unlikely (since economic theory gives us the tools to stop inflation).

Re:Good for the environment

[roca]

Transactions have already mostly moved from cash and paper to electronic. Bitcoin was not and is not needed for that.

Bitcoin's distinguishing feature is to replace "fiat" with "proof of work", and that necessarily entails a vast increase in energy consumption.

Re:Good for the environment

[sleepghost]

These money easy to produce; and that cost nothing to print. Are inflated indefinitely; This will cost your saving value over time. The Venezuela is the perfect example of what happen when you trust the state... If an energy cost is required to kill these 'easy money'; I'm OK with this...

Re:Good for the environment

[sleepghost]

Bitcoin remove any trust party; And is scarce; Fiat currencies are not scarce. Now you have a choice.

Re:Good for the environment

[sleepghost]

Indeed the cost of mining Bitcoin is a feature not an issue; Anything truly scarce is one way or another costly. Cost induced by inflation of money are real. Bitcoin solves this problem; The money we will get back on the long run is the more important.

Re:Good for the environment

[slashways]

Executive Order 6102: The confiscation of Gold. It already happened under president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Re:Good for the environment

[slashways]

The short-term price of Bitcoin is meaningless. We will see in ten years; I'm sure John McAfee will be right with his price prediction. We had to much noise in this 'space'. Only Bitcoin matter; Bitcoin is the only one truly scarce, others are just companies doing marketing on their useless products. The innovation is the software trustless 'hard money'; Not useless features like the unscalable, unsecured, and centralized ETH, with premined and so on... These useless projects should go to an insignificance point; As they were at the beginning of 2017.

Re:Lol

[plopez]

currency arbitrage does happen.

Re:Almost Time To Buy!

[ShanghaiBill]

... a GPU.

There is no way you are going to make money mining Bitcoin on a GPU.

You need to get an ASIC mining rig. You can buy one on Amazon for $515.

Cryptocurrency != Bitcoin

[Fencepost]

Whoever it was that's still bullish on cryptocurrencies is correct in one thing - long-term it's likely that some form of cryptocurrency or at least a non-tamperable blockchain is going to become widely used. That does not mean that it's going to be Bitcoin, and in fact it probably won't be Bitcoin.

Re:Cryptocurrency != Bitcoin

[110010001000]

No it won't. Blockchains are way too unwieldy to be used as a real currency.

Re:Almost Time To Buy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure he means GPU prices are finally going to return to sane levels now that the shine on dunning-krugerrands is wearing off.

Re:Why not?

[roca]

Digital transactions will increase (though in a lot of countries most transactions are already digital), but they don't require the use of digital currency. When digital currency does get used, it mostly won't be Bitcoin, since proof of work is incredibly inefficient and only of value to the tiny minority who care to eschew fiat currency.

Buying Bitcoin because something else inspired by Bitcoin might become valuable is crazy.

Meanwhile...

[LynnwoodRooster]

Dogecoin is worth more this year than it was last year!

Re:Meanwhile...

[DontBeAMoran]

No it's not. One Dogecoin is still worth exactly one Dogecoin! Now that is an extremely stable coin!

Re:Meanwhile...

[LynnwoodRooster]

See! It's inflation-proof!

Re:Meanwhile...

[DontBeAMoran]

Inflation-pwoof!

Re:Why not?

[Zocalo]

Honestly is Bitcoin any worse than a portfolio that has biotech stocks?

Impossible to say, since that's comparing a specific product with a class of product - not so much "apples to oranges" as "apples to citrus fruits"; oranges might be good, but lemons and limes not so much. Either way, I wouldn't generally consider *any* of the biotech stocks as something I'd class as a solid "Blue Chip" style investment, at least not yet, as none of them are really established as reliable long term performers (give or take the odd fluctuation, obviously) in the same way that real estate is.

Sure, you could get lucky and buy into the the next GSK, or you could get the next Theranos and end up with nothing, just like a lot of people who you would have expected to have done their due diligence ended up doing. As a speculative part of a larger portfolio, sure, you might as well take a punt on a few long shots (and I do just that with mine), but if the lion's share of your portfolio is high risk you'd better be prepared to write it off as well as cash it in and live the high life.

