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Wow. Bitcoin is almost $1,500

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DaveSimmons said:
Thanks, I agree -- those are very informative.
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Glad those posts helped.

The situation doesn't seem to have changed for the better. Numerous factors are driving money out of the crypto market at the moment, and it doesn't helped that Tether Ltd. has resumed printing of USDT. They're up to 3.2 billion USDT in circulation. Does anyone really think Tether Ltd. has acquired $1 billion in backing assets after coming under the scrutiny of the CFTC? Where are they getting the money? Though it is interesting that the market isn't responding positively to the printing of more USDT as it has in the past.

The DoJ has gotten into the act as well by investigating exchanges, including USDT-happy Bitfinex and GDAX (which has nothing at all to do with Tether).

Sadly, the prolonged nature of the CFTC investigation along with the involvement of the DoJ means that it may take awhile for the Feds to conclude anything. Personally I predict that the market will tank either way. Continued delays will make the decline slow and painful. Should the CFTC rule USDT to be generally fraudulent, the decline will be more swift. I just don't see a lot of upside for the market as a whole until the dust clears. Outside money does not seem to want to enter the market until there's some restoration in investor confidence. It's hard to know which crypto projects are valued correctly right now.

On the plus side, there will be some nice buys soon. Pick projects with strong technological fundamentals and snap them up when they get cheap. A few projects may have already bottomed out, and if you do just a tiny bit of research on historical pricing, you can probably tell which ones. Personally I am tempted to jump in with some "play" money soon, though every time I think my target has reached a floor, it just gets lower. Can't say I'm too disappointed (sorry, HODLers). Anyone hoping to enter the market or increase their stack during the current bear market should look at HODL times of 6-12 months at least (IN MY OPINION) since it may take awhile for the market to recover. I do not have any fun charts with alligators on them to prove my point. I'm just looking at market history and going off the noise coming from the no-coiner world. It's going to take a significant amount of capital investment in crypto to send it back to Jan 2018 levels. We will hopefully not see any more USDT-like shenanigans in future market valuations.

Dunno what to tell you if you are already HODLing, though it's probable that the market will go through its spasms and wind up higher by this time next year. Maybe. Some projects won't make it though, and it could get real ugly for Bitcoin and its various clones. I also have serious doubts about NEM. But boy is it getting cheap.

Those of you who are ETH veterans from 2016 have experienced similarly agonizing markets. You can try to time the market, sell now, and buy back in at a lower point, and I am almost tempted to tell you to do that (since it's really quite likely that the Feds will do something to make the markets tank), but again we don't know how much money will enter the market between now and the conclusion of the CFTC investigation. Strange things can happen in the cryptoverse. Maybe it will go back up to $700 or so, and then dip to $500 after the investigation is complete. What profit comes from selling your stack in that scenario? Or it could drop to $100 or less with zero upside between now and the post-CFTC floor. You just don't know! Which is the exciting, fun, and scary part of it all.

And if you try to set an exchange stop-loss, a stop-loss hunter may eat your lunch.

Good luck. I won't be posting much due to busy schedule blah blah blah but I'll lurk as time permits.
 
I noticed that the charts for the "big four" CCs at Coinbase seem to be trending downward.

I was wondering though, using the Coinbase interface, when you go to "Sell" for USD, it places a sell order for the current valuation (of Bitcoin, for example), MINUS $100. I guess that's the spread, but couldn't the automatic selling feature, that ALWAYS sells at the lower end of the spread, over time, end up depressing the value of the CC, when you have hundreds or thousands of users selling using that interface? I mean, isn't it nearly certain to drive down valuation, absent buyers that want to increase the value? Rather than hold steady?
 
Yea, but he only said in a long drawn out explained way what most of us already knew. You can't convince people who see $$. Sure there was and probably still is money to be made in playing the cryptocurrency game, but the ones who are driving prices are not interested in long term viability of it or blockchain in general. They are only concerned with making fast dollars. When you have fast dollars, there are going to be a ton of undesireable consequences in the process because it's not about furthering a cause, it's just about making money quickly. These exchanges popping up are only worried about money, nothing else. What the hell do you think banks are and why there are regulations? The anonymous money angle is a pipe dream. No regulations/no tracking basically leaves you open to every bad thing that you can imagine and plenty of things you've never thought of. Everything technological can be hacked and manipulated if there is enough interest. It is as simple as that.
 
