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Crypto currency investors

the most smartly coded trading bots have the wyckoffian algorithm .

works 70% of the time . worked for me


i dont throw darts at the wall my friend

Good. I use some aspects of Wyckoff in my trading. I'm glad it's working for you.
 
. .
what are you buying ?

where are you based ?

do you leverage trade on bitmex or spot trade ?

did you buy the dip in dec 2018 ?

https://www.globalresearch.ca/deutsche-bank-next-lehman-brothers/5682841

Duetsche bank collapse has started

bullish for cryptos

I don't trade crypto-currency. I trade mostly on Gold, Oil, and Indexes. I'm based in the UK. I don't really look at fundamentals unless I invest in stocks which I then use value investing with technical analysis.

In regards to Deutsche Bank, they are too big to fail and will be bailed out. I agree we have a very bullish market in crypto-currency.
 
Last edited:
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commodity trader. nice .


-----------------------


Lehman bros was too big to fail sir ...

titanic was unsinkable ! i like the hubris of these banks until the point they go bust . ( and get bailed out ) .

literally and figuratively , the banks are the ones in this world with free lunch


-----------------------


buy bitcoin at these levels ( 11,6 K) . 17k incoming by end august .
 
.
commodity trader. nice .


-----------------------


Lehman bros was too big to fail sir ...

titanic was unsinkable ! i like the hubris of these banks until the point they go bust . ( and get bailed out ) .

literally and figuratively , the banks are the ones in this world with free lunch


-----------------------

True. However, Deutsche Bank is Germany's biggest bank, thus it would be suicidal if the Govt didn't bail them out. In 2008, the US Govt chose not to bail out Lehmann brothers because it could afford to do so. Germany can't afford this outcome if it wants to remain a powerhouse in Europe in the financial service industry.

This doesn't mean Deutsche Bank won't be hit hard. Most likely, they will be restructured by merging with other banks. A company which has a strong moat but is undervalued is a good investment to buy. I have briefly skimmed the bitcoin chart, and in my opinion, it will go above 17K in the long term.
 
.
BTC . 12.6 K

the collapse of DB impetus ?

BTC to retest 13.5k if we hold here

A series of global socio-economic events can be attributed to heightening interest in bitcoin, including escalating trade wars and economic sanctions. Demand for bitcoin in Iran has increased as the U.S. has sought to cut off capital inflows through tightening sanctions. Meanwhile, capital controls in China make it hard for the wealthy to get their money out of the country, with bitcoin one of the few ways in which this can be effectively done. Meanwhile, in the U.S. there’s been a kickback against the super rich, with populist politicians on the left advocating high taxes on the wealthy. Bitcoin is a haven for people who believe they risk having their net worth drastically slashed by punitive taxation.

https://news.bitcoin.com/competing-stablecoins-cant-topple-tether/
 
.
Donald trump rant has shaken the markets and induced panic selling among the weak hands .

the orange fool has nothing better to do in his life,

anyways, a good buying opportunity is emerging

ETH - 160

BCH 250

BTC - 8 k


tgts
 
.
Donald trump rant has shaken the markets and induced panic selling among the weak hands .

the orange fool has nothing better to do in his life,

anyways, a good buying opportunity is emerging

ETH - 160

BCH 250

BTC - 8 k


tgts

Bitcoin has a clear pattern called San Sen. Furthermore, it completed an ABCD move downwards which was equal in length. The market should see some retracement. However, accumulation will only be determined once we see more price action and further change of character. I did a perfect trade going long on gold today, it was textbook.
 
.
Bitcoin has a clear pattern called San Sen. Furthermore, it completed an ABCD move downwards which was equal in length. The market should see some retracement. However, accumulation will only be determined once we see more price action and further change of character. I did a perfect trade going long on gold today, it was textbook.


pun intended .............
 
.
The Takeaway

  • Chinese importers in Russia are buying up to $30 million a day of tether (USDT) from Moscow’s over-the-counter trading desks.

  • They use the cryptocurrency to send large sums back to their home country, which has strict capital controls.
  • Previously the merchants used bitcoin for this, but when the market crashed in 2018 they switched to tether, which is designed to maintain parity with the U.S. dollar.

