Bitcoin Dropped Nearly 30% This Week. But Why? (cnn.com) 105
Last Sunday, Bitcoin had dropped 13% in three days, to $76,790.
By Thursday it had dropped another 21%, to $60,062.
This morning it's at $69,549 — up from Thursday, down from Sunday, but 44% lower than its all-time high in October of $123,742. In short, Bitcoin "is down almost 30% this week alone," reports CNBC: "This steady selling in our view signals that traditional investors are losing interest, and overall pessimism about crypto is growing," Deutsche Bank analyst Marion Laboure said Wednesday in a note to clients. Growing investor caution comes as many of the sensationalized claims about bitcoin have failed to materialize. The token has largely traded in the same direction as other risk-on assets, such as stocks... and its adoption as a form of payment for goods and services has been minimal... While many in the crypto market have previously credited large institutional investors with supporting the price of bitcoin, now it is those same participants who appear to be selling. "Institutional demand has reversed materially," CryptoQuant said in a report on Wednesday.
But not everyone accepts that answer, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. "The worst part for some of crypto's permabulls is that they aren't sure what exactly caused the crash": The selloff left many of the market's luminaries — those so well-known that they go simply as "Pomp" and "Novo" and "Mooch" — searching for answers... Ether dropped 24% to $2,052, off 59% from its own high of last year. Both tokens staged furious rallies Friday, but the week remained a historically bad one for crypto. And few seem to know what went wrong. Market theories for the selloff ranged from investors' pivot toward the prediction markets and other risky bets, to widespread profit-taking after a blistering bull run. "There was no smoking gun," said Michael Novogratz, who runs Galaxy Digital, a crypto merchant-banking and trading firm...
"If you ask five experts, you'll get five explanations," said Anthony Scaramucci, who served for 11 days as communications director during Trump's first term and is among the best-known crypto bulls at his firm, SkyBridge Capital.
"No, but seriously: What's going on with bitcoin?" reads the headline at CNN, with a story that begins "Bitcoin is acting weird... " Crypto is notoriously volatile, and it's gone through numerous crashes that are bigger than this one. What's strange is this: Bitcoin's four-month slump has come at a time when, in theory, it had everything going for it.
Economist Paul Krugman points out the price of Bitcoin is now lower than it was before America's 2024 election, when candidate Trump promised to make cryptocurrency "one of the greatest industries on earth."
CNN seems to agree with CNBC that what's behind this new crypto winter is "Mostly doubts that bitcoin is 'digital gold,' after all..."
Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.
By Thursday it had dropped another 21%, to $60,062.
This morning it's at $69,549 — up from Thursday, down from Sunday, but 44% lower than its all-time high in October of $123,742. In short, Bitcoin "is down almost 30% this week alone," reports CNBC: "This steady selling in our view signals that traditional investors are losing interest, and overall pessimism about crypto is growing," Deutsche Bank analyst Marion Laboure said Wednesday in a note to clients. Growing investor caution comes as many of the sensationalized claims about bitcoin have failed to materialize. The token has largely traded in the same direction as other risk-on assets, such as stocks... and its adoption as a form of payment for goods and services has been minimal... While many in the crypto market have previously credited large institutional investors with supporting the price of bitcoin, now it is those same participants who appear to be selling. "Institutional demand has reversed materially," CryptoQuant said in a report on Wednesday.
But not everyone accepts that answer, the Wall Street Journal reported Saturday. "The worst part for some of crypto's permabulls is that they aren't sure what exactly caused the crash": The selloff left many of the market's luminaries — those so well-known that they go simply as "Pomp" and "Novo" and "Mooch" — searching for answers... Ether dropped 24% to $2,052, off 59% from its own high of last year. Both tokens staged furious rallies Friday, but the week remained a historically bad one for crypto. And few seem to know what went wrong. Market theories for the selloff ranged from investors' pivot toward the prediction markets and other risky bets, to widespread profit-taking after a blistering bull run. "There was no smoking gun," said Michael Novogratz, who runs Galaxy Digital, a crypto merchant-banking and trading firm...
"If you ask five experts, you'll get five explanations," said Anthony Scaramucci, who served for 11 days as communications director during Trump's first term and is among the best-known crypto bulls at his firm, SkyBridge Capital.
