Crypto hoarders dump tokens as shares tumble

Jeff S

Ars Legatus Legionis
10,922
Subscriptor++
I guess HODL is now FODL. . .

It'll be interesting to see if this causes a total deflation of the crypto bubble, or if it yet again finds a bottom and bounces back.

One of the arguments that crypto-boosters have long made is that crypto, supposedly like Gold, would hold its value in a time of economic recession or depression. A hedge against economic uncertainty, a safe haven for your dollars. . .and yet, it seems that as we are starting to enter an economic recession, that crypto is not so de-coupled from the larger economy and other assets like stocks, bonds, and the value of the dollar.
 
Upvote
159 (160 / -1)
Donald Trump’s pledge last year to turn the US into a “bitcoin superpower.”

Apropos of this; anyone else thinking back to what happened to the Spanish empire when they got their hands on several fucktons of new world gold and silver? It didn't directly destroy them; and in the immediate term being able to buy whatever for the low low price of killing a few people who didn't matter seemed like a great deal; but it more or less rotted them out because the industry with the highest ROI was plunder, rather than something value-added; and you ended up with essentially the closest thing to serious inflation issues that a goldbug can manage.

The very idea of being a "more or less arbitrary value store superpower" speaks to a profoundly rotten concept of what power even is. It looks extra stupid in 'crypto', which doesn't even have niche medical, industrial, and scientific uses; but the problem is a more fundamental one: being rich at the single-person scale is straightforwardly handy; because there's an economy out there large enough that we can usually treat it as arbitrarily large relative to your consumption and production; so just having enough cash to consume whatever amuses you beats punching the clock; but at the scale of a nation-state that simplifying assumption no longer holds; and being a 'superpower' more or less implies that the outside economy is small enough, relative to you, that it will be distorted by your interactions with it.
 
Upvote
296 (297 / -1)

Dadlyedly

Ars Tribunus Militum
2,551
Subscriptor
Why is everybody acting like there's a bubble that's about to pop and they want to shore up their stock prices against it? All of the AI people say that There Is No Bubble! They would never lie!
Well, half say there is no bubble, the other half say there is a bubble but buy anyway because there is no bubble.
 
Upvote
64 (64 / 0)

chiasticslide

Ars Centurion
241
Subscriptor++
Apropos of this; anyone else thinking back to what happened to the Spanish empire when they got their hands on several fucktons of new world gold and silver? It didn't directly destroy them; and in the immediate term being able to buy whatever for the low low price of killing a few people who didn't matter seemed like a great deal; but it more or less rotted them out because the industry with the highest ROI was plunder, rather than something value-added; and you ended up with essentially the closest thing to serious inflation issues that a goldbug can manage.
When your entire economy pivots to building sabers, you're going to have to keep rattling them. Boy, that doesn't sound familiar in this day and age at all!
 
Upvote
124 (124 / 0)

Dadlyedly

Ars Tribunus Militum
2,551
Subscriptor
I hope Bitcoin et al fucking crater taking the AI bubble with it.
Unfortunately history over the last decade suggests Bitcoin can keep doing this peak-and-crash thing indefinitely over a very long time. If I have grandkids, I suspect they will be having the same debates over it's value.
 
Upvote
114 (114 / 0)

Jeff S

Ars Legatus Legionis
10,922
Subscriptor++
Wait, I want to know what lenders are offering DEBT to make leveraged purchases of a highly speculative 'asset' with no inherent value? Also, I hope they lose a lot of money when Strategy and similar businesses go bankrupt.

We live in a world where black and brown people often can't get the money to buy a house, but somehow there are billions and billions of dollars available to buy crypto and. . . twitter.
 
Upvote
128 (130 / -2)

SirOmega

Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
6,165
Subscriptor++
Borrowing money to buy crypto??
That’s some Great Depression level thinking there . . .
Reminds me of The Big Short. Little or no money down to buy a house that will totally continue to appreciate under any circumstances.

Yeah, Okay.

Then 2008 happened and everything blew up.

The problem this time around is you have a cryptomonger in chief who would probably just decide to bail out crypto with our tax dollars.
 