  • Despite longstanding questions about USDT’s collateral, in this market “nobody actually cares if tether is backed or not,” says one Moscow trader.
Vrrrrrrrrrrrrr…..

The cash-counting machines were softly buzzing in an office with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Moscow’s landmarks.

“Hear that sound?” asked the head of an over-the-counter (OTC) cryptocurrency trading desk — let’s call him ‘Oleg’ — who requested his real name and company be withheld. “You can hear it 24/7 in here.”

Business is brisk thanks to a constant flow of Chinese merchants who come in daily with heavy bags of cash. Oleg said his OTC desk sells about $3 million worth of crypto every day. Most of it usually goes to China. But what’s perhaps most surprising is which crypto.

Only 20 percent of Oleg’s sales are in bitcoin, the oldest cryptocurrency with the largest market capitalization. The other 80 percent is in the dollar-pegged token known as tether, or USDT.

Tether’s best-known application is allowing crypto traders to move money between exchanges quickly to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities. But according to several Moscow OTC traders, it has at least one real-world use case – as the go-to remittance service for local Chinese importers.

The total volume of USDT purchased by Chinese businesses can reach $10 million to $30 million daily, these traders said.

“They accumulate a lot of cash in Moscow and need tether to transfer it to China,” said Maya Shakhnazarova, head of OTC trading at Huobi Russia, the Moscow office serving high-roller clients of Singapore-based exchange Huobi Global.

It’s a simple process.

“A client comes with cash, we register the price at exchanges, when we agree on a price, we make a deal,” Shakhnazarova told CoinDesk. “The client hands over cash and a wallet address, the seller sends USDT to the wallet.”

Why tether? It has the usual advantages of crypto – no limits on how much money can be sent or where – without the volatility that makes most coins infeasible for moving millions across the border daily.

Despite longstanding questions about USDT’s purported dollar backing, exacerbated by the New York State Attorney General (NYAG) court case against the issuing company Tether, the stablecoin usually trades around $1.

The tether-for-rubles purchases often take place in offices like Huobi’s in the steel-and-glass skyscraper district of Moscow City.

“There are a lot of OTCs here in Moscow City, a bunch of offices in every building, and the volumes for them all can reach several dozens of millions of dollars a day. It’s all paid for in cash,” Shakhnazarova said.

Tether’s killer app
Chinese grey-market importers used to rely on bitcoin before the 2018 bear market, another OTC dealer, Roman Dobrynin, told CoinDesk. As the price was ever-growing, merchants and the intermediaries helping them buy crypto could make some extra money along the way.

But since the beginning of 2018, hoping that your bitcoin will still be worth the same or more at the end of the transfer became too risky.

“As the price was going down, tether became much more convenient to use,” said Dobrynin. “China is totally reliant on USDT, they trust in it a lot, plus it’s very liquid.” His own clients are mostly Chinese, and they usually find him by word of mouth, connecting via Telegram.

To buy or sell USDT for dollars from Tether itself, a trader must be verified through the company’s know-your-customer (KYC) process. However, since the token runs on top of public blockchain networks (bitcoin, ethereum and tron), anyone can receive or send it, and secondary trades are unrestricted.

Tether did not respond to requests for comment by press time.

Back in China, the merchants can exchange USDT for fiat easily, even though the People’s Bank of China banned fiat-to-crypto spot trading in September 2017, forcing the exchanges to move out of the country and limiting trading to crypto-to-crypto pairs.

Chinese traders who need to liquidate crypto assets into Chinese yuan can still go to an OTC market maker, such as those registered on exchanges like Huobi and OKEx, to get matched with buyers and send them crypto after receiving a wire transfer via a bank, AliPay or WeChat Pay.

Critics of Tether have long questioned whether the stablecoin was fully backed 1:1 with dollars, as the company long insisted. The NYAG case revealed that Tether had loaned a big chunk of its capital reserves to Bitfinex, an exchange with overlapping management and owners, leaving the coin only 74 percent collateralized by cash and equivalents.

None of this seems to faze the Moscow traders or their Chinese clients.

“Nobody actually cares if tether is backed or not,” says Konstantin Plavnik, chief operating officer of Moscow-based crypto derivatives exchange Xena. Confidence in Tether’s solvency relies on long-time habit and convenience: this market needs tether, so tether is trusted.

