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Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip
- Havoc 5y agoI mean anyone sane was expecting a trace back at some stage after the wild couple of months we just had. Predicting crashes isn’t hard. Predicting the timing thereof on the other hand…
- drcode 5y agoExactly- I was enjoying the upward price trajectory, but the whole time I was thinking "This next bubble pop is going to be epic" Frankly, this is an underwhelming drop so far.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoYeah. I was expecting a correction too but not so soon. Looks like Musk's greenwashing tweets started it...
- sva_ 5y agoHaha, less than 24h after that article that hit the frontpage yesterday. https://etherscan.io/blocks https://etherscan.io/blocks The blocks look absolutely insane right now
- tiborsaas 5y agoCare to explain what's insane looking to you?
- sva_ 5y agoTo make a transaction, you have to spend a certain amount of gas. This will then be multiplied by the constant cost of the transaction. But gas fluctuates based on demand. If many people want to make a quick transaction, gas will go up as the amount of transactions per block is limited. Avg gas was around 70 gwei yesterday. Currently there's tons of blocks averaging between 1000 - 1500 gwei, which is a lot.
- mikejarema 5y agoI think the amount of fees per block is what's "insane" here. Going back a day shows that the fees were on the order of ~3 eth per block (https://etherscan.io/blocks?p=300 https://etherscan.io/blocks?p=300) whereas now they're averaging around ~20eth per block. In other words ETH holders are very motivated to move their tokens right now, and the amount they're paying to do so reflects this.
- 52-6F-62 5y agoI imagine much of the traffic is likely out of China? It sounds like the CCP is moving to ban clearance and trading institutions in the space, stopping short of banning personal holdings. (something in the name of protecting people? https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinese-financial-payment-bodies-barred-cryptocurrency-business-2021-05-18/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/chinese-financial-payment...) A lot of people probably trying to sell off now or moving their holdings to exchanges located outside of China.
- rawtxapp 5y agoThe fees, on a good day, you can pay somewhere around 50-100gwei for a transaction on eth, right now we are seeing 1500+gwei transactions. For example, to deposit into a maker vault, a 50 gwei transaction would cost somewhere around 100$, it now costs like 2-3k$ just to execute a single transaction.
- SavantIdiot 5y agoEager to see the profitability change of ETH for today: https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/price-mining_profitability-eth.html#3m https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/price-mining_profitabil...
- sulunia 5y agoI just wanted to be able to buy a GPU without paying exorbitant prices because miners.
- sva_ 5y agoI think there's a realistic chance that you'll soon be able to get them at a nice discount on ebay.
- kevingadd 5y agoEthereum switching to PoS seems like it would definitely reduce the incentive to buy truckloads of gpus
- sarabad2021 5y ago
- Toine 5y agoI love when bubbles explode. I feel like the world is a tiny bit less insane.
- rawtxapp 5y ago2017 and 2013 also looked like bubbles exploding, yet here we are.
- lanstin 5y agoI worked for an internet company in 2000 and was a stay at home parent looking for a job so as to avoid losing my HSBC mortgaged house in the fall of 2008 but still I share this feeling. I got a job hen and enjoyed the Big Short tremendously. I think the crypto documentaries will have nicer rich people details tho, tho sports cars etc.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stephc_int13 5y agoI don't know why, it is probably highly irrational, but I always rejoice when the Bitcoin crashes.
- fartcannon 5y agoThats kind of sick? What an absolutely repugnant thing to do. Do you rejoice at war and animal abuse too?
- thecopy 5y agoCare to elaborate?
- dougmwne 5y agoBTC is a climate armageddon? I cheer too.
- swader999 5y agoNaw, it's mostly fueled by and helps make green energy viable.
- jasonladuke0311 5y agoThat is the type of bizarre connection only made by zealots.
- fartcannon 5y agoIt's just empathy. I also have empathy for gamblers, criminals and zealots.
- metacritic12 5y agoPeople are envious generally and when something they don't understand does well, they're confused. When that thing goes down, they feel relieved and their worldview makes more sense. Schadenfreude in general.
