5 ms·

Bitcoin tumbles below $70K, heavy losses in cryptocurrencies in last three weeks

58 points by heresie-dabord 9mo ago

jqpabc123 9mo ago
The myth that bitcoin is an effective store of value (aka "digital gold") has just died. The proof is available in your crypto wallet. Real gold bullion has now been fully "digitized". You can buy and hold real bullion without taking delivery, without transactions fees and without dealing with tbe schenanigans of unregulated markets and manipulators. Over the past year of unprecedented marketplace turmoil and upheaval, "real gold" has risen just as dramatically as "digital gold" has fallen. Only one myth left standing in the way of bitcoin's total demise --- the idea that PoW is a reasonable and effective basis for financial markets/transactions. Are you willing to put real money on it?
- seydor 9mo ago
  If gold rises (and therefore falls) as crazy as Bitcoin, then why is it better
  - simmerup 9mo ago
    Because when you buy gold you don’t have to rely on shady crypto bros to cash out
  - DennisP 9mo ago
    You don't just want the best investment, you want several good investments that are uncorrelated with each other. Gold is better if you're looking for something to diversify your investments in the stock market, since it tends to do well when stocks are doing badly (though that's not guaranteed). Bitcoin of course has been better for really high returns, mostly when stocks are doing well. Whether that will continue is anyone's guess. Long-term returns for gold have basically matched the S&P500 total performance since the bottom of the dotcom crash.
  - jqpabc123 9mo ago
    Excellent question. The answer is that "real gold" has a long, long history as a stable store of value and as a result, more people know it, trust it and are willing to buy it when the chips hit the fan. Here is a chart showing the price of gold over the past decade. https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html Here is a corresponding chart for bitcoin. https://charts.bitbo.io/price/ https://charts.bitbo.io/price/ But I would argue that the most important and telling part is what has ocurred recently, after a crypto fan assumed personal control over the world's largest economy.
  - Rury 9mo ago
    Because they're not actually equivalents. Gold has unique properties as a material, unique properties that are useful. It'd be more widely used in industry if it wasn't such a scarce and expensive material. Bitcoin on the other hand, has no use other than for conducting trade. Because of this, they inherently carry different risks as an asset.
  - tomrod 9mo ago
    You can use gold in tangible ways.
- derektank 9mo ago
  I’m a crypto skeptic but the benefit of bitcoin over gold has never been ease of transaction. The benefit is that regulators and governments are generally unable to confiscate bitcoin. The same is not true of gold, particularly if you do not take final delivery.
  - esseph 9mo ago
    Not true though. "the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has also seized almost 130,000 bitcoin worth around $15 billion at the time of the announcement—the largest US cryptocurrency seizure to date." https://www.wired.com/story/feds-seize-record-breaking-15-billion-in-bitcoin-from-alleged-scam-empire/ https://www.wired.com/story/feds-seize-record-breaking-15-bi...
  - heresie-dabord 9mo ago
    Here are estimates of the value of Bitcoin currently held (mostly via seizure) by the US government: https://www.theblock.co/post/374636/the-daily-us-government-bitcoin-holdings-surge-to-36-billion-crypto-etfs-see-755m-in-outflows-after-market-wipeout-and-more https://www.theblock.co/post/374636/the-daily-us-government-... https://www.mexc.com/learn/article/how-much-bitcoin-does-the-us-government-own-complete-guide/1 https://www.mexc.com/learn/article/how-much-bitcoin-does-the...
    - chistev 9mo ago
      How can you seize it without the private keys? Do they force it out of the people involved?
      - crazygringo 9mo ago
        You find the private keys wherever the owners stored them.
      - jqpabc123 9mo ago
        Do they force it out of the people involved? Yes, in a manner of speaking. Government has lots of coercive tools at it's disposable. For example, search warrants and incarceration. If you refuse to hand over your keys, government can easily nullify you or your relatives ability to make use of them and make your life really bad in the meantime. Keepjng money from government is yet another crypto myth that doesn't hold up very well in many cases.
- mothballed 9mo ago
