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Cryptocurreny retailer BitPrime closes trading after running out of money

bitprime.co.nz

151–160 of 172 posts

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

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not a crypto optimist at all, just trying to be objective. For both crypto and gold, the price is supported by the amount of people willing to buy it as a store of value (yes, gold is also used for jewelry and some manufacturing, but that's a secondary use). Crypto is new, so it's mostly recognized by early adopters - people that are more likely to change their mind in the changing circumstances. There's also a lot o…

Gold's intrinsic value is what makes it a store of value. Bitcoin doesn't have that directly - the coins directly don't have any value, but the ledger and mining technology behind it has real value as invented knowledge because it was novel at the time. That's like saying gold has intrinsic value because there are manufacturers of jewelry, but not because of the physical properties of gold.

IMO bitcoin can act as a commodity, but it needs more participation and infrastructure (importantly, the internet) to realize that. Mining bitcoin is cheaper than mining gold though, so that should be a good hint that if Bitcoin is any kind of store of value, it should end up cheaper than gold.

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

#152
post #64
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.

This is some random startup nobody has heard of. HN likes to work themselves into a froth over every scrap of bad crypto news, but this is utterly insignificant. Crypto will continue to fluctuate wildly as it always has.

And they're not going insolvent / losing customer funds. They are shutting down because they were not able to run their business profitably.

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

#153
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. They did the same thing with “terra USD”, some shitcoin I had never heard of until it failed. It was even named to confuse people by sounding like USDT. HN is only a step above CNN when it comes to trustworthiness on this specific topic.

Just to put in perspective: a number of non-crypto YC startups had their treasury in UST. The reverberations of this will be massive.

Oh that happened in 2009 as well, tons of startups had their money parked in an asset with a special name, where it was tied to real estate, so the startups' treasury could appreciate without being spent. Because real estate never goes down, you see. It was so safe.

Safety is dangerous.

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

#154
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.

Bitcoin market cap is about 580 Billion. SP500 market cap is about 38 Trillion. During unremarkable market swings, the SP500 gains and loses the entire Bitcoin market cap daily (1.5%) Crypto can go to zero and the world will continue on.

These days rather, it loses and loses the entire market cap of bitcoin daily.

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

#155
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How you can be in business selling this shit as non-shit when admitting the truth without having some crazy legal liability exposure problems is amazing to me. Like, FTX literally advertises "you don't need to know anything about crypto." But he says you should here!

For a lot of people, the game seems to be simply to grab the cash now and if regulators eventually come knocking, lawyer up, settle and keep most of your profits. I remember a guy on HN a year or two ago who was very proud of the ICO he ran in 2017. The token was useless, investors lost their money, and he was fined something around a million dollars by the SEC. But to him that was a mark of pride, like he fought The…

That's funny. Founder. Like if I were a woman I would treat that like, "What? You're in a band?" Like OK lead singer of a known band, then you're not in a band, you're in that band. But it's just nah.

So the view from the inside, like what a VC sees, is that everybody is piling up and it's so so easy to say "I've got hot shit" and you have to be like "yeah maybe." A lot of the time "don't pitch me bro." And set it up like a nightclub, realistically none of the founders will have real tech without getting it from real researchers, so they have to impress you with how well they work the club. Now that I say that I'm figuring out my own strat too, treat it like a club.

So the second secret, don't tell anybody, don't link to this comment, close the doors, unplug the ethernet, turn on the wifi jammers, put your smartphones in the faraday cage, the secret is: everybody wants you to lose. Everybody wants you to lose. Just like in a club. When you accept that, it's so much easier! The entire club wants you to prove you're a lesser man, like sit next to the bar waste your money on drinks (never on a hotel), parade in circles concentrically around the women dancing with their clique of girlfriends in the middle, asking like once or twice and feeling bad for months about being rejected, that's what the club wants the men to do. And there is violence at the club, it's not like "the worst that can happen is she says no" that's a load of shit, it depends on a lot of things.

So it's the same adversarial environment, everything going against you. Realize that, and it's suddenly much easier.

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

#156
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely an open source, battle-tested, massively widely used operating system like Linux has some value? There's tons of value being captured by closed operating systems.

But there is tons of value being captured by closed operating systems?

Windows is closed source and quite a profitable part of Microsoft’s business.

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

#157
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GrubHub stock is down to $3 after a high of $20. Food is a scam.

Do you know that GrubHub doesn't make food, their business model doesn't have anything to do with food, except in the most tangential sense?

What does this have to do with perceived value based on today's market rate...?

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

#159
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.

$ 1.2 trillion, or 6 % of US GDP p. a., according to coinmarketcap.com I guess it was about 10 % at some point not too long ago?

Nah. As posted elsewhere, "Market cap" is a nonsense term in the crypto world, just utterly meaningless. I could create a new coin right now, call it MarketCapCoin, with an initial mint of 1 billion MCCs. If someone buys 0.01 MCCs for $10, that would mean the "market cap" of my shitcoin was $1 trillion. Does my stupid shitcoin represent 6% of US GDP? Of course not. There's no liquidity or economic value, it's just cosplaying with a spreadsheet.

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

#160
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are enough correlations to show Tether magic money being used to prop up btc, eth on these shady exchanges. It is obvious they are using fake magic money to prop/inject into the eco-system. When btc, eth props up, everything else tends to as well. IDK how it's not obvious to you unless you have some financial incentive to ignore the obvious.

To you, does "prop up" mean "act as the only value behind", or "noticeably increase the price"? This may be where we diverted from each other.

For me it means both. I know absolutely that btc/eth didn't grow organically to the levels it did without significant propping from tether and manipulation from exchanges.
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