[drawingthesun]

Considering Bitcoin had never fallen lower than a previous cycles ATH (All Time High) until now, who is thinking that this might be a sign of the end of crypto?

Each cycle goes higher was pretty much the only thing that kept the whole thing going. Now that is gone I think the space will dry up.

Tether collapsing in the next couple weeks will likely put Bitcoin under $10,000

[scoopertrooper]

> Considering Bitcoin had never fallen lower than a previous cycles ATH (All Time High) until now, who is thinking that this might be a sign of the end of crypto?

This sounds like just another one of those synthetic signposts people create around crypto. It's just a pattern. It has no particular significance; beyond the fact that if enough people believe in it, then it might influence their actions in a way that moves the market.

My favourite was that people were going around saying the cost of mining Bitcoin served as a floor to the market. As though the miners would (somehow) stop the price going down when it became unprofitable for them to mine. More likely, they'd just stop their mining activities and move onto something more lucrative.

[moffkalast]

It's also worth pointing out that Bitcoin was created after the last major crash in 2008, there's no precedent for its behaviour in the current one.

Ironically it was also made as a hedge against the existing financial systems, but eventually became just an extension of them. Became "the very thing it swore to destroy".

[nappy-doo]

The arbitrary signposts are because the only way to look at Bitcoin is with technical analysis and looking at the graph. There are no earnings releases, press releases, or business conditions to discuss. We can only look at the price, and speculate. (NB: speculate, not invest.)

[datadata]

There is of course news that matters to bitcoin and impacts the price. When China banned bitcoin, one would expect price to go down. When Tesla bought bitcoin, price should go up. By your argument all commodities would also fall into the same camp.

[silisili]

Here's hoping. When stocks tank, one can decide if a company is undervalued and decide whether to buy in.

Bitcoin has no value other than speculation, so it's a hard ask for people to buy in as it's never technically undervalued...

[rvz]

> Here's hoping. When stocks tank, one can decide if a company is undervalued and decide whether to buy in.

Even those stocks that underwent the SPAC route that also offer no dividends and are beyond loss making to the point at which they will be delisted?

I don't see how SPACs that aren't making any money like $BZFD or $NKLA are any better than Bitcoin.

Let's hope these shady SPACs don't start repeating the ills of other non-SPACs as the tide turns bearish by losing $1B mysteriously like Wirecard or fabricating your financial reports which Luckin Coffee did.

[kgwgk]

The quote you reply to doesn't say: "When stocks tank, one can buy in."

It says: "When stocks tank, one can decide if a company is undervalued and decide whether to buy in."

[lrvick]

Bitcoin has value for the same reason Visa has value.

A medium of exchange is a tool, and tools people use have value.

I grant the majority of the market is speculation but many of us actually regularly use Bitcoin for things like payroll, settling debts, cheap international value transfer, buying coffee, and for cash-like privacy for online purchases.

For those like me that have been continually buying, saving, and spending bitcoin for a decade, vs simply speculating, dollar cost averaging kicks in. Even 300% price swings do not matter all that much in the long run.

Those that go all-in short term looking to gamble get wrecked, but that is often the case in trading. Bitcoin will be healthier when the short term traders are forced out.

[knorker]

> Bitcoin has value for the same reason Visa has value.

No. Visa has contracts, offices, and cash. They have over $81B in assets, over $12B of which is cold hard cash.[1]

Visa also has employees who know what they're doing. Bitcoin has cryptocurrency industry people working on its behalf. It's not the same thing.

Bitcoin has people and companies invested in it (emotionally and financially). Visa has almost a hundred billion dollars in assets, and the market believes they'll be able to make even more (hence the almost $400B market cap).

Visa's market cap is just 4-5x its current assets.[2]

Bitcoin has no assets. It's just speculation. It can't be liquidated even in theory.

[1] https://s1.q4cdn.com/050606653/files/doc_financials/2022/q2/...

[2] ok, so it also has liabilities. But my point stands. Visa has value in a way that Bitcoin doesn't.

