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The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

bloomberg.com

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Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#171

Post by CyberDildonics »

jessriedel wrote: post #156
CyberDildonics wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very simplistic way to look at it. Before the latest huge price increase, bitcoin had very little real competition. Now it has proved that its artificially crippled capacity of 1MB is an enormous problem and that the limited throughput couldn't even come close to handling the last bubble smoothly.

My comment is intended to speak to cryptocurrency as a whole (the OP topic) rather than Bitcoin specifically relative to other cryptocurrencies. I welcome links to charts that show, e.g., total crypto market cap on a log scale.

> My comment is intended to speak to cryptocurrency as a whole (the OP topic) rather than Bitcoin specifically

You said bitcoin twice and linked to btc's price over time, I'm not sure why anyone would take that to mean crypto-currencies in general.

This seems like a textbook example of moving goal posts.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#172

Post by FabHK »

root_axis wrote: post #73
pvaldes wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the biggest waste of computing power and energy in the history of the planet If we except the tetris, or minesweeper...

When will this horrible argument stop being thrown around? Tetris and minesweeper use a minuscule amount of power and typically provide many hours of entertainment. As technology has advanced, the power efficiency of these games increased exponentially. On the other hand, blockchain mining responds to more efficient hardware by increasing difficulty in order to compensate for the impact of improved hardware on the ha…

Yes, the arms-race character of Bitcoin difficulty adjustment is grating, and I don’t see an easy way around it with proof-of-work. If only there was some central institution we could trust.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#173

Post by nosuchthing »

decentralised wrote: post #23
pavlov wrote: post #10

An important harbinger of trouble to come is that the Tether (USDT) coin, which is supposed to be pegged 1:1 to USD, is now trading substantially below $1: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-15/dollar-pe... Billions of Tethers were printed seemingly out of thin air and used to purchase Bitcoin. It's part of the foundation of the house of cards that keeps Bitcoin at its current price: "Despite their modes…

I saw a couple of comments today about the price of USDT so I think it's worth while explaining how it works just in case anyone is interested in knowing more. USDT is a pegged-currency. It's often described as a stablecoin but that's not correct because it doesn't have an inbuilt stabilisation mechanism unlike Maker's DAI for instance. The way it works is purely based on well known legal mechanisms that have no cryp…

  Stabilisation mechanism 
  unlike Maker's DAI for instance
What?

The Maker DAI relies on users trading Etherium for another token DAI.

It’s essentially a mortgage backed security derivative, except instead of houses it’s a speculative database token swap.

Certainly not safe.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#174

Post by sodafountan »

coliveira wrote: post #24

Bitcoin and similars are the biggest waste of computing power and energy in the history of the planet. It will be nice for the environment when this is all over.

what an ignorant and short-sighted comment. The amount of economic good cryptocurrency can do will far outweigh any negative environmental costs incurred over the long term. Bitcoin is good for a world that is teetering on the edge economic enslavement from debt.

When bitcoin inevitably hits 100,000 dollars, 1,000,000 dollars and so on (it's an algorithm, it will happen, you're just investing in an algorithm) people will use that money to buy Tesla's, start eco-friendly businesses, upgrade their outdated appliances and so on.

Just wait and see.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#175

Post by jimjimjim »

superkuh wrote: post #34
fastball wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the claim. Obviously you haven't heard of the NSA or the US Military.

For anyone downvoting this I'll expand what he said so you can understand it before reflex downvoting. Nationstate backed fiat currencies require enormous amounts of energy waste in the form of standing armies and other tools of power. Compared to the energy Bitcoin uses to protect itself from attack or fraud this energy is very large.

wut?

nations will continue regardless of currency.

nations will always have different levels of resources.

nations will need to defend those resources.

this has nothing to do with electricity used in current electronic financial transactions.

bitcoin and it's ilk are wildly fantastically inefficient.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#176

Post by jcranmer »

superkuh wrote: post #34
fastball wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite the claim. Obviously you haven't heard of the NSA or the US Military.

For anyone downvoting this I'll expand what he said so you can understand it before reflex downvoting. Nationstate backed fiat currencies require enormous amounts of energy waste in the form of standing armies and other tools of power. Compared to the energy Bitcoin uses to protect itself from attack or fraud this energy is very large.

The government's monopoly of force and the stability of its currency are not strongly correlated. A country like Somalia had a stable currency despite the fact that its notional government barely exerted any power beyond the walls of its offices, and a country like Zimbabwe has seen its currency lose any value despite the government lacking any reasonable prospect of invasion and the military/security forces preventing any reasonable prospect of internal rebellion.

If anything, a powerful standing army is more likely to result in failure of fiat currency (hyperinflation)--hyperinflation is fundamentally caused by a government pursuing really bad economic policies to the detriment of the economy, and the failing economy will tend to precipitate an internal (potentially violent) rebellion if there is space to do so.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#177

Post by Tsubasachan »

Instead of inventing bitcoin because evil banks maybe people should do some consumer rights stuff? I have become painfully aware that using an ATM in America costs money... Whose idea was that anyway. Why is Mastercard making billions? A percentage based fee instead of a flat fee. As if it matters if you use your CC to buy a carton of milk or a car.

Hocus pocus Capitol Hillus make usury illegal spell. I really don't want to use cash anymore.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#178

Post by sodafountan »

Aqueous wrote: post #53

According to the finance industry and finance media, the cryptocurrency industry, and cryptocurrencies in particular, have been on the brink of collapse since 2008, when Bitcoin first surfaced and was worth $0. I guess they're going all-in on the whole 'stopped-clock' prediction strategy, no?

It's fascinating to watch these patterns repeat themselves over and over. It's almost like we're all investing in an algorithm and everything's playing out according to its specifications.

- Sincerely, a guy who's been buying bitcoin since 2013

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#179

Post by nosuchthing »

jessriedel wrote: post #156
CyberDildonics wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very simplistic way to look at it. Before the latest huge price increase, bitcoin had very little real competition. Now it has proved that its artificially crippled capacity of 1MB is an enormous problem and that the limited throughput couldn't even come close to handling the last bubble smoothly.

My comment is intended to speak to cryptocurrency as a whole (the OP topic) rather than Bitcoin specifically relative to other cryptocurrencies. I welcome links to charts that show, e.g., total crypto market cap on a log scale.

Market cap is meaningless due to spot price and order book spoofing on unregulated exchanges.

Without 3rd party audits, all the cryptocurrency exchanges can be assumed to be operating fractional reserves and wash trading.

Notice how once Chinese exchanges were forced to implement a fee on trades, their entire trading volume nearly disappeared.

See the integrity report from the New York Attorney Generals office:

https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/vmii_report.pdf

Re: The Cryptocurrency Industry Is 'On the Brink of an Implosion', Research Says

#180

Post by sodafountan »

labbyz wrote: post #105

Thanks Bloomberg for this advertorial summary of a 1250$ research .pdf. Saves me some money to invest (in crypto or otherwise). Would you believe that the author of this research was harping about blockchain adoption by large companies less than a year ago? A lot has changed in 11 months, such as a slow price drop from the 2017 December insanity. Isn't it a bit rich to first make companies anxious to join in on the b…

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