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Meme Coins Return To Earth as Gloom Overtakes Crypto Fanatics (bloomberg.com) 54

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Cryptocurrency enthusiasts who piled into meme coins such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu amid the long-time industry rallying call of "to the moon" are finding this year's journey back to earth pretty painful. From a report: Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and other tokens associated more with online jokes rather than actual software products have been hit harder than sector originals Bitcoin or Ethereum during the recent retreat from the record price levels reached late last year. Doge is off nearly 80% from its all-time high of 74 cents in May, and Shiba has declined more than 65% since hitting its peak of fractions of a penny in late October, according to data compiled by Messari.

Trading volumes have fallen off, now measured in millions instead of billions. And the jokes that once swayed a legion of mostly retail day traders to buy up coins on a whim come with a hint of sadness. The frenzy started with Doge. A digital token created in 2013 by a pair of software engineers took off as interest in crypto trading spiked and a new crop of retail traders took to social media platforms, using jokes, sarcasm and trolling to gin up their popularity. Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk's embrace of the token helped to send it soaring. Doge's popularity inspired the creation of new tokens based on the breed of dog, including Shiba Inu, Baby Shiba Inu and Floki, which is named after Musk's pet.
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Meme Coins Return To Earth as Gloom Overtakes Crypto Fanatics More

Meme Coins Return To Earth as Gloom Overtakes Crypto Fanatics

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  • While not quite the same, this is pretty close [youtube.com] when it comes to meme "coins".

  • No new technology is implemented homogeneously into a society. It's likely we're to face more boom+bust cycles akin to the tech waves of the 80's-2000's as adoption becomes more transparent and ubiquitous.
    • OK but that doesn't tell us whether bitcoin is amazon.com or pets.com

  • A lot of the rise in crypto has been manipulation, maybe with it going down like this a lot of the manipulation will leave the system, or has left.

    Although I really like the idea of BitCoin, I'm currently out and only go in for short periods because I think the price is distorted. Maybe if it drops low enough again I might consider getting some longer term. Not quite sure what low enough is for me though...

    • While I can see the ability to get in/out here and there and make some money now....

      I'm curious about the long term viability of everything digital here.

      I thought I read that when quantum computing really becomes viable, that that spells the end of blockchain as that it can be decrypted, is that right?

      And also....and sure, this is paranoid thinking, but we're long overdue for a large sun flare/storm being tossed our way and a large enough one might really fry a lot of the internet.

      Seems both of those re

      • I thought I read that when quantum computing really becomes viable, that that spells the end of blockchain as that it can be decrypted, is that right?

        That is the case but there are already efforts underway to quantum-proof the blockchain [consensys.net]. (I can't believe that is a real thing I just typed).

        Seems both of those reasons would make it smart to not go full bore into digital for value store, but to keep some physical stuff too...gold, etc.

        Yes for sure, that is where some of my money goes when I'm hopping out of

        • that is where some of my money goes when I'm hopping out of crypto.

          If you don't mind me asking...do you just buy crypto, or are you mining it too....or staking it, etc?

  • Live by speculation, die by speculation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Friday January 07, 2022 @10:30AM (#62152033)

    No sympathy.

  • "Crypto" is a glorified NFT, and NFTs are glorified collectibles.

    It's the ultimate extrapolation of the absurdity of believing that rarity = value. Literally rewarding people for consuming real resources to do empty calculations.

    Sooner or later, the world has to move to a more rational currency, and that seems like it should be the exact opposite of crypto: Not an abstraction with nothing behind it, but a literal, mechanical fact that no country can either fake or hoard. Units of energy or power sho

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      So.. the world should move forward by going backwards to things that worked poorly and had to be replaced?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        While the OP started off sounding like a gold bug, what he actually suggested was using energy as a value standard. Energy is arguably *already* our value standard, albeit indirectly.

        There are some advantages to using something that has actual intrinsic, productive worth as a backing for a currency, and disadvantages too, of course. Our current system is really based on productivity itself, which is pretty close to energy * efficiency, and gets repegged dynamically depending on how the actual minting of mon

      • This is an incredibly naive response. Currency arose naturally in places that carried enough trade to need it. As such, it is based on economic activity. It derives its value in the real trust embedded in the economic activity of that region. It is impossible to endow cryptocurrency with any value because it is not associated with any actual, real economic activity. This is why it's not a currency. It will never be a currency. This naivete of the cryptocurrency advocates guarantees its demise.

        As long as the

    • You're buying a code.

      Someone said it was money and said it had value, and people believed it.

      • You're buying a code. A code with no physical meaning other than the energy it consumes, yielding nothing but a direct path to maximum entropy.

        It seems natural that the energy itself should be the currency rather than some egotistical joke among coders.

    • Claiming fungible tokens are non-fungible doesn't make sense.

      • And if naming something dictated its reality, that would be a meaningful objection. But since you can sell NFTs, their name and the hocus-pocus behind their supposed specialness is totally irrelevant.

        • hocus-pocus behind their supposed specialness

          It's called public key cryptography.

          • It's called public key cryptography.

