BITCOIN

Frequentlyhere

Tether drifting off its peg too, now that could be very interesting. FT surprisingly quick off the mark in reporting:

https://www.ft.com/content/7ced3098-84a3-4c22-85ec-ac323d6d70e0

Though I believe we're all agreed that Tether is a crock, I can't recall from memory whether the participants in this forum believe its unrolling will substantially affect the price of bitcoin. We may be about to find out.

Paolo has already taken to twitter for his reassurance purposes ">300M redeemed in last 24h without a sweat drop"

Somehow from a British perspective, I don't take lack of sweating as being the good sign he means it to be.

Aegis

I for one love the idea of investing $0.90 to get back $0.60.  Presumably this will turn into a profit with enough volume?

Thrugelmir

darren232002 said:

Thrugelmir said:

The Lehmans moment of Crypto Currency. Investor support melts away .......

Hardly. Unlike Lehman, there will be no central bank printing money to save Luna and Do Kwon. 

Um.......... There was no support for Lehman Bros. The US authorities let it go under. Investors took the full hit.

Malthusian

Frequentlyhere said:

Tether drifting off its peg too, now that could be very interesting. FT surprisingly quick off the mark in reporting:

It dumped to as low as 94 cents around 8am this morning, but the wash trading bots are currently holding steady at 99 cents.

Infinite money glitch!

Which means that as it stands at lunchtime, nobody has much need to call on Tether's super secret reserves backing the "1 Tether = 1 real dollar" promise, that are too super secret to be independently audited. Unless, of course, they want to realise their "guaranteed" 1.01% return by calling on the guarantee.

Take the money! Open the box!

User232002

Thrugelmir said:

Um.......... There was no support for Lehman Bros. The US authorities let it go under. Investors took the full hit.

I thought you were referring to it in the metaphorical sense of it being the moment everyone realised the entire industry was running on vaporware.

Thrugelmir said:

The market is more correlated than investors think. Cross holdings have already resulted in sizable sell off's of bitcoin to raise liquidity. Like an iceberg. It's the 90% that lies beneath the water that's the problem. 

If your argument is that there are some crypto ponzi's that are a problem and need to die, I believe pretty much every pro-BTC poster here would agree with you. Plenty of tokens, in the top 10 even, are complete vaporware and we've said as much over the year this thread has been running.

If your argument is that Bitcoin, and many other genuine projects, are contaminated or somehow tainted due to this then that is wholly incorrect. The stock market isn't a scam because Theranos and Nikola existed.

And again, every 'sell off' has a buyer, which needs remembering.

User232002

How about we move this forward a little....

If you are someone who believes this is the great unwinding of the ponzi, that the scam has been unveiled and this is the death of BTC; What things in the future would invalidate your thesis?

If you can't answer this question because you don't believe your thesis is falsifiable, then that's blind faith based on emotion; not rational thought.

If your thesis can only be falsified by things that BTC isn't trying to achieve (ie. paying for your coffee in BTC) then that is just avoiding the question.

For example,

Frequentlyhere said:

Tether drifting off its peg too, now that could be very interesting. FT surprisingly quick off the mark in reporting:

https://www.ft.com/content/7ced3098-84a3-4c22-85ec-ac323d6d70e0

Though I believe we're all agreed that Tether is a crock, I can't recall from memory whether the participants in this forum believe its unrolling will substantially affect the price of bitcoin. We may be about to find out.

What does it do to the theory that 'Tether is a crock' if it manages to sustain the peg and maintain redemptions throughout this kind of market volatility?

Zola.

Doubt you'll get any meaningful answers from the detractors - they'll just be back here to beat their chest and say "na na i told you so!!!" when theres another dip

[Deleted User]

darren232002 said:

How about we move this forward a little....

If you are someone who believes this is the great unwinding of the ponzi, that the scam has been unveiled and this is the death of BTC; What things in the future would invalidate your thesis?

If you can't answer this question because you don't believe your thesis is falsifiable, then that's blind faith based on emotion; not rational thought.

If your thesis can only be falsified by things that BTC isn't trying to achieve (ie. paying for your coffee in BTC) then that is just avoiding the question.

