Bitcoin discussion and news
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not-bono-ever
meh
That is quite beautiful
Yossarian
Get thee behind me, Santa
Every now and again i think about the young man who used to live next door ,hasn't been in touch for ages and invested his parents pension in bitcoin for them.
Did he do it after October last year?
bimble
floofy
nope. A few years ago i think, but family relationships must be a bit awkward.
Yossarian
Get thee behind me, Santa
If he invested their pension in bitcoin a few years ago they'd still have made a massive profit at today's prices - I though the reason he might not have been in touch would be because he put their money in bitcoin in December last year and then they murdered him.
binka
!!!!!!!!!
Friend of mine put a couple of grand into it around Dec last year, in May when the price had fallen considerably he was talking about investing more. Convinced himself it couldn't possibly do anything other than keep going up long term and that the recent problems were a blip. He has other significant debts and bitcoin was probably his only hope of getting out of it.
Lot of people are financially fucked these days and they're the late comers who really thought it would solve all their problems. Wishful thinking strikes again
gosub
~#
You might think that, I'm inclined to disagree
mauvais
on reddit or something
Which bit and why?
People will cling on in the hope it recovers. Eventually they’ll mentally write it off though and pull out, at which point it goes pop.
not-bono-ever
meh
I’m ‘financially ruined’: Cryptocurrency investors are crushed by losses of 70% or more
So fucking annoying that people are sucked into this - I know it’s human nature and shit but ...
ETA - this theme of hard working people finally getting the chance to participate in the fantasy wealth lifestyle is an ever present with stuff like this - whole countries have collapsed whilst singing this song
So fucking annoying that people are sucked into this - I know it’s human nature and shit but ...
ETA - this theme of hard working people finally getting the chance to participate in the fantasy wealth lifestyle is an ever present with stuff like this - whole countries have collapsed whilst singing this song
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bimble
floofy
huh. Crypto-bros moving to Puerto Rico, saying they are there to save the country, and also to avoid tax.
The perfect storm: building a crypto-utopia in Puerto Rico – video
The perfect storm: building a crypto-utopia in Puerto Rico – video
gosub
~#
Cos Sin Tan (or variant thereof)
cupid_stunt
Merry fecking Christmas.
What could possibly go wrong?
ricbake
working out how
The bitcoin someone paid me a year ago is 40% up on its Sterling value.
not-bono-ever
meh
Thus will reach one million by the End of the year deffo. Today’s 6% slump to under 7k is just a blip. A goddam Buying opportunity . It’s FREE MONEY
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It's been remarkably stable the last few months, tbh, bumping around between £5k and 6k, enough to keep the miners mining. Its use value remains negligible. The environment continues to burn month after month after month.
Reports of further crashes have so far turned out to be nothing of the kind. It's jittery in response to any bad news, that's all thus far.
What is striking is that all the other cryptocons continue to mirror btc in their movements. None is rising - the crypto 'market' as a whole rose as one at the end of last year, then fell as one, and is now bumping around as one.
Reports of further crashes have so far turned out to be nothing of the kind. It's jittery in response to any bad news, that's all thus far.
What is striking is that all the other cryptocons continue to mirror btc in their movements. None is rising - the crypto 'market' as a whole rose as one at the end of last year, then fell as one, and is now bumping around as one.
Yossarian
Get thee behind me, Santa
Not sure if that's a typo or an accurate description of most of the alt-coins out there.
It does seem like a lot of people had the mistaken belief that buying a bunch of different cryptocurrencies was creating a "diversified portfolio."
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It wasn't a typo. To be clear, I consider every one of these things to be an environment-butchering confidence trick, and the pyramid will collapse at some point. That it hasn't done so yet, and has even reached a kind of equilibrium at around 1/3 the value of the peak in Dec last year, does surprise me a little, but the paraphernalia surrounding the con, its bells and whistles, is very considerable still and is perhaps the explanation for this relatively extended period of high plateau.
But the way that they very precisely mirror one another, not just broad-brush but at a significant level of detail, is very striking and is something I don't think it's obvious to expect to see. I guess the explanation is simply that they are all versions of the same pyramid relying on exactly the same kind of confidence to sustain them, and vulnerable to exactly the same kind of bad news.
