Bitcoin Falls Below $16,000 (cnbc.com) 87
Following the collapse of popular crypto exchange FTX, Bitcoin fell 12% to just under $16,000, hitting a low not seen since November 2020. "It reached its all-time high of $68,982.20 one year ago Thursday," notes CNBC. From the report: Cryptocurrencies extended their slide for a second day Wednesday as the market absorbed the potential collapse of popular crypto exchange FTX. Prices were pressured to start the day and plunged by late afternoon as Binance, the largest global exchange by volume, abandoned plans to acquire Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX after a due diligence exam and recent reports of mishandled customer funds and alleged U.S. agency investigations of FTX.
The Bankman-Fried empire quickly unraveled after a report last week showed a large part of the balance sheet at Alameda Research, the trading company where Bankman-Fried was also CEO, had been concentrated in FTX Token (FTT), the native token of the FTX trading platform. After some light sparring on Twitter with Bankman-Fried, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced his company was offloading the FTT on its books, leading to a run on the popular FTX exchange and a liquidity crisis. FTX counts some of the biggest names in finance -- including SoftBank, BlackRock, Tiger Global, Thoma Bravo, Sequoia and Paradigm -- among its investors. "Given the public-facing nature of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and the size of FTX, we believe that the week's events could cause some loss of consumer confidence in the crypto industry, beyond that seen in the aftermath of the 3AC, Celsius, and Voyager events that took place earlier this year," especially if panic spreads and crypto prices keep dropping, KBW analysts said in a note Tuesday. "It may take time for customers to regain trust in the industry, broadly speaking (and we think regulation could help this)."
The Bankman-Fried empire quickly unraveled after a report last week showed a large part of the balance sheet at Alameda Research, the trading company where Bankman-Fried was also CEO, had been concentrated in FTX Token (FTT), the native token of the FTX trading platform. After some light sparring on Twitter with Bankman-Fried, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced his company was offloading the FTT on its books, leading to a run on the popular FTX exchange and a liquidity crisis. FTX counts some of the biggest names in finance -- including SoftBank, BlackRock, Tiger Global, Thoma Bravo, Sequoia and Paradigm -- among its investors. "Given the public-facing nature of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and the size of FTX, we believe that the week's events could cause some loss of consumer confidence in the crypto industry, beyond that seen in the aftermath of the 3AC, Celsius, and Voyager events that took place earlier this year," especially if panic spreads and crypto prices keep dropping, KBW analysts said in a note Tuesday. "It may take time for customers to regain trust in the industry, broadly speaking (and we think regulation could help this)."
Regulation (Score:1)
"It may take time for customers to regain trust in the industry, broadly speaking (and we think regulation could help this)."
They don't need any new regulations. Fraud is already illegal - they just need to start enforcing it.
Re: Regulation (Score:2)
Re:Event everyone predicted comes true -- More at (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it man, it's a failed experiment. It turns out it's not so easy to create your own banking system.
Re:Event everyone predicted comes true -- More at (Score:5, Insightful)
In the last 5 years the value of Bitcoin has increased 4,800%. You remind me of the guys saying Tesla is a bad investment when in reality the stock has increased 14,000% in value since inception.
The difference is that Telsa has something of value behind it... Cypto is pure ether
Buying crypto is NOT investing it is gambling and the hope is there are more fools down the line than you.
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The poster you are replying to has no success in life and is just bitter and resentful towards people who do.
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You're off by a factor of at least 20 on 5 years' bitcoin increase. I peg it at like 190% or so.
Disney is down a mere ~14%, and that doesn't count the dividends. If you did, it'd be around 9%. I suppose that's unfair, though, I forgot to count bitcoin's dividends!
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Yeah, and I made $6k off Puts on TSLA just today alone, and I'm looking to give it another whack tomorrow to see how much more falls out of that tree. So whatever dude, you do you. Good luck with your bits, I hope it works out for you.
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In the last 5 years the value of Bitcoin has increased 4,800%.
