To think a huge crypto bitcoin bloodbath is on the cards.

[Viviennemary]

I have thought this for quite a while. But surely it's any day now. How this crypto market is sustainable is a mystery. A lot of it is backed up by Tether a so called stable coin meant to be worth 1$ but it is suspected Tether isnt backed by anything. Its just printed tokens backed by nothing.

I have very little sympathy for anyone who loses money 'invested' in cryptocurrencies...

I invested 250 in the summer and just cashed in at 10k 👍

@Ellmau

I have very little sympathy for anyone who loses money 'invested' in cryptocurrencies...

Generally me too. As long as they don't want any of my money to bail them out (like the endowment mortgage brigade, but that's another story).

@Remmy123 well done I got in a bit too late this time but I think it’ll rise again and whatever you think about crypto some people have done really well

My husband has made us a significant amount of money by investing in crypto.

There are also crypto currencies which are pegged to currencies such as the USD so very little risk there.

You have to know what you're doing.

That is a myth for a start. Tether for one is not backed by the US dollar. The whole thing is an absolute con.

@Lovelydovey

It’s all a massive pyramid scheme. The tokens go up in value because there is increasing demand for them but there is no inherent value in them. People only invest in them because they think they will increase in value (or for some because they are anonymous and so can be used for underground purposes).

This is exactly the same for any other major currency though.

You know what it’s all polarised - if you like crypto you’ll invest if you don’t you won’t and discredit it don’t worry about it just live your life and forget about it it doesn’t concern you. Why even bother thinking about it you’ve made your choice you’re happy with it stay positive

@Viviennemary

I have thought this for quite a while. But surely it's any day now. How this crypto market is sustainable is a mystery. A lot of it is backed up by Tether a so called stable coin meant to be worth 1$ but it is suspected Tether isnt backed by anything. Its just printed tokens backed by nothing.

So it's basically like paper money then and there is no difference?

Paper money (i.e printed by central banks) has a value that is guaranteed by those banks. And behind them, if needs be, their governments. And behind them, their armed forces.

But ever since the world abandoned the gold standard (a British wheeze that meant you could print as much money as you liked without needing the gold to back it) then yes, paper money is really the ultimate demonstration of consumer trust.

In 1967 the UK government decided overnight that the pound was overvalued and corrected it by 14%. No effect domestically, but if you were trading abroad, you suddenly had to find 14% more pounds to buy your Dollars, Francs, Yen etc. And that is what you can do with "real" money.

@Remmy123

I invested 250 in the summer and just cashed in at 10k 👍

Your 250 invested in Bitcoin has increased 40-fold since the summer?

It's probably just me being old - but I don't get how it could ever be practical. Let's jump forward 10 years an imagine Bitcoin has become widely accepted, it is still trading for the price right now (30,684.04GBP according to google) - your youngest mentions its mufti day and they need to take in 0.000001629511628846788 bitcoin (that would be 50p to us today).

Perhaps you take the kids to the cinema after school:
"3 tickets to see The Avengers 7 please ! "
"Sure madam, that will be 0.0014665604659621 bitcoin please"

I guess some electronic transaction is required - but the fractional nature of it seems very likely to end up with massive errors on either side the transaction.

I'm old enough to know people who lived through the time when £1 stopped being 240 old pence and it became 100 new pence - it was hugely confusing they say, too many pensioners were ripped off. Can't imagine transactions that involve 15 decimal places or more.

Most NFT stuff is money laundering. Drug dealer A sends Drug Dealer B some drugs. In return Drug Dealer B buys an NFT (a JPEG drawn in MS Paint in 10seconds) from Drug Dealer A for $1million. It's difficult for the authorities to discern the difference between a Drug Dealer and a moron. A lot of real modern Art works in a similar way, but NFTs are quicker and easier.

There's always been a 'need' for something launderers can do without any tangible product. Hence money laundering as laundries didn't produce anything. Then funeral homes, tanning places, casinos, REITs , now this.

The thing is I don't doubt some people are making money. Just as some people made money from tulips and some do from gambling. But nothing is adding value, you can't spend any of it anywhere so you rely on more and more people buying it (hence why it's a pyramid scheme), and it's crap for the environment. There are more environmentally friendly ways to gamble.

Your 250 invested in Bitcoin has increased 40-fold since the summer?

If I had Bitcoin I'd say this sort of thing online. Pour encourager les autres. Just saying.

@Findwen

It's a lot simpler than that in reality.

If you have, for example, a Revolut bank account you can hold Bitcoin and switch it almost instantly to whichever 'real' currency you like.

I don't mess around with Bitcoin much at all (I used to) but I still have a fraction of one in my Revolut account. A few days ago I 'sold' another fraction of it and converted it to £500. It took a couple of seconds.

