Is Crypto dying or just dropping for the moment?

[Artemus]

I wish that the bigger fools who keep trading legitimate currency for bitcoin tokens would realize that all they are doing is effectively laundering money for the criminals.

Do you think they care? If non-criminals who are long Bitcoin think that criminals are driving up the price, then they will be eager for more criminals to get involved.

It's not the criminals who are driving up the price but the Bigger Fools. Criminals don't buy bitcoin, they steal or are given it as ransom, which they turn around and sell as quickly as possible for whatever price they can get. Bigger Fools who Fear Of Missing Out buy them and in effect are laundering money for the criminals. And sadly, as in any speculative bubble, the Bigger Fools are the ones who are going to lose out when the bubble bursts.

 

[Artemus]

WIth the FBI recovering most (all?) of the pipeline ransom today the only apparent use for bitcoin appears to be less apparent. Prices have already dropped some and I expect them to drop even more.

I wish that the bigger fools who keep trading legitimate currency for bitcoin tokens would realize that all they are doing is effectively laundering money for the criminals.

Bitcoin is only down 10% today, which is a cryptocurrency burp. Granted, it is down 50% since its peak.

I think the harms via the inability to use Bitcoin as currency after the Tesla reversal followed by this which implies there might be risk to using it for black market purposes should weigh on Bitcoin. Time will tell.

It rebounded today to almost its starting level, so you are right about the burp. But it has been all bad news recently and I think it will continue to decline. People should be slowly realizing that you can't buy anything with it, you can't pay off loans, it is not even safe from government seizures and taxation, it's not a store of value (10% burps ), and eventually you will run out of Bigger Fools.

Then again, people are stupid.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

link

Cryptocurrency is quite possibly one of the easiest ways to make money... if you were reckless and invested real early and refused to sell out at all of the wild swings. $10 on Bitcoin at $10 a coin would be worth $40,000 today. The trouble is, cryptocurrency has almost no basis for its value, so it can easily sway when a person like Elon Musk announces he is accepting Bitcoin at Tesla or won't accept Bitcoin at Tesla... or talks on SNL.

What's happening: Bitcoin prices have plummeted about 12% to less than $50,000 in the last 24 hours, according to Coindesk. The decline comes after Musk, Tesla's CEO and a vocal bitcoin advocate, said his company was suspending plans to accept the cryptocurrency as payment for electric vehicles, citing its "high environmental cost."

Crypto has dropped notably since SNL broadcasted. Which is never a good sign for an investment if SNL can impact its value heavily.

Cryptocurrency is currently living a lie. That it is well... currency at all. Currency, in order to be useful, must maintain a value. Currency with huge swings in value is harmful for economy. Ironic that those that vouch for it whine about inflation, when Bitcoin has deflated like a balloon crushed by a 100-ton safe.

So with Musk saying 'backsies' over Bitcoin at Tesla, Bitcoin has dropped 10%, I think in part because it exposes the lie of Bitcoin's viability as a currency. Of course, wild drops are not uncommon for imagery funny money, so this could be a periodic drop. The one thing that makes me ponder this is the end is that normal people are investing now. And usually when the normal people are investing, that is the peak of the pyramid, and the sell off begins. Cryptocurrency is tantalizing, as the chance to make money was real (if not reckless and baseless). And that past performances idiom is getting ignored. New start up cryptos are coming out almost like Internet companies in the late 90s, which led to a deflation of that bubble.

So lots of losses for Bitcoin and Crypto during this period for a couple days, and then it rescued itself back to nearly the monthly high. But now news from China has battered crypto back down again to the lows. Time will tell if it rebounds... again. Bitcoin is below $30,000 for the first time since crossing that plateau in January.

 

[Jarhyn]

I wish that the bigger fools who keep trading legitimate currency for bitcoin tokens would realize that all they are doing is effectively laundering money for the criminals.

Do you think they care? If non-criminals who are long Bitcoin think that criminals are driving up the price, then they will be eager for more criminals to get involved.

It's not the criminals who are driving up the price but the Bigger Fools. Criminals don't buy bitcoin, they steal or are given it as ransom, which they turn around and sell as quickly as possible for whatever price they can get. Bigger Fools who Fear Of Missing Out buy them and in effect are laundering money for the criminals. And sadly, as in any speculative bubble, the Bigger Fools are the ones who are going to lose out when the bubble bursts.

