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

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

#241
post #231
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Saudis facing confiscation and raids back home dumped their cash into Bitcoin which fueled the rally to $20k. They are now pulling the money out.

I never heard this one... what do you have to back it up?

Jonathan Nelson, Managing Director HACK Fund discussed this on last week's sharespost webinar. The slides and replay should be up soon if you check their site. Discussion was titled 'State of Crypto Markets and Regulation: USA vs. the World – SharesPost Expert Series'

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

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At $250 I was explaining to my parents what bitcoin is. At $19,000 I was overhearing Starbucks baristas talk about it.

At $10k, car service mechanics were buying into random cryptocoins. Nobody understood them, everyone just wanted to get rich. A speculative asset, not a currency.

But what could we have done about it? It's unfair to be liked by fools. The core idea is still interesting to experiment and explore but now it's tainted by greed.

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

#243
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe it would affect USA's financial system. There are certainly a number of individuals who hold BTC who would get wiped out in such an event, but it seems like it'd be relatively isolated. 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…

I perhaps downplayed the flippancy in my previous comment. I'm aware of the theory and impact to the cryptocurrency world of a 51% attack. I honestly believe that the electricity usage - and therefore climate-change impact - of cryptocurrencies to far outweigh the benefits they bring. I think that the "value... march towards zero" is a good thing because "wasting electricity perpetually" is a bad thing. I don't think…

I don’t know who to root for between the people who don’t care bitcoin is a massive waste in power but engage with it anyhow because I enjoy the hypocrisy and sight of their surface level convictions - or - the people who want tech to crash and people to be burned by that.

I guess the latter as future techs could be made less wasteful.

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

#244
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.

>AT 10k+ I was once again reminded the universe hates me.

Why? You'd have sold them at 150.

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

#245

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.

> Bitcoin still has a long way to drop.

Is there a way to short Bitcoin?

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

#246
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do we know this isn't what this system was bound to do eventually? It's not really been around very long.

How is this a relevant question?

Because I'm curious what the other person thinks? Did I miss the syllabus?

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

#247
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…

Main reason likely natural down cycle following parabolic run-up. Remember btc/crypto still a global, minimally regulated market driven by and large by unsophisticated retail investors (though pros are increasingly getting in). Domino effect / reflexivity on way up and on way down. Marginal buyer was simply exhausted at some pt, and institutional demand expected to be next big marginal buyer didn't materialize as quickly as people thought.

That said one guess on a trigger for the most recent sell off was that Bitcoin Cash, a fork of "reference" Bitcoin, forked in a bigly hostile way, resulting in two new Bitcoin Cash chains (Bitcoin Cash ABC and Bitcoin Cash SV - for satoshi vision lol) each now with its hash power majority controlled by one group e.g. highly centralized. The market is confronting the possibility that proof of work -- the most widely used consensus mechanism -- is way more centralized than it thought, and way more subject to value destruction from a tiny % of people.

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

#248
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…

For all the hype, bitcoin really is not worth its price to me. I would not sacrifice 4k to have 1 bitcoin for its use today. Its expensive, slow and inconvenient to transfer.

When it hit 18k-20k last december it was absolutely nuts. Bitcoin is not there: it has no mainstream product market fit. Its pretty useless. And it hasn't been fulfilling its expectations of not being so.

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

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember looking at the price of Bitcoin when it was $23, $250 and $400. I didn't have any money, so I couldn't buy, but still fun to think about 10x-ing my current bank account. To be completely honest, even if I did have money, I wouldn't have bought. The price used to go up and down by 10% like daily. At that point it feels like gambling.

Sometimes I nearly shed a tear when I open my wallet that shows me how many coins it held over its lifetime. It even converts it into my local currency as if to mock me. I remember times where those Bitcoin faucets (is that still a thing?) gave you 50BTC every X hours just for entering your wallet address. Of course I spend nearly all of them on stupid stuff later on but before they gained considerable value. I still…

[deleted]

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

#250
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, and by no means am I a bitcoin-enthusiast, there's a lot of value to be had by something that allows relatively frictionless international money transfer. I realize that's not necessarily a feature of blockchains, though it is a feature of cryptocurrencies (for now, at least). We had a friend who lives in a commonwealth country working for us as a contractor, and figuring out how to pay them was a pretty…

Tranferwise makes me cringe. I fell for the hype. I failed to do research and fell into the same tarpit that even a cursory glance would have revealed. They withdrew my funds. Promised a transfer date by the following date. Three days pass and the suddenly lock me out of my account and asked for a bunch of documents to complete the transfer.

For most people making normal-person-sized transactions, TransferWise is fine, and doesn't need lots of documentation.

For example, paying rent on a holiday home, or sending money to a son or daughter studying abroad.

Larger sums, or transfers involving Americans, are more likely to need the additional identity checks.

(Source: my usage, and feedback from people I've recommended the service to.)

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