  >You can buy and hold real bullion without taking delivery Not your vault, not your gold.
  - jqpabc123 9mo ago
    True. Physical possession is an option with real gold --- as is stuffing fiat under your mattress. But even if you don't choose this route, I would argue that a fully regulated vault is a safer and more reasonable option than one that isn't.
- jt2190 9mo ago
  Having an app that tells you that you have a thing is not the same as physically having the thing. Owning gold in that sense is no different than owning bitcoin: They both rely on a societal fiction that you can actually get the value of the asset when you expect that you can. In other words: The presence of a reliable financial and legal system is what makes the myth real for both assets. We forget that the idea that the gold could be “further away from”/“not actually in the physical possession of” the human who “owns” was not universally accepted at all points in history. In a weird way, bitcoin is more forthright in that it says out loud “trust me this is valuable because we all agree it just is” where non-custodial ownership of gold tries to imply that there’s less need for this trust because there’s an actual shiny rock on the planet somewhere and humans have a history of valuing shiny rocks. Ultimately it seems like it’s the “trust” part that mostly matters. Bitcoin is certainly harder to trust at the moment. But gold is rallying because there is less trust overall. That’s not good for either asset.
- tim333 8mo ago
  Over the last ten years gold is up about 5x and bitcoin up about 200x. The fact it's has a wobble doesn't prove it's all over. See Bitcoin Obituaries for the other 400 odd times people have claimed that, the first being when it was 23 cents.
throwa356262 9mo ago
Last time I heard bitcoin was in free fall and doomed it was at $18K... (I dont own any bitcoin and believe the world would be a better place without cryptocurrencies)
- webdevver 9mo ago
  i reckon this time it will touch $30k before hitting new high of $200k
  - dauertewigkeit 9mo ago
    Could be, but we don't know what is driving this meme magic. Could be totally organic. Could be not.
    - tim333 8mo ago
      We have a pretty good idea. Bitcoin holders and miners promote it. Punters buy because it's going up until it peaks and then they sell because it's going down. The a value is approx <amount average person invests in bitcoin> x <number of people> / <number of coins (~16 mil)> It goes up over the cycles as the number of people in it goes 1 mil, 10, 100, 1000 etc.
  - benj111 9mo ago
    Can't tell if genuine or sarcasm ...
    - webdevver 9mo ago
      very broad extrapolation of the previous two 'cycles'. after a peak, it tends to crash to 20-30% of previous peak value, goes sideways for a year or two, then goes up to 2x its previous peak. the 'four year cycle' is perhaps moreso the 'US presidential cycle'.
      - adastra22 9mo ago
        Bitcoin has already largely separated from the 4 year cycle.
rich_sasha 9mo ago
It's converging back towards its intrinsic value.
browningstreet 9mo ago
Hasn’t bitcoin repeatedly dropped 70%+ from record highs and then surged over that high again within a year?
- ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago
  Yes. Many things which happened before are still noteworthy when they happen again.
- jqpabc123 9mo ago
  Yes it has. But as they say, past history is no indication of future performance. Current economic conditions are anything but "normal" by recent historical standards. A good indication of this is the fact that "real gold" has risen just as dramatically and at the same time as "digital gold" has fallen.
  - DennisP 9mo ago
    Bitcoin has always traded more like tech stocks than gold.
    - jqpabc123 9mo ago
      The obvious difference being that tech stock value is based on some tangible product or service in a regulated marketplace. Bitcoin value is based on --- pure speculation and manipulation in an unregulated marketplace
- simmerup 9mo ago
  Yes, and such climbs coincide with Tether printing billions from unknown sources (most likely thin air) You can’t pump bitcoin with monopoly money forever, because the liquidity becomes too small
  - reisse 9mo ago
    It's expected for Tether to print when the crypto market cap is growing, because most crypto trades in USDT. So you cannot reliably say what is the cause and what is the consequence here. Then, if the price was pumped and the liquidity didn't match it, it'd be a perfect target to squeeze (because the market is so highly leveraged), at least one trading firm should've attempted it.