"No, but seriously: What's going on with bitcoin?" reads the headline at CNN, with a story that begins "Bitcoin is acting weird... " Crypto is notoriously volatile, and it's gone through numerous crashes that are bigger than this one. What's strange is this: Bitcoin's four-month slump has come at a time when, in theory, it had everything going for it.
Economist Paul Krugman points out the price of Bitcoin is now lower than it was before America's 2024 election, when candidate Trump promised to make cryptocurrency "one of the greatest industries on earth."
CNN seems to agree with CNBC that what's behind this new crypto winter is "Mostly doubts that bitcoin is 'digital gold,' after all..."
Thanks to Slashdot reader fjo3 for sharing the news.
And this is the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
The doubts will last for as long as the depression, during which the wealthy will be buying up bitcoin like mad. Once Bitcoin heads back into the 100k region, everyone will decide it IS digital gold, and push it up higher, at which point the wealthy will sell off, causing a collapse that the "everyone elsers" essentially pay for, and the cycle will continue.
And that is all bitcoin is. It's all the stock market is, too. A tool for pumping money from 401K plans and the gambling poor into the hands of the wealthy.
Re: And this is the problem. (Score:4, Funny)
Re: And this is the problem. (Score:4, Informative)
Yep. And different from penny-stocks or other crappy investments, you will not ever be able to sell them, because the Bitcoin network will simply vanish when mining does not pay anymore.
Re: (Score:3)
Yep. And different from penny-stocks or other crappy investments, you will not ever be able to sell them, because the Bitcoin network will simply vanish when mining does not pay anymore.
Miners are turning off their rigs because it's not profitable to mine [futurism.com]. The cost to mine is roughly $87,000 whereas BTC is only at 70,000 or so.
Re: And this is the problem. (Score:2)
It's still marginally profitable if you are stealing electricity.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting. That effect may be the end of it.
Re: And this is the problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting. That effect may be the end of it.
If it comes to that, the difficulty can be turned down to make mining profitable again.
I wish it would just end.
Re: (Score:2)
I do not think that will work. Because who would make that decision and implement it? It will just be the start of open "value" manipulation.
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The first 51% of miners by volume to agree to it. Of course once they do that, they'll realize they can do all sorts of other fun stuff. Like giving themselves free bitcoin.
Re: (Score:2)
I do not think that will work. Because who would make that decision and implement it? It will just be the start of open "value" manipulation.
Difficulty is updated every few months. This is a routine process. I'm not sure that it has ever been decreased rather than increased, but I don't think that will be a significant obstacle.
Re: (Score:2)
I do not think that will work. Because who would make that decision and implement it? It will just be the start of open "value" manipulation.
Actually, I looked it up rather than going from memory: BTC difficulty updates don't happen every few months they happen every 2016 blocks, which is roughly every two weeks. And the process is entirely automated, adjusting the difficulty to maintain a new block rate of about one every 10 minutes. In fact, the "2016" number was chosen because it's the number of 10-minute intervals in two weeks. This is all part of Satoshi's original design.
The most recent adjustment happened on Feb 7, and it was a downw
Re: (Score:2)
Re: And this is the problem. (Score:2)
Bitcoin mining has always been unprofitable as it's spot price even when we used to mine on GPUs in 2011. Miners are always better off holding. But then in hindsight it was better to just buy some and forgo the mining part entirely.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And that is all bitcoin is. It's all the stock market is, too. A tool for pumping money from 401K plans and the gambling poor into the hands of the wealthy.
You forgot money laundering, and a large part of that for ransomware ransom money. A tool for crime.
Re: And this is the problem. (Score:1)
Re: And this is the problem. (Score:1)
Re:And this is the problem. (Score:5, Informative)
And that is all bitcoin is. It's all the stock market is, too.
You're completely wrong to equate bitcoin with the stock market. When you buy shares in a publicly-traded company you're buying something real, a portion of an actual business that owns real stuff, has real employees, makes real stuff and sells it to real people. Exactly how much that company is worth, so exactly how much your share is worth, isn't really clear because calculating that value requires a lot of guesses about what the company, and its market, and the economy as a whole, are going to do in the future. But it's definitely worth *something*.
That's not true of bitcoin. You won't hear people talking about bitcoin "fundamentals" the way they do with stocks, because bitcoin doesn't have any fundamentals. It's just vibes, all the way down. Oh you can talk about hashrates and work factors and the cost of mining equipment, etc., but none of that has any actual value. If the governments of the world united and successfully banned cryptocurrencies, all those ASIC rigs would be useless. If they were still using GPUs at least you could repurpose them for AI, or graphics.
