Live data from Hacker News

No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

bloomberg.com

221–230 of 463 posts

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#221
post #20

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…

> breach $20k again

This is so unreasonable for a piece of data which was worth $0.1 a decade ago and is easily cloneable (trivially if not for network effects and integration)

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#222
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $4 I was trying to explain to my professor that my capstone project wasn't based on drug money.

At 4$ I was pissed I traded 150 for WoW gold. AT 10k+ I was once again reminded the universe hates me.

I think that's why crypto-currencies will be doomed. Because too many people see it as something they can maybe buy for a pittance and at some point in the future cash out for a 5,000% increase.

It's not currency, people don't want to use it like currency. They want it to be a viable get rich quick scheme. Because whenever you refuse to use it for normal commerce lest next week, next month, next year, you regret your purchase because of huge price swings. Everyone would engage in that sort of behavior and I'm sure it's not the basis for a healthy economy or currency.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#223
post #20

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…

> On the other hand if, like I believe, it's mostly scams, empty promises and poor understanding of technology and/or economy, then this might be the beginning of the end.

There are several startups that have made progress but not enough progress that the value of their token has increased through network effect. The Brave browser has 5MM MAU. There is still a lot of development to be done to whitelist ads and pay users for their attention. It's a good start though.

Other startups are starting to realize that on boarding new users with Meta Mask doesn't work. The users unfamiliar with cryptocurrency exit the funnel early because installing a plugin and depositing money makes the experience much more difficult. This is the case with FunFair currently.

Increased adoption probably won't happen until 2022. Because these assets are liquid it's likely we'll see an even bigger drop until then.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#224
post #20

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…

To me, it’s obvious that the Bitcoin Cash “hash war” has been what’s triggered the fall of the 5K support level (and to me, it’s telling that 200 messages in, no one has really even mentioned it).

The contentious fork has been very disruptive, causing BCH trading to be halted and lowering trading volume across the board. At the same time you have a huge redeployment in mining resources, up to 4exa on the Bitcoin.com pool alone pointed to BCH to defend vs a BSV takeover attempt (along with threats of 51% attacks and long range re-.org attacks) - up to 30% of SHA-256 mining power was pulled, mining at 100-200% less profitability of BTC, which also would have had some pretty big effects on the market (potentially parties dumping BTC to fund hashrate, potentially other miner related effects).

This sort of shakiness/distraction/fud drives the whole market down, which drives more selloffs, which drives articles and discussion like this, repeat.

Now that this seems to be largely over (and exchanges are opening BCH/BSV back up) you’re actually seeing a bit of a price/volume bump after this cratering, although I think people will be skittish for a while. I think it’s right to be skeptical - the people that are building real things will keep doing so, largely under the radar, and the markets will do as the markets will.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#225

Everything sells off this time of year. Nasdaq is down 7% on the month. It’s end of year profit-taking for tax purposes. As BTC has become completely mainstream now, this makes sense.

yeah just volatility in a relatively new market, I expect 10,000 by February

If that's the case I'd expect you to be investing every spare penny you have into BTC at the moment...

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#226
post #133
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone come up with a use case for blockchains yet, that isn't buying illegal drugs or money laundering? I keep seeing pie in the sky hypotheticals like "supply chain trust" from people who think farmers are etching their cucumbers with serial numbers, but I've yet to see any use case presented for a blockchain that has real utility and isn't better solved by existing processes or systems.

They aren't cucumbers but over here in Europe, eggs do have a serial number. Making an analog asset machine readable and tied to a trackable digital asset is certainly an entertaining thought. Especially for an industry like the food industry where currently we have to trust that the state is controlling them correctly or even that they are controlling them themselves (which several food scandals showed that this isn…

do you have a counter argument for: "you still need to trust the devices that write to the blockchain" -- so ultimately you would be trusting the supplier.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#227
post #20

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…

I am a firm believer that cryptocurrencies can offer major value to the world. But if you look at what's out there, Bitcoin etc are outdated technologies. Since Bitcoin was always leading the charts, in my opinion the whole market had to crash, and out of that it will show which ones offer true value. You shoudn't focus too much on price, but mainly focus on applicability and adoption/use. Most doctors here only offe…

> We have email, which is basically instant, free and worldwide. Why can't we have the same for payments?

We're getting there, but we're doing it in the mainstream space, not the cryptocurrency space. Within and between an increasing number of countries and groups of countries, this is becoming possible.

But between banks, not with distributed wastes of power like Bitcoin.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#228

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.

I have yet to see a single blockchain project that's actually interesting and worthy of anyone's attention.

* Basic Attention Token (BAT), Brendan Eich, digital advertising

* FunFair (FUN), Jez San, online gambling

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#229
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, KYC/AML is totally bad because of trying to actually prevent money being funnelled into crime organization etc. This is why I cant stand ignorant crypto-fans.

AML is bad because it makes a crime out of something which isn’t actually bad. Yes, criminals are bad people who do bad things and they should be caught & punished. But KYC/AML are about making it easier to find criminals by their behaviour, not about crime directly. They violate the right to privacy, among other things, but most people don't care because — by definition — most people are normal: they don't carry $10,000 across state lines; they don't pay cash for everything; they have state-issued identification. They don't care if abnormal people who aren't criminals are inconvenience or oppressed by KYC/AML laws.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#230
post #20

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…

I discussed the things that happened specifically on November 14th in my Quora answer: https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-price-of-Bitcoin-plummet-d... It's very very likely because of the Bitcoin Cash fork. It has become a pissing contest between Roger Ver (Bitcoin ABC) and Craig Wright (Bitcoin SV). While Craig trolls and threatens the Bitcoin ABC side by "bleeding them dry" in a hash war. Jihan Wu, founder of Bitma…

I think it's fascinating that this is 100% different than what Bitcoin was sold as.

The theory of Bitcoin was basically "money without people". You wouldn't have to worry about governments and politics; value would be sent and stored in pure pieces of math. Mere governments couldn't possibly do as well as the glorious algorithms wisely fixed in advance by, etc, etc.

But if you're right, Bitcoin has way more politics than a third-world kleptocracy. And it clearly lacks the institutions and formal procedures used to shape those kinds of political currents into useful effects on the currency and the economy.

Post reply on HN