This post is a great reason to ignore everything you have to say on the topic.

You obviously never actually looked into this.

Most criminals do, in fact, buy their Bitcoin. It's something of a toss-up between smurfing for the bitcoin and using exchange services themselves.

You can get a pretty clear idea what and how black market coin economies work by looking at a darkweb directory such as dark.fail (hint: it's all drugs and CC fraud and other sales based activities).

I can say quite confidently that I know zero people who have acquired Bitcoin through anything other than symmetrical economic exchanges of stuff.

Criminals ABSOLUTELY buy Bitcoin. Though sometimes they sell it, depending on what side of the transaction they are on at the moment.

 

[Artemus]

It's not the criminals who are driving up the price but the Bigger Fools. Criminals don't buy bitcoin, they steal or are given it as ransom, which they turn around and sell as quickly as possible for whatever price they can get. Bigger Fools who Fear Of Missing Out buy them and in effect are laundering money for the criminals. And sadly, as in any speculative bubble, the Bigger Fools are the ones who are going to lose out when the bubble bursts.

This post is a great reason to ignore everything you have to say on the topic.

You obviously never actually looked into this.

Most criminals do, in fact, buy their Bitcoin. It's something of a toss-up between smurfing for the bitcoin and using exchange services themselves.

You can get a pretty clear idea what and how black market coin economies work by looking at a darkweb directory such as dark.fail (hint: it's all drugs and CC fraud and other sales based activities).

I can say quite confidently that I know zero people who have acquired Bitcoin through anything other than symmetrical economic exchanges of stuff.

Criminals ABSOLUTELY buy Bitcoin. Though sometimes they sell it, depending on what side of the transaction they are on at the moment.

I was speaking of the ransomware criminals when I posted, so yes, my blanket statement was incorrect and I should have been clearer. But every reputable source has made it clear that the price increases have been a speculative bubble driven by "investors" who think they are going to get rich quick, not the criminal element. That fact is unchanged. (Search for "bitcoin price speculative" and ignore the hits from places like "coindesk.com". Then search for "bitcoin price criminal" and see if you can find an article attributing the recent price rises to criminal activity.)

Interestingly, though, cybercrime seems to be moving to Monero. Perhaps soon Bitcoin will only be held by the biggest fools. Hopefully they won't switch to Monero to provide their money laundering services there.

ETA: Cybercrime is a tiny fraction of cryptocurrency transactions. The price is driven by speculators.

And incidently, like you I also know no one who obtained their bitcoin by other than economic exchange. But that is probably because neither of us hang around with North Korean hackers, and therefore makes people we know a horribly biased and incomplete data set by which to make any judgements.

 

[funinspace]

ETA: Cybercrime is a tiny fraction of cryptocurrency transactions. The price is driven by speculators.

Cathie Wood's ARKW ETF recently bought a million additional shares of GBTC (a fund that holds Bitcoin), in their $5.6 billion fund. Billionaire fund investors like Ray Dalio are also invested. Personally, I think some of the cryptocurrency space is not just 'speculation'.

Disclosure: I no longer hold anything with Bitcoin; but I do still have some in ETHE (Ethereum) within an IRA.

 

[Artemus]

ETA: Cybercrime is a tiny fraction of cryptocurrency transactions. The price is driven by speculators.

Cathie Wood's ARKW ETF recently bought a million additional shares of GBTC (a fund that holds Bitcoin), in their $5.6 billion fund. Billionaire fund investors like Ray Dalio are also invested. Personally, I think some of the cryptocurrency space is not just 'speculation'.

Disclosure: I no longer hold anything with Bitcoin; but I do still have some in ETHE (Ethereum) within an IRA.

I would argue that any investment in bitcoin is by definition speculation. You can't buy anything (legal) with it, you don't receive interest or dividends, you can't lease it out, you can't build anything with it, you can't grow anything on it, you can't burn or fission it and recover energy. In fact you, you can't do anything with it except hope that someone else will pay you more for it. It seems to me that it is a textbook match to the definition in the Investopedia (or any) link I can find. Normally I have no problem with speculative investments, it is your money to risk at your discretion. With bitcoin, however, there are the ludicrous energy costs and criminal opportunities that don't exist with mainstream investments. It needs to be heavily regulated, just like any other investment.