[datadata]

> Bitcoin has no assets.

Cash just as well "has no assets". You can't just compare bitcoin to a corporation and get something that makes sense.

[knorker]

Two things:

> You can't just compare bitcoin to a corporation and get something that makes sense.

1) I agree. I was replying to a comment that did.

> Cash just as well "has no assets".

2) USD is backed, ultimately, by the full force of the nuclear armed state and multiple branches of the biggest military the world has ever seen. If you think the US government will allow USD to become irrelevant then you are going to be very disappointed. Bitcoin has no such thing.

[forum_ghost]

Russia has a nuclear armed military also. Strong enough to deter the US from direct confrontation.

Yet, somehow they have never been a prime destination for investment.

Economy matters as well. And loss of faith in the USD cannot be fixed with a few mushroom clouds.

[datadata]

No one said that USD is going anywhere. As you pointed out for bitcoin, the people who work on or invest in bitcoin are not part of the asset. This is the same for USD also. Visa equity is the most different amongst the three.

[bb88]

> Bitcoin has value for the same reason Visa has value.

No. Bitcoin has utility. Screws have utility also, they just don't have very much value.

[datadata]

Visa has value (on top of it's utility) because it is able to take a 1-3% cut of all payments that use the visa network.

Suppose bitcoin gave the equivalent utility as visa but for negligible fees. In this world, you would have the same utility for a lower cost, and the equity value of Visa would conceivably go to zero. My point is that converting utility to value depends on the ability to monetize something. If there was somehow a screw monopoly, I'm guessing the "value" of screws would go way up even with fixed utility. This of course was also true when the cost of producing a screw was much higher in the past. Technology is deflationary.

I don't know what the value of bitcoin should be (nor do I think it has comparable utility to visa), but we are undoubtedly in world where too much value is extracted from financial services relative to the utility that they provide. I think that will be disrupted, but have no idea what, if anything, will be valuable after it is disrupted.

[bb88]

A stock of Visa has value but little utility. A Visa credit card maybe has value on the black market.

But the card itself has no value other than said black market. It has loads of utility though.

Maybe you can use it to scrape off the ice on your car windows in a cold winter day... so that would be maybe a nickel?

Further I can call citibank to get a free replacement visa card. So the value of the credit card seems to be close to zero.

[petertodd]

FWIW the global industrial fastener industry totaled $86 billion of revenue in 2020, or about $11/person: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/industri...

[squidbeak]

Beautiful retort to a lazy argument.

[igorkraw]

Using this logic, we can value 1 bitcoin at 7/1700* 442billion /21 million = 87$ (Bitcoin Tps divided by Visa TPS times first visa market cap I found divided by number of Bitcoins ).

Except if course, if you buy a piece of visa, you get a dividend and legal rights, while owning a Bitcoin gets you the privilege of paying miners to extract that value. So really, that 7/1700*442e9 $ is the value of those who own the network (the miners), not the users.

[lrvick]

The miners have no incentive to mine unless there are a large number of people choosing to exchange Bitcoin giving it buying power to offset electricity cost.

[igorkraw]

So you are saying there is no value to be extracted? Shocking

[lrvick]

I feel certain you understood that is not at all what I was saying.

[listenallyall]

> many of us actually regularly use Bitcoin for things like payroll

Please define "many" when it comes to settling payroll to employees.

[lrvick]

I run a high-risk security and applied cryptography consulting firm so naturally most of my clients are in the crypto-asset industry. Multiple offer payroll in crypto-assets to all staff, and one pays all employees in it exclusively to avoid hires that do not have an interest in the space. I pay most subcontractors in Bitcoin too.

Unlike paying in company stock you do not deal with nonsense like AMT or blackout periods.

I for one am thankful for the regular clients that pay me in crypto-assets, and wish all would. It saves me having to buy from exchanges. Makes for an easy dollar-cost-averaging strategy too.

[somewhereoutth]

So the advantage of using crypto is that it is good for those that use crypto? Your argument is circular.

> avoid hires that do not have an interest in the space

> saves me having to buy from exchanges

[DickingAround]

Money is kind of like that; it's a delusion. The problem is something is always breaking that delusion by printing more of it. But not everything can be printed. If you can't print, the delusion can be pretty hard to break. If the delusion is never broken, it's actually a good thing to use as money.

[dubswithus]

You omitted one of their arguments:

> Unlike paying in company stock you do not deal with nonsense like AMT or blackout periods.

[scoopertrooper]

You shouldn't have your wealth stored in a medium of exchange, while expecting capital appreciation exceeding or even comparable to the equity market. That kind of volatility is a sign of there being something seriously wrong with that medium of exchange.

[lrvick]

Storing wealth in an -inflationary- asset like fiat currency is a stupid move, I grant. I store value in a mix of fixed quantity or -deflationary- assets that are useful or interesting to me like art, vehicles, real estate, and yes... crypto-assets. The latter is perhaps the most volatile but also has the highest liquidity, is fireproof, can be traded for other assets anonymously, etc. Tradeoffs.

[cmrdporcupine]

Calls fiat currency inflationary while advocating a "currency" that has had (as of this moment) 45.92% inflation YoY and is rapidly getting worse.

Nice religion you got there.

[datadata]

Normally by inflation it is meant "monetary inflation", price has no bearing on this.

[jmartin2683]

I believed all of that until the day I actually tried to accept it as currency at my business.

It doesn’t work. Other things do the job much cheaper and faster… and without burning a small country worth of energy.

[quickthrowman]

> Bitcoin has value for the same reason Visa has value.

I disagree, Visa has value because it is a company that earns profits, ~$10B in FY 2021 ($5.xx per share, 2B shares outstanding)

Bitcoin is not a company that earns profits, so any value ascribed to BTC cannot be for the same reasons Visa has value. In fact, BTC has zero intrinsic value.

[smaryjerry]

Visa has also has value because it adds trust to the system. You can contest your charges and a lot of the fees go towards keeping that trust. Credit cards have tons of abuse but it’s backed by a level of insurance. I stopped using crypto because the fees were so high, it wasn’t simple (unless you use an exchange) and doesn’t come with that trust. Even the exchanges themselves fail because they are gambling with customer cash essentially. It’s like if my bank decides to put all the cash it was holding for me into Iraqi dinar because it has a feeling it was going to go up.

[dendriti]

Visa is not a medium of exchange. This is a sad take.

[lrvick]

I assume you have used credit cards.

[ChrisLomont]

Visa is a company processing transactions for a medium of exchange, which is USD (or other currencies).

Visa is not a medium of exchange any more than a local bank is.

[nextstepguy]

So Visa is similar to miners on Bitcoin blockchain and bitcoin is the medium of exchange?

[thehappypm]

As a medium of exchange, the price of one bitcoin should be kind of meaningless. As long as you can quickly do the transaction and cash out on the other end, it shouldn’t really matter if BTC IS $100 or $100,000.

[datadata]

As a lower bound it would need to be high enough to support the largest supported transaction. If the market cap of bitcoin was only $100, you could not transact $200.

[moistly]

> many of us

There are 8 billion of us on this planet.

There are maybe a hundred thousand bitcoin holders.

A fraction of them actively use bitcoin.

By any metric, “many of us” is an grossly incorrect statement.

[herbst]

I may sound overly optimistic however crypto is still the most easy and often cheapest way to transfer money.

I work in a weird field credit card providers don't like to work with. The only real international solution is Crypto, everything else are more local solutions with their own issues.

Even thought I am losing money every day, I don't see any other solution to my, and some others, businesses.

[sentirism]

I think we are just in a golden period like the 1920s before May 1, 1933 when gold was confiscated.