- bethecloud 5y agotime to buy
- jmacd 5y agoAs an outside observer, who has no crypto holdings at all, but is very deeply invested in the public stock market with a heavy weight on technology stocks... this doesn't look like a crash to me at all. It just looks like some steam being let off and old investors cash out and new investors get more comfortable with how much and where to invest. I consider crypto currency as it is to be an elaborate Ponzi scheme (personal view), but even with that cynicism nothing about this dip looks unhealthy to me. (I have views on what ultimately happens, but I will hold back on that)
- bogota 5y agoYou can criticize crypto currency’s for a lot but I still have never seen a good argument for it being a ponzi scheme. Can someone further this argument to one that wouldn't cover every investment asset?
- lapetitejort 5y agoDividends and voting rights, off the top of my head. That's not universal to every stock, but fairly common.
- tim333 5y agoWhat about art? Also no divs and voting rights and similar economics but seldom called a ponzi scheme.
- Theodores 5y agoAbductive reasoning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test So you have the non-existent assets, bag holding, difficulty getting out and the promise of above average returns. If I put my money into my saving account then I can get out at a clearly stated time, there is no expectation apart from very little interest and I am reasonably sure that the government will bail out the bank if the bank fails. In between there are a spectrum of investment options, property is a good investment asset and you actually have a property made from things like bricks and glass as the 'store of wealth'. Yes it might be difficult to get out if there is a property crash. But it is not a ponzi scheme even if it has some characteristics of one.
- shiado 5y agoLooks like the liquidations are stopping. Funding rates are finally negative https://www.bybt.com/FundingRate https://www.bybt.com/FundingRate I would expect the exchanges to have 'problems' while the big boys load back up for cheap. BIG shorts are closing. https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/BTCUSDSHORTS/ https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/BTCUSDSHORTS/
- jk7tarYZAQNpTQa 5y agoELI5?
- shiado 5y agoPerpetual swaps are most of the crypto market by volume. Here is a guide explaining them https://www.bitmex.com/app/perpetualContractsGuide https://www.bitmex.com/app/perpetualContractsGuide Throughout the last week of price declines the rates have stayed positive meaning longs were still paying shorts, implying continuous buying pressure, likely by those trying to time a bottom. But after this mega nuke the leveraged long traders got liquidated. When you clear out leveraged traders it becomes harder to move the price as fewer will be liquidated accelerating price changes. To summarize, retail investors lose in crypto because they take big risks with small money with big leverage and the big boys with big money then flush them out and the crypto lifecycle begins again making the whales richer and more capable of manipulating the market the next time.
- Theodores 5y agoIt is on its way back up. Remember to buy the dip, folks! Also interesting how BTC is now a store of wealth, not a currency. They should just call it a religion.
- kingaillas 5y ago>They should just call it a religion. A Planet Money episode from a few months ago covered this (https://www.npr.org/2021/02/18/969182201/bitcoin-the-religion https://www.npr.org/2021/02/18/969182201/bitcoin-the-religio...) and it was an interesting episode. Basically, bitcoin is like a religion in that 1) the founder is shrouded in mystery, 2) he/she goes missing/vanishes/dies before being able to benefit (i.e. they sacrifice for the benefit of others), 3) thus the actual spread of the religion/technology is left to an inner circle of disciples, 4) the masses that are brought in often talk about it incessantly furthering its spread, and 5) it has rituals/holidays (bitcoin halving day, bitcoin pizza day) This changed the way I think about bitcoin adherents.
- Theodores 5y agoInteresting point there. What is also interesting is how well jokes are received. HODL and 'buy the dip' or 'to the moon' are taunts. Note how far my comment was modded down - no room for humour if you have had your 'money' wiped out. You can't tease religious people either. I once sat next to a girl at work who was seriously Christian. I jokingly asked if she believed in Father Christmas one slow Friday afternoon and the looks I got from my colleagues who knew what I was doing and how morally wrong my teasing was! It is the same with the Bitcoin religion. You quickly learn not to question it. I also consider The War Against Terror to be a religion.
- randywaterhouse 5y agoAnd, as usual, Coinbase is also down at the moment [0]. Don't have a super-strong opinion on the crash itself (or whether we should call it a crash given crypto's volatility)--but it does seem peculiar that the exchanges in the space tend to drop when things get rough. [0] https://status.coinbase.com https://status.coinbase.com as of 13:51 UTC status was "intermittent downtime" and "delayed withdrawals"
- krono 5y agoI very clearly recall Coinbase structurally having these outages back in 2017/2018 as well. Always when big price movements are about to happen, but often before the volume spike. Nothing but funny coincidences I'm sure.