Re:And this is the problem. (Score:5, Interesting)
We should clarify that although stocks often follow "fundamentals" in the long run, it's a very fuzzy thing. First, there's no agreement on what the fundamentals entail. Is that revenue, profit, margins, PE ratio, either trailing or some estimate of future? Second, high-frequency traders account for around half of all stock transactions, and they directly ignore all fundamentals all the time. Third, retail investors (like you and me) account for up to 20% of all trades, but not surprisingly, these investors may not understand what fundamentals are. Fourth, about a quarter of all trades are made by hedge funds that do a lot of shorting and use of derivatives, which greatly muddies up all the talk about fundamentals.
Despite all this fuzziness, stocks are still much easier to understand than crypto, which is pure speculation with no inherent value.
Re: (Score:2)
We should clarify that although stocks often follow "fundamentals" in the long run, it's a very fuzzy thing.
It's way beyond that.
Not only can no one tell you where the market will be tomorrow, but the market is so thoroughly penetrated and rigged by micro- and nanosecond traders that a live human has zero chance of making money unless by sheer chance they're doing what the traders are doing.
The book "The Flash Boys" details how the stock market is completely rigged, gamed, and outrun by hyper-speed traders. Definitely worth a read. You're not investing in stock, you're hoping the algorithms of the dark money pool
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Here is a review of that Pete Kovac book:
https://www.bankers-anonymous.... [bankers-anonymous.com]
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding of HFT may be completely wrong, but when HFT got started, there were traders that were making money by doing the following: Mr HFT (MHFT) offers to sell 100 shares of ABC at $10/share. Mr Retail (MR) agrees to buy those shares at that price. MHFT then immediately cancels his sell order before it is executed and puts in a new sell offer at $10.01. If MR agrees, MHFT again cancels his order before it is executed and offers to sell at $10.02. Lather, rinse repeat until MR declines to buy. At w
Quite false. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have made quite a lot of money investing in the stock market, and you can too. People who know what they are doing gain the option to retire early.
You don't do it by day-trading or other stupid things. One makes money in the stock market through wise, tried-and-true buy-and hold strategies. It takes many years for the profits to amount to much. That is more than most people can bear. Everyone wants to be an overnight millionaire. Nope, that's not going to happen on the stock market.
Day trading puts you in direct competition against high frequency traders, where you are completely outgunned. It is folly. Buy-and-hold investing yields excellent returns in the long term, but requires discipline, patience, and a proper education in the relevant details.
Re: (Score:3)
An investor without much skill can generally do about 5-8% on the market. If you want to go "easy mode" you buy ETFs - basically you buy the indices - Dow Jones, S&P 500, etc. Most ETFs have a fund that matches their core index and you just buy that and hold it.
Of course, it's 5-8% on average - there will be bad years, like 2008 and 2020, but all those years do is bring down the average return rate. In a few years, they all recover. So it's never something you want to do with your retirement funds if yo
Re: (Score:2)
the market is so thoroughly penetrated and rigged by micro- and nanosecond traders that a live human has zero chance of making money
Nonsense.
It's debatable whether HFT is a net positive for the market (it does provide positive value, ensuring that pricing is consistent across markets), but it definitely doesn't "rig" the market. If you're trying to compete with the high frequency traders at their game, you're going to lose, but you're also doing it wrong. For people who don't spend all their time reading quarterly reports, the right way to do it is to put your money in a decent mutual fund or index fund, and let it grow. If you want
Re: And this is the problem. (Score:2)
If you think HFT keeps you from making a profit on stocks, you are a dumbass.
You buy at one price, you sell at another. When the market is overall doing well you can close your eyes and invest randomly and make a profit. The only way to persistently lose money is if you FOMO buy everything high and panic sell everything low. It's not the market's fault if you persistently make bad trades. I mean it's kind of like blaming house flippers for you not making a profit trading properties. The fact that someone ha
Re: (Score:2)
So...where will the market be tomorrow? What will the Dow Jones be at? What will the Shanghai Stock Exchange be at in 24 hours? Where will the NASDAQ Composite be at 2pm Tuesday?
No one no knows, and that's because the stock market is irrational.
Those exchanges could all be up or down this time tomorrow and neither you nor I nor anyone else can predict it. The best anyone can do it make generalizations based on the trends and those are wrong about as often as they're right.