OTC traders also point out that USDT’s daily volume exceeds its supply in circulation several times over, which indicates that people turn the token around multiple times during the day. For example, according to CoinMarketCap, on July 29, the 24-hour volume of USDT was recorded at $17.5 billion, while the total supply was just around $4 billion.

The turnaround of tether is fast, so for the merchants using the token for remittances, whether it’s worth something or not matters only within one day. Large batches of USDT get transferred to China overnight and then exchanged for yuan, crypto entrepreneurs in Moscow told CoinDesk.

“USDT will stay propped by the power of habit and trust of its users,” said Vladislav Bulochnikov, the head of product at crypto wallet app provider Chatex. “Even if it loses half of its backing — it’ll still be out there.”

Skirting capital controls
Stepping back, the Chinese government maintains strict capital controls, limiting the amount of foreign currency anyone can buy or sell to $50,000 a year. People can apply for an additional quota, but still the amount of currency they can buy and sell will be limited. In this situation, some Chinese have opted to use crypto to move money across the border, Bloomberg reported in 2017.

The fact that Chinese merchants bringing cheap goods to Moscow’s shopping malls use crypto to move money around was all but officially recognized by the Russian authorities last year.

Several large malls in the city account for around $9.5 billion of unregulated cash flow monthly, and most of the merchants are from China, said Yuri Polupanov, the Bank of Russia’s head of financial monitoring and currency control, during an event hosted by Thomson Reuters in Moscow in April 2018.

These malls, located inside huge warehouses on the outskirts of Moscow, host multiple retail stands, selling mostly clothing, usually for cheap and for cash. They are shopping Meccas for people who can’t afford to spend much on their wardrobes and avoid even mass-market chain stores.

“We see most of the revenue turned into cryptocurrency, which is not reported in any way at the moment,” Polupanov said at the Thomson Reuters event, according to the RBK news agency. “We see simultaneous transfers of that cryptocurrency via email to the homeland of those merchants and producers, and the following exchange of it for the local currency there.”

According to a March 2019 report in the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, cash would be received at places like a hotel called “Druzhba” (“Friendship” in Russian), located next to the shopping mall named “Moscow.” Then this cash would be swapped for crypto and sent to Hong Kong.

The wholesale trade offices at Druzhba could be turning around $10 million to $12 million daily, Novaya Gazeta’s sources estimated.

The operations were ceased for a short time after police raided the hotel, along with the malls mentioned by the Bank of Russia, in March of this year.

Small crypto desks are still functioning at those malls, OTC trader Dobrynin believes, though they likely don’t provide the volumes merchants need.

Outside traders are often afraid to go to those areas to make deals as things can get dangerous there, he said, explaining:

“The personnel working there can sell somebody information about how much money you have, and some armed people can meet you on your way back. People go there only with armed bodyguards.”

Wolfie Zhao contributed reporting.

Russian ruble and Chinese yuan banknotes, image via Shutterstock



https://www.coindesk.com/tether-usdt-russia-china-importers
 
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Crypto-currencies are essential a ponzi scheme that get people to solve math problems in exchange for a bitcoin. The first problem that needed to be solved were something like what is 1+1. And most responded 2, and they all got one bitcoin. There is fake scarcity built into bitcoins and fake rarity. So now the math questions, these questions take many hours of computing energy to get one bitcoin. So those who solve complex math problems, will get the same amount of bit coins as those who at the start of the ponzi scheme were asked what is 1+1. This is built in unfairness. To get the supply low to boost the price for those who answered the question what is 1+1. They got bitcoins for next to nothing. While if you want a bitcoin now, you have to pay 10.000 euros for one bitcoin. Those who were on the ground floor made millions and could potentially make billions, if enough people demand bitcoins now that they are produced in scarcer numbers.

This scam could go on a very long time, decades or bitcoins could replace paper currency. Bitcoin values could top 1 million or more. What is a bitcoin. People on ebay get scammed because some sell bitcoin coins made of copper and people think these are bitcoins, because what they know about bitcoins is they make you money. You get rich off of bitcoins. So long as the ponzi scheme keeps going. Bitcoins are essentially an electric bill people trade. Somebody spends 500 dollars a month on electric bill mining for bitcoins and they sell their electric bill rewards (bitcoins) for one thousand, making 500 per month mining bitcoins.