- jondwillis 5y agohappened back in 2013/4 as well
- jondwillis 5y agodecentralized exchanges on EVM-compatible proof of stake chains are still cheap, available, and fast. e.g. xdai
- blfr 5y agoCoinbase is down for me. Gotta give it to BTC: it's a great store of value. You cannot sell it in panic, the technology is protecting you from your own psychology.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- marban 5y agoJust like 99% cocoa chocolate — built-in overeating protection.
- creshal 5y agoLong-term hodling of chocolate is still an unsolved problem in my experience. It tends to just disappear over time.
- twox2 5y agoCoinbase is not the only place to sell it though.
- lottin 5y agoThey have all shut down.
- djbebs 5y agoCoinbase infrastrcture does not run on bitcoin
- papito 5y agoBut does it run on BLOCKCHAIN.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- randomopining 5y agoDiamond hands baby!
- whenindoubtlie 5y agoChina has recently banned banks from providing cryptocurrency services.
- paulpauper 5y agoMSTR is massivly leveraged. How will they not go bust if BTC keeps falling
- rawtxapp 5y agoTheir average buying price is in the ~20-30k range, still lots of way to go. And if they have losses on their coins, they can harvest them to offset their other incomes, etc.
- reubens 5y agoSeeing the exchange price graphs coalesce in red like that... it's a sight to behold. I feel for the vulnerable recent converts.
- End_the_Fed 5y agoThis is what a healthy market looks like, without circuit breakers, without Powell stepping in, without the POTUS making emergency statements to contain the panic. Price discovery at its finest. When you buy crypto you are effectively voting with your wallet against the Fed and all those phony protection systems Every day more and more people are understanding the machinations of the Fed. BTFD
- codyb 5y agoThis is one hell of a take. Give me a stable financial system any day. If, by understanding, you mean, realizing that having a centralized entity with a mandate to keep inflation to stable levels so the monetary supply doesn't swing wildly in value from day to day, sure?
- End_the_Fed 5y agoStability=stasis 1:1 human relationships are unstable as it is, think about a 300M individuals megasocial group where everybody is interacting with everybody and constantly adjusting. The Fed is like the doctor who fills up the patient with cortisone and throws away the thermometer to avoid reading the temperature We need ups&downs, love&hate, forest fires and rebirths. Anestetyzing the whole process makes me wonder what are we even thinking BTC mimics nature as opposed to the Fed which mimics the arrogance of man.
- woeirua 5y agoLet’s see you stick to your guns when BTC loses 95% of its value in a week.
- rawtxapp 5y agoIt already has done that many times over (20k->3k back in 2017). And people who would have kept buying would be in a great place right now.
- yawaworht1978 5y agoSome of these "guaranteed" returns if you pass custody of your btc scammers must be working on exit strategies now. The article says china banned transactions, does this include mining rewards? Technically, that involves a transaction, right?
- randomopining 5y agoBig banks and the rich are squeezing out paper handed retail and leveraged traders. They are buying in at the low and will go full steam by the summer.
- ProjectArcturis 5y agoBitcoin is the ultimate, purely financial object. It has no revenues or profits. The supply is fixed -- unlike, say, gold, where high prices mean people will eventually start digging mines, BTC supply is entirely price-inelastic. The only thing that determines BTC price is demand. And over the past 13 years, we've seen reflexivity at work: The price has gone up, so more people want it, so the price goes up further, and on and on. There's no reason this can't happen in reverse. As in previous crashes, once the price starts going down, more people want to sell. Really just an interestingly pure experiment in group psychology.
- paulpauper 5y agoThat would only be true if bitcoin technology were protected by IP, which it is not. new coins effectively dilute existing holders of btc
- dogman144 5y agoAs the supply is fixed, this is a very illogical take.
- paulpauper 5y agoalt coins. BTC dominace used to be 90%+. now way lower . BTC holders get no royalties from blockchain being copied
- thebean11 5y agohow can you possibly make the claim that BTC was diluted vs the market cap of other coins being net new value?
- NationalPark 5y agoThe argument is that crypto has little to no intrinsic value and the price is being moved by speculation. In that case, the value comes from how many other speculators are willing to speculate in your currency - more options means fewer dollars buying bitcoin. The fact that pretty much every crypto of non-trivial float trades in lock step with BTC definitely supports the "no intrinsic value" theory.