2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago
Tulip mania
fallingfrog 9mo ago
Well the reason people buy bitcoin at 100k is because they think it will someday be worth a million. If it's never going to be worth a million, then it's not worth 100k either.
- glimshe 9mo ago
  Unlike other goods with some real worth (like a tulip), you can apply your correct observation all the way to a cent if you exclude illicit uses of Bitcoin.
ArtTimeInvestor 9mo ago
So a minus of about 45% from the all time high three months ago? If this is it for this cycle, that would indicate the volatility of Bitcoin went down significantly. Taking a look at the Bitcoin to USD price chart, I see roughly these numbers: 2013: $1,100 -> $238 = -78% 2017: $19,000 -> $3,500 = -82% 2021: $68,000 -> $16,000 = -76% It will be interesting to watch if the volatility really stays this low suddenly. If so, one could point to the institutional adoption over the last years as the reason for this. When I ask Gemini for the number of public companies with Bitcoin on their balance sheets over the last years, I get: 2023: 67 2024: 79 2025: 190 And a similar trend for Bitcoin ETFs and ETPs. Twice as many in 2025 than in 2023.
- rossdavidh 9mo ago
  As others have pointed out, it also runs up less in percentage terms during the resurgence. If, as you posit, Bitcoin is becoming less volatile, then the question will be what the demand looks like when it is no longer a way of getting exposure to potential large upside. In other words, a lot of people have bought it in the hope that it will double or more. How many will buy it in the hope that it doesn't go down? Perhaps it will happen, but it's not obvious.
  - ArtTimeInvestor 9mo ago
    In the limit, that would mean that Bitcoin's volatility reflects only the savings rate of people. That would mean that Bitcoin is pure monetary value. In that case, it would suck out all the monetary premium from other assets like real estate, equities and gold. The monetary premium in those is probably a few hundred trillion. So by that time, Bitcoin's price should be 2 orders of magnitude higher than today.
skc 9mo ago
Hasn't wild volatility always proved to be the very nature of Bitcoin?
webdevver 9mo ago
its kind of fun now, in the 'post crypto' era. i used to think, well the 'serious' stuff is stocks, PMs, RE, etc., but crypto is a 'shitcoin', a 'gamble'. but infact, it recently dawned on me, its (almost) the other way around. everything is a 'shitcoin'. your real estate is a 'shitcoin', and can get 'rugged' with crime rates, or tax band shifts, or legislative changes with the sole purpose of winning populist votes. stocks can (and have) been getting rugged. gold got rugged recently (although now recovered.) cash gets rugged with money printing (but everyone already knows that.) for a long time i felt an implication that there's a 'safe house' for your resources, like in a video game, but at your choosing you can 'leave' the safe house for a risky win. but thinking about it more - that's a very 90s US-centric viewpoint of 'the end of history' - no, you can get absolutely screwed doing the 'right thing', playing 'smart'. you can do your homework and get deep fried anyway. i'm actually not sure which is more risky: holding bitcoin or real estate. genuinely, which is more dangerous?
- crazygringo 9mo ago
  > i'm actually not sure which is more risky: holding bitcoin or real estate. genuinely, which is more dangerous? You can look at past statistics and volatility. The answer is clearly that Bitcoin is far more risky on average. This is an objective question with an objective answer.
- rossdavidh 9mo ago
  Well, it would depend greatly on which real estate you mean. There are empty cities in China which testify that real estate can, in fact, be very risky, but most real estate is not like that. Lots of other places where it is certainly not safe, but in the end you can at least use it as a place to live (unlike the Chinese ghost cities), whereas Bitcoin does not have any intrinsic use (even T-bills can be used to pay government debt such as taxes).
- jezzamon 9mo ago
  rugged doesn't seem the right word. A rug pull represents the person creating and controlling a thing deciding to reveal it to be a scam and cash in at the expense of the suckers. Things like that tend to be illegal in the analogs you talk about.
xnx 9mo ago
Once Bitcoin goes to zero, the "everything bubble" healing can begin.
- asciii 9mo ago
  Maybe Satoshi will finally sell his coins at $0 as a joke to the world