These bitcoin are not the level of scam that the paper currencies are. FRNs are based on usury and debt. Ponzi schemes are a bit higher holding than usurious money like dollars. FRNs are long term ponzi schemes.

Bitcoins are worthless, having no value, except the expectation of a quick return and others entering the market to boost prices of something that is futures trading on electric bills.

If bitcoins go to zero in value, would you pay 25 dollars for each worthless bitcoin in the market?

Nobody would pay $25 per bitcoin, if bitcoins are worthless.

Now if gold went to zero in price, would you pay 25 dollars for each ounce of gold, even if you knew the price of gold would still be zero. Gold is gold and has value.

Everybody would buy gold at cheap prices, because gold always has value to every sane person. Gold is the possession of kings and the super rich (best jewelry is made of gold). Bitcoin is trying to change that and for that bitcoins are loved by central bankers. The war is not paper money vs bitcoins, Paper money is taking notes on cryptos, they want to replace paper with cryptos. The conflict is between bitcoins and gold. Gold demand fell with cryptos, making a quick buck or a quick million dollars crashed the gold and silver markets. Because this ponzi scheme pays well.

Holding worthless bitcoins that are valued at a million dollars each, still does not change the fact that they are a worthless ponzi scheme.

Paul Krugman
Bitcoin is basically a Ponzi scheme

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/bitcoin-is-basically-a-ponzi-scheme/

What was pets.com, a worthless dot-com stock that made no money. bitcoins have millions and billions in debt from electric bills, only the ponzi scheme risk of great rewards gets people to buy this debt electric bill which are called bitcoins.

But pets.com has merchandise to sell, so they had something of value in their company.

Bitcoins can still make you rich, but they are essentially worthless, and be happy that some are buying this worthless money instrument to make you rich. The ride could go on because many want to get rich quick!
 
.
Any good website/app to buy cryptocurrency in India after zebpay stopped treading
 
.
Crypto-currencies are essential a ponzi scheme that get people to solve math problems in exchange for a bitcoin. The first problem that needed to be solved were something like what is 1+1. And most responded 2, and they all got one bitcoin. There is fake scarcity built into bitcoins and fake rarity. So now the math questions, these questions take many hours of computing energy to get one bitcoin. So those who solve complex math problems, will get the same amount of bit coins as those who at the start of the ponzi scheme were asked what is 1+1. This is built in unfairness. To get the supply low to boost the price for those who answered the question what is 1+1. They got bitcoins for next to nothing. While if you want a bitcoin now, you have to pay 10.000 euros for one bitcoin. Those who were on the ground floor made millions and could potentially make billions, if enough people demand bitcoins now that they are produced in scarcer numbers.

This scam could go on a very long time, decades or bitcoins could replace paper currency. Bitcoin values could top 1 million or more. What is a bitcoin. People on ebay get scammed because some sell bitcoin coins made of copper and people think these are bitcoins, because what they know about bitcoins is they make you money. You get rich off of bitcoins. So long as the ponzi scheme keeps going. Bitcoins are essentially an electric bill people trade. Somebody spends 500 dollars a month on electric bill mining for bitcoins and they sell their electric bill rewards (bitcoins) for one thousand, making 500 per month mining bitcoins.

These bitcoin are not the level of scam that the paper currencies are. FRNs are based on usury and debt. Ponzi schemes are a bit higher holding than usurious money like dollars. FRNs are long term ponzi schemes.

Bitcoins are worthless, having no value, except the expectation of a quick return and others entering the market to boost prices of something that is futures trading on electric bills.

If bitcoins go to zero in value, would you pay 25 dollars for each worthless bitcoin in the market?

Nobody would pay $25 per bitcoin, if bitcoins are worthless.

Now if gold went to zero in price, would you pay 25 dollars for each ounce of gold, even if you knew the price of gold would still be zero. Gold is gold and has value.

Everybody would buy gold at cheap prices, because gold always has value to every sane person. Gold is the possession of kings and the super rich (best jewelry is made of gold). Bitcoin is trying to change that and for that bitcoins are loved by central bankers. The war is not paper money vs bitcoins, Paper money is taking notes on cryptos, they want to replace paper with cryptos. The conflict is between bitcoins and gold. Gold demand fell with cryptos, making a quick buck or a quick million dollars crashed the gold and silver markets. Because this ponzi scheme pays well.

Holding worthless bitcoins that are valued at a million dollars each, still does not change the fact that they are a worthless ponzi scheme.

Paul Krugman
Bitcoin is basically a Ponzi scheme

https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/bitcoin-is-basically-a-ponzi-scheme/

What was pets.com, a worthless dot-com stock that made no money. bitcoins have millions and billions in debt from electric bills, only the ponzi scheme risk of great rewards gets people to buy this debt electric bill which are called bitcoins.

But pets.com has merchandise to sell, so they had something of value in their company.

Bitcoins can still make you rich, but they are essentially worthless, and be happy that some are buying this worthless money instrument to make you rich. The ride could go on because many want to get rich quick!


https://www.investopedia.com/news/what-paul-krugmans-problem-bitcoin/



krugman, a known bitcoin hater

Any good website/app to buy cryptocurrency in India after zebpay stopped treading



local.bitcoin.com

localbitcoins.com

localethereum.com

remitano.com
-----------------------

https://news.bitcoin.com/testing-haven-ob1s-new-social-media-and-crypto-marketplace-app/

^^ haven

a crypto currency shopping, chatting, and business app + social media that is encrypted

When Cash Is Banned, Centralized Cryptos Are Not Going to Save You




Australia is now moving forward with its proposed legislation to ban cash purchases over 10,000 AUD ($6,900) for business purposes. According to the treasury website: “The Black Economy Taskforce recommended this action to tackle tax evasion and other criminal activities.” While many Aussies are celebrating Bitcoin’s exclusion from this clause, others find the move away from hard cash somewhat chilling. After all, if this finally goes through, banks and the state will be given sole power to deny or approve any and all purchases above this limit. Crypto is not yet affected, but when cash is erased, and the control grid is tightened, be sure that centralized shitcoins are not going to save anyone, either.


read full article here
https://news.bitcoin.com/when-cash-is-banned-centralized-cryptos-are-not-going-to-save-you/
 
.

Does not change the fact that bitcoins are a ponzi scheme. The entire monetary system is a ponzi scheme. So bitcoins come along, and don't seem like a scam because they are more valid money than Federal Reserve Notes or other debt fake paper money that gets passed off as real money. Counterfeit money is more real money than fake money that comes from central banks. That is how bad the system is, cryptos are a ponzi scheme and they are better than the rest of the ponzi schemes out there.

The Bitcoin ‘pyramid scheme’ continues to collapse

By John Crudele


November 26, 2018 | 11:39pm | Updated
NY POST

Enlarge Image
bitcoin-futures-flop.jpg


Getty Images

More from:

John Crudele
upload_2019-8-2_10-11-38.gif

Election spending’s trickle-down conundrum

The Fed getting a sneak peek at July's job numbers isn't a bad thing

The Fed should ditch the rate cut and re-establish its independence

Trump fails to see rate cut would hurt savers

If the Fed cuts interest rates, things could get ugly

The ancient Egyptians made pyramids to last forever. Wall Street’s pyramid schemes aren’t nearly as durable.


Bitcoin, while not officially a product of traditional Wall Street, is a pyramid scheme. A fraud. But it is best described as a “confidence game.”


I’ve been calling it a “bitcon” for a long time. And now the pyramid seems to be collapsing because fewer and fewer people have confidence that the price of this inherently worthless “cryptocurrency” is going to continue to rise.


I’ve just repeated some of the comments I made about bitcoin (and you could include other cryptocurrencies here) for years. But I’ve been especially vocal since early this year, when bitcoin was reaching nearly $20,000 in price and even staid Wall Street firms were being lured to this “investment.”


Here’s what I said about the crypto in a column on Jan. 4 that made predictions for the new year.


“The fact that anyone even has to discuss the fate of this and other so-called cryptocurrencies shows just how crazy the world has become. Bitcoin — or bitcon — is a confidence game. A scam. It will exist and move higher for as long as extremely wealthy people are willing to prop it up in hope that suckers remain confident that bitcoin has some value,” I wrote.