But the way that they very precisely mirror one another, not just broad-brush but at a significant level of detail, is very striking and is something I don't think it's obvious to expect to see. I guess the explanation is simply that they are all versions of the same pyramid relying on exactly the same kind of confidence to sustain them, and vulnerable to exactly the same kind of bad news.
BigTom
Well-Known Member
Certain crypto coins do have use - bitcoin, litecoin, etherium and maybe some others on darknet markets for drugs and other illegal items, and I would think Monero (if I have the right one) which is actually anonymous for money launderers and criminal organisations.
That's why bitcoin hasn't collapsed completely, and why I don't think it necessarily will (until/unless it's either surpassed by a different cryptocurrency or regulated out of existence or drugs are legalised). The really odd thing is that all the people who actually use bitcoin don't care about the price, because the things they are buying aren't priced in bitcoin. If you want to buy £10 of drugs and a bitcoin costs £5 you buy two bitcoins. If they are £5,000 you buy 0.002 bitcoins (if my maths doesn't fail me). What matters is stability which makes it surprising bitcoin have been adopted but there's nothing else that serves the function and it's so much easier to buy drugs over the internet than with traditional dealers that the instability is tolerated by buyers and sellers. (it also means they won't care if it crashes in price which is another interesting dynamic)
Because there were still people buying as the price fell from December, it didn't collapse completely, so it's quite likely that we will see another cycle of large rise and then partial collapse I think. It's like normally this kind of thing would have a base of zero so once it collapses no-one is going to buy it again, but bitcoin still has people buying regularly as it falls so it'll keep cycling up and down.
The con has a base of truth, the best/worst kind of con.
The other coins are just the con so they totally rely on what bitcoin is doing and the vague promise that perhaps they will become the successor to bitcoin somehow.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
The use value of these things is tiny. A few thousand transactions every few minutes, tops. Yes, it is used to trade illegal stuff. But that's it. Its transaction volume is dwarfed by the volume of those using 'normal' money routes, and there is no mechanism so far for it to compete at those kinds of scales, even if there were a demand for it, which there isn't and won't be. Why pay for something with btc when you can just use Visa?
The base of truth is miniscule. Its use value justifies - perhaps, at tops - an exchange value for each btc of a couple of hundred dollars each, and that's being massively charitable towards it: it gives an 'income' to the miner equivalent to a dollar or so per transaction on the block, which they may or may not top up with fees. Regardless of that, the mechanism itself - burning fuel and swallowing up high-tech as it does - is pure evil.
The base of truth is miniscule. Its use value justifies - perhaps, at tops - an exchange value for each btc of a couple of hundred dollars each, and that's being massively charitable towards it: it gives an 'income' to the miner equivalent to a dollar or so per transaction on the block, which they may or may not top up with fees. Regardless of that, the mechanism itself - burning fuel and swallowing up high-tech as it does - is pure evil.
BigTom
Well-Known Member
Whilst that's true, it doesn't say anything about the fractions of usages within bitcoin that are actual use and that are speculation. If it was just speculation then after december when it was crashing big and everyone was trying to sell, the value would collapse quickly at some point, but if the fraction of people actually using bitcoins is big enough, that provides a group who continue to buy regardless of price.
I don't understand how you go about thinking about what the use value justifies in terms of the price of bitcoins, especially since the users don't care what the price is. Miners income is only that until the next halving and at some point will become only fees, and the dynamic will change again at each of those points, especially the last.
Your last point is of course correct, and I'm not defending bitcoin, just explaining why I think it didn't completely collapse earlier this year and achieved some kind of stability (if a ~20% price variance can be called stable! Only in bitcoin world eh?)
not-bono-ever
meh
Blockchain still has potential value as a record keeping system I hope. It’s sll a bit wanky but if the financial drivers behind for profit mining that we focus on in this thread are removed it still has some social benefit
I will be proved wrong on this obviously. I usually am
I will be proved wrong on this obviously. I usually am
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