throwaway1492 9mo ago
It’s my personal belief that btc has been the currency of foreign influence operations ie for paying media figures to influence popular opinion and sentiments. I believe this can be most readily seen in the US right and maga. The messaging is all very consistent across YouTube, x, fox, news nation etc across weeks, months and years. Brexit was a proof of concept, certainly it has spread.
- kkfx 9mo ago
  The Bitcoin genesis is certainly unclear; a FLOSS project is proudly published by those who create it and certainly don't want to remain anonymous, but the super-value of BTC over time has been driven by substantial criminal activities, not exactly US nor pro-US. The first ones were indeed US "ally", the D-Company that sold drugs for BTC to arm Al-Qaeda by selling BTC for weapons and explosives, which the sellers were happy to accept because they could sell them for various nations' fiat currencies to D-Company customers, laundering it well and without having to carry around pallets of unmarked bills, which are easy to seize during travel. Yes, Al-Qaeda was pro-US kleptocracy, certainly not pro-American people, see https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/resources/docs/ISPSW_461_Lin.pdf https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/c... But then China also used them to smuggle Fentanyl into the US, and this late revenge against the East India companies that invaded it with opium so long ago, on the wrong subject (since it was the UK that started the Opium War and the US helped and was largely helped by China, which paid for e.g. the development of the railway networks in the US, a history forgotten by most), it proved that BTC as a tool is neutral. Its use by Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea confirms this. So I suspend judgment, I don't trust the genesis, I read and encounter various problems https://blog.dshr.org/2025/09/the-gaslit-asset-class.html https://blog.dshr.org/2025/09/the-gaslit-asset-class.html but I am not completely convinced by your analysis and honestly, I am very much in favor of the end of the banking system and the current financial model for the development of humanity, and it matters little who brings about this event; they are the enemy of my enemy in any case.
monkeydust 9mo ago
After trying to trade the cycles I gave up and stuck some key currencies on a hard wallet put it somewhere safe and told my wife. My kids will either thanks me or wonder what the heck I was thinking in the future. Worth it for pure asymmetric payoff scenario and just to have some skin in the game. All imho and not advice!
bryanlarsen 9mo ago
Remember that bitcoin miners have to pay for electricity with real currencies, so they have to sell bitcoin regularly. Most other bitcoin uses are balanced -- ie user buys bitcoin gives to dealer who sells it. When the number of transactions per day is going up this is slight buy pressure because of the time lag between buy & sell, but in a steady state system this is neutral. IOW, the natural direction of bitcoin prices during steady state is down.
- D13Fd 8mo ago
  What is the volume of those real-world uses vs. the speculators/investors, I wonder?
iamnothere 9mo ago
XMR has dropped about 50%, which means it’s back to November prices. (If you ignore the unusual January spike, it’s not even down that much, price is usually rising slowly over time.) Since the maturation of XMR, I really don’t understand the popularity of Bitcoin except as a speculative asset. XMR is everything that BTC promised and failed to be, with real anonymity baked in. I’m not big on crypto, but it’s strange to see the continued focus on one of the least interesting technologies in the space.
- npoc 8mo ago
  Too difficult to audit the total supply, and tail emission. Bitcoin is anonymous enough while remaining fully auditable (nobody secretly printing it out of thin air) and perfectly scarce. If you think it's one of the least interesting technologies, then I suggest you don't understand the power of ideal scarcity in a liquid, digital asset
oompydoompy74 9mo ago
*BTC is on sale. Buy and hold .
ChrisArchitect 9mo ago
Related: Bitcoin gets a zero price target in wake of Burry warning https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46907794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46907794
ChrisArchitect 9mo ago
3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46900497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46900497
fortranfiend 8mo ago
[dead]
saxin 8mo ago
Wait for monday it will crash

