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Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

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Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#91
post #49

other than trying to get the money of suckers, I've never understood the point of bitcoin. no currency, digital or not, can be removed from the world's activities. why would you ever want something that could plunge 30% in a day? even if it went up 5 billion percent, then what? everyone sells and it goes down? what's the point? it's like the most zero-sum activity imaginable. edit: I'm sincerely wondering what the va…

It is an expensive way to send money around without involving PayPal or a bank etc. If you're buying something illegal or forbidden by them it would be handy for that. That's about it.

It could plausibly be used for things that should be legitimate but are banned by an oppressive establishment. For instance, a writer could become blacklisted by VISA and Mastercard effectively impoverishing him. Crypto could get around that ban. Of course, envelopes with 20 dollar bills can also get around that, but it seems like governments are moving away from cash. So, maybe in the future crypto will be very useful to non-criminals.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#93
I don’t care to debate the merits of crypto, I am more interested how come the major US exchanges and players (Coinbase, BlockFi) all go down and then all come back up at the same time after bottoms were reached and the rebound. That’s incredibly suspect and warrants investigation. I’ve never not been able to access my ETrade account and trade (don’t bring up Game Stop) that didn’t affect ETrade and was debunked why they had to limit buying.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#94
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So bizarre that he would tweet this after coming out against Bitcoin for environmental reasons. The higher the price goes, the greater the incentive to spend more electricity on mining; for anyone who cares about the environment this crash is great news.

I think the guy is not completely sane, to be honest. Also, not as smart as most people tend to think he is.

"some people just want to watch the world burn". he's a master troll, is the simplest explanation.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the guy is not completely sane, to be honest. Also, not as smart as most people tend to think he is.

Could be that he has separate money pools, and his "toy with markets for amusement" money is kept apart from his "get to Mars" money. It isn't "not smart" if he's just viewing it as a game and he has the means to do so. Lots of people have messed around with various systems for no reason other than to see if they can.

He has been vocal on many subjects unrelated to Bitcoin and came out "not so smart" in my opinion.

It is easy to intellectually overestimate someone with this kind of success and reach.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#96
My - surely far fetched and with no evidence to back up - take is that Musk didn't go long on BTC when he announced TSLA would buy BTC for 1.5$bn, but actually went short. Musk wanted to take TSLA off the public trading market but failed due to lack of money/investors for a buy back. Buying large amounts of BTC with TSLA money, ties the TSLA price to the BTC price. And Musk is a very smart person, he definetely knows that a couple of tweets of him can sway the BTC courses. Question is whether Musk will come up with private investors or own money now to take TSLA off the stock exchance (doubt it as it is still too highly valued).

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#97
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of like when you create money:credit out of thin air when you run a tab at a bar. But with code.

It's not like that at all.

How is it not an agreed-upon way to settle IOUs? It's not only this, but it is this as well.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#98
post #2

Any evidence for why or how this is happening? Who are the sellers?

According to [0] Tether has to file their first report today disclosing the composition of their reserves as a condition of their settlement. I haven't verified that, but if true the sell-off could be driven by insiders and/or smart money.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/nfv8vg/the_te...

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#99

other than trying to get the money of suckers, I've never understood the point of bitcoin. no currency, digital or not, can be removed from the world's activities. why would you ever want something that could plunge 30% in a day? even if it went up 5 billion percent, then what? everyone sells and it goes down? what's the point? it's like the most zero-sum activity imaginable. edit: I'm sincerely wondering what the va…

>I've never understood the point of bitcoin

I'm far from a Bitcoin maxi, but I own a small % in my portfolio. Here's my take:

We are entering a world of abundant cyber-terrorism. If my bank and/or brokerage gets hacked, why do I own? I have nothing except that entry in their book keeping. And if you think, "It's backed up, they'll have you up and running in no time", I'm skeptical. I think anything like this would be chaotic.

This is much harder to do to whatever wealth I have tied up in Bitcoin. As long as the internet is running, there's a permanent record of what I own.

Re: Bitcoin’s plunge intensifies, tanks 30% to $30k in single day

#100
post #52

other than trying to get the money of suckers, I've never understood the point of bitcoin. no currency, digital or not, can be removed from the world's activities. why would you ever want something that could plunge 30% in a day? even if it went up 5 billion percent, then what? everyone sells and it goes down? what's the point? it's like the most zero-sum activity imaginable. edit: I'm sincerely wondering what the va…

The point of Bitcoin is that the world's governments have weaponized money. If all you pay attention to is the ups and downs of the exchange rate, then it all probably seems pretty pointless. But if you look at it against the backdrop of sanctions, civil asset forfeiture, erosion of civil liberties, and monetary debasement, things look different.

These are some heavy assertions here. How would Bitcoin protect against any of that?

The government already tracks who buys Bitcoin by having all points of purchase of USDBitcoin require proof of identity, and they can obviously look at the blockchain to get all the transaction made by each individual.

Let's be realistic for a second. All it would take for the government to forfeit your bitcoins is a $5 wrench [1]. I don't like that it's that way, and I don't know what the solution is, but I know it's not as simple as "make Bitcoin happen".

[1] https://xkcd.com/538/

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