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Cryptocurrencies Tumble Even More, While One Asset Manager Proclaims 'Bitcoin is Dead' (marketwatch.com)

Cryptocurrency prices "fell sharply on Friday, as another bout of selling took digital currencies to fresh lows," reports MarketWatch, adding that Friday the price of Bitcoin "crashed through support at $3,500, falling more than 10% to a 15-month low at $3,230 on the Kraken exchange."

"What a difference a year makes," CNN Business quipped Friday, in an article headlined "Bitcoin's Epic Plunge Continues": In December 2017, bitcoin prices hit a record high of just under $20,000... Bitcoin is at a 15-month low. But prices have really gotten whacked this week, falling nearly 20% in just the past five days alone. Bitcoin isn't the only cryptocurrency getting hit either. Ripple/XRP, ethereum, stellar, litecoin and numerous other cryptocurrencies have plunged in the past week.

Little tangible news can explain or justify the current crypto carnage. One possible reason is that a pro-crypto member of the Securities and Exchange Commission warned at a conference this week that she's fighting an uphill battle trying to convince the rest of the SEC to approve more bitcoin exchange traded funds.... Nearly two-thirds of money managers surveyed by asset management firm Natixis still thought that cryptocurrencies were a bubble, the firm reported this week.

"In my opinion, bitcoin is dead," wrote the CEO of one wealth management firm with more than $32 billion in assets. It won't go quietly, but the recent precipitous drop may be the beginning of its inevitable and inexorable death spiral. Or there could be a dead cat bounce. Either way, I see bitcoin as a dead man walking. Future generations may read about bitcoin in a finance textbook as a curiosity and wonder what all the fuss was about. There are still some die-hard adherents espousing the virtues of bitcoin, desperate to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Unfortunately for them, the end may not be pretty when it comes.

Proponents of bitcoin tend to focus on the impact of the blockchain technology that drives it, and make no mistake, blockchain is the real deal. Blockchain is fundamentally changing the way industries do business, from traditional banking to supply chain management. But just because blockchain technology is creating a new paradigm doesn't mean that bitcoin shares that same distinction.... Most cryptocurrency transactions are purely speculative. There are no real fundamentals to evaluate; bitcoin doesn't produce any products or services, hire any employees or pay any dividends. The only way profits are generated is when the owner is lucky enough to find someone else who will pay more for the thing...

The minute bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency appears to have even the slightest chance of disrupting national monetary supply, I expect regulation to be swift and decisive. The SEC has already issued guidance around cryptocurrencies that has created roadblocks to gaining the same legitimacy as traditional marketable securities... If you enjoy the thrill of making bets, I suggest you visit your favorite sports book or table game in Vegas where your odds of success are much higher.

88 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. £3500 is not dead! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Bitcoin will never reach $1000

    Now, $3500, is dead. The problem isn't Bitcoin it's people's wild expectations. Well, that and the energy use to make the things.

    1. Re:£3500 is not dead! by fluffernutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wild expectations, like expecting a method of currency to hold the same value from day to day? Like being able to put $5 in a wallet and knowing you'll be able to afford a coffee and a doughnut next week?

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    2. Re:£3500 is not dead! by Joce640k · · Score: 2

      ...knowing you'll be able to afford a coffee and a doughnut next week?

      And knowing in advance what the "transaction fee" will be.

      --
      No sig today...
    3. Re:£3500 is not dead! by jythie · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I think the original proponents really overestimated people's willingness to pay transaction fees, esp for small transfers. That was the poison pill in the design.

    4. Re:£3500 is not dead! by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      Nope the poison pill always was exactly what you would expect, no fad lasts forever, no marketing program lasts for ever and once marketing started to fail the far product was doomed. Bitcoin is nothing but a marketing program, an illusion of worth created by quite successful hype marketing and of course human greed. Energy backed crypto across international and national exchanges, with an international currency supplied by the international exchange, where ever it may be based upon the future energy assets it holds, that were deposited by those seeking access to sell energy future, you know say 10% of what they want to put up on the market, for which they receive the international energy backed crypto currency, they can trade internationally.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  2. Oh my by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No surprise here- currency not tied to anything but mindset is going to be destructively fickle and unstable.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    1. Re:Oh my by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Little tangible news can explain or justify the current crypto carnage.

      Maybe it's just that people are finally starting to realize its true worth, ie. zero.

      It's not much use as a currency (unless you enjoy transaction fees and like seeing your money go down in value), it's certainly not an investment.

      Sell while you still can!

      (oh, wait, you can't... blockchains only allow a few transactions per second so you have to join a long line of sellers)

      --
      No sig today...
    2. Re:Oh my by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not this again. Real currencies are not tied to a resource backed standard, but they are closely tied to the economy in which that currency is used. And governments generally know quite well how much extra cash they can print without setting off inflation: if the economy grows, you can grow the money supply as well. Bitcoin isn't tied to any real economy, the volume of BTC transactions is absolutely dwarfed by the speculative transactions. Bitcoin isn't like shares either, which have a speculative nature but always have a real and objective value underpinning them, not a commodity but a company holding assets, adding value and making profit (or with the potential to make future profit)

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    3. Re:Oh my by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      Yeah, that's what I meant by "volume of BTC transactions", not a very good description. I meant the volume of transactions involving goods and services rather than simply buying or selling of BTC for speculative purposes, i.e. BTC's "virtual economy".

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    4. Re:Oh my by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      You do realize that applies to almost all currencies in use today as almost none are based on any kind of resource-backed standard, where there's a guarantee that the currency can always be exchanged for a certain amount of some other commodity.

      This is true of currencies. Bitcoin stopped being a currency as soon as its fixed money supply caused its exchange value in terms of what a currency trades for began fluctuating wildly every day. At that point it began being traded as a storehouse commodity, but not one whose value has been embedded in all cultures for thousands of years.

    5. Re:Oh my by Joce640k · · Score: 2

      The transaction fees are a result of stubborn stupidity by the bitcoin core developers, who insisted they had to keep the block size at a ridiculously small 1MB. That of course created high transaction fees. This is what caused the bitcoin/bitcoin-cash split.

      Yes, we know why they exist.

      Bitcoin-cash recently did a stress test, showing a far greater number of transactions/second with a 32MB block size.

      Very good, but we're not talking about Bitcoin Cash.

      Like it or not, plain old Bitcoin is the flagship cryptocurrency. If it goes down it'll take all the others with it.

      --
      No sig today...
    6. Re:Oh my by sacrilicious · · Score: 2
      Your post is a breath of fresh air. Not that I necessarily follow it all, but I can tell from the writing that you share my belief that there is a lot more intelligence to be had around analyzing and using crypto-currencies than either "I'm going to get rich on it" or "Because the gonna-get-rich fools are losing their shirts now, it's dead." Jeebus, where's my aspirin?

      Honestly, the whole article's got it backwards. I'll believe crypto-currencies are dead when people have stopped using them; and, emphatically, the speculators don't matter to me. And then this quote:

      Blockchain is fundamentally changing the way industries do business, from traditional banking to supply chain management

      it IS? I've been paying some attention, and have yet to see a single interesting use case where -- aside from crypto-currency for which it's well suited -- blockchain does anything better than the centralized, backed up data repo of whatever corporation or conglomerate is working with data. If someone can point me to something interesting being done, please do tell.

      Anyway... thanks again for writing with structure, I dug it.

      --
      - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
    7. Re:Oh my by timholman · · Score: 1

      Maybe it's just that people are finally starting to realize its true worth, ie. zero.

      Cryptocurrency proponents haven't helped their case with all the forks and new coins being constantly produced. There are now approximately 2100 cryptocurrencies, up from 1600 just last June. Even Bitcoin Cash, which was a fork of Bitcoin, has now forked into BCH ABC and BCH SV.

      It doesn't take much of nonsense for people to realize that cryptocurrencies are nothing more than electronic monopoly money. How can something have any real value when more of it keeps appearing every day, backed by yet another group of people who want to become rich?

    8. Re:Oh my by jythie · · Score: 1

      The other problem is the fact they made bitcoin deflationary. Increase the workload for a decreased payout and the cost to cover that arms race of un-repurposable hardware has to come from somewhere.

    9. Re:Oh my by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Banks are using blockchain as a settlement mechanism for innovative payment services. But their chief motivation for this use case it to circumvent their own bloated creaking legacy payment processing systems and the months-long development cycles associated with them. So they use it as an innovation platform to develop prototypes quickly. Once they have a good idea if and how to roll out that service to all customers, they will probably integrate it with the legacy systems rather than stick to blockchain (especially something like Ripple which is under external control)

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    10. Re:Oh my by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Blockchain is fundamentally changing the way industries do business, from traditional banking to supply chain management

      it IS?

      Probably not.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    11. Re:Oh my by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      It doesn't take much of nonsense for people to realize that cryptocurrencies are nothing more than electronic monopoly money.
      How can something have any real value when more of it keeps appearing every day, backed by yet another group of people who want to become rich?

      Bingo. By design or not, in their current incarnation cryptocurrencies are a scammer's paradise and a risky proposition at best.

      Maybe I'll create and offer "JustAnotherOldGuy-Coin". Buy it now while the price is still low!

      After it goes up, the exchange (which I run) will mysteriously get hacked. But not to worry- I'll send each buyer an email with my sincere condolences. I'll be sending it from my new private estate, located on "Hookers and Blow Island".

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    12. Re:Oh my by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      Blockchain is fundamentally changing the way industries do business, from traditional banking to supply chain management

      it IS? I've been paying some attention, and have yet to see a single interesting use case where -- aside from crypto-currency for which it's well suited -- blockchain does anything better than the centralized, backed up data repo of whatever corporation or conglomerate is working with data. If someone can point me to something interesting being done, please do tell.

      My company uses it to track medical payments over our pharmacy network, and it seems to be working well for that.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    13. Re:Oh my by AuMatar · · Score: 2

      Name a bank that's actually doing that, and show proof. Not that they're looking into the possibility, but proof they're actually doing it. You won't find any- nobody is actually doing this.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
    14. Re:Oh my by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 1

      Santander Group for instance. And that’s just one of them.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    15. Re:Oh my by Cyberax · · Score: 2

      Nobody uses blockchain for anything serious. Some companies use it because it's a fad and they want to sound cool.

      My friend just got laid off from Yet Another Blockchain Startup that was trying to create banking software on top of the blockchains. Turns out that banks don't really need to have immutable history of transactions. Basically there are no situations when it's useful, the regular record-keeping systems are more than enough.

    16. Re:Oh my by Megol · · Score: 1

      Bullshit. Gold is naturally rare and useful. Bitcoins are artificially rare and (in themselves) useless.

    17. Re:Oh my by AuMatar · · Score: 2

      Yeah, they cap it out at 10K euros? That's not a serious system, that's something they put out there to ride a fad. Call me when they process 10 million euro transactions. You're not showing a serious use of blockchain, you're showing a toy.

      --
      I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  3. It'll always bounce back, and more and more use it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A lot more people use bitcoin now than before. Irrespective of the current price, it's still above what it was a good while ago, and each time it falls, it's to a higher level than it was before.

    Bitcoin is not going away, no matter what the financial 'oligarchs' would like. A big fat 'Up yours' to them. This article is just more scaremongering to try to drive the price down more. Won't work love.

  4. And here lies the problem. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    99.999% see the bit-monies as a COMMODITY...something to eventually be traded for something more desirable, like American dollars. It is not viewed as a currency.

    1. Re:And here lies the problem. by alvinrod · · Score: 1

      All currencies are essentially commodities. It's just the universality of acceptance (and the ability to pay taxes with it) that makes something a currency. Bitcoin was pretty widely accepted for a while, and if you were looking for illicit goods or services, it was the currency that many were dealing in so it became necessary to use for some who might not have been otherwise interested.

  5. I remember when by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No one thought Bitcoin was worth $100. Now its the end when it hits $3000.

    1. Re:I remember when by gravewax · · Score: 1

      People aren't saying it is the end at $3000, there saying it is on it way there though. when it hits sub $1000 early next year is when the true panic will set in for the hold outs. maybe sub $100 in 12 months?

  6. No arguments here by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They us massive amounts of electricity, they spiked the cost of graphics cards so high that they've only just now come down to the level they were at 2 1/2 years ago and they're completely impractical for purchasing anything except maybe drugs (since they're too volatile and slow for much else). Chalk it up as a failed experiment and move on.

    --
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    1. Re:No arguments here by OzPeter · · Score: 2

      Chalk it up as a failed experiment and move on.

      Recently (as in the last 4-6 weeks) I have heard ads on AM radio *cough*Beck*cough* spruiking Bitcoin and how it was going to go through the roof by the end of the year, and that you need to order this special report to tell you all about it.

      --
      I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
    2. Re:No arguments here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Their money comes from people ordering the report, so bitcoin itself doesn't matter.

    3. Re:No arguments here by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

      ...spruiking Bitcoin...

      Aha! Australia must be getting farmers driven out of South Africa. I love coming across little signs like this.

    4. Re:No arguments here by solanum · · Score: 1

      ...spruiking Bitcoin...

      Aha! Australia must be getting farmers driven out of South Africa. I love coming across little signs like this.

      We are, but spruiking is a word that has been in common use for many decades and, according to the Oxford English Dictionary at least, is Australian, not South African.

      --
      Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
    5. Re:No arguments here by sonamchauhan · · Score: 1

      Good points.

  7. Is there really any difference by bobstreo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    between buying bitcoin or wall street or penny stocks from an investment point of view?

    Both tend to be controlled by rumor, innuendo and flash trading, with the average person left out as anything but a source of income based on payments to provide the services of exchange.

    You can of course mine bitcoins, but lacking large amounts of free electricity and computer parts, most of the people I know with bitcoins bought them at some point, some did very well and dumped them for large gains, others just sat on them and are complaining about their current valuation.

    As usual, there are people "behind the scenes" making legendary amounts of money in either investment.

    1. Re:Is there really any difference by Jzanu · · Score: 1

      Yes. Bitcoin and all other electronic only currencies have thousands of times the volatility. That sounds nice on the upswing, but also since the proportion for optimal portfolio investment is the reciprocal of the volatility, you should hold at most a tiny fraction compared to your actual stocks and bonds. Unless you want to get caught on the downswing and have uncontrollable losses.

    2. Re:Is there really any difference by Riceballsan · · Score: 1

      I haven't invested in bitcoin, but isn't the concept of a bitcoin that it can be divided indefinately? can't you buy .0001 bitcoins or something? I mean it would be a pretty untenible currency if you could only trade 500-11,000 at a time.

    3. Re:Is there really any difference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You can buy .0001 bitcoins, but you might end up paying more for the transaction cost than for the bitcoins you will gain. There was a time when transactions were free, but clever investors figured out how to squeeze money out of all the various mechanisms designed into the scheme. If you want to "use" bitcoin to buy stuff, everyone is waiting to help you out for a small fee.

      Most trades on the currency exchanges operate in the range of 0.05 to 2.0 bitcoins per transaction, or $200 to $8000.

    4. Re:Is there really any difference by vakuona · · Score: 4, Informative

      Is there really any difference between buying bitcoin or wall street or penny stocks from an investment point of view?

      If I buy shares on wall street, or even penny stocks, there is a good chance I will get dividends and make my money back and more that way. People who invested in Apple in 2000 when the whole company was only worth $5bn and kept their shares have received more in dividends and buy backs than they probably paid for those shares initially - Apple has paid out more than $100bn. Yes, you could have made your money by selling the shares as well, but you didn't have to. This is why Apple (and other shares) are investments and not some zero sum speculative activity. You don't need a "greater fool" to make your money with an actual investment.

      With Bitcoin, the ONLY way to make a profit is to find someone (a greater fool) to buy it off you for more than you paid for it (by spending I am referring to either by exchanging cash for bitcoins, or by racking up electricity bills mining coins). This is why bitcoin is speculative, and you basically need a "greater fool" to make money off it.

    5. Re:Is there really any difference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      ... isn't the concept of a bitcoin that it can be divided indefinately?

      Not exactly. The smallest division is 0.00000001 BTC (1 Satoshi). Pretty small, but not infinitely. I don't know how easy that would be to change if needed.

  8. Failed Experiment, or brilliant... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    SHA256 cracking method?

    Someone I talked to claimed that bitcoin has provided an excellent checksum collision database due to the way it works, and that said database reduces the need for brute force when attempting to create collision hashes. I don't know if this is true or not, but as both a social experiment and way to do Folding@Home style distributed crack of sha256sum, it would be a brilliant social hack and experiment all rolled into one.

  9. Re:It'll always bounce back, and more and more use by fluffernutter · · Score: 4, Funny

    I traded them in for Beanie Babies a long time ago.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
  10. Re:Who is Manipulating the Cryptocurrency Market by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    Well I'll be goddam if TFS doesn't answer your question:

    Little tangible news can explain or justify the current crypto carnage. One possible reason is that a pro-crypto member of the Securities and Exchange Commission warned at a conference this week that she's fighting an uphill battle trying to convince the rest of the SEC to approve more bitcoin exchange traded funds.... Nearly two-thirds of money managers surveyed by asset management firm Natixis still thought that cryptocurrencies were a bubble, the firm reported this week.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  11. Yes, huge difference by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    Both tend to be controlled by rumor, innuendo and flash trading

    Yes but the difference is, there is a fundamental base of Bitcoin users that will remain.

    A penny stock is mostly not about the company, but about the manipulation. Whereas bitcoin is at times manipulated, but still has value.

    A penny stock company could shut down any time, but Bitcoin cannot go away from the choice of any one person or even small group of people...

    In I way I find it amusing, that you and others proclaim Bitcoin is heavily manipulated - at the same time making no connection with multiple stories of Bitcoin being dead.

    I was waiting for a buying opportunity, guess this is as clear a one as any.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Yes, huge difference by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      but still has value.

      We have a traditional saying, here in East London: "If you can't tell if you are being scammed: you are being scammed".

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  12. Because I'm smart by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2, Funny

    Thank goodness I sold all my Bitcoin and put my money in the stock market.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  13. Re:It'll always bounce back, and more and more use by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

    Bitcoin is not going away, no matter what the financial 'oligarchs' would like

    I feel the same way about my Microsoft Zune.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  14. bitcoin is dead? by themusicgod1 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    --
    GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
  15. Money is just an idea backed by confidence by dogsbreath · · Score: 1

    Money is just an idea backed by confidence.

    I don't know who said it first, I thought it was Galbraith but apparently not. Similar quotes abound in economic literature. It is a phrase that likely has been around since the day money was first substituted for barter exchange.

    The value of any currency is tied to the belief that if it is accepted for payment today then it will be accepted tomorrow.

    That's it. Nothing else.

    The belief that currency value must be supported by some physical item such as gold has long been shown to be false. It is all about the actors in the market having confidence in the exchange unit. A currency probably does not even need the original national source to continue as a unit of trade.

    It helps if the currency has certain usability characteristics such as the ability to be used without difficulty. Demand, and therefor value, is driven upwards if it has characteristics desired by market place traders. If the market no longer demands the bitcoin characteristics that set it apart from government backed national currencies, then the demand for it will fall.

    All currency are "mindset" valued.

    1. Re:Money is just an idea backed by confidence by jythie · · Score: 1

      Given that gold and silver were at one point only valued because you had to pay your taxes in them, yeah, the particular backing has always been arbitrary.

    2. Re:Money is just an idea backed by confidence by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

      Money is just an idea backed by confidence.

      Then feel free to invest in bitcoin to your heart's content.

      I do wonder though- if it's so great why haven't most bitcoin enthusiasts converted all of their wealth into bitcoin?

      I suspect it's because everyone involved realizes that this shit is at its heart fundamentally unstable and unpredictable, and no one is foolish enough to basically risk everything on the fickleness of the cryptocurrency carnival ride.

      The fact that it's not tethered in any way to anything of tangible value is concerning, but go ahead and pour your life savings into it if your confidence level is high enough. Maybe it'll skyrocket and tomorrow you can buy yourself a yacht or whatever, or maybe it'll plunge and you won't be able to afford a Happy Meal.

      For now I'll stick with my old-fashioned dollars, which typically don't display such wild changes in value over the course of an hour or two. Or a day or a week.

      And as I mentioned previously, if my bank is robbed or blown to bits or falls into a sinkhole, so what? My money is still there, up to the limits of the FDIC.

      If, on the other hand, your bitcoin exchange gets robbed or hacked or whatever....your money is gone, period. Really gone, like "OMG oh shit" gone.