Upvote
99 (101 / -2)

Jeff S

Ars Legatus Legionis
10,922
Subscriptor++
When your entire economy pivots to building sabers, you're going to have to keep rattling them. Boy, that doesn't sound familiar in this day and age at all!
Wasn't one of the massive economic issues of the Soviet Union that the central planners of the economy decided to put far too much of the labor and resources in the economy into weapons production, and that lead to severe austerity with regards to food, medicine, clothing, blankets, housing, and other necessities?
 
Upvote
43 (44 / -1)

citizencoyote

Ars Tribunus Militum
1,576
Subscriptor++
“There’s going to be a fire sale at these companies; it’s going to get worse,” said Adam Morgan McCarthy, senior research analyst at crypto data firm Kaiko. “It’s a vicious cycle. As soon as the prices start tanking, it’s a race to the bottom.”
Don't threaten me with a good time, now.
 
Upvote
116 (116 / 0)

Not_an_IT_guy

Ars Tribunus Militum
1,565
Subscriptor
Wait, I want to know what lenders are offering DEBT to make leveraged purchases of a highly speculative 'asset' with no inherent value? Also, I hope they lose a lot of money when Strategy and similar businesses go bankrupt.

We live in a world where black and brown people often can't get the money to buy a house, but somehow there are billions and billions of dollars available to buy crypto and. . . twitter.
Don't worry, the people companies that are loaning the money are too big to fail, so they will be fine after the .gov takes citizen money to make them whole (i.e. taxes).
 
Upvote
62 (62 / 0)
Maybe some AI firms with spare GPUs and nothing but empty valuations for assets should buy these tokens at discounts to prop up their value and then turn around and pivot to mining...why have one bubble when you can have two?
The funny thing is that we already have two. The AI bubble is both a real estate bubble and a tech bubble. So now it seems that cryptobros are gunning for a third. A valuation bubble?
 
Upvote
43 (43 / 0)

Jeff S

Ars Legatus Legionis
10,922
Subscriptor++
Reminds me of The Big Short. Little or no money down to buy a house that will totally continue to appreciate under any circumstances.

Yeah, Okay.

Then 2008 happened and everything blew up.

The problem this time around is you have a cryptomonger in chief who would probably just decide to bail out crypto with our tax dollars.
From my understanding, the real problem wasn't that borrowers were borrowing too much on houses - although that was certainly part of the problem, but was that banks that were originating debt were turning it over so fast as "collateralized debt obligations" that were sold as 'investments' in financial markets, that they had no incentive any longer to try to make sure the debts weren't junk?

That is, in the old-school version of lending, a bank had money, it made loans, and if the borrowers didn't repay the loans, the bank lost money. So the bank had a lot of incentive to not make bad loans.

But now banks were originating loans, backed by Congress through Fannie Mae/Freddie Mack, and then re-selling them as those CDOs almost instantly, claiming they were great, low risk pools of debt, when in fact they were very high risk pools of debt that were on a collision course with default.

Leaving the Taxpayer on the hook for the bailout of everyone else's reckless behavior? Privatized profit, socialized risk, as the saying goes.
 
Upvote
164 (165 / -1)

Jeff S

Ars Legatus Legionis
10,922
Subscriptor++
Anyone hitching their wagon to anything Donald says or does ALWAYS gets burned.
Not EVERYONE though. The people close to Donald get in fast, get out fast, selling at a profit to the greater fools who are left holding the worthless asset. Because that is how pump and dumps work.
 
Upvote
107 (107 / 0)

Justin Credible

Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
8,037
Subscriptor++
Unfortunately history over the last decade suggests Bitcoin can keep doing this peak-and-crash thing indefinitely over a very long time. If I have grandkids, I suspect they will be having the same debates over it's value.

Maybe maybe not we shall see. Notice there hasn't been a "world wide" adoption of BC being interlaced with global currencies which everyone in the BC world predicted would have happened by now? It's too volatile, too many swings, and it's vaporware. BC is for the rich companies to buy and sell between each other to turn a profit on something that doesn't exist.
 
Upvote
31 (32 / -1)

Jeff S

Ars Legatus Legionis
10,922
Subscriptor++
Don't worry, the people companies that are loaning the money are too big to fail, so they will be fine after the .gov takes citizen money to make them whole (i.e. taxes).
The problem with bailout-capitalism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
 
Upvote
57 (57 / 0)