The myth that bitcoin is an effective store of value (aka "digital gold") has just died. The proof is available in your crypto wallet. Real gold bullion has now been fully "digitized". You can buy and hold real bullion without taking delivery, without transactions fees and without dealing with tbe schenanigans of unregulated markets and manipulators. Over the past year of unprecedented marketplace turmoil and upheaval, "real gold" has risen just as dramatically as "digital gold" has fallen. Only one myth left standing in the way of bitcoin's total demise --- the idea that PoW is a reasonable and effective basis for financial markets/transactions. Are you willing to put real money on it?

seydor 9mo ago
If gold rises (and therefore falls) as crazy as Bitcoin, then why is it better
- simmerup 9mo ago
  Because when you buy gold you don’t have to rely on shady crypto bros to cash out
- DennisP 9mo ago
  You don't just want the best investment, you want several good investments that are uncorrelated with each other. Gold is better if you're looking for something to diversify your investments in the stock market, since it tends to do well when stocks are doing badly (though that's not guaranteed). Bitcoin of course has been better for really high returns, mostly when stocks are doing well. Whether that will continue is anyone's guess. Long-term returns for gold have basically matched the S&P500 total performance since the bottom of the dotcom crash.
- jqpabc123 9mo ago
  Excellent question. The answer is that "real gold" has a long, long history as a stable store of value and as a result, more people know it, trust it and are willing to buy it when the chips hit the fan. Here is a chart showing the price of gold over the past decade. https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html Here is a corresponding chart for bitcoin. https://charts.bitbo.io/price/ https://charts.bitbo.io/price/ But I would argue that the most important and telling part is what has ocurred recently, after a crypto fan assumed personal control over the world's largest economy.
- Rury 9mo ago
  Because they're not actually equivalents. Gold has unique properties as a material, unique properties that are useful. It'd be more widely used in industry if it wasn't such a scarce and expensive material. Bitcoin on the other hand, has no use other than for conducting trade. Because of this, they inherently carry different risks as an asset.
- tomrod 9mo ago
  You can use gold in tangible ways.
derektank 9mo ago
I’m a crypto skeptic but the benefit of bitcoin over gold has never been ease of transaction. The benefit is that regulators and governments are generally unable to confiscate bitcoin. The same is not true of gold, particularly if you do not take final delivery.
- esseph 9mo ago
  Not true though. "the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has also seized almost 130,000 bitcoin worth around $15 billion at the time of the announcement—the largest US cryptocurrency seizure to date." https://www.wired.com/story/feds-seize-record-breaking-15-billion-in-bitcoin-from-alleged-scam-empire/ https://www.wired.com/story/feds-seize-record-breaking-15-bi...
- heresie-dabord 9mo ago
  Here are estimates of the value of Bitcoin currently held (mostly via seizure) by the US government: https://www.theblock.co/post/374636/the-daily-us-government-bitcoin-holdings-surge-to-36-billion-crypto-etfs-see-755m-in-outflows-after-market-wipeout-and-more https://www.theblock.co/post/374636/the-daily-us-government-... https://www.mexc.com/learn/article/how-much-bitcoin-does-the-us-government-own-complete-guide/1 https://www.mexc.com/learn/article/how-much-bitcoin-does-the...
  - chistev 9mo ago
    How can you seize it without the private keys? Do they force it out of the people involved?
    - crazygringo 9mo ago
      You find the private keys wherever the owners stored them.
    - jqpabc123 9mo ago
      Do they force it out of the people involved? Yes, in a manner of speaking. Government has lots of coercive tools at it's disposable. For example, search warrants and incarceration. If you refuse to hand over your keys, government can easily nullify you or your relatives ability to make use of them and make your life really bad in the meantime. Keepjng money from government is yet another crypto myth that doesn't hold up very well in many cases.
mothballed 9mo ago
>You can buy and hold real bullion without taking delivery Not your vault, not your gold.
- jqpabc123 9mo ago
  True. Physical possession is an option with real gold --- as is stuffing fiat under your mattress. But even if you don't choose this route, I would argue that a fully regulated vault is a safer and more reasonable option than one that isn't.
jt2190 9mo ago
Having an app that tells you that you have a thing is not the same as physically having the thing. Owning gold in that sense is no different than owning bitcoin: They both rely on a societal fiction that you can actually get the value of the asset when you expect that you can. In other words: The presence of a reliable financial and legal system is what makes the myth real for both assets. We forget that the idea that the gold could be “further away from”/“not actually in the physical possession of” the human who “owns” was not universally accepted at all points in history. In a weird way, bitcoin is more forthright in that it says out loud “trust me this is valuable because we all agree it just is” where non-custodial ownership of gold tries to imply that there’s less need for this trust because there’s an actual shiny rock on the planet somewhere and humans have a history of valuing shiny rocks. Ultimately it seems like it’s the “trust” part that mostly matters. Bitcoin is certainly harder to trust at the moment. But gold is rallying because there is less trust overall. That’s not good for either asset.
tim333 8mo ago
Over the last ten years gold is up about 5x and bitcoin up about 200x. The fact it's has a wobble doesn't prove it's all over. See Bitcoin Obituaries for the other 400 odd times people have claimed that, the first being when it was 23 cents.

