1 BTC = $8.2k, it’s up 735% this yr UPDATE 5/19: BTC @ $42k :damn:

[TrebleMan]

This is why I think people who throw around that "major corporations have adopted crypto" bs are talking out of their ass.

Why would a a company like Amazon or Walmart take as currency something that loses 30% of its value in two weeks? shyt lost 10%+ of its value overnight two days ago. No major company is looking at volatility like that as a worthy investment.

I got out the game way earlier in the year. It's too speculative right now. I really don't know what crypto does better than real world money or how it's that much more secure than any major bank with a database. It definitely isn't more convenient to use than real world money, that's for sure and people like to use simple things.

I pretty much agree with the criticisms of it in this thread:

But why does crypto matter? What does crypto do better than a database? That it's trustless? Why does that actually matter? I have no fear of my investments being directly stolen or my broker lying to me and there's insurance for that anyways. I have no fear that I'm going to lose my Starbucks gift card balance either.

I just don't see a use case for crypto, it being trustless and verifiable is cool but is anyone actually asking for that? Also that's only true if more than one group runs the miners too.

I mean people use traditional banking for money laundering all the time and that stuff is far less opaque than crypto. Layer enough transactions back and forth and you can make billions of dollars worth of laundering look like trading gains or whatever.

Remember lots of the goal of laundering isn't necessarily to make it so the government doesn't know you're doing it. It's to make it so that the government can't prove you're doing it.

Is that sentiment at all related to the fact that you're still holding on to those heavy bags you bought in december and are waiting for the next hype phase to roll by to finally get rid of them? If so, good luck with that.

After this year's crypto debacle and given the fact that the tech has been around for 10 years now without going anywhere but ICO scams, I really don't see any new hype being generated any time soon. I'd rather place my money on some completely new "investment" fad popping out of nowhere that college kids will be dumping their student loans into in the next few years than crypto. But of course -- no one knows for certain with this stuff.

It lost its "change the world" narrative years ago. Hundreds of billions invested over 10 years and no one's using it to do anything but day trade and buy drugs. According to even the crypto subs, the most exciting and anticipated future developments would be the co-option of crypto by the established banking sector so that people can buy it without actually having to deal with crypto, private keys, etc.

It may or may not have lost its "this could make me rich!" narrative. We'll see. Now that every country and everyone has been inundated with bitcoin news, there's a declining amount of possible "finally, population X will buy in and cash early investors out at higher prices" futures. The big hope is that an ETF launch will unlock all that IRA and grandma money. Or that global asset managers will decide that a well-rounded portfolio has crypto exposure. Something like that.

The tech behind Bitcoin is here to stay - blockchain will be around and will find it's way into other applications. And the die-hard Crypto people will never give it up. But I don't think that Bitcoin is going to be the way of the future or anything. The only practical way to spend it - for the average consumer - is to convert it to tether and then to dollars, and that conversion is just too volitle for the every day person.

Blockchain has been around since the 1970 in the form of databases.

Blockchain is just a simplified form of a database that only allows for "append only" operations. It is used to solve a very specific technical problem related to proof of work and does not really offer much usability outside of the scope used for BTC.

It's hard for people that invested themselves into this to realize that blockchain is in fact, not a new invention.

If I read this 5 years ago, I might have found this compelling. But the usability of cryptocurrency is arguably a lot worse than it was back then.

I bought a small amount of bitcoin locally to see what the fuss was about, and back then I was able to buy a cup of coffee in real life, and make online purchases which took seconds to go through. Now as far as I understand transactions are slow and expensive, and as a result there are less businesses accepting bitcoin. I mean Amazon used to accept Bitcoin - can you imagine that happening again?

IMO cryptocurrency has potential as a currency, and the idea of having a medium of exchange which is not bound to a government's authority is an interesting one. But at the moment this Libertarian dream is more of a nightmare: it seems as if cryptocurrency's usefulness has been massively undermined by in-fighting among the larger players, and it's largely served as a platform on which every financial scam invented in the last few centuries (and some new ones) could be replayed before there is any regulation.

We will see if crypto will be able to grow up, or more-so now to be reborn as something useful, but for now I don't see that happening any time soon.

Crypto is still massively overpriced with no real use case, the current prices are likely propped up by price memory and 'hodl'ers. We're still some way up the bubble from last year, and there was no actual reason for that price hike beyond speculative hype.

Will it bounce back? Maybe, if it actually becomes useful for something. The issue is choosing which coin will be the one that makes that jump to having a wide spread use. Or maybe it'll just enter another speculative bubble. The whole 'market' is super vulnerable to manipulation and hype-trains so it could go up, down, sideways or in circles for no real technical reason. And added on to that, there are numerous scams / frauds / suspicious activities all through the system that could blow up any day (lookin' at you, tether) and cause who-knows-what to the market.