Re: (Score:3)
Despite all this fuzziness, stocks are still much easier to understand than crypto, which is pure speculation with no inherent value
I think cryptocurrencies are super easy to understand, and the last clause of your sentence just spelled out everything anyone needs to know.
If you're into cryptography, you might find the details of how they work interesting (well, moderately; there isn't any really interesting cryptography there), but none of that has any bearing on whether it makes sense to put your money into it.
Re: (Score:2)
The mechanics of blockchains and cryptocurrencies are straightforward to understand. The fluctuations of crypto valuations and why people buy and sell cryptocurrencies are not.
Re: (Score:2)
If that were meaningful, studies wouldn't show that hedge fund managers only make a profit around 1/3 of the time. If the people who actually work in the industry and know every aspect of it better than I know machine code or C still can't get anything useful out of their work 2/3rds of the time, then the theory simply isn't important.
Re:And this is the problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
It’’s fundamentally different from the stock market. The stock market is about ownership of a productive asset, a company. Bitcoin produces nothing. It’s a nominal store of value, like gold, but completely intangible. It’s worth exactly the faith that people have in it, no more or less. There is no liquidation value as there is for a stock. You are not left with something in your hand, as you are with gold.
In short, it’s bullshit. It’s always been bullshit. I’ll never be convinced otherwise.
Re: (Score:2)
It’’s fundamentally different from the stock market. The stock market is about ownership of a productive asset, a company. Bitcoin produces nothing. It’s a nominal store of value, like gold, but completely intangible. It’s worth exactly the faith that people have in it, no more or less. There is no liquidation value as there is for a stock. You are not left with something in your hand, as you are with gold.
In short, it’s bullshit. It’s always been bullshit. I’ll never be convinced otherwise.
A owner of a share of stock theoretically and legally owns a part of the company. However, in real life, there is no essentially no ownership because the only two differences between a shareholder and a non-shareholder are dividends and some form of compensation when the shares are bought or transferred. Yes, there is this silly thing about stockholder votes, but corporate shareholder elections are literally jokes because the board gets to vote on behalf of non-returned ballots and even then, the board ca
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know what point you think you're making here?
Re: (Score:3)
The case of Google is interesting because they're not protecting themselves from small investors, but rather defending against large investors. The 2 founders have the final say in all decisions because they control more than 50% of the votes.
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The wealthy are buying good, not Bitcoin. The challenge with Bitcoin now is that it has effectively become regulated via tax and anti money laundering agreements across most countries.
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It's as if "the wealthy" somehow know that buying things when they're cheap and selling them when they're expensive is a good way to make money.
Re: And this is the problem. (Score:2)
Tell me you have zero idea how financial markets work without telling me you have zero idea how financial markets work.
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, no. There's one thing crypto is not, as Krugman says: it doesn't make anything. Mostly, it's not used for exchange (except for ransom). It's original uses - tax avoidance, illegal purchases, and money laundering, haven't changed. Everything else is pure gambling.
history (Score:2)
Last time Dontardo passed a big trickle down scam bit coin crashed down to the price to generate a coin. This time it's a repeat but the cost is higher. What is it now $40k? (depends on cheap power) We probably have a ways longer to drop. Last time it made more sense to invest in higher return "investments" because of the trickle down scam and it is the same now.
I do think it will rise up again later on like last time.
Also try to pay attention when Putin goes in big; likely after the USA goes in and then
Why not? (Score:2)
Fear and greed drive bitcoin. No inherent value.
Re: (Score:1)
You left out ignorance and stupidity. Without that, it would never have gotten to anything.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
Well, yes but the supply of human stupidity is really big and it's also a renewable resource. There is literally a new sucker born every day. Actually the AI says at least 360 thousand new suckers each day.
I have a new formulation of the problem. Previous changes have created many problems. Some of those problems are becoming existential and we need solutions. But the solutions involve more changes, and the people with the power to decide on and implement changes are not thinking about solving old problems.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Although I tend to think the world is not actually so connected that it all has to implode together. Some parts may still be able to survive the crash of the rest. That a really big implosion is coming seems to be rather obvious though.
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Just the ACK. And wondering which part so offended the censor troll.
Just following the cycle, I guess... (Score:4, Informative)
Bitcoin seems to have this odd 4 year cycle where it skyrockets to more than double it's prior all time high, only to crash over 50% in value 6 months later.
