Are we excited yet?

In 2018, Eth dropped to 100 (from ATH 1500) and BTC to approx 3k (from ATH 20k)

Back of the napkin: since Eth hit ATH of 4500 in 2021, a similar drop would have meant a low of 300 during this bear. I doubled that 300 to 600 ("cat out of the bag") and added a bit, 750. That became my approximate buy-in point (gradual buy ins) for this bear.

My buy pressure is off, which is nice for once, but obviously I was monitoring. Eth bottomed out at 1k, so I didn't pick up much. BTC was similar.

Each bull has a point of hype (in 2013 it was BTC, in 2017 it was Alts, in 2021 it was Defi + NFTs + memecoins/Musk). For the next one I couldn't really see anything but AI. So I picked up some AI alts, and some other "easy to buy low caps on CB/Revolut" long-shots. With hindsight I should have picked up more Eth/BTC but as mentioned it never really reached levels I wanted to buy at this time around.

Indeed I wouldn't be surprised to see some sort of double dip thing or something slightly strange happen. That said, this time, apart from AI, I can't see where the hype will be generated from, so possibly less FOMO from joe public. On the flipside, it's a hell of a lot easier to instantly buy crypto with cash than it was in the past.

It's a very brave stance I'll give you that! In your other comment you say Interest Rates are going to have an effect. Even though interest rates dropped fairly consistently between 2009 and 2019 and we all know what direction the price of btc went.

I know what they say about past performance but you are making a contrarian call based on no historical precedence in the face of liquidity drying up faster than it ever has in the past! All I can say is good luck and I hope it works out for you!

I'm talking from a pure risk/reward stance. To me it's utterly pointless trying to hack another 5%-10% profit out of a scenario that has never happened before. Even if you got it right 50% of the time you'd still be in the red because when this thing breaks it could slap you with an immediate massive opportunity cost that is in essence a loss. However, if that's your game, that's all well and good and I won't counsel against anyone doing it. I just find it odd

Haven't read that but listened to a few podcasts and he seems stuck on money needs to be spent otherwise it's got no value.

But I can also keep cash in my bank account and it's got a value. It's there to allow for the rainy day. Similar with bitcoin. Yeah I can't buy my cans in Londis with bitcoin but if my rainy day fund is in bitcoin then I'm happy to spend the cash in the economy.

Indeed, one of cash's primary functions is as a medium of exchange.

Inflation typically reduces it's value over time, so in the short/medium term (and as a hedge) we can have some in the bank. But for long-term, it's often why we invest a portion of our medium of exchange into assets (e.g. shares, property, gold, crypto, etc)

The number of crypto developers who don't understand some or all of these concepts is shocking (I've talked to developers of a popular alt coin and they didn't have a notion of this elementary stuff, they just thought they could mint x amount and that automatically made it a currency and "stability" would just magically arrive at some random point in the future)

Long time lurker and hodler.. I hit my target yesterday and cashed out! So it’ll all probably sky rocket now lol 😂

I can't imagine cashing out completely when we're just at the previous ATH levels and we're approaching the next halving in a month AND these ETFs are accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars worth of BTC every day. There's a growing supply crunch and if these ETFs maintain even a quarter of their buying pressure (which is likely as Fink recently recommended a 1-2% allocation afaik?) it'll sail past $100k probably within the year. But of course it's smart to not get too greedy

Smash through 70k it is booooom

Not being smart but, what would you say to people who buy in now and then it collapses? Sorry, we were wrong, it really was just a speculative bubble after all.

It has increased in dollar terms by 248% in just 12 months. Where is that extra "intrinsic value" coming from?

Greater fool theory.

Like everyone else, I invest in crypto in the hopes that someone else will pay more. They only buy it from me in the hopes that someone else will pay more. Like rare baseball cards.

It taps into that need to own something rare, in this case digital trinkets with artificial scarcity. These trinkets are mostly solutions to problems that don't exist, but as mentioned are very good at cosplaying as some sort sort of future "financial" revolution, which is easy to market to low-info investors. And the other investors feed off them.

Greater fool theory squared.

Don’t invest what you can’t afford to lose, you want single digit steady returns on your investment then look elsewhere, there is an element of gambling in this but with the right information and a sound strategy then it is possible to multiply your money.

The intrinsic argument is over patsy, but discussion on the collapse of the crypto market is worthwhile I think, like the market is cyclical. From what I can see the last was caused by ftx Luna and three arrows for their own individual reasons. In that there is a belief that they prevented the real, or potential, ath from occurring, worth considering when attempting to forecast the next ath.

Indeed, to expand on the cyclical point, the market is only "cyclical" because, so far, people believe it is. It's almost 100% herd psychology.

If e.g. we hand a stock to an analyst, he can figure out the approximate market value of it. If we hand a crypto token to an analyst, or any analyst, they have no clue of it's value. None of us do. That's because there's little logic in the crypto market. So anything can be "worth" anything, hence the rollercoaster, hence the peaks and troughs and the very crude "cycles" of these herd movements. Which we all gamble on, for real money.

Does this idea apply to gold/silver too? As far as I can tell, their reason for having value are their rarity and difficulty to extract/produce. And of course, a hedge against inflation. Same as bitcoin, no?

Of course you can make jewellery too, and they are very useful in some electronics, but this isn't what gives it it's high value, it's the scarcity and it's (relative) immunity from deflation. in that case, Bitcoin seems the more appealing option, no?