I predicted a number of times that bitcoin would eventually be worth $0.


On the day that column was published, bitcoin was selling for $15,144. That was below the $19,650 peak it reached on Dec. 16, 2017.


Over this past weekend, the price had fallen to just $3,600, which is still $3,600 too much.


Since its peak, bitcoin has lost about $700 billion in value. Think of it this way: The early participants in this pyramid have made a lot of money, but other people have lost $700 billion of their money in less than a year.


What caused that price decline? Nothing. That’s the same reason why bitcoin was once worth $19,650, or $15,144, or any amount.


I discussed this subject with a colleague last week, and she and I agreed that bitcoins are hard to write about. Why? Because bitcoins are the epitome of “thin air” investments. They represent nothing — not a piece of a company, or an ounce of precious metal or the faith in a country.


see also

upload_2019-8-2_10-11-38.gif



Why bitcoin may soon be worth nothing

It’s like writing about philosophy. Bitcoin is a thought. And thoughts have value only if other people value them.


And bitcoin continues to be worth something only if its proponents can convince others to jump on board with the idea and bid up the price.


That’s the definition of a confidence game. You have to be confident that someone is dumb enough to keep investing in this scam.


Bitcoin’s value is certainly disappearing. And the only real explanation is that the confidence game is falling apart. The pyramid scheme that lured new money into this scam is collapsing.


When will bitcoin reach $0? I don’t know, although I did predict in another column that it would before the end of this year.


But I do know this: There are already investigations going on. And once the small investing suckers start complaining, the folks in Washington will get involved.


One report last week said the Trump administration is investigating whether people were propping up the price by purchasing bitcoin with other cyrpotcurrencies, which is like the mathematical equation “Confidence game squared.”


Since I am already on the topic of thieves, let’s talk about Christmas shopping.


We all know that there are people who do their holiday shopping with other people’s money. But how active will crooks be this holiday season?


According to a report from electronic payments expert ACI Worldwide, there will be a 14 percent increase in fraud attempts between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. That’s only slightly below the expected 18 percent increase in the amount of goods purchased this holiday season.


see also

upload_2019-8-2_10-11-38.gif



Crooks are boosting their online fraud game

Fraud attempts like illegal credit card purchases were expected to increase 17 percent between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, while purchases during that period were expected to rise 19 percent.


The stores are keeping ahead of the crooks — but just barely.


But give the crooks some credit. Erika Dietrick, global payments director at ACI, says thieves are going for the more expensive goods that are in short supply.


“Fraudsters will keep an eye on items that have limited inventory as it gives them an additional opportunity to steal and sell those items on the dark market for a higher price,” Dietrick says.


Nobody ever said thieves are uneducated in the Law of Supply and Demand.


Old-fashioned shoplifting is also a favorite of thieves. But this is interesting: According to the National Retail Federation, losses from employee theft are now nearly equal to those of shoplifters.


Employees now account for 32.2 percent of what is euphemistically called “inventory shrinkage,” compared with 35.7 percent for shoplifters and other outsiders.


Bitcoins may outlast the FRNs and you could make billions of euros on bitcoins, but this does not mean it is not a wothless ponzi scheme.
 
.
Does not change the fact that bitcoins are a ponzi scheme. The entire monetary system is a ponzi scheme. So bitcoins come along, and don't seem like a scam because they are more valid money than Federal Reserve Notes or other debt fake paper money that gets passed off as real money. Counterfeit money is more real money than fake money that comes from central banks. That is how bad the system is, cryptos are a ponzi scheme and they are better than the rest of the ponzi schemes out there.

The Bitcoin ‘pyramid scheme’ continues to collapse

By John Crudele


November 26, 2018 | 11:39pm | Updated
NY POST

Enlarge Image
bitcoin-futures-flop.jpg


Getty Images

More from:

John Crudele
View attachment 572236
Election spending’s trickle-down conundrum

The Fed getting a sneak peek at July's job numbers isn't a bad thing

The Fed should ditch the rate cut and re-establish its independence

Trump fails to see rate cut would hurt savers

If the Fed cuts interest rates, things could get ugly

The ancient Egyptians made pyramids to last forever. Wall Street’s pyramid schemes aren’t nearly as durable.