In my opinion crypto is just so uncertain that it's not really 'investing' if you put money into it. Crypto is a gamble, and if you want to gamble you can probably have more fun with options over at /r/wallstreetbets - go in with some 'play' funds if you want but as an investment strategy I think it's just too risky and unpredictable.

It's 100% speculation and hype driven since its use as a currency is really limited.

Think about the market cap of other coins. Some have huge market caps and aren't used at all to buy goods or services. They have value only because people think they can make money off other people, who think the same, etc.

Maybe I'll take another look if it drops lower, but I'm not wasting time researching.

This isn't anything like the dot com era. Think about the 10 year jump from 1995 to 2005 with the internet, how has that compared to the 10 year jump from 2009 to 2019 with bitcoin?

 

[null]

This is why I think people who throw around that "major corporations have adopted crypto" bs are talking out of their ass.

Why would a a company like Amazon or Walmart take as currency something that loses 30% of its value in two weeks? shyt lost 10%+ of its value overnight two days ago.

I got out the game way earlier in the year. It's too speculative right now. I really don't know what crypto does better than real world money or how it's that much more secure than any major bank with a database. It definitely isn't more convenient to use than real world money, that's for sure and people like to use simple things.

I pretty much agree with the criticisms of it in this thread:




















Maybe I'll take another look if it drops lower, but I'm not wasting time researching.

This isn't anything like the dot com era. Think about the 10 year jump from 1995 to 2005 with the internet, how has that compared to the 10 year jump from 2009 to 2019 with bitcoin?

Mass adoption in the developing world is possible IMO. Just not using POW and probably not on public blockchains.

 

[null]

 

[peppe]

just recently bought coaching from someone and asked if I could pay with paypal and he was like naw give me them BTC. Paid him $600 and I see that the next day it was only worth $400 if he didn't transfer that day, then

 

[Arithmetic]

Title update

 

[Knowledge]

See my problem and a lot of the og collectors problem with Bitcoin is that it isn't what it use to be. A crypto currency is....well supposed to be cryptic. It started gaining value in the first place because it was a secure way to buy dope n shyt off the deep web without the feds having a money trail (think cigs and ramen in prison). Well ain't shyt secret or secure about Bitcoin these days. Where's the value? It's not really backed by anything, it's not really anonymous anymore, and the feds can track the shyt out of it right now. It really doesn't serve a purpose or a need other than digital money which is bout as good as some CSGO skins. I know because Ive been in that scene since bitcon first hit the net

Tracing Illegal Activity Through The Bitcoin Blockchain To Combat Cryptocurrency-Related Crimes

 

[Adam3000]

just recently bought coaching from someone and asked if I could pay with paypal and he was like naw give me them BTC. Paid him $600 and I see that the next day it was only worth $400 if he didn't transfer that day, then

Joke is on you for buying coaching from someone stupid enough to ask for payment in bitcoin

 

[ISHIDA]

Did we hit the moon yet?

 

[DirtyMoney]

Gains to be made shorting crypto via bitmex aNd fx brokers

 

[paperbag]

Gains to be made shorting crypto via bitmex aNd fx brokers

Made so much money this past week
Thank you based Arthur

 

[peppe]

Joke is on you for buying coaching from someone stupid enough to ask for payment in bitcoin

we'll talk again in 6 months pleighboi

 

[the bossman]

NASDAQ, NYSE, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity. The biggest financial markets & institutions in the world are getting ready to launch products for their clients to buy into crypto and yall want to miss the boat?

 

[SadimirPutin]

NASDAQ, NYSE, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity. The biggest financial markets & institutions in the world are getting ready to launch products for their clients to buy into crypto and yall want to miss the boat?

Many of those same organizations have at certain points lost their clients billions of dollars

A big name doesnt mean the investment makes sense

And how does them "buying into crypto" affect how your investment will turn out? Does them jumping in mean your coins will go up? based on what?

 

[DrHackenbush]

NASDAQ, NYSE, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity. The biggest financial markets & institutions in the world are getting ready to launch products for their clients to buy into crypto and yall want to miss the boat?

Its sad but a lot of people actually fell for the FUD thats been going around the last few weeks. I seen a lot of people on twitter talking about selling at $3.6k and trying to buy back in at $1.8k..They got shaken out of their positions. We'll only begun a new bullrun once all those kinda people get shaken out. BTC could still go down to like $2k from here but in a year or so time the price is gonna be a lot higher than it is now. They literally pulled this same manipulation with Gold back in the day

 

[DrHackenbush]

Many of those same organizations have at certain points lost their clients billions of dollars

A big name doesnt mean the investment makes sense

And how does them "buying into crypto" affect how your investment will turn out? Does them jumping in mean your coins will go up? based on what?

Its based on supply and demand, scarcity. Look at whats happening next year with the block time halvening