Bitcoin Going to 0?

[ilconsiglliere]

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#charts

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/06/bitcoin-price-crackdown-bis-cryptocurrency

Govmt has realized that its a threat to the $ and the party is over.

[unix]

Lol.

And ITYS

[ilconsiglliere]

Whats ITYS?

[The Gorn]

I Told You So

So, waiting for Crypto to rise to the occasion here... really.

[unix]

LOL

Technically, before ITYS, I was told so.

[ArnoldW2]

ilconsiglliere wrote:

Govmt has realized that its a threat to the $ and the party is over.

Actually, I think the global elitists DON'T want to end the party just yet.

Right now, they are making money from falling cryptocurrency prices via the new futures contracts.  While it's a pretty good bet that crypto-currencies will hit bottom after a crash of 90% to 99%, it won't be a 100% crash.

But after crypto-currency prices hit bottom, the elitists will want to make money from vastly greater price increases, which will make crypto-currencies more expensive than ever.  That's why the current effort to crush crypto-currencies will stop short total annihilation.

Once cryptocurrency prices are bubbly high (again), government central banks will declare the crypto-currencies to be "safe" and will once again allow the general public to buy.  Otherwise, there will be nobody for the global elitists to sell their BitCoins to at the top.

As long as crypto-currencies are used only for speculation, they are NOT a threat to government fiat currencies.  They will become a threat only when they display enough price stability to function as money.

Remember, the elitists missed out on the first three boom and bust cycles.  Then they missed out on the boom part of the fourth cycle.  Finally, they're now making money on the bust part of the fourth cycle, and they want to make money on the future FIFTH boom and bust cycle.

I think there's a good chance that governments will outlaw all non-government crypto-currencies after the 5th cycle busts, but NOT before that.

[unix]

I wouldn't mind cryptocurrencies if I could get assurance that a supercomputer running somewhere underground could not devalue the whole thing.  the whole "mining" thing is stupid as hell. Why the hell for? It expands the currency base and devalues *everyone's* investment in it. That's what the current central bank is doing. Printing. Instead of one location, you have a million and 1 small investors devaluing the thing. 

I think this devaluation is masked by these huge waves, up and down. But it's going on.  So if you mine a bitcoin, where do you think the value comes from???

at the expensive of everyone else.

[The Gorn]

In my opinion, the only way a cybercurrency can attain the stability to be used and "trusted" universally as cash like would be central control by a government. Just like paper money.

So in the crypto currency world, I'm totally guessing that this could be achieved with a mining process that used a hash or salt as the basis for all valid crypto currency in use. The hash/salt would be a state secret because in order for new minted currency to be valid the crypto currency would have to be based on that hash.

I don't know anything about the mining algorithms but almost all decent cryptographic algorithms have the concept of a hash or a salt which is a random numeric sequence used to initiate the encryption. I would assume the Bitcoin algorithm or other could be adapted to use a hash or salt as a validity check.

I believe that in the "right" context government will flock to trackable crypto currency as a replacement for paper.

[ArnoldW2]

Unix wrote:

I wouldn't mind cryptocurrencies if I could get assurance that a supercomputer running somewhere underground could not devalue the whole thing.

The key factor preventing too much devaluation is that open source crypto-currencies have a "supply limit".  For example, once the supply of BitCoins have been mined, the mining totally ends.  Forever.  And so does any devaluation that continued mining might otherwise have caused.  Once the last BitCoin has been mined its price may still soar or crash, but no longer because of mining.

Here's a list of crypto-currencies and their "supply limits".
 

Crypto-Currency		Supply Limit		Web Site Source
BitCoin		21,000,000		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin
Bitcoin Cash		21,000,000		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_Cash
Bitcoin Gold		21,000,000		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_Gold
LiteCoin		84,000,000		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litecoin
NameCoin		21,000,000		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namecoin
Ethereum		Uncertain		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum
Ethereum Classic		Uncertain		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum_Classic
Ripple		100 billion		https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_(payment_protocol)

Here's a site with two lists of crypto-currencies:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cryptocurrencies


Gorn wrote:

The only way a cybercurrency can attain the stability to be used and "trusted" universally as cash like would be central control by a government ... In the "right" context government will flock to trackable crypto currency as a replacement for paper.

In the end, it may come to that.

The compelling feature for governments is the ability to track ALL financial transactions accurately.

Any crypto-currency adopted by governments will NOT have a supply limit -- same as fiat currencies.  This guarantees that, eventually, their crypto-currencies will be inflated to zero value -- same as fiat currencies.  Eventually, can be a long time.  In the case of the U.S., the dollar is still around after more than a century with the Federal Reserve.  And the British Pound has been around for centuries.  Be extremely patient.  Every government currency's time will end someday -- whether fiat or crypto.

One last thing:
Mining is NOT a requirement for crypto-currencies.  All 100 Billion Ripples were declared and issued at the very beginning -- with no mining.  Mining may be useful as a free enterprise incentive system, but I can't think of a good reason for any government to adopt a crypto-currency that has to be "mined", as it would be an unnecessary expense.