Bitcoin, while not officially a product of traditional Wall Street, is a pyramid scheme. A fraud. But it is best described as a “confidence game.”


I’ve been calling it a “bitcon” for a long time. And now the pyramid seems to be collapsing because fewer and fewer people have confidence that the price of this inherently worthless “cryptocurrency” is going to continue to rise.


I’ve just repeated some of the comments I made about bitcoin (and you could include other cryptocurrencies here) for years. But I’ve been especially vocal since early this year, when bitcoin was reaching nearly $20,000 in price and even staid Wall Street firms were being lured to this “investment.”


Here’s what I said about the crypto in a column on Jan. 4 that made predictions for the new year.


“The fact that anyone even has to discuss the fate of this and other so-called cryptocurrencies shows just how crazy the world has become. Bitcoin — or bitcon — is a confidence game. A scam. It will exist and move higher for as long as extremely wealthy people are willing to prop it up in hope that suckers remain confident that bitcoin has some value,” I wrote.


I predicted a number of times that bitcoin would eventually be worth $0.


On the day that column was published, bitcoin was selling for $15,144. That was below the $19,650 peak it reached on Dec. 16, 2017.


Over this past weekend, the price had fallen to just $3,600, which is still $3,600 too much.


Since its peak, bitcoin has lost about $700 billion in value. Think of it this way: The early participants in this pyramid have made a lot of money, but other people have lost $700 billion of their money in less than a year.


What caused that price decline? Nothing. That’s the same reason why bitcoin was once worth $19,650, or $15,144, or any amount.


I discussed this subject with a colleague last week, and she and I agreed that bitcoins are hard to write about. Why? Because bitcoins are the epitome of “thin air” investments. They represent nothing — not a piece of a company, or an ounce of precious metal or the faith in a country.


see also

View attachment 572237



Why bitcoin may soon be worth nothing

It’s like writing about philosophy. Bitcoin is a thought. And thoughts have value only if other people value them.


And bitcoin continues to be worth something only if its proponents can convince others to jump on board with the idea and bid up the price.


That’s the definition of a confidence game. You have to be confident that someone is dumb enough to keep investing in this scam.


Bitcoin’s value is certainly disappearing. And the only real explanation is that the confidence game is falling apart. The pyramid scheme that lured new money into this scam is collapsing.


When will bitcoin reach $0? I don’t know, although I did predict in another column that it would before the end of this year.


But I do know this: There are already investigations going on. And once the small investing suckers start complaining, the folks in Washington will get involved.


One report last week said the Trump administration is investigating whether people were propping up the price by purchasing bitcoin with other cyrpotcurrencies, which is like the mathematical equation “Confidence game squared.”


Since I am already on the topic of thieves, let’s talk about Christmas shopping.


We all know that there are people who do their holiday shopping with other people’s money. But how active will crooks be this holiday season?


According to a report from electronic payments expert ACI Worldwide, there will be a 14 percent increase in fraud attempts between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. That’s only slightly below the expected 18 percent increase in the amount of goods purchased this holiday season.


see also

View attachment 572238



Crooks are boosting their online fraud game

Fraud attempts like illegal credit card purchases were expected to increase 17 percent between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday, while purchases during that period were expected to rise 19 percent.


The stores are keeping ahead of the crooks — but just barely.


But give the crooks some credit. Erika Dietrick, global payments director at ACI, says thieves are going for the more expensive goods that are in short supply.


“Fraudsters will keep an eye on items that have limited inventory as it gives them an additional opportunity to steal and sell those items on the dark market for a higher price,” Dietrick says.


Nobody ever said thieves are uneducated in the Law of Supply and Demand.


Old-fashioned shoplifting is also a favorite of thieves. But this is interesting: According to the National Retail Federation, losses from employee theft are now nearly equal to those of shoplifters.


Employees now account for 32.2 percent of what is euphemistically called “inventory shrinkage,” compared with 35.7 percent for shoplifters and other outsiders.


Bitcoins may outlast the FRNs and you could make billions of euros on bitcoins, but this does not mean it is not a wothless ponzi scheme.



^^ https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/

bitcoin has died 371 times

yawnnnnnn
 
.

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