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Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

bloomberg.com

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Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#181

Post by smaryjerry »

lrvick wrote: post #55
silisili wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's hoping. When stocks tank, one can decide if a company is undervalued and decide whether to buy in. Bitcoin has no value other than speculation, so it's a hard ask for people to buy in as it's never technically undervalued...

Bitcoin has value for the same reason Visa has value. A medium of exchange is a tool, and tools people use have value. I grant the majority of the market is speculation but many of us actually regularly use Bitcoin for things like payroll, settling debts, cheap international value transfer, buying coffee, and for cash-like privacy for online purchases. For those like me that have been continually buying, saving, and…

Visa has also has value because it adds trust to the system. You can contest your charges and a lot of the fees go towards keeping that trust. Credit cards have tons of abuse but it’s backed by a level of insurance. I stopped using crypto because the fees were so high, it wasn’t simple (unless you use an exchange) and doesn’t come with that trust. Even the exchanges themselves fail because they are gambling with customer cash essentially. It’s like if my bank decides to put all the cash it was holding for me into Iraqi dinar because it has a feeling it was going to go up.

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#183

Post by naveen99 »

kgwgk wrote: post #104
lrvick wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will never drop to 0, barring no fundamental security flaws are discovered, because there will always be people like me that are never willing to sell and always willing to buy more. If it hits $1, I will just stock up. Traders getting out is good for me. I am in Bitcoin, or any really viable replacement that emerges, long term for reasons fickle speculators do not care about. I fundamentally believe a healthy soc…

> Traders getting out is good for me. Say everyone gets out except you. You own all the bitcoins in the world. Now what?

Use it as the family ledger ?

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#184

Post by lamontcg »

drawingthesun wrote: post #11

Considering Bitcoin had never fallen lower than a previous cycles ATH (All Time High) until now, who is thinking that this might be a sign of the end of crypto? Each cycle goes higher was pretty much the only thing that kept the whole thing going. Now that is gone I think the space will dry up. Tether collapsing in the next couple weeks will likely put Bitcoin under $10,000

> who is thinking that this might be a sign of the end of crypto?

I think some billionaires may still be able to bail it out, I'm about 50-50 it dies.

> Tether collapsing in the next couple weeks will likely put Bitcoin under $10,000

I kind of doubt this happens, I think Tether is fundamentally structured differently than Terra/Luna and is all debt-based and won't face a run on the bank until crypto is basically a smoking hole in the ground. Everyone wants Tether to implode to take out crypto, but I think it is the other way around.

The Tether redemptions though are signs that the underlying value of the collateral (crypto) has gone below thresholds, and the redemptions withdraw liquidity that was causing inflation in the price.

Something else is likely to pop though, and eventually one of the really big exchanges is going to go under. Coinbase going full MtGox or something like that.

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#185

Post by smaryjerry »

As long as every bitcoin move is headline news there will always be a market for crypto. When these articles get no comments because it’s like arguing against flat earthers then it will be dead. The reality is it’s still nearly a trillion dollar market and the people like to debate and discuss it because of the uncertainty surrounding it’s demise, if it was settled no one would care and that’s when it would actually go to zero. Until then every drop is just another opportunity for someone buying.

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#186

Post by lamontcg »

Grimburger wrote: post #68
drawingthesun wrote: post #11

Considering Bitcoin had never fallen lower than a previous cycles ATH (All Time High) until now, who is thinking that this might be a sign of the end of crypto? Each cycle goes higher was pretty much the only thing that kept the whole thing going. Now that is gone I think the space will dry up. Tether collapsing in the next couple weeks will likely put Bitcoin under $10,000

> the end of crypto How do you propose to replace the $100bn online drug market?

That question can't prop up a liquidity crisis.

If everyone runs for the exits then crypto suffers an old fashioned bank run, and it doesn't matter if it has any intrinsic value. A bank suffering a run still has loans on the books that are being paid back, but it has a cash crisis and people can't withdraw. A systemic failure starts knocking over institutions one by one as they each hit a liquidity crunch and don't have cash. Once the music stops playing everyone tries to grab some of the remaining chairs and get out. If all the cash is removed from the system and there's still billions in demand trying to exit while there's only a trickle of people trying to catch a falling knife, then it is going to overshoot and unwind to very nearly zero.

The reason why we have things like FDIC, is to prevent things like this, but crypto decided that was all old fashioned thinking. As a result, crypto is buttressed only by some billionaires who are true-believers in it, and if it only takes a few billion here or there then they may produce a bailout package for the system. If not, then the system will fail.

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#187

Post by moistly »

lrvick wrote: post #55
silisili wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's hoping. When stocks tank, one can decide if a company is undervalued and decide whether to buy in. Bitcoin has no value other than speculation, so it's a hard ask for people to buy in as it's never technically undervalued...

Bitcoin has value for the same reason Visa has value. A medium of exchange is a tool, and tools people use have value. I grant the majority of the market is speculation but many of us actually regularly use Bitcoin for things like payroll, settling debts, cheap international value transfer, buying coffee, and for cash-like privacy for online purchases. For those like me that have been continually buying, saving, and…

> many of us

There are 8 billion of us on this planet.

There are maybe a hundred thousand bitcoin holders.

A fraction of them actively use bitcoin.

By any metric, “many of us” is an grossly incorrect statement.

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#188

Post by cmrdporcupine »

datadata wrote: post #166
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you agree it's not money then.

That is irrelevant here. The argument that bitcoin is not inflationary is merely that it has a supply cap. USD has no supply cap but it obviously has lower price volatility. That said, it is the Fed's goal to purposefully reduce the purchasing power of USD by 2% every year, so the trajectory is clear.

Your point about fiat currency is also irrelevant here. Bitcoin has been inflationary in the real world in actual practice. At least over the timescales we're talking about. While fiat currency has been inflationary, Bitcoin has been even more so.

And again back in reality, measures (interest rate increases) to counteract inflation in the fiat currency also make Bitcoin an unattractive "investment":

"The higher [interest] rates go, the more cost to hold an asset that does not produce anything." - Jamie Dimon, CEO JP Morgan

Bitcoin for a while was an unproductive but speculatively "profitable" (for non-greater fools) place to shove money when interest rates were low. Now that money is moving out.

Re: Bitcoin Falls Below $20k for the First Time Since 2020

#190

Post by robonerd »

synu wrote: post #120
robonerd wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. A lot of people have said that, some before disaster and some before victory. It was already an old saying when Pliny the Elder said it. Wellington made it his motto, and he beat Napoleon.

At the risk of explaining a joke, the idea was not that it’s something that’s only ever been said before failure, but that it’s a quite funny thing to say just before one.

At the risk of explaining my objection; it's not about the joke but about the premise of history rhyming generally being an artifact of overzealous pattern matching and the implicit exclusion of cases that don't match the target pattern.
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