Bitcoin, 11/10/2017: $6,346.70
Bitcoin, 11/10/2017: $17,744.50
180% isn't a bad rate of return over 5 years, but not even close to the 4800% you pulled out of your arse. It's not even as good as Microsoft stock's rate of return over the same period. Now, let's talk about the suckers that bought in within the last year.
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> It's completely unfit for the purpose of a currency. At the absolute best it might have been a store of value you could leverage into a currency.
It isn't a security so it isn't the best long-term store either. In terms of Bitcoin only, it should have had value in sending money instantly and globally. The best use case would have been microtransactions. Example: If everyone paid half a cent to read a news article and spent 20c a day they probably wouldn't care, but in aggregate maybe that would compe
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It sucks but it's still worth nearly $16k as of this posting. The only reason it dipped was the FTX liquidation. Once those shockwaves settle down, it'll probably just go back to around $17k-$19k and sit there for awhile. Nothing has changed.
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For whoever modded me "troll" - Bitcoin is now sitting at $17.5k and slowly rising. You were saying?
Re: Event everyone predicted comes true -- More at (Score:1)
The entire market is crashing starting yesterday. Elections are over so everyone is now going to be honest about the economy, itâ(TM)s really, really bad.
11,000 people at Facebook on the street, 3,000 at Twitter, probably 10,000 at Amazon in the upcoming weeks. Many other companies are doing the same, the US is hitting a depression.
The drop you see is a drop in the real value of a dollar, not whether true cryptocurrency can work, because they do work, people trading on the streets in Africa and South A
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no, not hyperinflation yet. This is just high inflation. When the currency starts losing a percentage point (or more) a day, then it will get into that territory. It is a possibility though, the Fed will not sit idly by as US bonds and stocks all drop in value because nobody wants to buy and hold them. The Fed will be the buyer of last resort, printing like a mad man, becoming the only buyer of US bonds, then it *will* hyperinflate the dollar.
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1%/day is >400% annual inflation, at that point your currency is already worth nothing.
The definition of hyperinflation is rapid, excessive, and out-of-control general price increases in an economy and I think we can all agree that it is largely gotten out of control since Biden took office.
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The 'coin' market was pumped up by 0% interest and quantitative easing. Now the fed is cranking up the rates and crashing the stock market due to Bidenflation and globally to the damage done by the other Branch COVIDians, a bitcoin holder has to ask themselves if they would rather hold some Amazon that just corrected by 1 trillion dollars, or some other real stuff.
Coins generally fail Gresham's Law that bad money drives good money out of circulation. Also few even attempt not to create a traceable trail a
Re: Event everyone predicted comes true -- More at (Score:2)
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This isn't about your imaginary paranoid conspiracy.
Suckers have been paying large quantities of hard money for bitstrings just about long enough.
Hucksters talk about cryptocurrency as if it were money, but you can't pay anything but ransom with it.
People always wake up eventually from a tulip madness.
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Momma always said, be sure to feed the trolls
This isn't about your imaginary paranoid conspiracy.
UK CBDC - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
( Russel Brand lighting that on fire: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] )
US CBDC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Would you like to borrow some crayons to connect the dots?
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There is a zero percent chance that a strong government would permit some outside currency to take any real hold.
But governments have done nearly nothing about cryptocurrencies. Governments could decide to impose a high tax on cryptocurrency mining, trade, ownership, or profits, or they could just outlaw all related activities for their residents. Whether the governments would be able to collect a tax or enforce a prohibition is not the question. What matters is that to date the governments have not taken any of the steps of "not permitting" cryptocurrencies. If I misunderstood your comment, you are welcome to clarify
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Initially I thought that you might refer to cryto going down the drain, which a lot of non stupid people did predict and never jumped on that train beyond a little bit of disposable money.
But reading further it sounds more like da big ebil guberment made it happen because crypto was too stable and to dangerous to their power.
Not currency, not stock, Bitcoin 75% drop normal (Score:2)
Did no one see this coming?
Yes, this was absolutely expected, but not for the reason you suggest. This is the fifth time that after an exponential run up bitcoin has come down 75% from its new high. The 5th time it has done this.
It's not currency. It's not a stock. 75% drops are NORMAL for bitcoin.
Binance rugpulled FTX. (Score:5, Interesting)
Step 1: crash FTX's shit token by dumping it
Step 2: offer to bail out FTX when there is a run on their shit token causing possible insolvency
Step 3: look at books and realize FTX is a toxic shithole loaded up with nothing but leverage and collapsing assets used as collateral for that leverage
Step 4: say "nah, we're good" and kill the bail out, causing FTX to totally collapse and drag down the entire crypto market with it.
They rugpulled FTX, and took billions of value with it. How's that deregulated / decentralized market working for you now?
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Exchanges like Binance and FTX are centralized.
Re: Binance rugpulled FTX. (Score:2)
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Christ. We've made it too easy for stupid people to get on the internet.
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They rugpulled FTX
Aborting a purchase while doing due diligence is not a rugpull. I think you've seen that word (legitimately) used in many other crypto stories but didn't actually understand what it means.
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Way to ignore the first 3 lines of my post, where the rug pulling occurred.
Relevant /. 2022 Bitcoin Polls (Score:4, Informative)
Will Bitcoin break 100k before the end of 2022? [slashdot.org] Consensus: No!
where do you think the price bottom is for bitcoin this cycle? [slashdot.org] Consensus: Below $15k
Wow. So the polls are good for something!
Re:Relevant /. 2022 Bitcoin Polls (Score:4, Interesting)
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Slashdot is always negative about everything. So if something does faceplant, the slashdot predictions will be right.
And it's true that most things do faceplant and never become good or even persist. But the relatively few exceptions are how history is made.
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In this case what it is, is hindsight bias.
Slashdot is always negative about everything. So if something does faceplant, the slashdot predictions will be right.
And it's true that most things do faceplant and never become good or even persist. But the relatively few exceptions are how history is made.
It can be said that the pessimist is rarely disappointed.
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Holy crap (Score:3, Interesting)
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Difficulty scales with amount of miners. As some pull out, remaining get more for the same work.
That's in fact one of the defining features of proof of work based cryptocurrencies that survive more than a few years. Dynamic scaling of rewards with amount of work done in the total pool.
Re:Holy crap (Score:5, Funny)
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I think we've had enough history of crypto now to see how they end. First, bid-ask spreads on exchanges become really wide and volume becomes really low. Then days go by with no exchanges, and ultimately you're left with a source code repository that will get deleted based on the host's inactivity policy. You're also left with a bunch of hard drives with a copy of the ledger on them, and of course all the repository downloads which could in theory revive it but I'm not aware of any such resurrections. B
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Bitcoin would most likely be one of, if not the last, crypto to which this happens.
When it happens, can we cryptographers have our word back?
Re:Holy crap (Score:5, Informative)
Difficulty scales with amount of miners. As some pull out, remaining get more for the same work.
That's in fact one of the defining features of proof of work based cryptocurrencies that survive more than a few years. Dynamic scaling of rewards with amount of work done in the total pool.
Except capital expenditures are sunk costs. If you invested in a bunch of GPUs, servers, and floor space, then you might need some steady mining profit in order to not lose your shirt.
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Yes, that's how supply and demand works. Most indebted tend to be the first ones to fall off when demand for their work goes down.
And if you bet everything down to your shirt on speculative asset like mining rigs for cryptocurrency, that's on you.
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Yes, that's how supply and demand works. Most indebted tend to be the first ones to fall off when demand for their work goes down.
No it's the exact opposite here. The most indebted have the highest motivation to keep mining providing there's any remaining profit margin at all. Those without debt are those who can just bail out and go do something else.
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You appear to assume that creditors will just keep looking at lack of payments and not begin debt recovery procedures. Why?
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Yes, that's how supply and demand works. Most indebted tend to be the first ones to fall off when demand for their work goes down.