- zionic 5y agoHN when crypto pops: This is off topic/irrelevant HN when crypto retraces some of those gains: Pop open the champaign! Lets all talk about how great this is! Front page!
- Trasmatta 5y agoIs there anyone actually saying this is off topic / irrelevant?
- ourcat 5y agoSurely this is also very much related to the recent announcement in China [1], banning financial institutions and payment companies from providing services related to cryptocurrencies? [1 : https://www.reuters.com/world/china/what-beijings-new-crackdown-means-crypto-china-2021-05-19/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/what-beijings-new-crackd... ]
- knowaveragejoe 5y agoThis quote made me laugh: "Hong Kong's Bitcoin Association said in a tweet in response to China's reiterated ban: "For those new to bitcoin, it is customary for the People's Bank of China to ban bitcoin at least once in a bull cycle."
- davesque 5y agoWas gonna say. I feel like I hear the same set of news stories once every 3-5 years.
- rawtxapp 5y agoJust like the last cycle when they flip flopped on banning it every other week.
- ipv6ipv4 5y agoThis still seems to leave open the ability for Chinese nationals to covertly convert yuan to foreign currencies without limits - buying compute with yuan which converts to BTC which can then be converted into anything. I wonder what the BTC/USD break even point is for that to make financial sense.
- devops000 5y agoIt’s strange that Bitcoin has peaked exactly the day of Coinbase IPO
- shrimpx 5y agoEarly coinbase stock holders have been eagerly cashing out. Their lack of confidence has been in the news.
- tim333 5y agoNot so strange - Bitcoin prices are mostly set by investor psychology. They were probably thinking to the moon and then when the IPO was a bit disappointing lost that.
- indiantinker 5y agoA Wyckoff Event just happened as he explains https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFijwQzZFuM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFijwQzZFuM
- karolist 5y agoOriginal video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhf_2gJJS1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhf_2gJJS1I
- indiantinker 5y agoThanks
- javier10e6 5y agoCrypto is DE-CENTRALIZED. As long as there are people out there that rather trust a ledger produced by a collection of de-centralized computers than a ledger held by a private institution/government (closed) its value will remain useful/practical.
- woeirua 5y agoReally because some outrageous percentage of the mining power is centralized in China.
- patwolf 5y agoI've been trading Bitcoin for several years and have gone through the various booms and busts of that time. I'm not sure I'm ready to call this a crash when it's back to where it was a few months ago. The idea of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is addictive, but there's always the sobering moment when you realize how limiting it is. I tried to transfer some a few months ago and was hit with $25 in transaction fees, and it took over 3 days to be confirmed. Clearly I should have used higher fees to expedite it, but I sympathize with newer investors experiencing that for the first time. I've also seen folks recently invest in mining rigs only to realize they're not as profitable as they anticipated. I'm sure in time prices will back up as the cycle will repeat itself--the hype will die down, Musk will tweet something that inspires the next generation to jump on the bandwagon, and the price will rise again. Maybe we'll lament not buying while it was under 100k.
- endisneigh 5y agohow is 20% down not a crash?
- matheusmoreira 5y agoIt's a crash on a traditional market such as stocks. On the cryptocurrency market, a real crash would result in figures in the -90% range.
- paulpauper 5y agoBItocin has among the worst risk-adjusted returns of any investment. I would not touch it. NASDAQ 100 and or fang portfolio way better.
- sumedh 5y agoWhy not have 5% or less in BTC, if it does well, good for you, if it does not, its just 5% of your portfolio.
- paulpauper 5y agoby that logic, why not just buy lotto tickets?
- sumedh 5y agoThe probability of BTC going to zero is very very low, the probability of you not winning the lotto is very very high.
- hellow0rldz 5y agoYou know... what I am curious, does this logic make sense? Why wouldn't a given % be allocated to lotto tickets?! Quite curious from a risk/reward portfolio formula.
- dcx 5y agoYes, it does, despite the negative expected value. In corporate finance it's known that companies that are approaching failure are often willing to pay for volatility. This is also why lotto tickets are more popular with the poor.