It went from around 20,000 back to 3,000 around 2018, and from $62,000 back to $16,000 around 2022. This time in 2025-2026 it drops from $120,000 to... $55,000? I'm not sure where the bottom is, but I don't think that we hit it yet.
Each dip seems to be a bit less crazy than the last one, but it's definitely either a "cyclical asset" if you're a Bitcoin believer or a giant "pump and dump scam" if you're a Bitcoin hater.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
And if you are neither "believer" nor a "hater", but see it as what it is with, you know, using rational though instead of emotions, there are no "cycles" here, as it is all even less valuable than hot air.
Re: (Score:1)
You people are even more disconnected from reality than the AI fanbois. And that is saying something.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
"You people" is for sure one of the best ways to start out a line of "rational [thought]".
I confess, I believe in the AI as well, love it, want more of it...but it does not provide any arguments to prove my statements false.
Why not? Because you know I am right, otherwise you would type something proving me wrong.
Whether you like it or not people buy and sell control of Bitcoin, and there is an obvious cycle.
Why deny it because you think it is irrational or emotion to "believe" in or "trade" Bitcoin?
For bett
Yeah, not surprising, but I wish I understood why (Score:2)
I agree, the "halving" charts seemed to correlate with this four year pattern.
But the charts do not show a drop right after the reward to mine a block is cut in half as I would expect.
Those who pushed the "halving" correlation are probably comfortably hibernating for another year of crypto winter before the spring.
If I had any money I would put it where my mouth is an buy me some Bitcoin...but all I can do is put my prediction here in writing: the bottom is no lower than $60k, and 3 years from now $120K min
Election uncertainties? (Score:2)
I wonder if it is related to the uncertainties that come with the mid-term elections. Almost every one so far since 2006 [exception: 2014] has seen the House flip which invites a whole new relationship with the President (usually antagonistic) and with it a huge increase in uncertainties that tend to drop a lot of markets for a time. So maybe they're selling to ride it out in more stable things (like international stocks and, well, you've likely noted the price of gold is exploding...)
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting.
Peak in late 2013 ($1000) dropping to a low mid 2015 ($225).
Peak in late 2017 ($20k) dropping to a low late 2018 ($4k).
Peak in late 2021 ($65k) dropping to a low late 2022 ($15k).
Peak in late 2205 ($120k) dropping to a low maybe in late 2026 here of like ($50k).
Midterms: 2026, 2022, 2018, 2014 all correlate with the low? I think that is a sound assertion!
Okay, but your pattern of the House flipping seems pretty sound, some might say certain, going back 20 years now.
In addition I would have figur
Re: Yeah, not surprising, but I wish I understood (Score:2)
There's a pretty consistent delay between havening and price rise. People know it's going to rise, but because everyone knows, the market (especially with derivatives) attempts to time shift that rise into something more profitable for them, for example by keeping prices artificially low to scoop up more before the price rise.
The 4 cycle continues. No evidence of it going away, though it is tempering expectedly as the overall market value grows to levels that make it hard to move.
The overall impact of the h
Because it's mostly used for money laundering (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're a white collar criminal you can rip off pretty much anyone you want anyway you want as long as you don't go after the really really rich people like Bernie Madoff and Elizabeth Holmes did.
So there's a lot less demand for crypto because it's a lot easier to commit white collar crime and will be for the next at least 3 years.
Meanwhile the AI data centers are sucking down all the compute power so cryptocurrency is having a rough time competing.
And finally of course we are in a massive massive recession that nobody is talking about because the news media has been ordered to keep quiet about it by their owners. That recession is inevitably affecting scams like Bitcoin because they are Ponzi schemes and when the economy gets bad Ponzi schemes start to collapse because there aren't enough suckers who have money left to keep them going
Bithumb (Score:1)
My guess of how the dominoes fell as worldwide BTC dropped from $80K -> $65K--
1) Bithumb, a South Korean company, screwed up by sending BTC instead of won to its accounts
https://feed.bithumb.com/notic... [bithumb.com]
2) its users quickly sold 1,788 BTCs, which pushed the Korean bitcoin index down below $60K
3) IBIT then plummeted from the national selling
4) Blackrock had hedged IBIT
https://bitrss.com/bitcoin-cra... [bitrss.com]
5) worldwide BTC dropped from Blackrock's loss
Hallucinations are not stable (Score:4, Insightful)
The belief that BTC has value is a pure hallucination. Also, the fewer people that fall for the scam, the more volatile things get. It seems the scam is slowly coming to an end. About time.
