
The Great Cryptocurrency Scam - walterclifford
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jayadkisson/2018/11/20/the-great-cryptocurrency-scam/#2a895620359f
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Mtinie
> Whatever else one can say that cryptocurrency has accomplished, it has been
> one of the greatest destroyers of wealth in the financial history of
> mankind.

I'm not going to argue that cryptocurrency prices are in a great place, they
aren't.

In early January 2018 the combined market capitalization of the measurable
cryptocurrency tokens was ~$825B. Today's market capitalization is ~$146B, or
about $679B in "destroyed" wealth. If you take Bitcoin's price movement from
$19783 to $4508 from the start of 2018 until today, in isolation, investors
have seen losses of $266B.

This is a lot of money, no doubt, but you don't need to go too far for
examples using commonly described "good" assets with similar losses
individually (a la BTC) or in aggregate (all cryptotokens) on a far shorter
time horizon:

\- Between October 3, 2018 and today, AAPL's stock losses have "destroyed"
~$262B in wealth.

\- FAANG stocks (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) have seen ~$822B in
wealth destroyed as their stocks have fallen significantly from their high-
water marks since the end of August 2018.

The ardent drum-beaters may say this is "good for Bitcoin" in some warped way
(I don't agree) and I certainly can't argue that the current market outlook
has many upsides, but hyperbolic criticisms aren't helpful.