Isn't it funny how

[mark_reh]

when the price is crazy high, you see ads all over TV about "investing" in gold, and when the price goes down, the ads disappear. BTC is the same way- when it was high people were talking it up to get the dumb money into it, and now that it's down, no one's saying you should "invest" in it, except maybe the "investors" who bought in at the high and are still holding on, hoping for a turn-around.

"Investing" in BTC is like "investing" in casino chips or lottery tickets. Every once in a while someone wins, but the vast majority of the suckers lose their money. It is in the interest of the folks who stand to make money that we hear about the winners far more than we hear about the losers, even though there are many thousands or even millions of losers for every one winner.

Bitcoin has not legal use in the real world.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin's only real value is in the use for black market transactions or tax evasion. It costs too much to keep the infrastructure running both mining and logging transactions for it to be of any real value. A digital currency backed by a fiat bank or government will eventually take over crypto currencies.

Re:Not bitcoin

[MikeDataLink]

Very possibly, but not a currency that needs the output of the Hoover dam for an hour to calculate a transaction.

THIS. Cryptocurrency is absolutely without a doubt the future of currency, but it will never be bitcoin for this reason and because its value is not stable.

Ethereum took an even harder it

[rsilvergun]

it's at about 1/10 it's peak.

I'm guessing somebody is done propping up the market. This is a bit too much of a drop off for it to just be a course correction.

Re:Almost Time To Buy!

[EvilSS]

Pretty sure he means GPU prices are finally going to return to sane levels now that the shine on dunning-krugerrands is wearing off.

Yea if that's the case he's missed the boat on high end cards and is about to miss it on mid-range cards. Nvidia's price hike on the 20x0 series along with their lackluster performance increase over past gen, and the depletion of the 10x0 series cards as they are discontinued and start to sell out has driven prices back up to near last early 2018 levels for 1080's and 1080ti's. Best bet right now is a used card and better hurry before those start going back up.

Re:Why not?

[ceoyoyo]

"Honestly is Bitcoin any worse than a portfolio that has biotech stocks?"

Yes, it is. Biotech companies produce tangible products. Individually they may succeed or fail, but on average across the sector they create real value, and the expected return for investments in that sector is positive. Investing exclusively in a specific biotech stock is of course risky, and usually not a good idea.

Conventional commodities are *something*. A barrel of oil or an ounce of gold. They have at least some intrinsic value, even if that value is vastly different than their market value.

Bitcoin is a virtual commodity. It isn't anything, and it's not backed by anything. You're effectively "investing" in the bet that the world will adopt a particular accounting system in the future. Unlike regular stocks, there are also very good reasons to believe that if any cryptocurrencies are successful, only a single one will be. So you can't really protect your investment by diversifying. There's also the observation that treating cryptocurrencies as investments harms their utility. Currencies work best if they're non-volatile and slowly lose value over time. That's the opposite of what you want in an investment.

32% of PRICE

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin lost 32% of its price, not its value.

Its value is identically zero.

Re:32% of PRICE

[LynnwoodRooster]

Paypal, Zelle, Alipay, and many others - backed and/or associated with those banks - are essentially instant, and usually free.

Re: the coup d'grace

[iggymanz]

Don't conflate Bitcoin and money. Bitcoin is a game token plummetting in exchange value. If no one plays the game its dead

Re: Why not?

[iggymanz]

Eh the u.s. dollar is a digital currency, most is not physical. Meanwhile Bitcoin is not a currency, can't be used in most stores and with most people or governments. It's a game token, that's all.

Re:Yep.

[110010001000]

Exactly. Once the markets correct all the idiots will learn that the true value of a Tesla stock is really about $20.

Re: Lol

[iggymanz]

No Bitcoin fails the definition of money

Re:It is a hedge not an investment

[110010001000]

You don't know what you are talking about. No one would use Bitcoin to hedge. Christ, Bitcoin nutters are so ignorant.

Yes

[raymorris]

> Honestly is Bitcoin any worse than a portfolio that has biotech stocks?

