
Bitcoin Plunges to $3,738; Whole Crypto Scam Melts Down, Hedge Funds Stuck - howard941
https://wolfstreet.com/2018/11/25/bitcoin-plunges-to-3738-whole-crypto-scam-melts-down-hedge-funds-stuck/
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cortic
Its back down to what it was at last September, six times higher than it was
the September before that, fifteen times higher than it was the September
before that.. i think I'll hodl.

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thoughtexplorer
True true. But can't you just keep using that logic all the way back?

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TomMarius
Depends on when you bought. Of course it's not useful if you're trying to
outsmart the market.

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hourislate
"All of economic history is one lie and deceit after another. Your job as a
speculator is to get on when the lie is being propagated and then get off
before it is discovered."

-George Soros

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xutopia
I saw BTC as a more modern gold. So sad that there were scams bringing up the
price artificially. This could have been the every person's means to have full
control over their own money.

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timClicks
Control requires knowledge. I suspect fewer than 1% of people who have BTC
understand how it operates.

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buboard
you can say that about money supply or credit cards or paypal etc. it doesn't
matter. what matters is that other people trust it too.

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redial
Sure, but that is not _controlling your own money_.

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buboard
i think you really are. you can't pay another ebay (e.g.) user today, without
ebay somehow being liable about the transaction. crypto keeps people bound to
their wallets, which frees up a ton of possibilities.

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nickthemagicman
Has anyone else ever thought the inflation of the amount of other crypto
offerings has massively diluted btc's value?

Coinbase used to offer just btc then it upped to btc,ltc,and eth. Then it
offered btc cash and now there's literally 20 or more cryptos available on
coinbase.

To the average 'normie' who uses coinbase they used to just pick btc and call
it a day. But they have way too many options nowdays which probably scares
them and also dilutes the value.

It might just be coinbase and the crypto casuals who inflated the price.

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lowdest
>literally 20 or more cryptos available on coinbase

False, there are exactly eight.

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dna_polymerase
> [..] but “bubble” is a misnomer; it’s a magnificent scam, where people paid
> a lot of money [..]

Oh boy. Oh boy. The cryptocoin ecosystem is still existing. There are
thousands of people working on the next generation of decentralised payments.
The bubble bursting doesn't change the fact that people are working on making
BTC, Eth, and so many other great coins scale. We already saw the bubble burst
once before. It may take a year, maybe longer but someday people will be able
to use Crypto for day to day payments. And that day another bubble will burst,
it's called fiat and it's the original Scam. The kind of scam Wall Street
tries to protect by lobbying against decentralisation, by smearing it but they
can't kill it.

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jeletonskelly
Ok, but what _problem_ is cryptocurrency solving exactly? I'm already making
day to day payments with USD, so why do I want to do it with cryptocurrency?
If the entirety of the value of cryptocurrency as a problem solver is that
people have to accept the New World Order evil banksters conspiracy theory
then it's already dead.

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extragood
The biggest thing for me is that cryptocurrency improves every non-cash
payment that you make.

To pay for something without cash, you have to use a service: whether it's a
credit card, Paypal, Square, Stripe, Google Wallet, Apple Pay, etc. (if you're
not using cryptocurrency). At minimum, there's a bank involved. That means
every transaction goes through a payment processor who collects their share of
the transaction value, whether it's taken from the end-customer or the
merchant. Generally the merchant "eats" the cost which is then in turn
reflected in higher prices.

Cryptocurrency is decentralized, meaning that there is no middleman company
that profits off of every transaction, and that's better for consumers and
business. It's more efficient. And I dislike bank and credit card executives.
They're pretty scummy.

The problem with cryptocurrency is that many early adopters hoarded their coin
collections rather than spend them, thereby creating artificial scarcity,
which in turn raised the price beyond any semblance of reason.

The market determines the value of the coin, and investors don't have a good
sense of what the real value should be - assuming that we aren't witnessing
the demise of Bitcoin et al. right now.

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redial
I do not know much about Bitcoin or other crypto coins, but how can it be more
efficient if it takes on average[1] almost an hour for a transaction to be
validated? Credit card, Apple Pay, Ali Pay, etc. are instant.

[1] [https://coincentral.com/how-long-do-bitcoin-transfers-
take/](https://coincentral.com/how-long-do-bitcoin-transfers-take/)

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bdcravens
> Credit card, Apple Pay, Ali Pay, etc. are instant.

Not really. There's a settlement period, and if the transaction can be
reversed, it's really not complete in the sense of a Bitcoin transaction with
6 confirmations.

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redial
The transaction may not be truly completed, but it was validated instantly.

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bdcravens
Which in Bitcoin's case, would be a 0-confirmation transaction, which is
visible pretty much immediately as well.

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redial
0-confirmation seems to be just a placeholder, so I do not think it is
comparable at all to a credit card verification.

I do not want to nitpick but credit cards validate, that is to say they verify
the parts in a transaction and resolve instantly if it can or cannot take
place, and then it does take place _instantly_. That you can "take it back" is
a feature independent of the actual operation. The settlement period is not a
technological imposition but a human one; it is in place because humans are
not trustworthy.

On Bitcoin on the other hand, the limitation is inherently technical. The
protocol verification methods are slow _by design_.

