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Comment by mattwilsonn888 | Hacker News Reader

> When was the last time you saw BTC lose 48k in value?

Not using proportions is pure sensationalist nonsense. >50% drawdowns have happened several times in Bitcoin. So tell us again how this time is different.

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> Not using proportions is pure sensationalist nonsense.

Why did you chose to ignore the reference to BTC being currently at 27% of its year peak in November?

I mean, to ignore the reference to the percentage drop and cherry pick the abs value, you had to read the whole post and decide to ignore everything except the very last sentence.

Ignore? I went a step further and acknowledged its been down more than 50% multiple times! Maybe you are the ignorant one - if you manage to pay close enough attention to read me this time.

One way this is different for BTC/crypto is that it was getting attention in mainstream/"Main Street" culture.

BTC has been acting like it's just another speculative asset for a long time. I bet a lot of Main Street investors will probably not come back to crypto after this is all over.

> BTC has been acting like it's just another speculative What does that even mean? That makes no sense in the context of what Bitcoin actually is, rather than your straw-man interpretation of other people's incorrect assessment.

As for main street - they will come back just slightly wiser. Don't forget how much of them skipped Bitcoin and went straight to canine and DeFi which is currently unwinding.

I suppose it depends on what you consider "main street". I noticed the largest amount of people asking me about cryptocurrencies in 2017, during the last run-up.

> I bet a lot of Main Street investors will probably not come back to crypto after this is all over.

I had similar thoughts in 2018.

The Fed didn't raise interest rates in 2018 like they just did though. The era of free money is over. That has affects on the whole economy, not just crypto. But where conservative main street is content with meager returns, just enough to beat inflation, the promise of crypto, especially for those that missed out on the during the original Bitcoin boom, is ludicrous returns which leads to yacht money.

Myopic. Those people learned the lesson and can change expectations. You can't read minds. The market is primarily emotional and using what people feel now to prove your point long term is the same thinking that causes someone to buy Bitcoin at $69k thinking its going straight to one million usd.

When it starts going up hedge funds will jump in..

but not using absolute values is as much nonsense

The absolute values has a huge influence about potential investments (e.g. mining equipment, but also things like storing money in BTC).

EDIT: Uh I got off topic, point is if the absolute value drops blow some vague thresholds it can cause chain reactions. An losing 50% of a small and 50% of a big investment makes a big difference. END EDIT

Plus and most important by now a lot of non-tech enthusiast are in the crypto market.

For example private people tempted by celebrity and YT videos which don't understand the crypto market dynamics.

By now crypto currencies are ironically also somewhat interlinked with stock market due to investors from the stock market speculating on it in various ways.

This has pushed bitcoin so hight, but also this makes the current crash worse then crashes in the early time.

Especially a lot of "innocent bystanders" are affected directly (private person putting savings in BTC) or indirectly (e.g. through fonds).

Furthermore many of them have been bluntly lied to wrt. the risks involved, market dynamics and what technically is provided and isn't.

I.e. besides burning people this crash could also lead to more regulation, potential much more depending on how it plays out.

The absolute amount matters as well though. It's easy to imagine something that dropped from 1000 to 500 returning to 1000. That's a small rise in value, and if you believe the currency is really a currency you can imagine a "$1000 coin" being useful.

Its harder to imagine a currency or a stock that fall $30000 returning to $60000.

It might be the same percentage, but it's not the same in terms of psychology.

One milli-bitcoin was $60 a few months ago, now it’s $20, a mere $40 drop.

Using proportions is misleading. The reasons for drop from 1000 to 500 are different from those for a drop from 60,000 to 30,000.

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