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An article on Ars Technica notes the continuing slide downward of Bitcoin prices (down below $9,000 per coin from a December peak of $19,500). It also notes some recent news about Facebook ads and crypto, SEC Action against a different cryptocurrency project, and rumors about a still different coin's possibility of insolvency.
Meanwhile, rumors are swirling about Tether, a cryptocurrency whose value is pegged to the United States dollar. Tethers are supposed to be redeemable for dollars at any time, but in recent months Tether has struggled to gain access to the conventional banking system and has failed to produce a financial audit demonstrating its solvency.
I'm not sure if the article is connecting unconnected stories of problems or if the theme of trouble in crypto-land generally is valid. But this quote got me to thinking how much the state of cryptocurrency may be like the Free Banking Era in the United States in the 1800s and the Wildcat Banking that signaled its demise. We discuss cryptocurrency a lot on Soylent, but are the troubles of various operators all linked or is it unrelated coincidence?
[Ed. Note: The linked story at Ars Technica was updated to report that the price of one BitCoin dropped below $7000. As of this writing, coinbase reports the price dropped to about $6400 (Javascript required). Note this price is still $5500 ahead of where it was this time last year when it had just inched above $1000.]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @03:56AM (2 children)
With all that confirmation lag in the network, how fast can the price drop? It is faster to drive to a gold coin dealer, wait for the store to open, buy some gold eagles, and drive home with a meal stop than to buy these bitcoins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 06 2018, @05:27AM
You sound like you're thinking of a price drop the wrong way. When the price is falling, it's not necessarily being transacted at each step along the way. Someone is making an offer to sell, and then before it is purchased, someone makes another offer, lower. Meanwhile, sales aren't going through, or they're going through slower than people are scrambling to sell. When people see the price is falling, those few remaining buy offers tend to dry up, and the drop accelerates.
Basically, there's not much of an upper limit on how fast the price can fall, because the price falling doesn't require a single transaction to actually take place...they just usually do in practice.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday February 06 2018, @10:46AM
sudo mod me up