      Like I've said, I think the idea of cryptocurrencies are fascinating and they hold some serious promise, but there are too many fundamental problems with the current state of affairs.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    3. Re:Money is just an idea backed by confidence by Megol · · Score: 1

      What point would that be? The value of gold and silver (also other metals, gems etc.) were established long before taxation became a thing.

    4. Re:Money is just an idea backed by confidence by jythie · · Score: 1

      According to the best records we have, gold and silver jumped to prominence because of taxation. Before that humans mostly used barter or debt economies, but when governments needed to scale up and provide more services than walls and food stockpiles, they started using precious metals, and that caused them to become something valued as something other than building materials.

  16. Re:Explain by presidenteloco · · Score: 1

    Blockchain is collective truth verification, for the state of balances and transactions and contracts and votes and holdings and a whack of other things that used to require "paperwork".

    Think of it as the anti-Trump.

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
  17. Huh by Greyfox · · Score: 1

    So what is everyone using to buy their weed and fentanyl now?

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    1. Re:Huh by Lije+Baley · · Score: 1

      Dogecoin.

      BTW: I've heard rumors about you from various people in multiple villages.

      --
      Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
    2. Re:Huh by Greyfox · · Score: 1

      Me? But I'm just this guy, you know?

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  18. 2016 to now ... by Tjp($)pjT · · Score: 3, Informative

    GE had a market cap of 280 billion, now around 60 billion. BTC had a market cap around 20 and now is around 60. Lies, damn lies, and statistics. Just because it was trendy enough to go over 300 at some point doesnâ(TM)t mean that was the meaningful data point.

    --
    - Tjp

    I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!

  19. Re:No surprise at all by presidenteloco · · Score: 1

    You are wrong.
    Money X gets its value from the social agreement to use X as a token for value, and the maintained social agreement to transact economic transactions using X.

    Nothing more, nothing less.
    Yes, those social agreements have traditionally been associated with and given a certain stability by the prevailing hierarchical governance organization in one region or another.

    No reason the social agreement in the future couldn't be based on X's transactional role in the global economy as a whole, though.
    There are ways of implementing some sorts of fully automated monetary policy, for new forms of X, too. They would be based on automatically triggered futures contract sales and the like, to stabilize the currency X's value.

    Money is primarily a token of social interaction, co-operation, and agreement.

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
  20. Power consumption is reducing in par with price by enriquevagu · · Score: 2

    The best part (for the environment) is that the overall energy consumption of the Bitcoin network is dropping significantly. According to this estimation the power consumed by the aggregated network has dropped from 73.12 TWh per year (around 8.3 GW on average) one month ago, to 45.54 TWh per year (around 5.2 GW on average) today.

    Note that solar panel market installed 98.9 GW last year. With an optimistic efficiency of 50% (nigths, clouds), this means that one month ago we were dedicating one in each 6 new panels installed last year, worldwide, to power Bitcoin. Today, it is "only" one in 9.5.

    And yes, those panels are the "clean energy" we are installing to save the world. Bitcoin saves nothing, please save (pun intended) the "but this is the cost for lack of trust/decentralized/...". This is good, and should keep dropping, considering the environmental impact.

    1. Re:Power consumption is reducing in par with price by Jzanu · · Score: 1

      Individual panels seem lower but like in this article from 2011, what matters more is the system efficiency. Solar panels had improved even more by 2014 , with clear pathways for further improvement and that is even before looking at concentrators. Overall though, the real question is cost per watt which was $0.35/watt without subsidy in the US in 2017 and has an even clearer path to become cheaper and more productive.

    2. Re:Power consumption is reducing in par with price by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 1

      this means that one month ago we were dedicating one in each 6 new panels installed last year, worldwide, to power Bitcoin. Today, it is "only" one in 9.5.

      Can you convert that to how many library of congresses can be powered?

  21. Blockchain technology by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Informative

    the blockchain technology that drives it, and make no mistake, blockchain is the real deal. Blockchain is fundamentally changing the way industries do business, from traditional banking to supply chain management. But just because blockchain technology is creating a new paradigm

    Wait, are we talking about the same blockchain?

    Though Blockchain has been touted as the answer to everything, a study of 43 solutions advanced in the international development sector has found exactly no evidence of success.

