Volumes have atrophied completely. It's not a cooling of retail interest vis-a-vis the stock market, but complete apathy and/or hatred.
See the volume data for OpenSea as an example.
I would argue that NFTs did more to spread the word that cryptocurrencies are a farce than they did to create "value" for those behind them.
Bootstrapped businesses have the best execution.
In 2019, no one was saying it would crash in 2022; they were saying it would crash in 2019 or just "it will crash eventually"
In 2020, they weren't saying it would crash in 2022, they were saying it would crash in 2020 or just "it will crash eventually"
In 2021, they weren't saying it would crash in 2022, they were saying it would crash in 2021 or just "it will crash eventually"
In 2022, they said it would crash in 2022 or just "it will crash eventually", and people who didn't realize it would actually happen in 2022 were in a bubble?
It turned out that 2022 was different, but the predictions weren't any different, which means they weren't actually meaningful predictions.
People started saying "yeah, there's a problem here" about the Irish property market in 2003 or so. Lots of people were saying "this will crash any day now". For years. Then between 2006 and 2010, prices halved, for broadly the reasons the doomsayers were saying (the global financial crisis was arguably a trigger, but doesn't explain the whole thing).
(Also, I would note that Bitcoin did crash in 2021, as well. And it's not like 2022 is likely to be the last crash, either).
Didn't collapse the next month.
Didn't collapse the next month.
Finally collapses the one after. Was it still a POS garbage house? Probably.
"it will crash eventually" is more important, it results in people staying away/getting out of this market, for good. It's much more powerful than oh it's gonna crash on this or that date.
> > I think everyone was completely caught off-guard by the ferocity and pace of the crypto drawdown.
> If you were caught off-guard then you've been sitting in a massive bubble.
OP is saying people were caught off-guard by the specifics of the crash. That doesn't require being in a bubble, because there weren't any specific correct predictions that were distinguishable from the specific incorrect predictions.
Non-specific predictions may be useful, but they don't prevent you from being surprised by the specifics.
For those who are in this market (as Coinbase is), they are useful in terms of planning and setting up a large reserve of rainy day funds - for less risky venture it may not be necessary, but for crypto it absolutely is. Unless plan B is to crash and burn which seems to be the MO for most crypto companies.
You know who didn't drink the koolaid? Cumberland/DRW and Jump.
HN has predicted 10 of the last two crypto crashes.
Plus there's also the "Lehman Brothers moment" provided by FTX. People are learning what "counterparty risk" is. If you're not daytrading, then suddenly it's worth considering moving your crypto off the exchange and assuming the custody risk yourself.
Predicting tops/bottoms is a fools errand, however. If you thought Bitcoin was overpriced at $15,000 and see it rise to almost $70,000, only to see if fall, but not past the point where you initially thought it was overpriced -- well, hopefully you at least didn't bet on it being overpriced at $15k.
I remember thinking how crazy Tesla's price seemed to me in June/July 2020. It then proceeded to go up more than 4x that price over the next 1.5 years before falling, but TSLA is still trading ~30% higher than those June/July 2020 prices.
It has significantly outperformed VC darlings like Peloton (-93%) and WeWork (-90%).
You can't tell me that WeWork stock wasn't working on the greater fool theory any more than Bitcoin's price works on finding more bagholders. It's all a grift, some worse than others.
It's absolutely not informative to compare their returns to various crypto.
That doesn’t change the fact that crypto is zero/negative sum.
Meta crashed 73%. Tesla crashed 70%. Netflix crashed 72%.
Everyone knew it was always going to come down, but if I were to tell you in September 2021 that Meta was going to trade 70% down within a year, you wouldn't have believed me
I would have probably asked "who is Meta?" at which point you explain you are a time traveler, and Facebook was to change their name in the next few months, too. After my initial laughter, I suppose I'd believe your whole story, because you can't make this stuff up. Next thing you'll tell me, Zuckerberg has legally changed his name to "The Cooler Mark".
Maybe not down 70%, but certainly down a lot due to iOS privacy changes, which are being taken up by other platforms and browsers as well.
A big chunk of the negative sentiment however can be attributed to those ridiculous metaverse demos that they've spunked $15b of cash on.
I have always said (w/comments to back it up) the $600 checks were going to cause huge issues sooner than later. I don't think its that prophetic or controversial (its basic econ) but at the time it seemed if you even suggested the idea that printing so much money was a bad idea you were seen as "hating poor people" or some other flavor of "against the common man."
Still. I can't say I would have believed you. Otherwise, I would have shorted the whole tech sector.
Then out of the blue, for no real reason, it went up again, hitting another new high.
Point is: markets are completely irrational and predicting what they're going to do or not going to do is a futile exercise.
In real terms, Bitcoin and Ethereum didn't perform any worse than most major tech stocks, and outperformed many pandemic tech stocks (Zoom, Peloton).
You have to believe. Especially if you claim to be a leader.