throwa356262 9mo ago

Last time I heard bitcoin was in free fall and doomed it was at $18K... (I dont own any bitcoin and believe the world would be a better place without cryptocurrencies)

webdevver 9mo ago
i reckon this time it will touch $30k before hitting new high of $200k
- dauertewigkeit 9mo ago
  Could be, but we don't know what is driving this meme magic. Could be totally organic. Could be not.
  - tim333 8mo ago
    We have a pretty good idea. Bitcoin holders and miners promote it. Punters buy because it's going up until it peaks and then they sell because it's going down. The a value is approx <amount average person invests in bitcoin> x <number of people> / <number of coins (~16 mil)> It goes up over the cycles as the number of people in it goes 1 mil, 10, 100, 1000 etc.
- benj111 9mo ago
  Can't tell if genuine or sarcasm ...
  - webdevver 9mo ago
    very broad extrapolation of the previous two 'cycles'. after a peak, it tends to crash to 20-30% of previous peak value, goes sideways for a year or two, then goes up to 2x its previous peak. the 'four year cycle' is perhaps moreso the 'US presidential cycle'.
    - adastra22 9mo ago
      Bitcoin has already largely separated from the 4 year cycle.

rich_sasha 9mo ago

It's converging back towards its intrinsic value.

browningstreet 9mo ago

Hasn’t bitcoin repeatedly dropped 70%+ from record highs and then surged over that high again within a year?

ekjhgkejhgk 9mo ago
Yes. Many things which happened before are still noteworthy when they happen again.
jqpabc123 9mo ago
Yes it has. But as they say, past history is no indication of future performance. Current economic conditions are anything but "normal" by recent historical standards. A good indication of this is the fact that "real gold" has risen just as dramatically and at the same time as "digital gold" has fallen.
- DennisP 9mo ago
  Bitcoin has always traded more like tech stocks than gold.
  - jqpabc123 9mo ago
    The obvious difference being that tech stock value is based on some tangible product or service in a regulated marketplace. Bitcoin value is based on --- pure speculation and manipulation in an unregulated marketplace
simmerup 9mo ago
Yes, and such climbs coincide with Tether printing billions from unknown sources (most likely thin air) You can’t pump bitcoin with monopoly money forever, because the liquidity becomes too small
- reisse 9mo ago
  It's expected for Tether to print when the crypto market cap is growing, because most crypto trades in USDT. So you cannot reliably say what is the cause and what is the consequence here. Then, if the price was pumped and the liquidity didn't match it, it'd be a perfect target to squeeze (because the market is so highly leveraged), at least one trading firm should've attempted it.