I tend to avoid this thread because it just seems to be a pitched battle between people who love/hate the idea of Bitcoin. I find it all a bit odd if I'm honest. I've never experienced people having entrenched, almost ideologically driven discussions about other types of investment in this way. People either invest in things or they don't. I can only conclude that the point in all this is to win at debating things on the internet rather than to illuminate people about the merits or otherwise of Bitcoin as an investment.

But if we actually want to move the discussion forward then instead of fishing for comments that you can use as a sounding off point for the same slagging match we've had for the last 200+ pages, why don't we hear some genuine reasons why Bitcoin would be a sound investment at present. I personally can't see the appeal right now. This isn't because I think it's a "scam", but because it's fairly obvious to me that a lot of the momentum behind Bitcoin during its steep price rise was driven by sentiment and that's clearly turned over the last few months (people are now tripping over themselves to point out that crypto has become "boring" and the developments of the last few weeks, though not directly related to Bitcoin, will undoubtedly knock a lot of casual investors' confidence in anything crypto).

I don't particularly care if it rebounds in the long term or if it falls off a cliff edge tomorrow, I just struggle to see a reason why it would be worth the risk at present. It doesn't look like an appealing short term option to me and if it's a long term option then it comes with substantially more unknowns/risk than "traditional" investing. Arguing that something isn't a scam is a pretty low hurdle to clear, what I'd like to know is why Bitcoin represents a sound investment for someone like me who is open to the idea but has a healthy scepticism about gibberish on the internet. I would far rather be rich than right so I'd genuinely love you to prove me wrong.

Thrugelmir

Zola. said:

Doubt you'll get any meaningful answers from the detractors - they'll just be back here to beat their chest and say "na na i told you so!!!" when theres another dip

Another dip would hardly be a surprise. Given the far broader clouds hanging over almost every asset class. The great reset will continue for some considerable time. A new era for investors. With the punch bowl of cheap money taken away. 

Aegis

Deleted_User said:

darren232002 said:

How about we move this forward a little....

If you are someone who believes this is the great unwinding of the ponzi, that the scam has been unveiled and this is the death of BTC; What things in the future would invalidate your thesis?

If you can't answer this question because you don't believe your thesis is falsifiable, then that's blind faith based on emotion; not rational thought.

If your thesis can only be falsified by things that BTC isn't trying to achieve (ie. paying for your coffee in BTC) then that is just avoiding the question.

I tend to avoid this thread because it just seems to be a pitched battle between people who love/hate the idea of Bitcoin. I find it all a bit odd if I'm honest. I've never experienced people having entrenched, almost ideologically driven discussions about other types of investment in this way. People either invest in things or they don't. I can only conclude that the point in all this is to win at debating things on the internet rather than to illuminate people about the merits or otherwise of Bitcoin as an investment.

But if we actually want to move the discussion forward then instead of fishing for comments that you can use as a sounding off point for the same slagging match we've had for the last 200+ pages, why don't we hear some genuine reasons why Bitcoin would be a sound investment at present. I personally can't see the appeal right now. This isn't because I think it's a "scam", but because it's fairly obvious to me that a lot of the momentum behind Bitcoin during its steep price rise was driven by sentiment and that's clearly turned over the last few months (people are now tripping over themselves to point out that crypto has become "boring" and the developments of the last few weeks, though not directly related to Bitcoin, will undoubtedly knock a lot of casual investors' confidence in anything crypto).

I don't particularly care if it rebounds in the long term or if it falls off a cliff edge tomorrow, I just struggle to see a reason why it would be worth the risk at present. It doesn't look like an appealing short term option to me and if it's a long term option then it comes with substantially more unknowns/risk than "traditional" investing. Arguing that something isn't a scam is a pretty low hurdle to clear, what I'd like to know is why Bitcoin represents a sound investment for someone like me who is open to the idea but has a healthy scepticism about gibberish on the internet. I would far rather be rich than right so I'd genuinely love you to prove me wrong.

This is one reason why I find it so fascinating.  I invest and have done so for years, but I have never felt the need to evangelise over any of my investments or ridicule others who haven't bought in to the same investment.  I've also never assumed that critical comments are "FUD" and used that as a reason to dismiss any form of negativity.  It's genuinely interesting to watch.