Ask HN: Is Bitcoin Dead Now?

[roschdal]

Is Bitcoin dead now? FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is in prison, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao pleads guilty to money laundering, and Bitcoin is mostly used for illegal activities, the energy usage is massive. How can I short this awful currency?

[keiferski]

Topics like this are a good example of why you should never trust HN's advice on crypto.

Bitcoin is up, considerably, in the last ±6 months. Centralized exchanges like FTX or Binance have always been more convenient than logical, and the effect of their "collapse" on the market as a whole will not last beyond the media's attention span.

P.S., it's not just used for illegal activities, but is in fact a vital part of remittences abroad in places without stable currencies.

[cableshaft]

Yep, bitcoin is totally dead. That's why its more than doubled in price over the past year, while Dow Jones is up a whopping 3% in the same time period (and a single bitcoin currently costs more than a single share of Dow Jones stock).

[ps256]

> Is Bitcoin dead now?

No, that's not how anything works. The point is that it's alive as long as someone is running a node.

Whether the price will move up or down in the future - I think it's naive to think that you can profitably speculate on its price movement (long or short).

[AnimalMuppet]

"The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Personally, I wouldn't short it. I think it's dead (or rather, it was never really alive), but I wouldn't short it.

[hollerith]

Yes, totally dead with a market cap of only $724 billion, which is even lower than Tesla's market cap (at least right now) and everyone knows Tesla is dead as a doorknob.

[houseatrielah]

BTC has had a futures market for years. You're very brave to short BTC during the BlackRock ETF approval window.

[yuppie_scum]

I guess it was a good way to extract value from gullible Redditors (and HN readers) but I think the gig is up.

It never made any sense.

[pawelduda]

Yes it's more dead than ever before, experts agree

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/

[flessner]

I wouldn't short it personally, but if you really want to you will most likely need a (crypto) broker that gives you access to leveraged trading and/or futures.

[pettycashstash2]

A simple google search will provide plenty of guidance on how to short. My suggestion is just to not get involved in this

[factorialboy]

> How can I short this awful currency?

I wouldn't until Jan 10th.

That's when they decide on Blackrock's (and several other) Bitcoin ETFs.

[ALUC-inc]

It is quite possible

[t312227]

no.

but they smell quite funny since many years ;))

[jejeyyy77]

lmao

[wryoak]

Bitcoin is infrequently used for illegal activities considering payments are, you know, publicly traceable, as several high profile cases demonstrated. It’s more often used for your intentions: speculation.