Yes, Bitcoin is worse than a portfolio, period.
A portfolio of produce would be smarter.

Re:It is a hedge not an investment

[Actually, I do RTFA]

. Example: Venezuela could sell oil at fixed price in bitcoin. Iran could do the same. Both countries have strong incentives to do this (if they were not blind to the reasons why).

There's zero reason for them to do so. Venezuela launched it's own petro-based cryptocurrency. They can take all the value of a cryptocurrency backed by oil, and all the value of generating the genesis blocks.

it is possible that all dollar denominated investments could become nearly worthless.

You never say if what happens, but pretty much all investments are dollar denominated. If you're worried about massive inflation, you can just buy stock, gold or real estate. Any of those are better options.

Re:It is a hedge not an investment

[stinerman]

Not to mention that if the US Dollar collapsed, that would mean the US economy would have collapsed, and ... let's just say that if that happened, the BTC conversion rate will be the least of your worries

If you want to hedge against the Dollar collapsing, I recommend ammunition and store brand pork & beans.

Re: Why not?

[roca]

We agree.

Re:It is a hedge not an investment

[shess]

Bitcoin is a hedge, not an investment. It is a hedge against the total collapse of the US dollar. The only thing necessary for bitcoin to be well accepted is for someone to commit to pricing a good or service of value in bitcoin for a sustained period. Example: Venezuela could sell oil at fixed price in bitcoin. Iran could do the same. Both countries have strong incentives to do this (if they were not blind to the reasons why).

The problem is that both countries do not internally produce the things they would want to purchase with the bitcoin they receive from sales of oil. The things they want to purchase are denominated in dollars. For various reasons the US has placed restrictions at least on Iran about providing them with dollars (Venezuela much less so). To some extent, if Iran were to accept bitcoin for oil, that would be helpful to provide cover for the buyer, but it doesn't really help Iran. In fact, it would probably work like an other black market, where they'd be selling at a discount because they have no choice.

In all likelihood, a total collapse of the US dollar wouldn't result in your neighborhood bitcoin holders rising up to rule. They'd get to enjoy the same general chaos as everyone else, because in such a case there will be a flight to stability, not a sudden urge on the part of merchants and employers and the like to take risks on some new form of money. I could see bitcoin replacing the US dollar for many of the gray-market things out there, though, as it's likely inconvenient to deal with dollars when the transaction is not in the US and neither the buyer nor the seller are likely to ever interact with the US other than using USD for transactions...

Re:It is a hedge not an investment

[iggymanz]

the bitcoin scam is augering into the ground and you call it a "hedge"??!!! LOLZ, do you crypto-curtards have any shame or common sense?

https://www.bloomberg.com/opin...

the summary smells

[gravewax]

"Earlier this week, one financial advisory firm's CEO told CNN that they were still bullish on bitcoin."

So why change it to "one advisory firm's CEO" instead of Devere Group's CEO.... Ohhhhh right it is because then people would know it is someone that has sunk a lot of money into crypto currencies and them failing would also mean they fucked up. That is like asking the con man selling you the bridge whether there is any future value in owning the bridge.

Days of Black

[mentil]

Bitcoin: making Black Friday look like Black Tuesday!

Hey hey heeeeyyyyyyyy........

[blind biker]

Bitcoin is no better than Bitconnect. Both have a value of 0.

Re:ALL CRYPTOCURRENCIES ARE DYING!!!

[mhail]

Why do you even care? Who is paying you? Do you accept BTC for your FUD?

Re: Why not?

[DaveV1.0]

No it isn't and you have no idea what you are talking about.

Re:Lost value?

[Erik Hensema]

If inflation for the USD was 32%, then on average prices will have risen 32% for common goods in the US. Did they? Don't think so.

USA Today article is garbage

[hoggoth]

While I'm not disagreeing that Bitcoin's halo is tarnished... The article says
> hitting its lowest level since September 2007
When Bitcoin's original description was in a whitepaper published in 2009. How lazy does a reporter have to be to not even check a Wikipedia page? How well researched is the rest of the article?