- adventured 5y agoThe argument to not buy lottery tickets, is if you have no need of the return so it's not worth giving up the 5% of your portfolio that could be reliably generating returns for you. Software engineers for example are easily capable of reliably earning six figures in the US, outside of the Bay Area. With stock compensation their earnings potential is that much higher. It's a solid multi-millionaire track if you grind away at that career path and keep your expenses in line. So why bother with the lottery in that case? Because a few million dollars isn't enough? If you're earning $40,000 per year with an inability to generate much in the way of savings (compared to the software engineer), your job prospects are highly capped, you do manual labor in a factory in a 2nd tier city, your education level is weak, and your shot at a multi-millionaire outcome is essentially zero, maybe giving up 5% of your savings makes sense for a shot at an epic outcome to escape that lower middle class trap.
- aazaa 5y ago> Global stocks slipped and cryptocurrencies sank deeper on Wednesday as a threat of unwanted inflation had investors shy away from assets seen as vulnerable to any removal of monetary stimulus. The full title of this article is worth noting: "Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip". For some reason, that was changed for this posting. Bitcoin is increasingly being seen as a barometer for market liquidity. As Bitcoin goes, so go the markets. That's the real story here. We may not be there yet, but at some point, Bitcoin will drive broader market liquidity (stocks, bonds, gold, real estate), rather than feeding on its table scraps. Regarding the volatility, this is nothing new. Anyone involved for more that four years has seen this before and worse. What is new is the sheer number of people involved. Bitcoin's user base doubles roughly once every 1.5 years. That means that at any particular moment in time about half of the participants have been at it for one year or less. When they see their first fierce selloff, predictably accompanied by a vague announcement from China, it can be very unsettling. When this was happening with a small user base of mostly computer nerds and libertarians, it was easy to write off. When the user base includes respected financial institutions (as it now does), things get interesting.
- nemo44x 5y agoInteresting that this is occurring right as taxes were due. I wonder how much selling was for paying taxes?
- woeirua 5y agoEveryone should take some time now to learn about Tether, the high likelihood that it is in fact a Ponzi scheme, and that it poses a big systemic risk to the crypto exchanges and therefore the markets themselves [1]. People have been sounding the alarm on Tether for a long time now, but we’re finally getting some hard evidence now to back the allegations [2]. Don’t say you weren’t warned. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/smdiehl https://mobile.twitter.com/smdiehl [2] https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-ends-virtual-currency-trading-platform-bitfinexs-illegal https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...
- Clewza313 5y agoHere's a good, up to date primer: https://www.singlelunch.com/2021/05/19/the-tether-ponzi-scheme/ https://www.singlelunch.com/2021/05/19/the-tether-ponzi-sche...
- briankelly 5y agoYoga instructor selling her house to throw it into bitcoin feels like the '21 spiritual successor of the Las Vegas stripper who owned several condos/houses that became the '08 housing market crash meme. Wild prediction: this BTC crash pops the USDT bubble, cratering crypto in general. TSLA holders (frequently BTC/doge buyers themselves) begin to panic sell, triggering an ARKK bank run. ARKK implosion sparks wide selloff of big tech stocks (essentially their holdings) which depresses the S&P (where tech is the main driver of growth). Everyone is now forced to be conservative; cost to borrow skyrockets; demand chills, and coupled with supply chain disruptions and high commodity and materials costs, some businesses begin to fail. New homeowners who went for broke to buy at the top of their market are immediately underwater, and some of them are now losing their jobs. Fed is now between a rock and a hard place - needs to raise to interest rates but also needs to encourage spending - what to do? Anyway, there is my daily dose of doom-and-gloom, and I have a vague understanding of any of it, so enjoy.
- rebelos 5y agoSo what's your portfolio breakdown?
- fybs 5y ago"The bitcoin flow picture continues to deteriorate and is pointing to continued retrenchment by institutional investors," Quotes like that, in my experience, always turned out to be a buying opportunity.
- gher-shyu3i 5y agoAttention seeking headline. Stocks are down as well. From the very first sentence: > Global stocks slipped and cryptocurrencies sank deeper on Wednesday as a threat of unwanted inflation had investors shy away from assets seen as vulnerable to any removal of monetary stimulus This whole fiasco is because of money printing at will.
- idkwhoiam 5y agoWojak must have bought
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y agoIt's cryptocurrency crash, cryptography is more or less the same as it was yesterday.