 

[funinspace]

A small sampling of buying with bitcoin...
https://www.moneyunder30.com/things-you-can-buy-with-bitcoin

15 Surprising Things You Can Buy With Bitcoin

 

[Jarhyn]

It's not the criminals who are driving up the price but the Bigger Fools. Criminals don't buy bitcoin, they steal or are given it as ransom, which they turn around and sell as quickly as possible for whatever price they can get. Bigger Fools who Fear Of Missing Out buy them and in effect are laundering money for the criminals. And sadly, as in any speculative bubble, the Bigger Fools are the ones who are going to lose out when the bubble bursts.

This post is a great reason to ignore everything you have to say on the topic.

You obviously never actually looked into this.

Most criminals do, in fact, buy their Bitcoin. It's something of a toss-up between smurfing for the bitcoin and using exchange services themselves.

You can get a pretty clear idea what and how black market coin economies work by looking at a darkweb directory such as dark.fail (hint: it's all drugs and CC fraud and other sales based activities).

I can say quite confidently that I know zero people who have acquired Bitcoin through anything other than symmetrical economic exchanges of stuff.

Criminals ABSOLUTELY buy Bitcoin. Though sometimes they sell it, depending on what side of the transaction they are on at the moment.

I was speaking of the ransomware criminals when I posted, so yes, my blanket statement was incorrect and I should have been clearer. But every reputable source has made it clear that the price increases have been a speculative bubble driven by "investors" who think they are going to get rich quick, not the criminal element. That fact is unchanged. (Search for "bitcoin price speculative" and ignore the hits from places like "coindesk.com". Then search for "bitcoin price criminal" and see if you can find an article attributing the recent price rises to criminal activity.)

Interestingly, though, cybercrime seems to be moving to Monero. Perhaps soon Bitcoin will only be held by the biggest fools. Hopefully they won't switch to Monero to provide their money laundering services there.

ETA: Cybercrime is a tiny fraction of cryptocurrency transactions. The price is driven by speculators.

And incidently, like you I also know no one who obtained their bitcoin by other than economic exchange. But that is probably because neither of us hang around with North Korean hackers, and therefore makes people we know a horribly biased and incomplete data set by which to make any judgements.

I keep pointing out that once Bitcoin loses the tentative tether to reality that is the black market economy, it's all going to be a wash.

Currently, at the very least, I know Bitcoin has a real value of X Liquid Marijuanas per spacebuck.

I don't see criminal activity driving Bitcoin per se. Speculation drives it around. The criminal activity is the value BASIS though. Similarly, if suddenly Tesla's factories suddenly fell into a sinkhole, it doesn't matter what value people had speculated muskbux to, for example; the price would drop out because speculation is still always on continued value of the economy the resource mediates.

Just because people are largely unaware that the economic foam of activity that is Bitcoin is 99% criminal doesn't change the fact that when that churning activity vanishes, people will quit the game. I don't think it has reached critical mass to self-sustain without that modest mainspring pushing energy into it's ticks.

Miners are mining two things: transactional taxes on speculation, and transactional taxes on criminals. Without the incentive of the actual criminals to touch the stuff, it goes tits up.

 

[Gospel]

A small sampling of buying with bitcoin...
https://www.moneyunder30.com/things-you-can-buy-with-bitcoin

15 Surprising Things You Can Buy With Bitcoin

Ahh, you can buy just about anything with Bitcoin. Services like Paypal use Bitcoin Cash these days. You can even buy things for other people using USD in exchange for bitcoin. Not the same thing but that second mention reminds me of how the hood traded dollars for an increased value in food stamps to get more bang per buck while the seller can now purchase more than food.

 

[ZiprHead]

A small sampling of buying with bitcoin...
https://www.moneyunder30.com/things-you-can-buy-with-bitcoin

15 Surprising Things You Can Buy With Bitcoin

Ahh, you can buy just about anything with Bitcoin. Services like Paypal use Bitcoin Cash these days. You can even buy things for other people using USD in exchange for bitcoin. Not the same thing but that second mention reminds me of how the hood traded dollars for an increased value in food stamps to get more bang per buck while the seller can now purchase more than food.

The server this board is run on takes bitcoin for payment.