            Cryptography has a very important role to play in financial transactions and security applications. The question is why it would or should add value to art.

            If someone actually believes that uniqueness adds useful value, then just pick up a grain of sand somewhere. There is literally no other grain of sand anywhere in the universe or all of time exactly like it.

  • How cynical it all seems to name your product after an influencer's pet in the hopes he will shill it. It's right up there with trying to message the president through ads on Fox News or messages on Peleton.

    What next ? Does "the Rock" have a dog we can name a new pair of spandex tights for ?

    • A line of pet rocks named after The Rock's dog seems more in line with the spirit of the thing.
  • Shiba and Doge still up by thousands % over 1 or 2 years.
    I don't think anyone after 2021 had any real moonshots with any crypto. Maybe a 2x left and right, but that would have been good timing.
  • But Reddit told me they were going to the moon and we were all going to be billionaires off it. Are you saying I shouldn't have cashed out my entire retirement on Mario money?

    • Are you saying I shouldn't have cashed out my entire retirement on Mario money?

      See, there's your problem - you used your Mario money instead of your Monopoly money. Tsk tsk.

      • But the guy that sold me these ShitCoins assured me they were the next big thing. Is TotallyNotRussian$camCoin$.ru not a legit financial institution?

  • Because most of the money to be made from Crypto will br made from varoius hedging strategies. And for these to work, they need volatility. It doesn't matter whether the asset price is going up or down. So long as it's moving.

  • Dogecoin predates Ethereum (Score:4, Informative)

    by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Friday January 07, 2022 @12:25PM (#62152303)
    I don't know why I care since I have never owned any cryptocurrency, however: Dogecoin (2013) predates Ethereum (2015). Ref:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogecoin [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum [wikipedia.org]

    Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and other tokens associated more with online jokes rather than actual software products have been hit harder than sector originals Bitcoin or Ethereum

  • A few months ago the crypto crowd was urging people to buy crypto because cash was going to be worthless and crypto was going to continue to climb. All it took was the mere mention of raising rates and some of the mining shutting down and crypto plummets. Comparatively gold and silver have been relatively steady.

  • It's a real crypto with a serious push for utility including a NFT marketplace.

    On a related note (NFTs) it really saddens me how far this site has fallen that so many folks here mock the hell out of NFTs and can't see where they're going.

    Just the other day, I saw a fashion line that does NFTs. The holder of the NFT can redeem their NFT for an actual product or sell it to another user.

    It's entirely possible to use NFTs to replace traditional stocks, and there's a company called tZERO that does something simi

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by vux984 ( 928602 )

      Imagine a market where naked shorting and other criminal schemes are not even technologically possible because every share issued is a NFT and has its own serial number.

      Your are delusional. Of course it would still be possible; you'd just create a derivative market and short it there.

      In fact the current stock market is already a derivative market. If you dig deeply enough into how it really works, into market makers, stock settlement time, etc and -- you aren't buying and selling actual stocks on etrade or whatever, you are buying and selling proxies to stocks.

      Now look at crypto and NFTs and and crypto and NFT marketplaces, how long actual blockchain transactions take, an

  • Super bummer for those people who thought is was real

  • Shiba Inu (Score:3)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Friday January 07, 2022 @01:33PM (#62152501) Journal

    Early on, I took a flyer on $50 worth of Shiba Inu just for fun. It was kind of cool because that bought me almost 700,000 Shiba Inu coins, and I've never owned 700,000 of anything in my life. I especially enjoyed the occasional notifications from Coinbase telling me that Shiba Inu had gone up 15% and was now trading at $0.00. So now, when it goes down 15% and is still trading at $0.00, I don't feel so bad.

    I've long ago taken off my original investment out of cryptocurrency and I'm only playing with house money now. I never really thought it was a great investment, but it did allow me to buy a few nice things for myself that I otherwise might not have and if the big coins like ETH and BTC go back up, I'll continue to trade within a range. I can't complain. I mean, I took the Bears and the points against the Packers this year, so I'm not really what you would call savvy when it comes to these things. I'm pretty good at the racetrack, though.

    • I'm in a similar boat.
      I played with the markets for a bit, back in 2017/18 - a bit of 'for fun' cash and somehow got lucky first time - absolutely like a casino!
      I then put more money in - that I could afford - and of course, the entire market crashed.
      I just left what I had in there for over 2 years, till the market recovered and bailed out with a small profit.

      I kept one asset though, my long shot, probably the only cryptocurrency I know of, that actually has a working product outside of the cryptocurrency c

  • Another crypto story. Should /. just be named crypto dot?

    My idea is for a Rug Pull Coin. It's a coin that will be advertised as going to zero at some random time in the future. Until then, it can be bought and sold like any other coin or token. Just expect the rug pull at some point. Like playing with a jack-in-the-box.

  • That was never supposed to happen, because the supply of each crypto is mathematically limited, rather than being expandable infinitely by fiat. But for several years the number of different cryptocurrencies, each with its own independent money supply absorbing speculator dollars, has expanded steadily. Last I heard there were about 9,000 cryptos. This is turning into an inflationary blowoff.

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