Huh. As you’ll recall, Tether (which is supposed to always be 1 Tether = $1) broke its peg earlier this week and went down to $0.92 briefly. At which point it recovered …
… almost. It seems to have stabilized juuuust below a dollar at about $0.998. Which may not seem like an important difference from $1, but this new normal is lower than its previous normal rate from a month ago. A hairline crack in the dam? Watch this space.
In other news, crypto news site cointelegraph.com has a story up headlined “Bitcoin stays under $30K as LUNA gains 600% during ‘insane volatility’” Of course, even with that huge appreciation, Luna was trading for … three cents (when the article was written, anyway; looking for the live price got me much, much lower prices.) Earlier in the year it was trading for $100. But hey, you can count on the crypto press to always look on the bright side of life.
“However, life goes on and there will be a chance to accumulate more and next time ensure I take profits along the way.”
I think this quote is telling how many crypto enthusiasts think of cryptocurrency. They talk about its advantages over centrally managed fiat, but they’re actually thinking “next time I’ll remember to turn some of my cryptocurrency into real money.”
Lantz
3125
Actual transfers of crypto currencies have fees that spike based on usage and can be very slow depending on how many other people are transacting.
Actually making transactions for anyone trading them is going to get expensive quickly. So people transfer them into the exchanges and the exchanges let them transact with internal fees way less than real crypto transaction fees. Or the exchanges secretly steal the crypto/cash.
E.g.
Thrag
3126
An angle on the crypto crash I did not see coming.
Crytpo is infested with alt-righters, which is yet another reason to ban it.
JoshL
3128
This is a chart of the number of LUNA in circulation by day:
I think this is pretty hilarious, since crypto bros are generally gold bugs who think the Federal Reserve is the devil because they print money to cause inflation to punish the rich.
There are multiple strains of crypto bros. In my experience the original bitcoin fanatics were exactly as you described. Goldbug types who would fill your ear with rants about the evils of fiat currency and the Fed. Often with an alarming hint of Sovereign Citizen rhetoric thrown in for bad measure. The newer and younger strain of crypto bros is less conspiracy-theory minded and far more tech-bro with a far smaller tinfoil hat collection. These are people with get-rich-fast dreams that would have been trying to fast talk venture capitalists or get in with the next unicorn startup a decade ago. So basically a much stronger air of radical con artist. They didn’t come to cryptocurrency because of fringe political or economic beliefs, they just wanted to hop on the hype train.
KevinC
3130
Ah, yes. Bankers are notoriously anti-rich. :)
There is a lot of international exposure as well. Think of the worldwide millions of young, tech educated folks stuck in authoritarian nations with failing monetary policies resulting in unstable national currencies and inflation. A lot of young professionals are All In on the crypto future as a way to escape their national fiscal trap, and are going to get wrecked hard at some point.
Anti-cryptoscammer Youtuber Coffeezilla gets a New Yorker profile.
I believe the proper phrase is “get invited into @inactive_user’s XCOM squad”.
Dejin
3135
Thanks @HumanTon. That was a good read.
Thrag
3137
To contrast that Zuckerberg joint I posted earlier
https://youtu.be/0amWsMfR2Ok
Thrag
3139
It really is isn’t it? It’s pretty well put together. I really love the bridge with the crypto bro boyfriend character singing “this Ethereum is gonna get me out of this town”.
So he’s looking for more suckers eh? Why doesn’t he liquidate all his funds to pay back all the people he tricked?
Tim_N
3141
As someone who gambles in crypto markets regularly, I can confirm the one liner in Succession that it’s full of ‘nerds and nazis’. The only category I would add are gamblers. Everyone that I have met in the space that I like are gamblers who appreciate the volatility and 24/7 nature of crypto markets. Nerds who are “in it for the tech” are mostly delusional, meanwhile the nazis blame every dump on democrats and the fed and embrace hilariously misguided monetary theories and visions of a new world order based on crypto and ‘freedom’.
There are also a whole bunch of poor people in developing countries who are trying to change their life, and they are the only people I feel sympathy for whenever the market or some token crashes. The rest have it coming.
wavey
3142
A good article about crypto from Hugh Howey (author of Wool), about how horrifying it would be if cryptocurrencies actually succeeded in replacing fiat:
