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It can all go to zero

feld.com

41–50 of 361 posts

Re: It can all go to zero

#41
We have this discussion every year when there's a major correction (hint: this isn't that, this is one of the small ones).

It seems there are only two types of sentiment in the cryptocurrency market: extreme hype, where you start seeing mainstream media articles about "getting rich with cryptocurrencies," and extreme FUD, where everyone that has never trusted cryptocurrencies starts piling on for weeks about the tulip mania (we've never heard that one before) and how it will all go to zero this time.

But it never does. Almost every year, cryptocurrencies become bigger, on average. Small corrections, major corrections/bear markets, and even super-corrections (2-3 year long bear markets) are all in cryptocurrencies' future. But cryptocurrencies are here to stay. They won't ever crash to zero.

Re: It can all go to zero

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing tho is that people have seen the insane gains it can provide. There will always be buyers. If Bitcoin went to $50 tomorrow, you can bet I would buy a lot. I'm not the only one. It's done magic once, it might again. The point is, there will always be buyers.

To buy Bitcoin, a miner somewhere has to produce a block with your transaction in it. If the value of Bitcoin falls that much, it will no longer be profitable to mine. With no miners, nobody could buy or sell anything.

That was planned for. Like there's only 20million Bitcoins tops.

Re: It can all go to zero

#43
post #38

Every year for the last four years, bitcoin went down -20%~ or so in the 3rd week of Jan. I don't know why everyone freaks out this week Honestly, the history and trends are there, its just a thing that happens every year, I dunno man

Maybe the credit card bills that people ran up in December have come in, and they're selling their holdings to settle them.

the common theory [for the past four years] is that chinese new years is coming and its for red pockets

Re: It can all go to zero

#44
I've been thinking of starting a Medium account lately. All I have to do is wait for something bad to happen in crypto and give a first grade interpretation of events and compare them to some money movie I saw recently. I don't need to understand anything about crypto, and I can feel superior to all my friends who aren't working because they made money.

Re: It can all go to zero

#45
post #23

I think this summarizes the entire situation of the past 24 hours after China has banned its citizens from foreign crypto exchanges http://archive.is/2018.01.16-165846/https://twitter.com/AntP... Just looking at r/Poloniex it doesn't seem like quick customer turnaround is a thing.

Every bubble has money coming from somewhere. The mortgage bubble had all the BBB- derivatives that were ridiculously underpriced turning trash into treasure.

Bitcoin is all about money trying to get out of China. There is a bit of people in countries with trashy currencies trying to save, some illegal commerce and some greater fool speculation on top of that, but that's not a lot of money comparitively. As China squeezes the vice, it's going to slowly suck most of the air out of the market.

Re: It can all go to zero

#47

So many people love to parrot the 'It'll go down to zero!' line, especially if they don't have skin in the game, but there's pretty much no way. Specific cryptocurrencies, sure they could potentially go to zero. I'm watching one right now that's looking pretty darn close. But this entire industry? I don't think so. It's too late for that. Too many players, too much ease of access, too much of the potential has been d…

But that's the point, you're not invested in cryptocurrencies in general as much as most people are invested in 1 or 2 or maybe a small handful. When tech crashed did the tech sector basket go to $0? Of course not and no one contends that it would, but did a lot of people lose their shirts on Pets.com? You bet.

It was a lot worse than that. Most of the financial drop did not occur in the junk dotcom stocks, that's a myth.

Cisco went from ~$550 billion to ~$50 billion.

That was a real business with billions in profit. That single drop is nearly greater than the value loss in all the junk dotcom stocks combined. There were dozens of real businesses that were massively over-inflated, from Intel to Microsoft.

Oracle went from ~$200 billion to ~$35 billion. Again, another very serious business with substantial profits.

So how about Bitcoin goes to $3,000 to $6,000 and stays there for ten years? Impossible! everyone will cry.

Re: It can all go to zero

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing tho is that people have seen the insane gains it can provide. There will always be buyers. If Bitcoin went to $50 tomorrow, you can bet I would buy a lot. I'm not the only one. It's done magic once, it might again. The point is, there will always be buyers.

To buy Bitcoin, a miner somewhere has to produce a block with your transaction in it. If the value of Bitcoin falls that much, it will no longer be profitable to mine. With no miners, nobody could buy or sell anything.

And then the hashing algorithm self-corrects in difficulty downwards, and an individual could mine on their own PC again, like it did in the beginning when almost no one was using it, let alone dedicated mining equipment.

Re: It can all go to zero

#50
post #31

This reminds me so much of the .COM bubble. Same kind of discussions. I think there will be a place for cryptocurrency but before that has been established there will be a lot of people taking a lot of pain. People who have bought them a few years ago will only take paper losses but now there is real money flowing into this.

I have seen comparisons to the .com boom/bubble, and I don't buy it.

There was a lot of economic movement while the entire economy moved over to the internet. Those who didn't adapt failed. Those who tried models which didn't translate also failed. Lots of experimentation, and lots of reinventing things from scratch. So lots of failure and lots of speculation-- but ultimately around a real sea change.

I don't see how blockchain tech could have a technological / cultural impact on that scale. It has some value, and it will find its place in mainstream society, but I don't see how/why the market needs to test everything against it to reinvent itself as was done when the internet came to the fore. I could see that for sure with AI, but blockchain? Seems pretty specific and limited.

Much more hype and much less substance than the .com revolution, IMO.

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