Crypto’s 80% Plunge Is Now Worse Than the Dot-Com Crash | Hacker News Reader

Crypto’s 80% Plunge Is Now Worse Than the Dot-Com Crash

bloomberg.com

44 pointsprlambert26 comments

I think that headline is an outright lie. It's not as big as is stated in the article itself, and it has basically no impact on most people's lives, because it was expected by almost everybody.

They have hype in common, that's all.

>and it has basically no impact on most people's lives, because it was expected by almost everybody.

Worse for those that have invested in crypto it means, not most people

"gamble" would be a better word rather than "invest" as it would remove the undue sympathy.

Speculate is the middle ground here.

Still too lenient as it implies there was some thinking involved.

I get it. You have a gripe towards it. Did you lose money? Know people who did? Have the feeling of missing out?

Or perhaps he is just not into Crypto and the like (the "like" including things like Amway and Scientology).

Ah the ol' pyramid scheme and religious cult arguments.

Fair enough, now we actually have something to discuss. Do you consider the stock market and forex market also as pyramid schemes? If not, what's the difference?

The religious argument is kind of absurd though. I could dismiss every group or school of thought as being a bunch of crazy religious weirdos. Especially easy because in that case I don't have to provide any substantive arguments.

The difference is that Bitcoin is not used much for transactions currently. The companies on the stock market usually have a valuation at least somewhat related to the output they provide (I say somewhat because stock traders also try to project for the future and often get this wrong).

I see this as an issue of what's probably a reasonable valuation for the near future for a company or virtual currency and what is the current valuation. Bitcoin is valued many many times more than it's current actual value, most companies would have a massive selloff if they published such bad numbers in terms of current earnings with no clear value in the future.

Until Bitcoin gets at least some widespread adoption and most people investing in it are people that want to get rich quick, I see it on par with any other pump and dump scheme, pyramid scheme or cult.

It's only worse for those that invested in crypto during a period of a couple of months last year.

People who gambled on crypto any time before October are still up.

That's 11 months ago. You're saying that for virtually an entire year everyone who has invested in cryptocurrencies has lost money. That doesn't seem significant to you?

Fair point

What exactly precipitates articles like this? Reading this headline I went to naturally go check the price of Bitcoin [1] and was expecting some... well something. Instead it's up about 5% on the month, a bit more than 1% on the week.

In my cynical mind this just reads 'It sure is a slow news day, but we need to put something out. I know! the old trusty Bitcoin is crashing... or something!' Is there some other event that precipitated this that I missed?

[1] - https://www.coindesk.com/price/

Bitcoin doesn’t really count. It’s about all of the Also Ran shitcoins/ICO scams that bitcoin spawned.

>What exactly precipitates articles like this? Reading this headline I went to naturally go check the price of Bitcoin [1] and was expecting some... well something. Instead it's up about 5% on the month, a bit more than 1% on the week.

It was $19000 last year and ~ $6200 today, doesn't that give you any pause?

Sure, but why publish this article now. Bitcoin has been pretty stable (well stable for a crypto currency) for the past few month

It was already $6800 in February. What has changed since than to write about "Crypto’s 80% Plunge" now?

Articles are not just for breaking news.

They are also for reflective pieces covering a longer period of time.

Par for the course price volatility for bitcoin.

this is a fair argument for why you should never read daily news, and instead only read news that's a historical summary of the top N most important things from a trailing M year period.

Did you read the article? You didn't even have to get that far into it:

"Wednesday’s losses were led by Ether, the second-largest virtual currency. It fell 6 percent to $171.15 at 7:50 a.m. in New York, extending this month’s retreat to 40 percent. Bitcoin was little changed, while the MVIS CryptoCompare index fell 3.8 percent."

Headline is a bit misleading - but nonetheless the crypto-route has been a huge destruction of capital.

My biggest issue with the article: You cannot just compare 2008's route of one stock index with some arbitrary Crypto-Index. It's an unfair comparison.

I've did this just weeks ago myself: 2008's loss in S&P500 market-cap vs. this years loss in market-cap of the 5 leading crypto-curriencies. Which was about a third (Yes, it is just an approximation - it lacks the 2008's loss of market-cap in assets around the world, but so does it exclude ICOs and crypto-derivatives).

What makes such a comparison interesting though: The crypto-route was huge nonetheless, but it was more or less isolated. Which maybe was a good thing. If we were to believe in cyclical markets, with bubble-bursts being a recurring integral part, then maybe crypto was a "booby-trap" for spoofing speculation into it and save the rest of the financial markets this time?

I've actually been hoping and waiting for this to happen.

I've been keeping an eye on bitcoin long before the bitcoin faucet dried up, and am a big believer in bitcoin as a practical currency rather than something to gamble with. Hopefully with this, bitcoin becomes usable again as means to transact in low-value trades with other people.

So... This is good news for bitcoin?

These types of MSM clickbait headlines are a pretty reliable buy signal

I will never understand the reflex of decrying news as "FUD" or outlets as "MSM", if journalists don‘t write what you want to hear.

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