 

[Angry Floof]

I bought a tiny bit of crypto for fun, not enough to care if it tanks. I bought four different types of crypto, and all of them are kind of tanking this past month or two. I don't know from my investment which one is doing best or worst because I keep forgetting to check, but I do see the total investment about every other day and today is the first day in a month or so that any of them are going up. Thus far they've all been orange arrow down lately and my total investment is at an all time low, less than half of my original investment.



So I guess we'll see tomorrow if the upward trend continues. I would not know where to begin speculating on how it will move other than big, visible events like Elon Musk doing something Elon Musky with crypto.

I actually know zero about both crypto and investing. Like I said, this is just for fun. But it would still be awesome if it shot way up again.

 

[Rhea]

The server this board is run on takes bitcoin for payment.

Sp George Soros can fund us now?

 

[ZiprHead]

Heh, I wish.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The server this board is run on takes bitcoin for payment.

Sp George Soros can fund us now?

Heh, I wish.

Saying he could isn't the same as saying he will.

 

[lpetrich]

The Economist on Twitter: "In parts of Sichuan, bitcoin miners were ordered to clear out computers and demolish buildings housing them overnight" / Twitter
noting
Deep in rural China, bitcoin miners are packing up | The Economist - "A government clampdown has forced most of them offline"

IN THE HENGDUAN mountains of Sichuan province, swollen brown rivers and trees heavy with ripe mangoes do not evoke digital wizardry. Yet until recently, there were buildings here with rack upon rack of specialised computers. They were often near hydropower plants that supplied them with electricity from dams. They needed lots of power. Their machines were used for “mining”, a process that involves validating transactions conducted in bitcoin and other digital currencies by solving cryptographic puzzles. In return, they received newly minted coins. The buildings were recognisable by their huge cooling systems: usually a wall on one side covered in giant fans to draw in air.

But across Sichuan, the fans have stopped whirring. In May, a government committee tasked with promoting financial stability vowed to put a stop to bitcoin mining. Within weeks the authorities in four main mining regions—Inner Mongolia, Sichuan, Xinjiang and Yunnan—ordered the closure of local projects. Residents of Inner Mongolia were urged to call a hotline to report anyone flouting the ban. In parts of Sichuan, miners were ordered to clear out computers and demolish buildings housing them overnight. Power suppliers pulled the plug on most of them.

The clampdown has had a global impact. Bitcoin’s “hash rate”, a measure of the computational power being used by the world’s mining machines, has fallen by half in recent weeks. Its “difficulty rate”, which rises and falls as computers join or leave the mining effort, last week fell to an all-time low. China had accounted for about 65% of bitcoins earned through mining, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. But analysts think about 90% of its mining has now ceased. Chinese miners are selling their computers at half their value.

... The Cambridge numbers suggest that Chinese miners used around 83TWh of electricity a year, similar to Belgium’s total power consumption.

... To evade the clampdown, big miners have sent their machines overseas.

Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general, are essentially distributed accounting ledgers.

The blockchain part of them is how the ledgers' integrity is maintained. The transactions are divided into blocks, with each one having a hashcode like what are made by CRC-32 or MD5 or SHA-1. A hashcode is essentially a scrambled summary of its data, and changes to that data are very likely to make changes in a hashcode made from it. Each block's data includes the previous block's hashcode, so that makes it difficult to alter a block -- one has to redo all the later blocks to fit with it.

Each block also includes a "nonce value", and for it to be added to the blockchain, its nonce value must be selected to make the block's hashcode smaller than some value. That means trying a LOT of nonce values. That is done so as to make its selection essentially one-way, so that it is much easier to verify a block than to compose it.

This process is called "mining" in analogy with gold mining and the like. This trial-and-error is why Bitcoin miners buy a lot of computers and a lot of video cards, and why they consume so much electricity.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies in general, are essentially distributed accounting ledgers.

The blockchain part of them is how the ledgers' integrity is maintained. The transactions are divided into blocks, with each one having a hashcode like what are made by CRC-32 or MD5 or SHA-1. A hashcode is essentially a scrambled summary of its data, and changes to that data are very likely to make changes in a hashcode made from it. Each block's data includes the previous block's hashcode, so that makes it difficult to alter a block -- one has to redo all the later blocks to fit with it.