- Mc_Big_G 5y agoIt's funny how everyone here worships YC and YC has invested in multiple crypto companies and yet everyone here hates crypto and everyone involved in crypto. How do you justify that? Is it because you think YC is just clever to cash in on the speculation, the same way Trump is clever to not pay any taxes, but you hate all the little guys that cash in on the speculation?
- shrimpx 5y agoThe members of this board and the people who run YC don’t have much in common in terms of priories.
- d--b 5y agoThis is supposed to be transparent, right? so who's selling?
- game_the0ry 5y agoI used to be excited to see crypto currency related threads on HN's front page, bc I would be excited to see the technical discussion about he merits and criticisms of the technology. Nowadays, I am just disappointed when the discourse devolves into politics, cultism (on both sides), and misinformation. Where could I go to see discussions about just the technology?
- abledon 5y agolobste.rs
- fouric 5y agoSeconded, Lobsters is good. Now, my perception has been that it's beginning to have its Eternal September, including a significant uptick in political content, but as it stands it's still much more technical than HN.
- Trung0246 5y agoUnfortunately lobste.rs is invite-only which is suck because I don't know anyone around me that's use lobste.rs. Oh well.
- game_the0ry 5y agoLobste.rs looks like what I am looking for. Spot me an invite? :)
- DonCopal 5y agoThis section of the forum: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=6.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=6.0
- rawtxapp 5y agoEven though I'm very bullish on crypto longterm and even though this crash caused me large loses on paper, I'm happy about it. I think a lot of people got very greedy and way overleveraged themselves which is not sustainable in the long-term. For example, almost 9B$ worth of crypto got liquidated in the last 24hr, that's insane. People chasing quick money get burned. 1: https://www.bybt.com/LiquidationData https://www.bybt.com/LiquidationData
- fraud 5y agoWhat makes you bullish about crypto and what need do you see it fulfilling long term?
- rawtxapp 5y agoThis is personal opinion and feel free to disagree, but I have zero trust in the government and I don't think central bankers and politicians in Washington care about me. I think the current financial system is highly corrupt, broken and fragile. So naturally, ideally, I want to completely opt-out of their system. So far in human history, we never had an alternative, but now we do. Bitcoin price in fiat may go up or down, but I believe the Bitcoin network will keep ticking with the same mathematical rules and same transparency today and in 100 years from now.
- rewtraw 5y agoMost of HN isn't aware of the non-BTC, non-Ponzi protocols and dapps being built right now. There are some very cool things like decentralized lending/borrowing, exchanges, cross-chain swaps, synthetics, etc. These protocols are revenue generating (via fees) and are actively used with billions in volume. 99% of crypto will die off, but the small part that survives could be the backbone of a very robust internet-native financial system. Whether these DeFi primitives will ever be plugged into TradFi systems remains to be seen, but if nothing else, the ability for these protocols to easily interop is a huge win over existing systems. Even if everything uses stablecoins and all "altcoins" are ignored, there is still value here.
- thehappypm 5y ago
- uberdru 5y agoDid anyone else notice that the 'store of value' thesis is almost a verbatim rehash of Jim Rickards gold theories around the time of his book 'Currency Wars' (2011)?
- tubbyjr 5y agoSo much nocoiner butthurt in here lmao. Yes, it's down 50%, yet I'm still a multi-millionaire thanks to holding, from a small mining stint a couple years back, $0 invested directly aside from mining machines (GPUs I would have bought anyways for gaming). With how it's progressed, I never have to sell. My employment income is zero, and I can't get any mortgages cuz of this... no problem, I can literally use crypto to sythnetically underwrite my own mortgages.
- jondwillis 5y agoWhat have you used to synthetically underwrite your own mortgage?
- symlinkk 5y agoA lot of people here can’t separate emotion from logic. They love Element / Matrix because it’s decentralized. They love Apple because of their focus on privacy. But they hate Bitcoin: a private, decentralized currency. They say it’s because of “volatility” or “power consumption”, but when these problems are fixed they move the goalposts (see the ETH proof of stake thread). The truth is, they missed out on the bull run, and whether they consciously realize it or not they’re letting their emotions cloud their judgement.
- nano-erud 5y agoIt is common. Today it falls 50%, tomorrow it rises 200%. It is nothing unusual in the world of crypto.