"I want to say one two words to you" (Score:1)
"Monkey JPEGs"
Okay, one word and an acronym.
Shall I come in again ?
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but the whole "$200,000 Monkey JPEG" thing was the high point of the last 2021-2022 crypto rally.
This last rally seemed to be more of a "We can put Bitcoin ETF's in our IRA now, and we just got a crypto friendly president in office! Buy Buy Buy!" sort of thing.
and the 4-year halving cycle... (Score:2)
At this point I would just ban it (Score:5, Insightful)
It's been what, over 10 years now of Bitcoin and crypto and what has been the net utility to society or even humanity? I would say outside of a few select people getting wealthy it has overall been a net negative for 99% of humans alive.
It eats electricity, it eats labor which could be used on more useful things (how many talented coders are in crypto shit?) it eats money, it eats investments which could otherwise go into new companies or other ventures, it's just a big fat distraction for everyone, the fact we are talking about it here is even a net negative.
Now how you "ban" it is a tricky thing but at least as far as I am concerned I would say the SEC or whomever should declare it illegal to exchange any crypto for USD. Would that create a black market? Sure but that already exists, at least lets acknowledge that's all it is an ever was.
We've held our tongues and played nice for far too long than anyone involved in the crypto space deserves, it's stupid, it's a waste it adds almost nothing, probably worse than nothing, it has made all our lives worse.
Re: At this point I would just ban it (Score:2)
You can ban math?
Re: (Score:2)
Do we regulate finance already? As soon as the math becomes US currency you can take actions.
Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
The interesting issue here is that Bitcoin is a fiat currency, but it is backed by nothing. It's not that other currencies are not fiat currencies, but they are backed by something.
The US dollar is "backed" in the sense that if it crashes, the USA will do "something" to relieve the crash, and it's currently a currency that is needed to buy oil worldwide, and it's currently accepted as a "reserve currency". Could all of this change and the US dollar become worthless? Yes, of course but that would not happen until the US economy is completely destroyed. Most people would consider that unlikely, so they accept the fiat US dollar as a stable investment.
I suspect Bitcoin survived this long since it developed a little bit of real-world usefulness as a tool for moving and laundering criminal proceeds. As law enforcement gets better at attacking that criminal revenue chain, that usefulness is going to fade.
In a sense, the fact Bitcoin is a fiat currency backed by nothing is part of its allure: That makes it volatile. That makes it really attractive to gamblers or the professional gamblers who take big risks and call themselves "investors"
But eventually there will be a run on Bitcoin, just as there always is with any bubble. Perhaps this is just a big run. And there will continue to be runs as long as Bitcoin exists.
Re: (Score:2)
The US dollar is "backed" in the sense that if it crashes
No it's backed by something stronger than that. The US dollar is backed by the sheer volume of which it is traded for material goods. It's backed by the sheer volume of its international trade. It's also backed by the treasury bonds and as you eluded to the actions of a governing body that has an interest in keeping it stable.
But ultimately volume provides stability. Bitcoin trades $67bn in daily trade (on a normal day). That's very small meaning it only takes a couple of buyers making big moves to cause an
Re: (Score:3)
The US dollar is "backed" in the sense that if it crashes
No it's backed by something stronger than that. The US dollar is backed by the sheer volume of which it is traded for material goods. It's backed by the sheer volume of its international trade. It's also backed by the treasury bonds and as you eluded to the actions of a governing body that has an interest in keeping it stable.
It's got more than that behind it, too. It's backed by a massive network of debt contracts obligating people to do work in order to generate value in the form of dollars. That's how dollars are created: When banks issue loans they create the money[*] they're lending out at the same instant they create the loan contract that obligates someone to repay it.
Fiat currencies (which BTC is not) are essentially built on the legally-enforceable promise of people to do work in the future. They're backed by human
Re: Hmmm (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Police and courts are clearly relevant (to enforce all of those debt contracts that underlie the currency), but can you explain how, exactly, military forces are relevant to "enforcing" the USD? What, exactly, does "enforce" mean in this context?
Re: Hmmm (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Oil is priced in dollars by convention, but there is no requirement to buy it using dollars outside of what individual countries require for their trade. Oil is regularly traded in other currencies including euros, Indian rupees, Chinese yuan, and Russian rubles, with non-dollar oil trading covering about 20% of the global market. The US dollar is relatively stable, though, so it serves as a useful reference for other currencies, and using it dire
Why? (Score:2)
...when candidate Trump promised to make cryptocurrency "one of the greatest industries on earth."