    Blockchain Study Finds 0% Success Rate and Vendors Don't Call Back When Asked For Evidence

    --
    Better known as 318230.
    1. Re:Blockchain technology by thragnet · · Score: 1

      Blockchain and the Standard Model of Physics:

      https://slashdot.org/submissio...

  22. No value? That's a failure in logic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "There are no real fundamentals to evaluate; bitcoin doesn't produce any products or services, hire any employees or pay any dividends. The only way profits are generated is when the owner is lucky enough to find someone else who will pay more for the thing..."

    Modern currencies like the US dollar are not backed by anything tangible either. There is also something with Bitcoin and other crypto currencies of value. The most obvious being its ability to enable consumers and businesses to conduct transactions for less and without being in the same place. People are too quick to write off the cost of maintaining a centralized system based around banks and fiat currency. There may be issues with all current crypto currencies, but to ignore the potential and improvements that have already occurred is a great failure in logic. Advances in privacy and anonymity for instance with the zero coin protocol. This is huge for some markets. Dollars exist alongside euros and different crypto currencies can too.

    1. Re:No value? That's a failure in logic by vakuona · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Modern currencies like the US dollar are not backed by anything tangible either.

      This betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what a currency is, and what backs it. Currencies are backed by the economic activity underlying a specific economic area. The US dollar is backed by the economic activity in the USA, the British pound by the UK economy, and so on. Having dollars gives you the right to purchase goods and services from US providers. While the GDP is not "tangible", there is a lot you can buy with dollars.

    2. Re:No value? That's a failure in logic by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1
      Modern currencies like the US dollar are not backed by anything tangible either.

      The US Government is definitely tangible. However, I agree its credibility is in serious doubt.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  23. Re:It'll always bounce back, and more and more use by Rei · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Everybody point at the libertarian and laugh.

    --
    Seen on a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use."
  24. "killed it" by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    That's pretty hilarious, you seriously think that people in countries that "killed it" are no longer using Bitcoin?

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  25. Also, power consumption is not fundamental by presidenteloco · · Score: 3, Informative

    to blockchain and cryptocurrency.

    It was only associated with the version 1 blockchain and cryptocurrency technology.

    Proof-of-stake and other new concepts will replace the energy-intensive proof-of-work.

    I wish people would STFU with this particular criticism of crypto/blockchain because it's like criticising houses because you're opposed to bricks.

    --

    Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
    1. Re:Also, power consumption is not fundamental by enriquevagu · · Score: 1

      Yes, but any currency also needs credibility. After the Bitcoin debacle, ordinary people (those who don't know the difference between PoW and PoS, and don't care to know) will never trust any other cryptocurrency.

      Not to mention fundamental storage limitations of blockchain implementations, should a cryptocurrency be used at large scale...

  26. The good news... by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Funny

    People online will now be able to spell hold correctly again. But they will still think that the oppposite of win is loose.

    1. Re:The good news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The meme will now be used in different contexts: baghodlers.

  27. Taxes and all debts. Get dollars or go to prison by raymorris · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you don't get some US dollars and then give them to the IRS, IRS agents will eventually show up at your door and remind you that you better get some soon, or they'll be back to take you to prison. Ask Wesley Snipes - even action movie heroes need to have dollars. It might take a while, but eventually they show up.

    That means dollars will always have value, as long as the IRS exists. Dollars keep you out of prison.

    Additionally, as a bonus anyone who has debt of any kind needs dollars to get rid of that debt, so that the bank doesn't come take their house, car, etc. "Get some dollars or lose your house" is pretty powerful.

    Trying sending the IRS some Bitcoins. Not gonna happen. Check your mortgage statemwnt. It's 100,000 DOLLARS you have to eventually pay the bank to keep your house. Sending them a sha-256 hash isn't going to let you keep your house.

    How do we know the bank won't switch to denominating mortgages in Bitcoins or Buttcoins or Anonymous Coward Coin? Because the bank needs fifteen million DOLLARS to pay their taxes. So they are always going to want dollars from their customers.

  28. Re:Explain by gravewax · · Score: 1

    paperwork? wtf, we moved past the 90's 2 decades ago, ledgers, balance sheets and transactions are done electronically. Blockchain is merely another way to do that same thing, arguably better, but it has no actual benefit paperwork wise.