- thehappypm 5y agoI think an important Achilles' heel of cryptocurrencies is just how hoarded they are. Whales -- in general, they're just early adopters -- own huge swathes of the total amount of crypto out there. If we were to actually move to a world where crypto is used as currency, we'd have trillionaires who "earned" their wealth simply by being early adopters. Government issued currencies can solve this through taxation or more generally through monetary policy.
- vocatus_gate 5y agoOne could argue they "earned" the wealth by taking an enormous risk and holding through crazy swings when no one else would. And ended up be rewarded for taking the risk, as they should. Along comes the people salty they didn't take the risk, and want to steal the money from the people who did take the risk. It's a tale as old as time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- AzzieElbab 5y agoCrypto is climbing back up. Sticks not so much
- smithcoin 5y agoI hope the crypto prices keeps crashing, let's get rid of the speculators and posers.
- arisAlexis 5y agoSince when price speculation news are relevant to this forum?
- hnalien 5y agoHas anyone noticed how many Crypto rooms are currently on Clubhouse? Mostly led by paid clubhouse admins, trying to pump up crypto and who always have a extra stash to 'buy the dip'. This entire scenario smells of a scam led by companies like A16Z (investor in Clubhouse and other Crypto companies) and other whales like Musk, who have been playing with these coins/token prices since last year.
- kdragon 5y agoI feel like the HN community, who are more tech literate, should have a better understanding of Bitcoin and crypto. I don't like all the ignorant comments that focus purely on the financials. Is cryptocurrency space not full of technological marvel? Bitcoin has always been an application for demonstrating the engineering achievements behind it (solving byzantine faults, fungibility of data), so we can build even greater tools like smart contracts, programmable money, trust-less p2p networks, etc so many things. I think labeling bitcoin as a scam is a huge insult to those engineers involved. Engineers like Hal Finney who dedicated his life trying to make a brighter future for everyone, I don't think it is fair to call his and others work an elaborate ponzi scheme. The bitcoin space has so much history, a lot of battles have been fought on bitcointalk, over mailing lists and pull requests, etc. I feel that as developers we should focus less on financial markets and more technical discussion. Bitcoin has a lot of new things to talk about with the Taproot activation, like schnorr signatures and private lightning transactions. I'd like to see those discussions more on HN but that's just my opinion.
- UncleMeat 5y ago> Bitcoin has always been an application for demonstrating the engineering achievements behind it (solving byzantine faults, fungibility of data), so we can build even greater tools like smart contracts, programmable money, trust-less p2p networks, etc so many things. If you were to categorize all discussions about BTC between live humans into two buckets: discussions about the price of BTC and discussions about applications build on the bitcoin blockchain, which one do you think would win? I'd wager that >99% of all discussions are about the price. Yet the price is completely irrelevant to the applications built on the blockchain. They work just as well if the price of BTC is 1/10,000th the current price. So it becomes very hard for people to buy the claim that actually this is all about technology and not about getting rich.
- kdragon 5y agoI don't think it's fair to base a topic on the loudest voices in the room. That is a road to madness. I still wish to see more interest in technical discussion of Bitcoin here. Like the new BIP proposal expanding the scripting capability of the protocol. I don't know what percentage of BTC discussions on HN are in either bucket, but I hope at the very least it would be 50/50. Don't you agree?
- lurkerasdfh8 5y agomaybe off-topic but: interesting how any cryptocurrencies discussion have tons of comments repeating the same (flawed imo) arguments, while the older ones are both downvoted and argued against, but new ones keep popping up. look anywhere in this thread. there will be a comment 1h ago, and 4+ others further down with the exact same argument both downvoted and with a few dozen replies explaining why the argument is bogus. You might need to enable the option to see dead comments to get the full picture.
- amoorthy 5y agoIs converting crypto to regular currency like USD easy? I've heard that liquidity is hard to come by.
- bavdjdohrbd 5y agoBitcoin runs or used to run on IRC. The whole crypto space crashes the same day there's an IRC takeover and two staffers quit: https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bdd66b8f491 https://gist.github.com/aaronmdjones/1a9a93ded5b7d162c3f58bd... User and possibly Bitcoin user logs access/ownership/protection is unknown. And all crypto crashes same day? Too big of a coincidence if u ask me.