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The Cryptocurrency Crash Is Replaying 2008 as Absurdly as Possible

foreignpolicy.com

31–40 of 91 posts

Re: The Cryptocurrency Crash Is Replaying 2008 as Absurdly as Possible

#31
Author of the article has a long and deep/irrational inherent bias against crypto, so regardless whether you are pro or anti be very careful of taking his opinion.

I am semi pro crypto, depending on the use etc, but have personally always found this author to be a total dick, an opinion originating when I engaged with him via some correspondance after a published article a long time ago.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Crash Is Replaying 2008 as Absurdly as Possible

#32

Author of the article has a long and deep/irrational inherent bias against crypto, so regardless whether you are pro or anti be very careful of taking his opinion. I am semi pro crypto, depending on the use etc, but have personally always found this author to be a total dick, an opinion originating when I engaged with him via some correspondance after a published article a long time ago.

Curious what use of crypto are you pro for?

Re: The Cryptocurrency Crash Is Replaying 2008 as Absurdly as Possible

#33
post #26

2008: What do you mean credit default swaps on synthetic collateralized debt obligations will lead to a recession? That sounds like nonsense! 2022: What do you mean monkey pictures in block chains will lead to a recession? That sounds like nonsense!

I don’t there’ll be a recession, just a bunch of very disappointed people with less money than they started with.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Crash Is Replaying 2008 as Absurdly as Possible

#34
I love the fact that crypto people are not satisfied with creating one pseudocurrency out of thin air; as soon as that has the tiniest semblance of stability (in this case ether) they go and create other ones “backed” by it. How did we reach the kind of socioeconomic climate where people are actually willing to put their hard-earned money into such a thing?

Re: The Cryptocurrency Crash Is Replaying 2008 as Absurdly as Possible

#35

I love the fact that crypto people are not satisfied with creating one pseudocurrency out of thin air; as soon as that has the tiniest semblance of stability (in this case ether) they go and create other ones “backed” by it. How did we reach the kind of socioeconomic climate where people are actually willing to put their hard-earned money into such a thing?

> How did we reach the kind of socioeconomic climate where people are actually willing to put their hard-earned money into such a thing?

They’re unregulated slot machines. Go and look at the Terra/Luna Twitter and Reddit. It’s filled with casual to addiction-level gambling tells. The responsible ones acknowledge they’re putting a few hundred in and will likely lose it but maybe it goes up. The less fortunate treat it like an investment.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Crash Is Replaying 2008 as Absurdly as Possible

#36

200 Billion in crypto wiped out in 24 hrs is bound to cause ripple effects in traditional finance as well. "Crypto has at least started to work its way into the real financial system. Some traditional investors also own crypto; if their crypto goes down they might have to sell regular stuff. Some public companies are exposed to crypto (because they are crypto exchanges, because they have levered crypto holdings, etc.…

>so your boring old index fund might go down when crypto goes down I need someone to explain to me how my S&P 500 blackrock ishares are going to die from crypto. I don't think FAANG, Berkshire, Exxon and Pfitzer are going to notice if all of crypto dropped to zero right now.

> I don't think FAANG, Berkshire, Exxon and Pfitzer are going to notice if all of crypto dropped to zero right now.

If some investors are invested in both FANNG and crypto, when they face margin call in the latter they may have to sell the former to cover their position.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Crash Is Replaying 2008 as Absurdly as Possible

#37
It will interesting to see what Bitcoin's price floor is when we get to maximum crypto-pessimism.

Intuitively, that seems like it would be the price of its aspiration to be "digital gold", in the sense of it being an asset-of-last-resort that has little to no economically productive value, just like the piles at the United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox.

Heck if I know what that is, though. $10k, $5k? Or are there structural risks that would preclude it from ever being used that way? Is there price or policy regime which will trigger a catastrophic loss of confidence and collapse, or like gold, is there a reality of its existence that can't be negated.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Crash Is Replaying 2008 as Absurdly as Possible

#38
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>so your boring old index fund might go down when crypto goes down I need someone to explain to me how my S&P 500 blackrock ishares are going to die from crypto. I don't think FAANG, Berkshire, Exxon and Pfitzer are going to notice if all of crypto dropped to zero right now.

How is "going down" (by some percentage) the same thing as "dropping to zero"?

If they wouldn't be affected by crypto going down by 100%, why would they be affected by crypto going down by less than that?

Re: The Cryptocurrency Crash Is Replaying 2008 as Absurdly as Possible

#39
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you keep repeating something doesn't make it true, same goes for your statements. Tick-tock next block ...

> Just because you keep repeating something doesn't make it true My 'statements' and that 'something' that I am repeating are based on the contents of the article. That is why I am assuming you also have read all of it before commenting here and some of the author's previous articles. So when are you going to refute them and answer a simple question? Or did you just rush here to comment knowing that you cannot answer…

"As for the crypto-maximalists screaming about Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system for on-chain payments and as a currency, it is safe to say that experiment has totally failed and that was found out the hard way."

Crypto has not failed. These are your words, not from the article. You are wrong, as you don't have any proof. Also, the onus is on you to prove your statement. Right now it's baseless and doesn't further conversation.

Is that clearer? Or do you need more words to explain your baseless position.

Re: The Cryptocurrency Crash Is Replaying 2008 as Absurdly as Possible

#40
post #4

Yeah but is crypto causing the crash or just a symptom of it? It doesn’t seem like all the large investment banks and reinsurers are flirting with insolvency due to crypto exposure. They definitely were due to CDO and mortgages. That distinction seems substantive.

I think 2008 is the wrong analogy. The Dotcom bubble is probably a more instructive comparison. The Dotcom bubble was inflated by a lot of people investing in something they didn't understand. And the crash did not threaten to destabilize the entire financial system. But it did cause a drag on the broader economy, and had fairly significant local impacts. Of course that is just when evaluating the crypto bubble. Ther…

The Dotcom bubble companies were mostly not outright scams. Some of them were, in retrospect, obviously stupid ideas. But they were at least trying to bring in revenue, and a few actually succeeded.

By contrast, cryptocurrency has no revenue stream. It's a zero-sum game. A better analogy would be the bubble in Beanie Babies that happened around the same time as the Dotcom boom (and drove some early Ebay growth). Idiots were taking out loans to buy up thousands of those toys, thinking that demand would go up forever.

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