As an outside observer, who has no crypto holdings at all, but is very deeply invested in the public stock market with a heavy weight on technology stocks... this doesn't look like a crash to me at all. It just looks like some steam being let off and old investors cash out and new investors get more comfortable with how much and where to invest.<p>I consider crypto currency as it is to be an elaborate Ponzi scheme (personal view), but even with that cynicism nothing about this dip looks unhealthy to me. (I have views on what ultimately happens, but I will hold back on that)
Bitcoin is the ultimate, purely financial object. It has no revenues or profits. The supply is fixed -- unlike, say, gold, where high prices mean people will eventually start digging mines, BTC supply is entirely price-inelastic. The only thing that determines BTC price is demand. And over the past 13 years, we've seen reflexivity at work: The price has gone up, so more people want it, so the price goes up further, and on and on.<p>There's no reason this can't happen in reverse. As in previous crashes, once the price starts going down, more people want to sell.<p>Really just an interestingly pure experiment in group psychology.
Everyone should take some time now to learn about Tether, the high likelihood that it is in fact a Ponzi scheme, and that it poses a big systemic risk to the crypto exchanges and therefore the markets themselves [1].<p>People have been sounding the alarm on Tether for a long time now, but we’re finally getting some hard evidence now to back the allegations [2].<p>Don’t say you weren’t warned.<p>[1] <a href="https://mobile.twitter.com/smdiehl" rel="nofollow">https://mobile.twitter.com/smdiehl</a><p>[2] <a href="https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-ends-virtual-currency-trading-platform-bitfinexs-illegal" rel="nofollow">https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...</a>
Surely this is also very much related to the recent announcement in China [1], banning financial institutions and payment companies from providing services related to cryptocurrencies?<p>[1 : <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/china/what-beijings-new-crackdown-means-crypto-china-2021-05-19/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/world/china/what-beijings-new-crackd...</a> ]
> Global stocks slipped and cryptocurrencies sank deeper on Wednesday as a threat of unwanted inflation had investors shy away from assets seen as vulnerable to any removal of monetary stimulus.<p>The full title of this article is worth noting: "Crypto crash deepens, stocks slip". For some reason, that was changed for this posting.<p>Bitcoin is increasingly being seen as a barometer for market liquidity. As Bitcoin goes, so go the markets. That's the real story here.<p>We may not be there yet, but at some point, Bitcoin will drive broader market liquidity (stocks, bonds, gold, real estate), rather than feeding on its table scraps.<p>Regarding the volatility, this is nothing new. Anyone involved for more that four years has seen this before and worse. What is new is the sheer number of people involved. Bitcoin's user base doubles roughly once every 1.5 years. That means that at any particular moment in time about half of the participants have been at it for one year or less. When they see their first fierce selloff, predictably accompanied by a vague announcement from China, it can be very unsettling.<p>When this was happening with a small user base of mostly computer nerds and libertarians, it was easy to write off. When the user base includes respected financial institutions (as it now does), things get interesting.
Coinbase is down for me.<p>Gotta give it to BTC: it's a great store of value. You cannot sell it in panic, the technology is protecting you from your own psychology.
Looks like the liquidations are stopping. Funding rates are finally negative<p><a href="https://www.bybt.com/FundingRate" rel="nofollow">https://www.bybt.com/FundingRate</a><p>I would expect the exchanges to have 'problems' while the big boys load back up for cheap.<p>BIG shorts are closing.<p><a href="https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/BTCUSDSHORTS/" rel="nofollow">https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/BTCUSDSHORTS/</a>
I used to be excited to see crypto currency related threads on HN's front page, bc I would be excited to see the technical discussion about he merits and criticisms of the technology. Nowadays, I am just disappointed when the discourse devolves into politics, cultism (on both sides), and misinformation.<p>Where could I go to see discussions about just the technology?
I've been trading Bitcoin for several years and have gone through the various booms and busts of that time. I'm not sure I'm ready to call this a crash when it's back to where it was a few months ago.<p>The idea of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is addictive, but there's always the sobering moment when you realize how limiting it is. I tried to transfer some a few months ago and was hit with $25 in transaction fees, and it took over 3 days to be confirmed. Clearly I should have used higher fees to expedite it, but I sympathize with newer investors experiencing that for the first time. I've also seen folks recently invest in mining rigs only to realize they're not as profitable as they anticipated.<p>I'm sure in time prices will back up as the cycle will repeat itself--the hype will die down, Musk will tweet something that inspires the next generation to jump on the bandwagon, and the price will rise again. Maybe we'll lament not buying while it was under 100k.
Even though I'm very bullish on crypto longterm and even though this crash caused me large loses on paper, I'm happy about it. I think a lot of people got very greedy and way overleveraged themselves which is not sustainable in the long-term.<p>For example, almost 9B$ worth of crypto got liquidated in the last 24hr, that's insane. People chasing quick money get burned.<p>1: <a href="https://www.bybt.com/LiquidationData" rel="nofollow">https://www.bybt.com/LiquidationData</a>
I mean anyone sane was expecting a trace back at some stage after the wild couple of months we just had. Predicting crashes isn’t hard. Predicting the timing thereof on the other hand…
It's funny how everyone here worships YC and YC has invested in multiple crypto companies and yet everyone here hates crypto and everyone involved in crypto. How do you justify that? Is it because you think YC is just clever to cash in on the speculation, the same way Trump is clever to not pay any taxes, but you hate all the little guys that cash in on the speculation?