Central bank digital currency seems inevitable. I imagine in the far future there will be central bank digital currency and illegal crypto currency that facilitates black market transactions. Crypto holders will be smeared in narratives as drug traffickers and criminals. At some point there will be risk outside of volatility with holding crypto. I just can't see how things evolve any other way.

The digital Yuan is going to be incredibly tough competition for the West that I don't see how a renegade non-central bank digital currency does not eventually come to be seen as counterfeit.

[herbst]

I guess it depends. Crypto in my country doesn't have such a negative attitude. Some places allow you to pay your taxes in crypto, our main Amazon competitor is accepting crypto for years now, even our 'old people paper magazin shop' accepts crypto.

In Switzerland you have banking privacy, no or high cash limits, you can privately buy a new car in cash without anyone raising an eye brow. Crypto isn't actually a real danger when your whole society is based on monetary freedom.

[lamontcg]

> who is thinking that this might be a sign of the end of crypto?

I think some billionaires may still be able to bail it out, I'm about 50-50 it dies.

> Tether collapsing in the next couple weeks will likely put Bitcoin under $10,000

I kind of doubt this happens, I think Tether is fundamentally structured differently than Terra/Luna and is all debt-based and won't face a run on the bank until crypto is basically a smoking hole in the ground. Everyone wants Tether to implode to take out crypto, but I think it is the other way around.

The Tether redemptions though are signs that the underlying value of the collateral (crypto) has gone below thresholds, and the redemptions withdraw liquidity that was causing inflation in the price.

Something else is likely to pop though, and eventually one of the really big exchanges is going to go under. Coinbase going full MtGox or something like that.

[Grimburger]

> the end of crypto

How do you propose to replace the $100bn online drug market?

[lamontcg]

That question can't prop up a liquidity crisis.

If everyone runs for the exits then crypto suffers an old fashioned bank run, and it doesn't matter if it has any intrinsic value. A bank suffering a run still has loans on the books that are being paid back, but it has a cash crisis and people can't withdraw. A systemic failure starts knocking over institutions one by one as they each hit a liquidity crunch and don't have cash. Once the music stops playing everyone tries to grab some of the remaining chairs and get out. If all the cash is removed from the system and there's still billions in demand trying to exit while there's only a trickle of people trying to catch a falling knife, then it is going to overshoot and unwind to very nearly zero.

The reason why we have things like FDIC, is to prevent things like this, but crypto decided that was all old fashioned thinking. As a result, crypto is buttressed only by some billionaires who are true-believers in it, and if it only takes a few billion here or there then they may produce a bailout package for the system. If not, then the system will fail.

[Grimburger]

> crypto suffers an old fashioned bank run

Any half decent exchange in a western country that holds them to account has over 100% of customer assets, they don't get special rules like banks who only need a few % of customer deposits.

Bank runs aren't really possible unless there is corporate fraud happening.

[yieldcrv]

Bitcoin hit $3,000 like 2 years ago, just trade my guy! I love the volatility in digital commodities, its like seasonal commodities every year except with way greater amplitude and traders that treat it like forever-up equities

The origin of “hodl” was a drunk guy languishing that he couldnt trade well

> Yeah you good traders can spot the highs and the lows pit pat piffy wing wong wang just like that and make a millino bucks sure no problem bro. Likewise the weak hands are like OH NO IT'S GOING DOWN I'M GONNA SELL he he he and then they're like OH GOD MY ASSHOLE when the SMART traders who KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY'RE DOING buy back in but you know what? I'm not part of that group.

Just trade my guy. Nobody has to ever make an opinion on the asset class’ utility, only liquidity. Know your risk and accept the consequences. I’m very keen on this shakeout, the money is barely exiting the market its still in the stablecoins ($200bn+) and ready to pounce into any other crypto in the matter of any single block. Even if those implode too, good! Shake it out! I love 1,000% swings that dont have an expiration date, I still dont know another market to do that, especially randomly on a weekend. That was happening before hedge funds with LPs that are QE beneficiaries got into this space, and will happen after.