So whilst you're completely right insofar as you'd be messing around with very funny little numbers if buying something inexpensive, it's all very easy to handle so not much of a problem.

@MrsTerryPratchett

Your 250 invested in Bitcoin has increased 40-fold since the summer?

If I had Bitcoin I'd say this sort of thing online. Pour encourager les autres. Just saying.

Oh definitely! I was just curious as to whether that's what the poster was actually saying.

Most NFT stuff is money laundering. Drug dealer A sends Drug Dealer B some drugs. In return Drug Dealer B buys an NFT (a JPEG drawn in MS Paint in 10seconds) from Drug Dealer A for $1million. It's difficult for the authorities to discern the difference between a Drug Dealer and a moron. A lot of real modern Art works in a similar way, but NFTs are quicker and easier.

This made me laugh a bit as I’m constantly being pushed towards NFTs by parts of art world on IG

The other part is the big auction houses - Sotheby’s and Christie’s - don’t have same issue with reserves yet as they do on a Picasso. They can lose money on the latter and NFT is a goldmine in comparison, no integrity though

@MrsTerryPratchett, taxi firms, fast food deliveries, especially pizza and ice cream vans all serve the function here combined with offering a legitimate reason to make deliveries. Even better during lockdowns.

Ice cream bans and their turf/gang wars are well-documented. The world is very odd, when you think about it!

[quote SofiaSoFar]@Findwen

It's a lot simpler than that in reality.

If you have, for example, a Revolut bank account you can hold Bitcoin and switch it almost instantly to whichever 'real' currency you like.

I don't mess around with Bitcoin much at all (I used to) but I still have a fraction of one in my Revolut account. A few days ago I 'sold' another fraction of it and converted it to £500. It took a couple of seconds.

So whilst you're completely right insofar as you'd be messing around with very funny little numbers if buying something inexpensive, it's all very easy to handle so not much of a problem.[/quote]
So if you are going to be doing 99% of all your transactions (say, anything less than a quarter of one bitcoin - £7,500) in pounds, what purpose does bitcoin serve the general public ?

@Viviennemary

At least housing is something people need and use. It has value in itself. Bitcoin is no more than boxing up fresh air and conning people into thinking it's worth something. Its the biggest con of modern times. It is 100% a ponzi scheme.

It really isn’t. It’s wildly unpredictable yes but if you had put £50 into it in 2012 and now have £6000 which j can cash at any time very easily- you would think differently

Do you understand what a Ponzi scheme looks like before it fails? Having unrealised gains that can be realised at any time until they can't for everyone is pretty much a characteristic. "It’s wildly unpredictable yes but if you had put £50 into it in 2012 and now have £6000 which j can cash at any time very easily- you would think differently" I genuinely hope I would have the objectivity not to think differently in those circumstances.

I knew someone who worked for Madoff. And someone who worked in Enron entities. Madoff's 'pivot to a new strategy' arguably lasted 18? years before it stopped.

@Findwen

It's probably just me being old - but I don't get how it could ever be practical. Let's jump forward 10 years an imagine Bitcoin has become widely accepted, it is still trading for the price right now (30,684.04GBP according to google) - your youngest mentions its mufti day and they need to take in 0.000001629511628846788 bitcoin (that would be 50p to us today).

Perhaps you take the kids to the cinema after school:
"3 tickets to see The Avengers 7 please ! "
"Sure madam, that will be 0.0014665604659621 bitcoin please"

I guess some electronic transaction is required - but the fractional nature of it seems very likely to end up with massive errors on either side the transaction.

I'm old enough to know people who lived through the time when £1 stopped being 240 old pence and it became 100 new pence - it was hugely confusing they say, too many pensioners were ripped off. Can't imagine transactions that involve 15 decimal places or more.

Each Bitcoin is equal to 100 million Satoshis, making a Satoshi the smallest unit of Bitcoin currently recorded on the blockchain. Think of the Satoshi as the “cents” part of Bitcoin. But unlike a penny that represents 0.01 USD, Satoshi represents roughly 0.00000001 BTC — or Bitcoin to its eighth decimal. From finder.com

So 0.000001629 bitcoin would be referred to as 163 satoshis.

And the transactions would be handled by computers, so much less room for human error than there was when they changed the pound.

@MrsTerryPratchett Indeed though one change I've noticed since my youth is that the ice cream van locally now drives round with chimes selling ice creams at 5pm - 6pm in the dark in the middle of Winter. They seem to sell more ice creams in the Summer.

Bitcoin is 40% lower than it's All Time High, that's a real correction.
There is not so much money invested in at as for instance Gold, a fraction. So if there is further collapse it won't affect the wider economy IMHO that is.