ImpulsE69 said:
Yea, but he only said in a long drawn out explained way what most of us already knew. You can't convince people who see $$. Sure there was and probably still is money to be made in playing the cryptocurrency game, but the ones who are driving prices are not interested in long term viability of it or blockchain in general. They are only concerned with making fast dollars. When you have fast dollars, there are going to be a ton of undesireable consequences in the process because it's not about furthering a cause, it's just about making money quickly. These exchanges popping up are only worried about money, nothing else. What the hell do you think banks are and why there are regulations? The anonymous money angle is a pipe dream. No regulations/no tracking basically leaves you open to every bad thing that you can imagine and plenty of things you've never thought of. Everything technological can be hacked and manipulated if there is enough interest. It is as simple as that.
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To be fair, this has nothing to do with cryptocurrency as a concept or even as a practical entity. This is all about market manipulation, and is exactly what drives the vast majority of penny stocks. CCs offer nothing new to the "whales" that they haven't tasted elsewhere.
 
VirtualLarry said:
I was wondering though, using the Coinbase interface, when you go to "Sell" for USD, it places a sell order for the current valuation (of Bitcoin, for example), MINUS $100. I guess that's the spread, but couldn't the automatic selling feature, that ALWAYS sells at the lower end of the spread, over time, end up depressing the value of the CC, when you have hundreds or thousands of users selling using that interface? I mean, isn't it nearly certain to drive down valuation, absent buyers that want to increase the value? Rather than hold steady?
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use gdax and buy/sell there. if you have a coinbase account you automatically have a gdax account, same login/pw. transfers between coinbase and gdax are free as they are the same company.
 
I want to know why Coinbase does not run out of money. I mean, people buy bitcoin on other exchanges and then transfer them to coinbase to cash them out to fiat. Do they not run out because there is always more people transferring fiat into the system? If a ton of people cashed out at once for fiat, I think there would be a run on the bank situation.
 
Staples said:
I want to know why Coinbase does not run out of money. I mean, people buy bitcoin on other exchanges and then transfer them to coinbase to cash them out to fiat. Do they not run out because there is always more people transferring fiat into the system? If a ton of people cashed out at once for fiat, I think there would be a run on the bank situation.
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They charge fees. Every time someone buys crypto through them, they charge a fee and make money. If you transfer crypto to another address, they make money (which is why you should transfer to GDAX first then to wherever). They are one of the only ways to easily turn US dollars into crypto and vice versa, so they have a LOT of users, which means a LOT of fees being collected.
 
VirtualLarry said:
I noticed that the charts for the "big four" CCs at Coinbase seem to be trending downward.

I was wondering though, using the Coinbase interface, when you go to "Sell" for USD, it places a sell order for the current valuation (of Bitcoin, for example), MINUS $100. I guess that's the spread, but couldn't the automatic selling feature, that ALWAYS sells at the lower end of the spread, over time, end up depressing the value of the CC, when you have hundreds or thousands of users selling using that interface? I mean, isn't it nearly certain to drive down valuation, absent buyers that want to increase the value? Rather than hold steady?
Click to expand...

An interesting observation, though:

1). Most "serious" players are using GDAX/Coinbase Pro anyway
2). The reduction in price is only to assure that the Coinbase seller can actually move coin onto the market instead of having an unfilled order hanging on the books. Or so I would guess.

DixyCrat said:
BCH is my coin of choice, I believe in its fundamentals, and I believe that it is properly valued at about 10k
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Good luck! It is a good thing that BCH seems more interested in being a unit of barter than a "store of value", but the original codebase upon which BCH bases itself is going to be a major drawback.

ImpulsE69 said:
Yea, but he only said in a long drawn out explained way what most of us already knew.
Click to expand...

Not sure how many people knew that the DoJ was getting in on the act as well, or that Tether Ltd. had printed 1 billion more USDT since March. But hey I'll take your word for it.

You can't convince people who see $$. Sure there was and probably still is money to be made in playing the cryptocurrency game, but the ones who are driving prices are not interested in long term viability of it or blockchain in general.
Click to expand...

Anyone buying tokens is interested in money. We all speculate, albeit along different timeframes. My own ETH investment was supposed to last for years, but the irrationality of the market brought me to targets faster than anticipated, so I had to get out.

Anyone interested in blockchain for blockchain's sake would be coding or doing other work to improve uptake/utilization.

I am still very enthusiastic about Ethereum, but it paid out so fast that I am left wondering what else I should do (if anything) to contribute to its future.

Staples said:
I want to know why Coinbase does not run out of money. I mean, people buy bitcoin on other exchanges and then transfer them to coinbase to cash them out to fiat. Do they not run out because there is always more people transferring fiat into the system? If a ton of people cashed out at once for fiat, I think there would be a run on the bank situation.
Click to expand...