That's why.
Re: (Score:3)
You are onto something there. el Bunko usually destroys everything he touches: his "companies", the Kennedy Center, U.S. democracy, law and order, etc. This is just another in his unbroken line of failures.
Re: (Score:2)
His cryptocoin is down 93%. But it was just another way to funnel money into his pockets anyway.
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did they come to him with tears on their eyes?
only you can save us sir!
Re: (Score:2)
Nope. He was not directly invited. But that in no way impedes his ability to destroy everything he touches.
It's stablecoins, stupid (Score:3)
Bitcoin only got to rise in price because it was the first and for some time the only digital wallet. People, particularly tax evaders and money launderers, liked the idea of moving millions in a USB stick.or a mail. That created demand, demand bid the price up, and prices up brought the momentum-seeker speculators. Virtuous circle for you.
That era is gone. There are many digital options now. Particularly you have stablecoins where you don't need to worry (so much) about them losing value. So only the speculation effect remain. Once the momentum is downward, speculators flee, and there is no longer any reason at all to buy Bitcoin.
That's the cause. You are welcome.
It's nice to see this... (Score:2)
Just now? (Score:2)
The realization it's stupid? (Score:2)
And that it's a scam, and that one insane dude controls way too much of the money supply, and that it's harder to make money at it now, the pushback against bitcoin mining in general, and that itls literally designed to have a finite life because its sole purpose is to troll technolibertarians that have a marvelous misunderstanding of how reality actually works.
Blame Putin (Score:2)
AI (Score:2)
Oh so we have massive dollar deflation now? (Score:2)
Bitcoin advocates used to claim that the reason Bitcoin was shooting up in value wasn't that it was a made up currency subject to massive swings in value, but because the dollar was undergoing massive inflation and Bitcoin was the one actually holding its value.
They claimed this when USD inflation was actually around the usual 2-3% it normally is.
And for the last few years we've seen inflation bordering hyperinflation for the USD. But somehow... Bitcoin has lost value, not gained it.
So, Bitcoin advocates, a
Re:Oh so we have massive dollar deflation now? (Score:4, Informative)
Lol. Pray you never experience what hyperinflation actually is.
Why not? (Score:2)
It has been pumped and dumped for years now.. the whales are gladly riding the waves and the news media got something to report and discuss. All the fat cats win!
Because... (Score:2)
it was never worth the money in the first place.
What's going on with bitcoin (Score:2)
"No, but seriously: What's going on with bitcoin?"
Lol, no one knows. No one has a clue, even the people manipulating it behind the scenes don't really know what's going on. It's out of their hands. It's taken on a life of its own, if you will, and now it's running amok.
They're desperately trying to figure out how to stabilize it but that's like trying to steer clouds with your leaf blower.
All they can do is panic quietly and hope they don't wake up tomorrow morning with bitcoin trading for the same price a
the poor babies don't know? (Score:2)
"The worst part for some of crypto's permabulls is that they aren't sure what exactly caused the crash"
let's cut the BS. of course they know. it just isn't in their interest to admit it. they need dummies to pump the pyramid otherwise it will collapse...
What happened ? (Score:2)
Just stop (Score:2)
And the perceived adult value of crypto continues to get hammered. https://gizmodo.com/south-kore... [gizmodo.com] I've just never heard of a bank doing something this stupid. And yet you hear some lame brain story about crypto every month or so.
Prediction markets (Score:2)
Why?!? How are you this dumb... (Score:2)
It's right in line with the 4 years cycle. This is a completely expected downturn, pretty much right on schedule.
They don't know because it's purely speculative (Score:2)
This is vast
Re: They don't know because it's purely speculativ (Score:2)
The biggest underlying reason is for people in places without stable currencies to hold wealth. That creates a floor for crypto. For example anywhere experiencing true hyper inflation like Turkey one would want to immediately convert their paycheck to something else. Of course they could do something besides crypto.
Re: They don't know because it's purely speculati (Score:2)
Why? (Score:2)
Why? Um, because people sold? Why did people sell? Um, because other people sold?
We’ve seen this before (Score:1)
BTC = Black Tulip Coin
Haven't they heard? (Score:2)