
Bitcoin sinks below $7000 - TekMol
https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg1ztgCzm1g10zm2g25
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chollida1
Something to think about....

I don't really want to get into another Tether discussion but someone who
trades will be well aware that volatility is usually much more severe on the
way down than on the way up.

Hence the saying "Equities take the escalator up and elevator down".

With Bitcoin we saw larger volatility on the way up, than on the way down, ie
it went up in less time than it took to come back down.

This is atypical in the markets and suggests that something is propping up the
price of bitcoin that doesn't exist in other markets.

The other place you see this is on the day of a IPO where the banks that lead
the IPO defend the share price by strong artificial buying at the IPO price.

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Analemma_
Trading volume is actually still pretty low, by BTC standards. This is
actually a little worrying, since it indicates that the panic hasn’t even
started yet.

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diab0lic
I'm really shocked this panic hasn't set in yet, I would have bet otherwise. I
wonder if it'll be a slow slide all the way down.

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Analemma_
I imagine it will kick in when the truth comes out about Tether and USDT
becomes worthless. Right now the evidence is overwhelming, but there's still
no smoking gun. When Tether/Bitfinex declares bankruptcy, or the CEO is
arrested at the airport trying to flee to Vanuatu with a suitcase full of
cash; that'll be when the bloodbath starts.

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makomk
The evidence makes no sense. We're supposed to believe that Bitfinex printed
Tethers and used them to buy Bitcoins on their exchange - whose on-exchange
USD reserves aren't even backed by USDT and aren't meant to be[1] - and this
somehow caused a price bubble that mainly seemed to be driven by GDAX/Coinbase
judging from the price differences between the exchanges and trading volumes,
even though they don't deal in Tether at all. Not only that, it's just too
small - for comparison, the total amount of Tether printed as of the end of
2017 was about $1 billion, roughly the same as Coinbase's revenue from fees in
2017. (Another billion or so has been printed since, but that was all after
the Bitcoin price peaked.)

There's some circumstantial evidence that they may or may not have been
printing unbacked Tether to keep the price at parity, but that's a far cry
from powering the Bitcoin bubble.

[1] They were sort of a Tether exchange in the sense that for a while it was
the only way for most people to withdraw USD balances, but they only kept a
relatively small amount of USDT on hand to cover withdrawals.

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nugget
Keep in mind Bitcoin miners (and Ethereum miners et al.) keep producing a not-
insignificant number of coins every day, at least a % of which are typically
sold to pay taxes, electricity, and other operating costs. A constant stream
of new investment is needed to offset that sales pressure.

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TekMol
Afaik about $20m in bitcoins are created via mining per day. If that is
insignificant or not is an interesting question.

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donkeyd
$20m when? Since the value changes significantly each day.

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TekMol
[https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/miner-revenue-
value](https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/miner-revenue-value)

About $20m yesterday.

You have to subtract the transaction fees:

[https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/transaction-fees-
value](https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/transaction-fees-value)

About $2m yesterday.

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ww520
The Great Unloading is well underway.

The fear of missing out (on board) drives the price on the way up. The fear of
missing out (get off) drives the price on the way down. Classic trading cycle.

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smrtinsert
Where are the store of value guys now? I honestly want the rationale behind
this explained.

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freedom7775
Behind what? Bitcoin is a store of value. 1 BTC will always be worth 1 BTC.

If you want to store your USD, perhaps you should keep them in the form of
USD.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Bitcoin is a store of value. 1 BTC will always be worth 1 BTC.

You really want to look at a store of value in terms of other goods and
services, not itself. (Major world currencies tend to be stable in value
against common goods baskets in the short-term with slow inflation in the
longer term, so comparing—especially over a short term—a more volatile store
of value to a major currency can also;make sense.)

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ajross
ETH is off almost 45% from its peak too. For a few days it was stable and it
looked like the BTC drop was just a reshuffling within the crypto world, but
it seems like that buffer has been blown through and we're in a full-on
correction now.

Not the expected crash, though: it's been going steadily down, which surprises
me. I've always though the lack of liquidity would produce a crash-to-zero
when the bear market came. But there appear to be people buying BTC even now.
... Who?

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dragonwriter
> But there appear to be people buying BTC even now. ... Who?

Possibly the same people who are already holding a lot and not selling, which
is why the volume is low. If those people don't have a lot of free non-BTC
assets you'd see some bargain hunting as other investors try to exit, but
limited overall volume no matter how hard the rest of the market is running
for the exits and driving the price at which the true believers can buy down.

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setra
To keep this in perspective bitcoin was under $1000 at the start of 2017. It
is still a 700% increase since just that recent time.

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vinchuco
How many data points to drop to gain perspective?

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gigatexal
Wow. The fire sale keeps happening.

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diab0lic
It is pretty incredible how resilient BTC has been to panic selling, it has
definitely been trending downward at a high rate but I would have bet that a
panic sell-off would have occurred before it reached these prices. There is
still a reasonable inflow of money, from the looks of it -- and this is coming
from a serious skeptic.

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not_kurt_godel
I suspect that the exchanges are doing their best to keep the prices
artificially high by limiting sales and withdrawals under the guise of
technical issues and support load.

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aviv
This. Very much this. 100% this is a major reason.

~~~
gigatexal
+1 to all of the above. I am just buying small chunks of it here and there as
the price falls with play money. It's not much of an investment grade thing
yet imo so that's how I play it.

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bb88
There's $7000 left to short.

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gtcode
bitcoin may find support on bitstamp above 6600 (currently 6900). buy limit
6666.66

