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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

#401

Post by hndamien »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #128
dragontamer wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The electricity usage will remain high, OR a 51% attack will happen. The electricity usage can never drop without severe risk to the entire system. Sounds like the best argument against bitcoin I've heard yet.

The forking also seems to have had some unintended consequences of changing the use of hash power such that the main chain is more vulnerable.

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

#402

Post by petre »

freeflight wrote: post #240
kiriakasis wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is by far a more delicate topic.

I think it easily falls under the same umbrella. Financial privacy, especially from the state, is the ultimate form of privacy. There's a reason we have had bank secrecy [0] a long time before anything like the modern Internet-based privacy movements, with their much more expanded definitions, came along. Heck, some countries based a whole lot of their appeal on the strength of said bank secrecy laws, like Switzerlan…

Unfortunately bank secrecy is quite over even in Switzerland. They constantly get pressured by the EU to share data regarding EU citizens' accounts. The hunt for taxes is ongoing, under the pretense of preventing money laundering. Yet something in excess of 200bn euros was laundered through the Estonian branch of Danske Bank.

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

#403

Post by petre »

kadendogthing wrote: post #185
scient wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tech enthusiasts always seem to lack education around general civics and law. But it's especially bad in the area of tech-beanie-baby fanboys who pontificate around subjects by acting totally disingenuous or just willfully ignorant. Their cult-like excitement over a merkle tree with a distributed consensus/integrity algorithm is truly insane. * What REALLY gives currency it's value, LOL? As long as other people just…

> What REALLY gives currency it's value, LOL? As long as other people just blindly accept the currency it's totally fine!

Confidence. If enough people think rice bags or pressed and aged tea is money, then it is. At least you can eat rice and drink tea, bank notes or crypto hashes not so much.

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

#404

Post by sodafountan »

Nursie wrote: post #235
sodafountan wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a lot easier to recover when a recovery mechanism is built in - aka the halving. We're a solid year and a half away from that event happening, it'll go lower than this in that time but once the new supply restricts it'll make its slow ascent back up, people will see the opportunity and the demand will skyrocket again. I say this a lot, it's helpful to think of bitcoin as an algorithm, I just see this pattern pla…

This only works if demand continues at all. "The halving" is of little consequence if nobody cares.

Yeah I'm sure nobody's ever going to care about bitcoin again you're right.

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

#405

Post by petre »

wpietri wrote: post #230
jasonwen wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's no money without people. Money needs people's confidence to work as an exchange vehicle or value store. Jasonwen's theory seems correct if the facts are looked at as a collapse in confidence. If this is true, we shpuld also see capital flight to other cryptocurrencies.

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

#406

Post by tim333 »

chillacy wrote: post #296
tim333 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculating here but if you look at the price graph this year it looks like someone was trying to prop it up and keep it above $6000. Maybe tether/bitfinex or the Chinese miners, dunno. But anyway this would require $17m or more coming in to the market each week to cover the mining rewards. Maybe that dried up and the buyers ran out of money, then once it broke people tried to sell out before it got worse?

Perhaps a dumb question but how do you know it was one person/organization as opposed to general market forces?

I guess you don't really know unless there is some inside type information. Often currencies are officially supported by governments but with bitcoin the parties seem secretive.

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

#407

Post by narrator »

Forbo wrote: post #355
narrator wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the bell that rung at the top was the same bell I've seen in other speculative markets: The main people you would expect to see cheerleading throw in the towel and say it's crazy. That happened writ large at the beginning of 2018. There was one presentation at a Bitcoin conference I went to in early 2018 where this long haired huppy guy went through CoinMarketCap and called out every single thing on there as…

Any chance this talk was recorded? I would love to watch it!

It was at the world crypto economic forum. I can't remember who it was, but he had a beard and olive skin, so that should hopefully narrow it down a bit. I just stumbled in there while wandering out of another presentation I thought was dull. I think he was going off script for whatever the topic was.

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

#408

Post by asdff »

gl00pp wrote: post #363
jackjackk0 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think it's because of this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8

I mean I hear ya but it seems a little bias when they are 'projecting'. I mean, if I had 0 wives last week, got married this week, does that mean in 2 months i'll have 8 wives? (no i am not in UT) "Here we show that projected Bitcoin usage, should it follow the rate of adoption of other broadly adopted technologies"

Even today bitcoin is a serious energy concern. Currently the network uses as much energy as Denmark, while commanding a 0.033% share of cashless transactions. Which countries will bitcoin surpass in energy usage in 2019 as mining gets exponentially more difficult by design?

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

#409

Post by kadendogthing »

petre wrote: post #403
kadendogthing wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech enthusiasts always seem to lack education around general civics and law. But it's especially bad in the area of tech-beanie-baby fanboys who pontificate around subjects by acting totally disingenuous or just willfully ignorant. Their cult-like excitement over a merkle tree with a distributed consensus/integrity algorithm is truly insane. * What REALLY gives currency it's value, LOL? As long as other people just…

> What REALLY gives currency it's value, LOL? As long as other people just blindly accept the currency it's totally fine! Confidence. If enough people think rice bags or pressed and aged tea is money, then it is. At least you can eat rice and drink tea, bank notes or crypto hashes not so much.

>If enough people think rice bags or pressed and aged tea is money, then it is.

No, commodity money typically has a variety of practical functions and its function in an exchange system is born out of necessity. Not arbitrarily because people want to start doing accounting that way. I don't understand why people repeat this. It's not clever or insightful, and worse it's definitely not correct. It's gravely concerning that presumably basically educated people tout this line without a second thought when it comes to cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency finds its value purely out of someone hoping someone else will be left holding the bag, not because it's useful.

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

#410

Post by asdff »

overcast wrote: post #13
tom_ wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about $35 and $250?

Innovators. No one really heard of Bitcoin prior to the $1000 pump.

Being in college around 2014, everyone knew bitcoin because that's how you got your ID for bars.
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