71–80 of 463 posts
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The problem is that all that computing power still exists. If the hashrate drops, then a 51% attack becomes possible. Remember that those mining farms still exist, even if they've temporarily turned off their mining equipment. Someone can turn all that equipment on suddenly to attack the network and start double-spending their coins. In effect: the hashrate MUST remain high if the BTC network is to remain secure. Tha…
At the risk of sounding overly flippant... should we (the general non-bitcoin holding public) really care whether a 51% attack happens or not?
It looks like some countries where BTC is more popular may take a bigger hit under such a doomsday scenario.
In effect, a 51% attack would cause the attacker to scam a lot of money from people in a short period of time. Then everyone will notice it on the blockchain (remember: the Blockchain is public. 51% attacks would be relatively obvious to see). After that, BTC's confidence will be broken and the value will march towards zero: no point holding a coin when some unknown entity out there can double-spend their coins. That's how it happens for other Proof-of-Work coins.
But at the same time, BTC is the biggest coin, so its the least likely thing to happen. Its far more likely that BTC miners understand the importance of their mission, and remain wasting electricity perpetually.
Some would argue that the BTC community is too vested into Bitcoin. So even if a 51% attack were possible, the people who could do it would never torpedo the coins that the own.
Since the article states "the trigger for the latest sell-off is unclear" I'm really curious if somebody here could venture a guess about the reasons for the sudden drop. The Bitcoin Cash fork seems suspiciously correlated but is it big enough news to cause such a turmoil? Being a cryptocurrency-skeptic I won't pretend that I don't experience a little bit of schadenfreude when I see CC crash, however if I'm trying to…
Long story short, the American regulator has determined that the 2017 hype-fuelled ICOs were unregistered security sales (just like everyone said they are, but ICO promoters pretended to hand-wave away by mumbling something about utility tokens). They've fined an initial wave of ICOs to the tune of $250k and mandatory refunds to all who bought tokens in the ICO.
The catch here is that the refunds must be paid in USD, but the ICOs mostly raised in cryptos. If you did an ICO in December 2017 and raised $10M worth of cryptos but never cashed out any of it, your treasury is now perhaps worth only $2M, yet you're liable for $10M USD refunds. Any ICO administrator within reach of American regulators ought to be cashing out while they can...
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Trading volume has dropped significantly over the last 6 months. Large holders have been patient waiting for new money to enter the market. Eventually, when the only activity is a few automated traders and the exchange liquidity provider, large holders are faced with opportunity costs of investing in something else and the limited liquidity the market can absorb as they exit. It's a domino effect as they see each oth…
This is also the result of the federal governments of the world, the US in particular, choking off all the fiat crypto exchanges with their expanded and draconian know your customer laws. As an anecdote, I didn't buy my monthly bitcoin purchase early this month because I've been (and still am) locked out of my ~5 year old coinbase account I use constantly because they are being required to require new forms of ID and…
This is why I cant stand ignorant crypto-fans.
Cryptocurrency crash will hopefully bring expectations back in line with reality. Legit blockchain projects will only have to deal with the stigma from being associated with a giant pump and dump when they approach VCs.
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At $250 I was explaining to my parents what bitcoin is. At $19,000 I was overhearing Starbucks baristas talk about it.
At $80 I was mining using custom ASIC. At $20k I was trying to convince myself not to sell and that I was in it for the long run. I'm still in.
Bitcoin still has a $77B market cap. This is bigger than many well-known and long-living companies. Let's be real - Bitcoin still has a long way to drop.
A well-known and long-living company that went from $19k/share to $4k/share would be rightly deemed to be struggling, and folks would have concerns about its long-term potential.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Trading volume has dropped significantly over the last 6 months. Large holders have been patient waiting for new money to enter the market. Eventually, when the only activity is a few automated traders and the exchange liquidity provider, large holders are faced with opportunity costs of investing in something else and the limited liquidity the market can absorb as they exit. It's a domino effect as they see each oth…
This is also the result of the federal governments of the world, the US in particular, choking off all the fiat crypto exchanges with their expanded and draconian know your customer laws. As an anecdote, I didn't buy my monthly bitcoin purchase early this month because I've been (and still am) locked out of my ~5 year old coinbase account I use constantly because they are being required to require new forms of ID and…
Is this below the price where it is economic to mine? Presumably at some point the miners would have to pull the plug to avoid loosing money.