  29. Re:Who is Manipulating the Cryptocurrency Market by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    If a person was writing a fictional movie script about people using "computers" to do funds and why a gov got interested?

    Tax considerations and nations asking more questions.
    Tracking the past "use" in the wild to open investigations on any new owner.
    Any past sanctions evasion use is in the past becomes part of what the new owner "did".

    A fictional movie about an average person who gets into computer money early and finds they are tracked by big governments years later.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  30. Re:Taxes and all debts. Get dollars or go to priso by jythie · · Score: 1

    Something I always found amusing... proponents often wax eloquently about gold, how gold is real money, real value, yet the way we got started with gold (and silver) as 'money' was governments demanding people pay their taxes in it rather than grain.

  31. Less dead than it used to be by Air-conditioned+cowh · · Score: 1

    If the value of Bitcoin is a measure of how much life it has then it must have been really, really dead in 2011 when its value was $0.04.

  32. I was with him until... by paradigm82 · · Score: 1

    I was with him until:
    "Proponents of bitcoin tend to focus on the impact of the blockchain technology that drives it, and make no mistake, blockchain is the real deal. Blockchain is fundamentally changing the way industries do business, from traditional banking to supply chain management."
    So he's still a Blockchain-hyper apparently. I would go the opposite: Blockchain does solve real problems for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Distributed cryptocurrencies were not possible before blockchain. It seems around 2013-2014 it started becoming mainstream that this principle could be transferred to all kinds of other situations and that this would be valuable. I have always been a skeptic and have yet to see one instance apart from cryptocurrencies where blockchain truly contributed and worked (and where previous methods, such as digital signatures, wouldn't have been better). Whether Bitcoin is valuable or not is a different question. If it isn't, it just means blockchain has even less to show.

  33. Bitcoin is Dead... by rnturn · · Score: 1

    ... and prices of used high-end video cards crash.

    --
    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  34. Blockchain is prefect for doing what it does by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    and as soon as somebody figures out what that is it's going to take right off. It's a whole new paradigm. Why, that's twice as many digms.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  35. Re: Explain by gravewax · · Score: 1

    When you control the whole blockchain it is trivial to regenerate it to say whatever the fuck you like,

  36. Nope, still dollars by raymorris · · Score: 2

    The text of the much-ballyhooed Arizona bill (that passed) is:

    [The tax office may] "develop, adopt and use a payment system that enables the immediate remittance and collection of tax in real time at the point of sale, including payments of additional amounts after audit."

    Their was discussion that this immediate payment system could allow one to pay their 800 DOLLARS of taxes though MasterCard, Visa, CoinDesk Discover, PayPal ...

    It's still 800 DOLLARS of taxes you have to pay, whether you pay through PayPal or CoinDesk. There wasn't even ever any discussion of anyone getting a tax bill for .03 BTC.

  37. Close to a bottom by ayesnymous · · Score: 1

    The more people who come out saying Bitcoin is dead, the closer it is to a bottom.

  38. This again by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Bitcoin has been pronounced dead over 3000 times already yet it costs staggering ~ $3300 at the moment.

    Something that has no value whatsoever. Right.

    Clearly there's a bias against Bitcoin here at /. but it doesn't invalidate Bitcoin in the slightest. Yes, a year ago it was hyped like crazy, rose like crazy and then subsided but it's still very much alive and kicking.

    Shitcoins meanwhile have lost a lot more than Bitcoin because most of them are nothing but shit - "breakthroughs in using blockchain" which solve imaginary problems using imaginary tools. See how Ethereum has lost a lot more than Bitcoin because it's been used as a platform for hundreds of worthless ICOs.

  39. Re:Bitcoin by LtUoNXizqxawTj4ofx7t · · Score: 1

    bitcoin is dead indicator is the most reliable, buy now, thank me later

  40. Re:It'll always bounce back, and more and more use by DanDD · · Score: 1
    --
    "Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
  41. IRS raided his house in 2002 by raymorris · · Score: 1

    The raided his house in 2002.
    https://www.foxnews.com/story/...

    I've have revenue officers knock on my door regarding a company I used to work for.