Haha, less than 24h after that article that hit the frontpage yesterday.<p><a href="https://etherscan.io/blocks" rel="nofollow">https://etherscan.io/blocks</a><p>The blocks look absolutely insane right now
And, as usual, Coinbase is also down at the moment [0]. Don't have a super-strong opinion on the crash itself (or whether we should call it a crash given crypto's volatility)--but it does seem peculiar that the exchanges in the space tend to drop when things get rough.<p>[0] <a href="https://status.coinbase.com" rel="nofollow">https://status.coinbase.com</a> as of 13:51 UTC status was "intermittent downtime" and "delayed withdrawals"
I feel like the HN community, who are more tech literate, should have a better understanding of Bitcoin and crypto. I don't like all the ignorant comments that focus purely on the financials. Is cryptocurrency space not full of technological marvel?<p>Bitcoin has always been an application for demonstrating the engineering achievements behind it (solving byzantine faults, fungibility of data), so we can build even greater tools like smart contracts, programmable money, trust-less p2p networks, etc so many things. I think labeling bitcoin as a scam is a huge insult to those engineers involved. Engineers like Hal Finney who dedicated his life trying to make a brighter future for everyone, I don't think it is fair to call his and others work an elaborate ponzi scheme.<p>The bitcoin space has so much history, a lot of battles have been fought on bitcointalk, over mailing lists and pull requests, etc. I feel that as developers we should focus less on financial markets and more technical discussion. Bitcoin has a lot of new things to talk about with the Taproot activation, like schnorr signatures and private lightning transactions. I'd like to see those discussions more on HN but that's just my opinion.
"The bitcoin flow picture continues to deteriorate and is pointing to continued retrenchment by institutional investors,"<p>Quotes like that, in my experience, always turned out to be a buying opportunity.
Attention seeking headline. Stocks are down as well. From the very first sentence:<p>> Global stocks slipped and cryptocurrencies sank deeper on Wednesday as a threat of unwanted inflation had investors shy away from assets seen as vulnerable to any removal of monetary stimulus<p>This whole fiasco is because of money printing at will.
Some of these "guaranteed" returns if you pass custody of your btc scammers must be working on exit strategies now.<p>The article says china banned transactions, does this include mining rewards? Technically, that involves a transaction, right?
Has anyone noticed how many Crypto rooms are currently on Clubhouse? Mostly led by paid clubhouse admins, trying to pump up crypto and who always have a extra stash to 'buy the dip'. This entire scenario smells of a scam led by companies like A16Z (investor in Clubhouse and other Crypto companies) and other whales like Musk, who have been playing with these coins/token prices since last year.
maybe off-topic but: interesting how any cryptocurrencies discussion have tons of comments repeating the same (flawed imo) arguments, while the older ones are both downvoted and argued against, but new ones keep popping up.<p>look anywhere in this thread. there will be a comment 1h ago, and 4+ others further down with the <i>exact same argument</i> both downvoted and with a few dozen replies explaining why the argument is bogus. You might need to enable the option to see dead comments to get the full picture.
Did anyone else notice that the 'store of value' thesis is almost a verbatim rehash of Jim Rickards gold theories around the time of his book 'Currency Wars' (2011)?
HN when crypto pops: This is off topic/irrelevant<p>HN when crypto retraces some of those gains: Pop open the champaign! Lets all talk about how great this is! Front page!
I think an important Achilles' heel of cryptocurrencies is just how hoarded they are. Whales -- in general, they're just early adopters -- own huge swathes of the total amount of crypto out there. If we were to actually move to a world where crypto is used as currency, we'd have trillionaires who "earned" their wealth simply by being early adopters. Government issued currencies can solve this through taxation or more generally through monetary policy.
Crypto is DE-CENTRALIZED. As long as there are people out there that rather trust a ledger produced by a collection of de-centralized computers than a ledger held by a private institution/government (closed) its value will remain useful/practical.
A Wyckoff Event just happened as he explains <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFijwQzZFuM" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFijwQzZFuM</a>
Big banks and the rich are squeezing out paper handed retail and leveraged traders. They are buying in at the low and will go full steam by the summer.
This is what a healthy market looks like, without circuit breakers, without Powell stepping in, without the POTUS making emergency statements to contain the panic. Price discovery at its finest.<p>When you buy crypto you are effectively voting with your wallet against the Fed and all those phony protection systems<p>Every day more and more people are understanding the machinations of the Fed.<p>BTFD
It is on its way back up. Remember to buy the dip, folks!<p>Also interesting how BTC is now a store of wealth, not a currency. They should just call it a religion.
So much nocoiner butthurt in here lmao. Yes, it's down 50%, yet I'm still a multi-millionaire thanks to holding, from a small mining stint a couple years back, $0 invested directly aside from mining machines (GPUs I would have bought anyways for gaming).<p>With how it's progressed, I never have to sell. My employment income is zero, and I can't get any mortgages cuz of this... no problem, I can literally use crypto to sythnetically underwrite my own mortgages.