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The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

economist.com

121–130 of 179 posts

Re: The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

#121

Looking at Google's 5 year graph of Bitcoin prices, it looks like there were 2 crashes last year of similar size as this one.

You should look at >10 year graph with a log scale. What happens now is mild. Tou can do that here https://www.barchart.com/crypto/quotes/%5EBTCUSD/interactive...

Fwiw, on log scale there has been a pretty solid price channel for the past 8 years. It has only been broken twice. One was the covid low, when the price was rescued by fed printing. The second time is now. Not sure what is coming to save the price this time.

Re: The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m extremely bad at trading, but it didn’t stop me from achieving amazing returns. Just an example last year I had a target of $150k when it was at $50k, and also (like most people) I got a BTC based loan (it made sense for tax purposes as well). The problem was that everybody was doing it, and professional traders probably used those loans to short the market and trigger margin calls. I had multiple margin calls as…

r/trader/gambler

Thars like saying r/poker player/gambler

Financial instrument trading is always gambling. Imvesting is what it's not.

Re: The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

#123
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the legal responsibility of the investors, because society has given them limited liability. It may or may not be their moral responsibility, depending on what they knew, encouraged, or whatever. And the usual payoff for morally-shady but legally-blameless behaviour is reputational damage.

Y-Combinator exists to make Paul Graham and it's investors money. Morality is not money. Y-Combinator doesn't exist to make morality for its investors.

This is not a good argument. Of course companies can optimize for multiple objectives and to pretend that any company doesn’t is willfully blinding oneself to reality.

Re: The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

#124
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m extremely bad at trading, but it didn’t stop me from achieving amazing returns. Just an example last year I had a target of $150k when it was at $50k, and also (like most people) I got a BTC based loan (it made sense for tax purposes as well). The problem was that everybody was doing it, and professional traders probably used those loans to short the market and trigger margin calls. I had multiple margin calls as…

That is only if you bought Bitcoin when it was > Just an example last year I had a target of $150k when it was at $50k, and also (like most people) I got a BTC based loan (it made sense for tax purposes as well). That doesn't sound like a good idea in the middle of a bull run and everyone being in profit on Bitcoin when it was at $50K last year or even $69K. I have a different strategy - taking profits and taking adv…

You can't buy the dip during a peak. PP got a loan at 50 which is a bearish trade, halfway to shorting.

Re: The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have such short memories... Was 2018 really that long ago... Even back then there was a tonne of MSM coverage.

When was long term memory ever a thing for people. People have completely forgotten about invading an entire country finding no WMDs and the recent Afghanistan debacle.

The guy who did that just remembered and Freudian slip told everyone in a speech.

Re: The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

#126
post #75
post #63

Tether truthing the eminent doom of tether is all well and good but why aren't we talking more about YCombinator promoting startups that burned their customer's money by sending it to anchor protocol UST ponzinomics while lying that those investments were held in USDC and USD? https://twitter.com/fatmanterra/status/1527153694218797058 https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/stablegains Or is it bad to talk about such t…

Definitely looks pretty bad - but on the other hand, an accelerator not making any bets in crypto is not a sensible accelerator. You need to make bets everywhere and hopefully some stick. The other side of that is some don’t stick, and some go proper pear shaped. Make enough bets, it has to happen. I’ve got no idea what their original pitch is, I certainly wouldn’t back a crypto startup that ostensibly aims to do som…

> not making any bets in crypto is not a sensible accelerator. You need to make bets everywhere and hopefully some stick.

Thats not how it works; VC's are allowed to pass on anything they want, and it turns out they dont cut a fat cheque to every idiot who knocks on the door.

Re: The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

#127
post #5

,,The crypto slump has been brutal’’ I’ve been holding Bitcoin since 2013, and this 50-60% retracement from the all time high was nothing compared to what I (and other people) were living through. I advise people to look at past volatility of Bitcoin before making an investment decision.

Do you have a strategy of selling on the peaks (possibly even buying on the lows with some of the proceeds) to eventually exit while ahead or are you just holding because you have a strong belief that it can only rise in future and it's not worth following the day to day drama (as many do with stocks)? Either way, you personally benefit from belief in Bitcoin and crypto being generally positive, which has implication…

I bought in 2017 & sold the peak. My strategy was that in 2017 I back of the enveloped a fair price of 30k CAD, so when I checked in awhile later it was 69k CAD I knew things were getting stupid & had to sell for the memes

I also sold most my investments in January because I wanted to buy a house. Moral of the story: be a lucky bastard like me

I believe crypto doesn't need to "go to the moon" to succeed. If bitcoin hit a stable price of 1k it still works. If I were to make another play in the crypto space I'd probably do something stupid like buy 32 eth & stake it in eth 2.0

Re: The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

#128
post #26

If tether manages to make people believe that its demise would derail the regular economy, and get bailed to keep their peg, then they’ve definitely screwed everyone over.

Given what we saw in 2009, nothing could more-qualify them as a "real financial institution" than being bailed out as "Too Big to Fail"

Re: The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

#129
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the legal responsibility of the investors, because society has given them limited liability. It may or may not be their moral responsibility, depending on what they knew, encouraged, or whatever. And the usual payoff for morally-shady but legally-blameless behaviour is reputational damage.

Y-Combinator exists to make Paul Graham and it's investors money. Morality is not money. Y-Combinator doesn't exist to make morality for its investors.

Maybe it'd be better if our society reprioritized so "these organizations are all amoral actors who exist for no other purpose except to fatten the wallets of their owners" isn't the assumed norm.

Re: The cryptocurrency sell-off has exposed those swimming naked

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time one makes the point that Bitcoin has no real utility, someone says 'Lightning network'. Does anyone know if it's getting any adoption?

At this point it can be used for payments practically everywhere where Bitcoin accepted, but it’s not yet practical for payments over $100 as far as I know, so I still only use the base Bitcoin layer for paying for my travels. There are new algorithms in late research phase though for much larger payments (like $5000) that are expected to go into production this year. I’m waiting for that before switching to using li…

>"At this point it can be used for payments practically everywhere where Bitcoin accepted, but it’s not yet practical for payments over $100 ..."

What's the significance of that $100 dollar amount with the lightning network?

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