Slashdot Mirror
Ranks of Crypto Users Swelled in 2018 Even as Bitcoin Tumbled (bloomberg.com)
It turns out that cryptocurrency enthusiasts were committed well beyond the HODL rallying call that urged them to hold on during this year's digital-asset market collapse. From a report: The number of verified users of cryptocurrencies almost doubled in the first three quarters of the year even as the market bellwether Bitcoin tumbled almost 80 percent, according to a study from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. Users climbed from 18 million to 35 million this year. The figures may provide a silver lining. If user numbers continue to increase even in a deep market downturn, that could signal that an eventual recovery could be coming -- a crucial finding at a time when some critics predict that the value of cryptocurrencies will go down to zero.
It was the only way my sports betting site was going to let me cash out profits.
in bitcoin... CRASH!
The vast majority of the world's money is held in electronic form, with a small percentage existing as banknotes and coins.
There are more people than ever using Bitcoin as "banknotes and coins", despite its decline in value as a store of wealth or speculative vehicle.
Bitcoin especially, will always have a base of users - because there is no alternative that offers the same features (well other than other digital currencies), not even cash (and cash is in theory less universal, though the dollar comes closest to working everywhere).
Sometimes I wonder if anti-Bitcoin propaganda and manipulation may not be some kind of U.S. intervention, to keep the value of the dollar propped up since it's used around most of the world as a supported currency.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sure, millions of GPU miners, mining alt-coins and selling them for bitcoins, and the wiser ones then exchanging the bitcoins for their local fiat currency. Don't think of the handful of "enthusiasts" who built mining rigs. Think of many with a decent GPU in their PC who decided to let it mine when they were not otherwise using their PC. These people generated much bitcoin "usage". It was profitable until very recently and these people are bloating the cited stats.
If so all that means is that rather than having speculators who buy on a rising market and then sell at a higher price to realise their gain (in proper money), those who were left holding the baby, as it were, have decided not to sell up and take a loss. Presumably they are hoping that at some point there will be an upturn and their loss might even turn into a profit.
But that pattern of behaviour is one of hope rather than reality. Simply holding onto a worthless asset doesn't mean you might make some money from it in the future. It just means the holders are in denial.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I think a lot of people feel that our economy has peaked, and that there is a downturn shortly down the road. (Which is backed up with the Interest rate inversion) During this time, people do rather erratic things, such as investing in a popping bubble thinking it had dropped as far as it went. Also with general fear and uncertainty they probably think Crypto Currency is a way to diversify their newly acquired wealth.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I wonder what is defined as a "user". Does it mean the holder of the account? I don't actually think it means USING the bitcoins to pay for something.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Biased moderators set that post to offtopic because they are memebrs of liberal clinton-soros deep state who want to control you. Ignore them.
If you're buying now, you already missed out.
"Crypto" is short for cryptography, end of story. It is already abbreviated in "cryptocurrency". Also, cryptography is mostly an honorable business, while cryptocurrencies are mostly scam.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The intent of bitcoin isn't to be a value container or investment object, but to easily and securely move value from one place to another without official oversight or control, and in this function it excels. Investing in cryptocurrency is kind of like investing in porn, the more popular it gets, the more ubiquitous it becomes, and the less value the individual pieces become. There's thousands of free porn sites, yet that isn't slowing down the porn industry from creating more as the money flows through advertising, not so much from selling the porn itself. Anyone and their brother can set up their own cryptocurrency, and if it can be used to trade goods and services without banks and governments getting their fingers on it, fantastic!
If you look at the exchange rate, yes it looks like bitcoin has collapsed in the last year.
If you look at bitcoin transactions per day, it's been climbing since the beginning of 2018, and has had 200k transactions or more per day since the start 2016, with very few days exception. This is in spite of a huge increase of alternate cryptocurrency choices, a perceived cryptocurrency bubble burst, and a couple forks.
Watch the birdie, you'll miss the tiger.
This is how a ponzi scheme is supposed to work, right? Get more people on the bottom of the rewards pile to prop up the price for the people on top?
In fact, I don't see any reason why Bitcoin won't go extinct once a better alternative is implemented.
There will indeed probably be some more viable (in terms of technical quality) solution in use eventually.
Bitcoin Cash is supposed to be one of them... we shall see, I think it more likely to be Ethereum.
What Bitcoin itself is supposed to be, is more of a digital currency base on which others can trade around. So even if data to day you might use Ethereum to pay for things, you'd hold a larger amount in Bitcoin you could use to transfer to other currencies.
I think that is a likely scenario, Bitcoin has great widespread support, and as another responder noted "brand recognition" that counts for a lot, even in these early days of digital currency.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
IMHO, this "news" trying really hard to change minds of bitcoin owners considering to sell!!!
Bitcoin HODLers:
Don't listen to shills trying to manipulate you into keep holding!!!
Bitcoin is going towards TOTAL COLLAPSE!!!
SELL NOW!!!
(If you don't want become unable to sell, when it starts collapsing fast!!!)
Found the mark. Smart people ignore youre advice and buy when the iron is hot which is NOW.
THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES INCEL NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
The number of users increased by a factor of 2, the number of cryptocurrencies increased by a factor of 20, and most of the "users" of cryptocurrencies use more than just 1, therefore they are all at least double-counted and they are fewer in number per cryptocurrency.
Obviously paid-for crypto-currency "articles" like this one have been coming at us all week; someone is paying a lot of money to temporarily raise the bids so that they can offload at a smaller loss than if they sold now.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
A little relaxation of the bullish trend; combined with introduction of futures and
probably traditional financial companies shorting the hell out of BTC.
What you need is statistics from major exchanges/BTC financial companies on...
quantities of other peoples' BTC being used to make loans for entities shorting BTC.
And how much "fake" / "paper" BTC is floating around that was created by short-sellers?
(e.g. Bitcoins where someone has deposited, and the exchange loaned them out to Short Sell, then
the buyer deposited to exchange and were loaned out again to Short Sell, resulting in fractional-reserve bitcoins,
and the same BTC being sold on the market multiple times resulting in multiple buyers all "Owning" the same small numbers of Bitcoins)
It may be more useful as a currency when the price is bumping around dollars mark - so still a way to fall!
If cryptocurrency behaved like goods, we would have an increased demand while supply remain flat by design. That should raise prices.
I don't think that it's like a lottery as for me. A couple years ago people wanted to get money just to invest money in Bitcoin or something now there are even more ways to do it as MotoCoin and so on. If you wil work on it you will get sometihng for sure!