[iLoveOncall]

Tether collapsing would have a far larger effect than putting BTC to 10K, it would probably be the end of crypto. The vast majority of alt-coins cannot be exchanged against dollars and have a value only if they can be traded against USDT or other stablecoins.

[zdkl]

> The vast majority of alt-coins cannot be exchanged against dollars

I mean. You could, like, sell them on a forum or in person. With your wallet which is supposed to enable you to do just that.

I admire the success of crypto-exchanges' marketing in making them out to be the only way to conduct transactions on a friggin transaction management system. But then you'd have to deal with the fact that next to no one wants to organically trade <random myriad of altcoins/tokens>. I for one rejoice about the upcoming altcoin extinction event.

[redox99]

What you are saying is kind of orthogonal. Nowadays you can and people do indeed sell crypto in person, and using your wallet. But you use a stablecoin because it's much more convenient since its stable. Then with such stablecoin you have purchased, you swap it for your desired altcoin either on a centralized exchange or decentralized exchange.

I don't agree with the other comment that the USDT/Altcoin pair is such a big deal. If USDT became even less desired, other stablecoins pair would appear and surpass USDT pairs in volume.

[zdkl]

> But you use a stablecoin because it's much more convenient since its stable.

I don't know how to say this without sounding snide but I am genuinely curious: you need to back every single part of that sentence up with some serious citations.

Specifically can you challenge my perception that you're advocating for option B of the following: Option A: find someone to trade <thing you have> for <thing you want>, haggle, transact. Option B: trust some tentacled bio-monstrosity to perform sophisticated transaction chains with a ton of misaligned incentives at each layer.

[redox99]

> I don't know how to say this without sounding snide but I am genuinely curious: you need to back every single part of that sentence up with some serious citations.

You can check binance and other sites that offer P2P listings and you'll find that most of the listings nowadays trade stablecoins. I can't easily cite that for F2F (face to face) but I have done F2F trades many times and it's always with stablecoins

> Specifically can you challenge my perception that you're advocating for option B of the following: Option A: find someone to trade <thing you have> for <thing you want>, haggle, transact. Option B: trust some tentacled bio-monstrosity to perform sophisticated transaction chains with a ton of misaligned incentives at each layer.

Option A isn't viable. That's basically barter economy, and the same reasons why people use money instead of barter in the real world apply. You have a thousand+ of different coins/tokens/etc. So that's 1000^2 pairs if you wanted a pair for each combination. Obviously impossible.

So before stablecoins existed, BTC was the crypto that everything had a pair with. You would buy BTC and then trade that to something else. But with stablecoins most people moved to that because you don't have the volatility that BTC has.

> Option B: trust some tentacled bio-monstrosity to perform sophisticated transaction chains with a ton of misaligned incentives at each layer.

I don't know what you mean exactly by that loaded statement. But CeX are extremely simple in the way they operate. Of course the problem is if they are doing something not legit. DeX such as uniswap are a bit more complex but not that complex really.

To put things into perspective, what do people do? A) Buy AAPL through NASDAQ (with a broker as an intermediary) using dollars B) Trade AAPL for WMT over the counter

Of course A. B would be not only extremely situational, but also impossible unless you are really big investor.

[danaris]

The difference is that cryptocurrencies, in general, are being promoted as currency—something you trade for goods and services—not securities—something you trade for currency.

[zarzavat]

> The vast majority of alt-coins cannot be exchanged against dollars and have a value only if they can be traded against USDT or other stablecoins.

Even in a hypothetical world without any stablecoins at all (which is different from a world without Tether), fiat-less exchanges could still exist: just exchange fiat for btc or eth, and then btc or eth for altcoins. Altcoins existed long before stablecoins.

[rvz]

> Tether collapsing would have a far larger effect than putting BTC to 10K, it would probably be the end of crypto.

Tether isn't the only stablecoin out there. Tether collapsing is basically the end of Tether and will send BTC below 10K and will take the others with them.