2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo ago

Tulip mania

fallingfrog 9mo ago

Well the reason people buy bitcoin at 100k is because they think it will someday be worth a million. If it's never going to be worth a million, then it's not worth 100k either.

glimshe 9mo ago
Unlike other goods with some real worth (like a tulip), you can apply your correct observation all the way to a cent if you exclude illicit uses of Bitcoin.

ArtTimeInvestor 9mo ago

So a minus of about 45% from the all time high three months ago? If this is it for this cycle, that would indicate the volatility of Bitcoin went down significantly. Taking a look at the Bitcoin to USD price chart, I see roughly these numbers: 2013: $1,100 -> $238 = -78% 2017: $19,000 -> $3,500 = -82% 2021: $68,000 -> $16,000 = -76% It will be interesting to watch if the volatility really stays this low suddenly. If so, one could point to the institutional adoption over the last years as the reason for this. When I ask Gemini for the number of public companies with Bitcoin on their balance sheets over the last years, I get: 2023: 67 2024: 79 2025: 190 And a similar trend for Bitcoin ETFs and ETPs. Twice as many in 2025 than in 2023.

rossdavidh 9mo ago
As others have pointed out, it also runs up less in percentage terms during the resurgence. If, as you posit, Bitcoin is becoming less volatile, then the question will be what the demand looks like when it is no longer a way of getting exposure to potential large upside. In other words, a lot of people have bought it in the hope that it will double or more. How many will buy it in the hope that it doesn't go down? Perhaps it will happen, but it's not obvious.
- ArtTimeInvestor 9mo ago
  In the limit, that would mean that Bitcoin's volatility reflects only the savings rate of people. That would mean that Bitcoin is pure monetary value. In that case, it would suck out all the monetary premium from other assets like real estate, equities and gold. The monetary premium in those is probably a few hundred trillion. So by that time, Bitcoin's price should be 2 orders of magnitude higher than today.

skc 9mo ago

Hasn't wild volatility always proved to be the very nature of Bitcoin?

webdevver 9mo ago

its kind of fun now, in the 'post crypto' era. i used to think, well the 'serious' stuff is stocks, PMs, RE, etc., but crypto is a 'shitcoin', a 'gamble'. but infact, it recently dawned on me, its (almost) the other way around. everything is a 'shitcoin'. your real estate is a 'shitcoin', and can get 'rugged' with crime rates, or tax band shifts, or legislative changes with the sole purpose of winning populist votes. stocks can (and have) been getting rugged. gold got rugged recently (although now recovered.) cash gets rugged with money printing (but everyone already knows that.) for a long time i felt an implication that there's a 'safe house' for your resources, like in a video game, but at your choosing you can 'leave' the safe house for a risky win. but thinking about it more - that's a very 90s US-centric viewpoint of 'the end of history' - no, you can get absolutely screwed doing the 'right thing', playing 'smart'. you can do your homework and get deep fried anyway. i'm actually not sure which is more risky: holding bitcoin or real estate. genuinely, which is more dangerous?

crazygringo 9mo ago
> i'm actually not sure which is more risky: holding bitcoin or real estate. genuinely, which is more dangerous? You can look at past statistics and volatility. The answer is clearly that Bitcoin is far more risky on average. This is an objective question with an objective answer.
rossdavidh 9mo ago
Well, it would depend greatly on which real estate you mean. There are empty cities in China which testify that real estate can, in fact, be very risky, but most real estate is not like that. Lots of other places where it is certainly not safe, but in the end you can at least use it as a place to live (unlike the Chinese ghost cities), whereas Bitcoin does not have any intrinsic use (even T-bills can be used to pay government debt such as taxes).
jezzamon 9mo ago
rugged doesn't seem the right word. A rug pull represents the person creating and controlling a thing deciding to reveal it to be a scam and cash in at the expense of the suckers. Things like that tend to be illegal in the analogs you talk about.

