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Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

bitprime.co.nz

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Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#41

Post by mikeyouse »

grapeskin wrote: post #32
gumby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies are a tiny and insignificant part of the financial landscape. Maybe (formerly) a bit larger than VC but even less influential.

Bitcoin alone was apparently given a market cap of over 2 trillion recently. That’s roughly the entire GDP of France. If France’s economy poofed out of existence or halved in value, that’d be a huge shake up.

It helps when you understand that "market cap" has no meaning in the crypto world and that their "trillion dollar" numbers are completely imaginary.

The market cap of a stock (shares outstanding x share price) makes sense because each share represents a piece of the profits of the company and an ownership stake. If you took away half of the shares, the price per share would ~double and the market cap would remain the same since it's based on current cash + projections about the future profitability of the company, and the share price reflects those expectations. None of that is true for crypto.

Financially illiterate crypto people started multiplying the coin price x number of coins outstanding and calling that a "market cap" but there's nothing underlying the crypto world. Owning a bitcoin doesn't represent a percentage profit of some underlying economic activity that's being independently valued, coins are zero coupon bearer instruments, the value is in the coin itself. It's like talking about the "market cap" of pesos, just incoherent and easily gameable.

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#42

Post by geerlingguy »

Johnny555 wrote: post #30
650REDHAIR wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s all a house of cards. I spent a little time in the industry and the most prominent voices are just snake oil salesmen and charlatans now. Anyone who truly believed from the beginning made so much money that it’s not worth the risk for them to be publicly involved in the community. It became an MLM for bros and basement-dwellers alike to gamble their stimulus checks on.

At least a house of cards has actual cards supporting it, it's not clear what's supporting cryptocurrency.

NFTs pointing to URLs of images of those cards.

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#43

Post by majormajor »

grapeskin wrote: post #32
gumby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies are a tiny and insignificant part of the financial landscape. Maybe (formerly) a bit larger than VC but even less influential.

Bitcoin alone was apparently given a market cap of over 2 trillion recently. That’s roughly the entire GDP of France. If France’s economy poofed out of existence or halved in value, that’d be a huge shake up.

France's GDP results from liquid money already being moved around.

"Market cap" estimates assume that everyone could sell without the price moving. It's going to be far more sensitive to price changes than an actual country's GDP, it's based on what current trading prices are.

And Bitcoin, unlike a company with a huge market cap, isn't providing goods or services. E.g. if Apple disappeared into thin air, everyone hoping to buy new Apple phones or computers would be dramatically affected and that would have a ton of ripple effects. But if Apple's sales dropped to 0 and then they went out of business, their valuation would be down to 0 but a lot of people would've recouped some of their investment on the way down - the people selling earlier being better off than the ones later. This is a crazy scenario, though, since they're sales wouldn't go to 0 overnight.

So who's actually relying on Bitcoin? Some companies in the space, sure. Probably a bunch of individuals who did stuff like use bitcoin as part of their wealth portfolio when taking out loans. But if those people had those holdings wiped out, will the ramifications be huge? My guess is probably not but I don't actually know how many people would, for instance, be unable to pay their mortgage if their crypto holdings imploded.

(This will be interesting to see if a crash does happen: in a world where you believe prices always go up, the "clever" move is to not sell your bitcoin, but to borrow against it, so it appreciates in the background still. But in a world where there's a crash, this could leave you worse off than before, the debt won't go away just because the price fell.)

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#45

Post by brendoelfrendo »

grapeskin wrote: post #32
gumby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies are a tiny and insignificant part of the financial landscape. Maybe (formerly) a bit larger than VC but even less influential.

Bitcoin alone was apparently given a market cap of over 2 trillion recently. That’s roughly the entire GDP of France. If France’s economy poofed out of existence or halved in value, that’d be a huge shake up.

France's economy actually produces things, though; it represents the economic output of 60 million people. Bitcoin is an asset in a class of assets that doesn't really do much of anything on its own.

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#46

Post by KrishnaShripad »

grapeskin wrote: post #32
gumby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies are a tiny and insignificant part of the financial landscape. Maybe (formerly) a bit larger than VC but even less influential.

Bitcoin alone was apparently given a market cap of over 2 trillion recently. That’s roughly the entire GDP of France. If France’s economy poofed out of existence or halved in value, that’d be a huge shake up.

There is a big difference though. GDP is measured per year. Bitcoin market cap is of its lifetime value on date when you measured it (based on exchange rate fluctuations of course). So Bitcoin collapsing is not the same as France's economy going out of existence.

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#47

Post by peyton »

version_five wrote: post #11
llamataboot wrote: post #8

It has only just begun...

Maybe... from what I see (which is limited), "crypto" is feeling the same downward pressure that other stocks like tech are feeling (someone just posted an article about that). But people still haven't come around to the "this is just BS" phase yet that needs to happen. All crypto under current operating models is worth zero, it doesn't need to be marked down, it needs to (and will) be recognized as a scam and writte…

I don’t understand the go-to-zero case. Surely an open source, permissionless financial system has some value? There’s tons of value being captured in closed financial systems.

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#48

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

Nursie wrote: post #22
Ygg2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a Quadriga event?

Quadriga CX was a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange that went under a few years ago (early 2018? unsure exactly when) . Basically the founder lived the high life with his partner, multiple houses, a yacht, etc etc, and it looked like a stunningly successful and honest exchange. He died in India when he was there apparently building orphanages. It turns out that he ran the entire thing from his laptop and nobody else c…

the ex made a very convincing blog post some time ago that she was an innocent bystander to that train wreck.

As a neutral observer, she sounded somewhat believable, especially since she basically was along for the ride, and has almost nothing to show for the scam (and a lot of downside from being the person targeted by the ire of depositors)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/jennifer-robertso...

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#49

Post by majormajor »

grapeskin wrote: post #32
gumby wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrencies are a tiny and insignificant part of the financial landscape. Maybe (formerly) a bit larger than VC but even less influential.

Bitcoin alone was apparently given a market cap of over 2 trillion recently. That’s roughly the entire GDP of France. If France’s economy poofed out of existence or halved in value, that’d be a huge shake up.

Consider also that Bitcoin already halved in value in recent months without having the impact of half of a France getting bombed out of existence. ;)

Re: Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

#50

Post by cozzyd »

imron wrote: post #19
soared wrote: post #16

Would someone mind calming me by explaining why this is not a huge red flag, this isn’t the beginning of the end, and a theoretical crypto crash won’t throw the market into turmoil (or why the current market turmoil ain’t so bad)? I don’t have any kids to feed, just young dumb and tired of market crashes.

> or why the current market turmoil ain’t so bad You can buy the dip! /s

Buy some (casino) chips first, then the dip...
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