It won't be the end of crypto due to this as there are other coins (not tokens) out there that are compliant (ISO 20020), have a use case and will survive this crash, but I expect the majority of useless memecoins, tokens, etc to be wiped out.

[iLoveOncall]

> Tether isn't the only stablecoin out there.

The end of Tether will be the end of stablecoins, just like ICOs ended completely at some point.

[DickingAround]

I can't wait for Tether to fail. These 'stable coins' are just waiting for disaster; how many times have we tried to tie asset prices together, or tried to make a paper version of something else where there wasn't clear 1:1 relationship... it always ends in disaster. Better have that done away with sooner than later.

There is no way that will break Bitcoin; the network will keep running. And if bitcoin's fiat-price was too high because Tether existed, better to resolve that now as well.

[majani]

I wouldn't call it the end, but it would set crypto prices back 5-10 years

[benj111]

While I appreciate that's somewhat psychologically important, I don't think it's magically going to drop to zero now.

[highwaylights]

Probably not, but the myth that trees grow to the sky is the only reason 99% of the money that bought into this did so.

A year ago the internet was non-stop jokes about how much it outperformed the S&P 500 year over year.

It’s now underperformed it by 75% since the previous peak. The myth has been completely shattered.

[dzogchen]

It's not going to 'magically' drop to zero. It is going to drop to zero.

[lrvick]

It will never drop to 0, barring no fundamental security flaws are discovered, because there will always be people like me that are never willing to sell and always willing to buy more.

If it hits $1, I will just stock up. Traders getting out is good for me.

I am in Bitcoin, or any really viable replacement that emerges, long term for reasons fickle speculators do not care about. I fundamentally believe a healthy society needs a reasonably private, international, censorship resistant, and open source financial system that works over the internet. I see such a thing as having more -real- value than the US dollar that a small number of people can print more of at any time for political reasons.

[algo_trader]

Could u please game this out for me (Disclosure: i do not hold or hate crypto)?

99% of crypto users sell, or abandon their wallets

Remaining users are HODL, and even have some cash left

Demand falls, prices falls, mining difficulty adjusts, HODLs keep buying

As difficulty falls, there is a real risk of something-something-51% attack

So HODLs (acting rationally) need to spend more $$ to boost prices just to protect their existing coins

So now, we have a finite asset (coins), which do not generate income, but require non trivial constant $ cost just to protect it?

[kgwgk]

> Traders getting out is good for me.

Say everyone gets out except you. You own all the bitcoins in the world. Now what?

[nextstepguy]

I believe that was Warren Buffett explanation on Bitcoin a while back, during Berkshire Hathaway‎ quarterly earnings report.

[lekevicius]

Assuming the node network and mining remains intact... now you own a pretty valuable and difficult to replicate infrastructure. At least some people will want to own the "native token" of that network.

[bovinejoni]

How is that a realistic assumption? The infrastructure goes dark as soon as the mining incentives disappear. You own an internet relic, a MySpace page

[naveen99]

Use it as the family ledger ?

[redox99]

So I assume you are heavily shorted on BTC? Put your money where your mouth is?

[timmg]

Does anyone know what price it needs to drop to to no longer pay for mining? Like with the most efficient rigs? (Particularly with energy prices going up.)

[physicsguy]

I read in the FT this morning that it’s about $16000 in electricity costs to mine a bitcoin at the moment

[petertodd]

Mining difficulty adjusts automatically.

There is a price at which Bitcoin is no longer secure from the entity willing to spend the most money to 51% attack it. But there's no good way to know how big that threat is. Most likely Bitcoin has a significant safety margin there (I'd take a rough guess at >100x).

[nathias]

Do you think the tech disappears when Bitcoin goes below some magical threshold?

[akmarinov]

No one cares about the tech if people won’t put money into it anymore.

[cuteboy19]

It was fascinating 10 years ago but useless all along.

[nathias]

how is it useless if I've been using it for 10 years?

[highwaylights]

No, the code still sticks around, useless as it ever was for almost everything that was boasted of it.