xnx 9mo ago

Once Bitcoin goes to zero, the "everything bubble" healing can begin.

asciii 9mo ago
Maybe Satoshi will finally sell his coins at $0 as a joke to the world

throwaway1492 9mo ago

It’s my personal belief that btc has been the currency of foreign influence operations ie for paying media figures to influence popular opinion and sentiments. I believe this can be most readily seen in the US right and maga. The messaging is all very consistent across YouTube, x, fox, news nation etc across weeks, months and years. Brexit was a proof of concept, certainly it has spread.

kkfx 9mo ago
The Bitcoin genesis is certainly unclear; a FLOSS project is proudly published by those who create it and certainly don't want to remain anonymous, but the super-value of BTC over time has been driven by substantial criminal activities, not exactly US nor pro-US. The first ones were indeed US "ally", the D-Company that sold drugs for BTC to arm Al-Qaeda by selling BTC for weapons and explosives, which the sellers were happy to accept because they could sell them for various nations' fiat currencies to D-Company customers, laundering it well and without having to carry around pallets of unmarked bills, which are easy to seize during travel. Yes, Al-Qaeda was pro-US kleptocracy, certainly not pro-American people, see https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/cis/center-for-securities-studies/resources/docs/ISPSW_461_Lin.pdf https://css.ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/gess/c... But then China also used them to smuggle Fentanyl into the US, and this late revenge against the East India companies that invaded it with opium so long ago, on the wrong subject (since it was the UK that started the Opium War and the US helped and was largely helped by China, which paid for e.g. the development of the railway networks in the US, a history forgotten by most), it proved that BTC as a tool is neutral. Its use by Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea confirms this. So I suspend judgment, I don't trust the genesis, I read and encounter various problems https://blog.dshr.org/2025/09/the-gaslit-asset-class.html https://blog.dshr.org/2025/09/the-gaslit-asset-class.html but I am not completely convinced by your analysis and honestly, I am very much in favor of the end of the banking system and the current financial model for the development of humanity, and it matters little who brings about this event; they are the enemy of my enemy in any case.

monkeydust 9mo ago

After trying to trade the cycles I gave up and stuck some key currencies on a hard wallet put it somewhere safe and told my wife. My kids will either thanks me or wonder what the heck I was thinking in the future. Worth it for pure asymmetric payoff scenario and just to have some skin in the game. All imho and not advice!

bryanlarsen 9mo ago

Remember that bitcoin miners have to pay for electricity with real currencies, so they have to sell bitcoin regularly. Most other bitcoin uses are balanced -- ie user buys bitcoin gives to dealer who sells it. When the number of transactions per day is going up this is slight buy pressure because of the time lag between buy & sell, but in a steady state system this is neutral. IOW, the natural direction of bitcoin prices during steady state is down.

D13Fd 8mo ago
What is the volume of those real-world uses vs. the speculators/investors, I wonder?

iamnothere 9mo ago

XMR has dropped about 50%, which means it’s back to November prices. (If you ignore the unusual January spike, it’s not even down that much, price is usually rising slowly over time.) Since the maturation of XMR, I really don’t understand the popularity of Bitcoin except as a speculative asset. XMR is everything that BTC promised and failed to be, with real anonymity baked in. I’m not big on crypto, but it’s strange to see the continued focus on one of the least interesting technologies in the space.

npoc 8mo ago
Too difficult to audit the total supply, and tail emission. Bitcoin is anonymous enough while remaining fully auditable (nobody secretly printing it out of thin air) and perfectly scarce. If you think it's one of the least interesting technologies, then I suggest you don't understand the power of ideal scarcity in a liquid, digital asset

oompydoompy74 9mo ago

*BTC is on sale. Buy and hold .

ChrisArchitect 9mo ago

Related: Bitcoin gets a zero price target in wake of Burry warning https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46907794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46907794

ChrisArchitect 9mo ago

3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46900497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46900497

fortranfiend 8mo ago

[dead]

saxin 8mo ago

Wait for monday it will crash