And if you bet everything down to your shirt on speculative asset like mining rigs for cryptocurrency, that's on you.
Well you seemed to imply that as the bitcoin price drops the mining effort drops in rough proportion and decent profits are still possible for many (most?) miners.
Toe problem is there's three main numbers to consider, the per unit capital cost $X (and fixed operating costs), and the operating cost $Y, and the operating revenue $Z.
To be profitable they need $Z > $X + $Y, that seems very unlikely with the price drop.
But for as long as $Z > $Y they'll keep mining, so that actually prevents the work from
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I understand the desire to rule out the $X to make your argument, but I don't think it's doable as you are arguing. Capital costs have been going up rapidly for everyone, and if you're operating a speculative business, your capital costs were already likely pretty high as investors expect high returns.
This is why debt collectors would be going in pretty fast and hard for this sort of business. You need to be able to grab whatever can be liquidated before it loses too much value due to continued reduction in
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You can just sell your gear, it seems like the market for used GPUs hasn't collapsed completely yet.
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You can just sell your gear, it seems like the market for used GPUs hasn't collapsed completely yet.
"... and it's gone."
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Difficulty scales with amount of miners. As some pull out, remaining get more for the same work.
That's in fact one of the defining features of proof of work based cryptocurrencies that survive more than a few years. Dynamic scaling of rewards with amount of work done in the total pool.
Except capital expenditures are sunk costs. If you invested in a bunch of GPUs, servers, and floor space, then you might need some steady mining profit in order to not lose your shirt.
Not sure if snarky Sunk Cost Fallacy joke or serious...
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that's it for the miners. They were barely making it at $20k. It's $15,668 as I type this. We're talking death spiral numbers now.
My question is if this will cause the common folk to dump and take whatever profits they might have left. If so, it could definitely end in a death spiral unless the early purchasers pony up thinking it's a buying opportunity.
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All they do is hit the "off" switch until the price rises again.
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That will certainly make the value rise.
You kill me, dude.
Re:Holy crap (Score:4, Insightful)
It's $15,668 as I type this.
And that's still $16,000 more than it's worth.
BTC USD $10? (Score:2, Insightful)
When did that happen?
Crypto--It's like buying the rights to the International Star Registry or an Amish Miracle Heater, isn't it?
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Hope he didn't make donations in FTT tokens, lulz
So... (Score:4, Funny)
Countdown to zero, please. (Score:2)
I can't wait for Bitcoin and other crypto to fully collapse. I'm just tired of hearing about this biggest of speculative markets every minute of every day.
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Yeah, it's time to die. Consumes an absurd amount of electricity for what amounts to little more than an unregulated international gambling scheme. ETH may have redeemed itself with a transition to POS and if it works in the long term I think it will have a future because it actually does something beyond just allowing for value speculation and money laundering.
Cheap bitcoin (Score:2)
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I know, I know, it would be a net loss compared with their real value, but what can I say? I'm a sentimental guy.
Oh noes! My ugly monkey picture link will die too! (Score:2)
Because my ugly monkey picture links are blockchained to other crypto thingies and this is not good.
BTC should die (Score:2)
Just wait for it (Score:5, Funny)
"Buy the dip!
Please! Buy the dip! I'm sitting on a pile of these worthless crapcoins!"
Really? Nobody yet? Is every tulip gardener still unconscious from the shock?
Could FTX save itself... (Score:2)
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Sorry. Apes are too scarce.
Hope it Drops for Good (Score:3)
I love how this story is abbreviated (Score:2)
My single favourite thing here is that it showed up on the front page abbreviated. Just the title, Bitcoin falls below $16000. No need for the summary, the title literally covers everything we care about, and even Slashdot's homepage has run out of fucks to give about bitcoin
*I know that's not the reason for the abbreviated stories, but it's fun none the less.
So what happens if everyone sells Bitcoin ? (Score:2)
Regain? (Score:2)
In order to regain trust, anyone with half a brain cell would have to have had trust in the first place.
lol (Score:2)
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