Each block also includes a "nonce value", and for it to be added to the blockchain, its nonce value must be selected to make the block's hashcode smaller than some value. That means trying a LOT of nonce values. That is done so as to make its selection essentially one-way, so that it is much easier to verify a block than to compose it.

This process is called "mining" in analogy with gold mining and the like. This trial-and-error is why Bitcoin miners buy a lot of computers and a lot of video cards, and why they consume so much electricity.

The accounting part of it is fine--it's the mining side that is a bad thing and I have no problem at all with China cracking down on it.

 

[funinspace]

link

Cryptocurrency is quite possibly one of the easiest ways to make money... if you were reckless and invested real early and refused to sell out at all of the wild swings. $10 on Bitcoin at $10 a coin would be worth $40,000 today. The trouble is, cryptocurrency has almost no basis for its value, so it can easily sway when a person like Elon Musk announces he is accepting Bitcoin at Tesla or won't accept Bitcoin at Tesla... or talks on SNL.

What's happening: Bitcoin prices have plummeted about 12% to less than $50,000 in the last 24 hours, according to Coindesk. The decline comes after Musk, Tesla's CEO and a vocal bitcoin advocate, said his company was suspending plans to accept the cryptocurrency as payment for electric vehicles, citing its "high environmental cost."

Crypto has dropped notably since SNL broadcasted. Which is never a good sign for an investment if SNL can impact its value heavily.

Cryptocurrency is currently living a lie. That it is well... currency at all. Currency, in order to be useful, must maintain a value. Currency with huge swings in value is harmful for economy. Ironic that those that vouch for it whine about inflation, when Bitcoin has deflated like a balloon crushed by a 100-ton safe.

So with Musk saying 'backsies' over Bitcoin at Tesla, Bitcoin has dropped 10%, I think in part because it exposes the lie of Bitcoin's viability as a currency. Of course, wild drops are not uncommon for imagery funny money, so this could be a periodic drop. The one thing that makes me ponder this is the end is that normal people are investing now. And usually when the normal people are investing, that is the peak of the pyramid, and the sell off begins. Cryptocurrency is tantalizing, as the chance to make money was real (if not reckless and baseless). And that past performances idiom is getting ignored. New start up cryptos are coming out almost like Internet companies in the late 90s, which led to a deflation of that bubble.

So lots of losses for Bitcoin and Crypto during this period for a couple days, and then it rescued itself back to nearly the monthly high. But now news from China has battered crypto back down again to the lows. Time will tell if it rebounds... again. Bitcoin is below $30,000 for the first time since crossing that plateau in January.

So, it seems that it has climbed above 40k...maybe for a while...but certainly not as dead as a parrot...

 

[funinspace]

So with Musk saying 'backsies' over Bitcoin at Tesla, Bitcoin has dropped 10%, I think in part because it exposes the lie of Bitcoin's viability as a currency. Of course, wild drops are not uncommon for imagery funny money, so this could be a periodic drop. The one thing that makes me ponder this is the end is that normal people are investing now. And usually when the normal people are investing, that is the peak of the pyramid, and the sell off begins. Cryptocurrency is tantalizing, as the chance to make money was real (if not reckless and baseless). And that past performances idiom is getting ignored. New start up cryptos are coming out almost like Internet companies in the late 90s, which led to a deflation of that bubble.

Well, clearly it wasn't Death's big show. It seems that Bitcoin is struggling to stay above $50k now. More significant is Ethereum is closing in on it's previous peak from last May around $4k.

Your analogy to the Dot-Com boom-bust is probably a good one at a few levels. I'm sure many things will wash away and die. But, like so many things from the Internet companies, the whole of it certainly didn't die, but instead flourished over the long term. I don't see Cyrpto, and the emergent things like Non-fungible tokens (NFT) going away. I'm not sure where it will all be in a decade, but it will still be with us. Helium (HNT) is another player that is working towards practical things with their project on wireless hotspots, and has even gotten a few significant corporate engagements such as Salesforce.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It just keeps going, and proving why it is a failure as currency... and yet people keep using it as currency. The one difference between Internet IPOs and crypto is that at least a number of the companies actually provided a viable service. Cryptos are currency equivs of Locast and Aereo, where they exist almost exclusively because it flaunts the tax code and provides some level of illusion of being secretive and shadowy. Also, terrorists didn't take advantage of Internet IPOs.