There are several things happening, which is reducing confidence. Of course, as a permabull, I believe that these things are transitory. Here are some more macro events that are worth considering. BTFD

* India may try to make self-custody of crypto assets illegal, requiring all coins be given to exchanges. [A totally unenforceable law, trying to make math illegal, in this case storing 256-bit integers and performing the ECDSA/Schnorr signature algorithm.] Everyday Indian folk will lose their coins when the inevitable happens and the exchanges are compromised.

* Europe considering how to put the genie back in the bottle. Also thinking about custody regulation and reporting.

* US trying to develop (further) regulations around exchanges, trading, KYC/AML, derivatives and accounting.

* Uncertainty over the CSW lawsuit. The jury is still deciding the verdict, possibly next week.

* Custodial Bitcoin loaning service reported losing (wrapped) Bitcoin when defi platform was compromised.

* Larger market uncertainty due to new variants.

Its going to be bumpy. It always is. Maybe I have been watching too much Michael Saylor lately, but I think he is right about a great many things. It is too easy to look at systems from the inside and shout about bubbles. A more systematic appraisal of other large asset classes, the source/sink nature of money creation and capital flows is prudent.

Friend: why is bitcoin down?

Other friend: why was bitcoin up to begin with?

Sometimes it goes down, sometimes it goes up - it's not the first time. History shows that it goes up more than it goes down.

And Gwei almost hit $1k! Triggered by the rush of eth holders to the exit. None of the proposed eips do anything to de-incentivize "surge pricing" in mining rewards during "bank panics". It would be counter-productive to growing the network. But an interesting economic phenomenon to watch in real time just the same. Akin to price gouging gasoline during a hurricane ;)

Eventually, it will crash all the way down and will be mostly forgotten.

This “crash” however is unlikely to be the beginning of it.

>The price of bitcoin seesawed later Saturday after El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, whose country adopted bitcoin as a national currency in September, said in a Twitter post that the country had bought 150 coins for an average of $48,670 each. “El Salvador just bought the dip!” he said. He later wrote that the country had “Missed the f**ing bottom by 7 minutes,” followed by a laughing emoji.

El Salvadore needs to be cut off from the world financial markets; or at least USD markets. World Bank and IMF need to refuse to do transact with the country at all. This bitcoin experiment is going to end in disaster.

On another note, it’s nice to see ETHBTC ratio going up

It wasn’t a simple sell off.

Some not to be named hedge funds that were very long spot started selling aftermarket Friday to test the liquidity while taking out short positions.

Then when they felt the market was illiquid enough after probing it for a few hours, they quickly dumped their long positions, liquidated the leveraged longs, cashed in their shorts, and bought back into the ensuing panic sell off.

With the incoming Evergrande fiasco and eventual explosion of omicron cases it's gonna be a good winter for bears.

The coindesk article from 10 hours earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29439049

The primary value proposition of bitcoin is as a “currency” but the technical limitations on transaction throughput mean it will never be a viable currency at scale. Also the volatility of bitcoin value also makes it a terrible currency.

Thus it boils down to just some random thing that people have arbitrarily decided has value, like we did with tulip bulbs centuries ago.

This “story” has been told many times thought history and we know how this story ends. The technology is interesting, but the “value” of the coins seems built on a house of cards just waiting to collapse. Although like anything in that space, including tulip bulbs, those that can get in and out at the right time can make a killing while the suckers are left holding the bag at the end.

Where did all this money go? It can't disappear just like that, can it?

I can't withdraw more than a few K per week with crypto exchanges. How can $300B evaporate just like that?

Always fun to see HN hot takes on bitcoin. Similar to browsing the buttcoin subreddit. But apparently this group of people is much more enlightened than everyone else.

Am waiting a moment where Bitcoin will go to zero, the market and all that is bullshit.

Bitcoin has gone sky-high or fallen off a cliff? That's normal.

It's going to zero folks. Sell now.

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> The global crypto market cap is $2.33T, a 4.85% decrease over the last day.

not that bad...

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Non-paywall link?

> Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are notoriously volatile and often plunge for mysterious reasons.

There is nothing mysterious about Alameda making money from it triggering margin cascades.

ITT we pretend we're smarter than some guy by refusing to understand how exchanges work.