Coinbase does not buy your BTC/ETH/LTC/BCH. Coinbase has an exchange in the background (GDAX, now known as Coinbase Pro), and it uses a simplified interface to put your buy/sell orders onto the exchange. The fees they charge to use the simplified interface are pretty ugly.
 
DrMrLordX said:
Drive-by article links:

https://tonyarcieri.com/the-tether-conundrum-part-2-the-plot-thickens

and from a different perspective:

http://www.albertodeluigi.com/2018/06/25/tether-scandal-audit-subpoena-bitfinex/

Pick your poison. After reading the first piece, though, I'm inclined to doubt in Mr. Deluigi's claims. Just look at the way the writing style of the article. Bleh.
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The second atticle’s crappy english that his argument is “USDT is a fractional reserve currency.”
 
DrMrLordX said:
Drive-by article links:

https://tonyarcieri.com/the-tether-conundrum-part-2-the-plot-thickens

and from a different perspective:

http://www.albertodeluigi.com/2018/06/25/tether-scandal-audit-subpoena-bitfinex/

Pick your poison. After reading the first piece, though, I'm inclined to doubt in Mr. Deluigi's claims. Just look at the way the writing style of the article. Bleh.
Click to expand...

Yeah that second article I had to quit early on, just bad.

That first one though, yeah I agree the whole thing reeks of something. It's funny that it involves a US-not-US offshore casino in there. I have a feeling all of this is going to end up playing out like some robber-baron version of Cryptonomicon. There's bound to be a very dense story here, I just hope my money makes it out alive.
 
DixyCrat said:
The second atticle’s crappy english that his argument is “USDT is a fractional reserve currency.”
Click to expand...

destrekor said:
Yeah that second article I had to quit early on, just bad.

That first one though, yeah I agree the whole thing reeks of something. It's funny that it involves a US-not-US offshore casino in there. I have a feeling all of this is going to end up playing out like some robber-baron version of Cryptonomicon. There's bound to be a very dense story here, I just hope my money makes it out alive.
Click to expand...

It's a hard read. I tried to make myself go through the entire article from Mr. Deluigi to see if there was any meat to his claims. His logic is tortured, and he seems to ignore the fact that Tether Ltd. and/or Bitfinex can simply opt to stop "cashing out" USDT at any time according to Tether Ltd.'s own whitepaper (at least as far as I know). Tether can simply refuse the USDT tokens and/or Bitfinex can simply drop support for it, at any time of their choosing. I would expect them to do so once "the gig is up" - that is, once USDT bagholders try to make a run to cash out of Bitfinex. Taken in context with the multiple conflicts-of-interest pointed out by Mr Arcieri, Mr. Deluigi's claims appear to be a big pile of hooey.

I am not impressed by any argument claiming that established, reputable auditors can't/won't audit Tether Ltd. (which would take all of a few hours) because some Taiwanese banks had bad things happen to them (not coincidentally, those banks were the ones offering banking to Bitfinex through Wells Fargo) and/or because auditors are very cautious and conservative. Any reputable auditor will simply take the large sum of money to look over Tether's books and then give a thumb's up or thumb's down, along with a brief as to why. That is, assuming that Tether Ltd. is willing to show them what they want to see.

Instead we get "trust us! Louis Freeh says our money is there!", still without any indication of what red ink may be hiding in the shallow background.
 
Just checking in and updating the thread.

Current bitcoin price: $6,301
Current ethereum price: $356

Tough year so far for cryptocurrency. I'm still just an observer with no skin in the game.
 
Selling a chunk of my Ethereum back when was hovering around $500 earlier this year seemed like it was a good idea. It doesn't look like it ever rebounded.

Don't worry, though... I kept enough to pay for those Coolcoin transaction fees 🙂
 
I'm still mining ethereum but yeah it's been creeping down. Sitting at $349.8 total mined in terms of dollar amount and that goes down even as I mine. I only have 2 1070 TIs going, not worth paying the absurd prices for more. I didn't even mine enough to pay half the cost of one card. At least with just two, I can do a SLI setup or try to sell one, so the hardware is not a loss even if this whole thing does not pay out, which I doubt it will.

Counting on it eventually going up again. If not, oh well, I tried. 😛 I went so overkill on the actual rig though, the case is 6U and can fit 8 cards. I didn't do the wiring harnesses but I bought all the stuff to make them. GPU 6+2 pin connectors are weird. They're not the same as 8 pin connectors, so they were a bit tricky to source out, but I have them.
 
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