Posted on 02/26/2026 8:30:06 AM PST by Miami Rebel
Since its peak last fall, Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, has lost almost half its value. Nearly $2 trillion of wealth has evaporated from the global crypto market since October.
We have one question. What took so long? Outside of crimes and scams, the technology is useless, and its economics are even worse.
....At a time when investors have grown skittish about riskier assets, the value of Bitcoin has fallen nearly 50 percent since October, dropping to below $70,000, proving it was only a matter of time before crypto faced the critical lens it always needed but never truly received.
....One of the industry’s main facilitators, Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican nicknamed the Crypto Queen, received over $50,000 in campaign contributions from the crypto industry and investors just weeks before sponsoring a pro-crypto bill.
....If this technology is that revolutionary, why weren’t any of the giant tech firms using it? Were they too shortsighted to see the technological revolution unfolding before them? Or was the technology — which we learned was essentially a painfully slow and expensive database — just not that special?
Crypto is at best a form of private money, which has a long history of ending up in financial ruin. At worst, it is a speculative and highly volatile asset with almost no practical use, whose backers were (and still are) constantly trying to embed it into the financial system, both to increase its adoption and, should the market nosedive, stick taxpayers with the bill.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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YES!!!!
I'm a tech ignoramus, but two of my sons have advanced computer science degrees and have been saying this for years.
Cypto exists to give an untraceable way to transfer money to high level criminal activities and make such activities easier to commit, think ransomware.
What is cryptic is how nothing can be worth something.
Maybe because it’s not currency. Only governments have the right to issue currency. It’s not money — it’s hope and imagination.
They may have called the bottom
I never understand how crypto is said to be untraceable. Because they tell us how your investment is safe.
Supposedly the blockchain records all transactions in multiple systems around the world, so there are always records of your investment in bitcoin.
So if there are all these records in various systems with your investment, how is it untraceable?
I’ve broke three teeth trying to make my own bit coin. Never again.
Well, look at carbon credits.
Well, there are countless examples of how millions if not billions of funds have been transferred after things like massive ransomware attacks where no one was able to trace the funds from the bitcoin transfers
I do not get it myself, but it seems to work, especially given some of the violated actors were big business not inclined to just give up the coin.
I think it crashed to below $20,000 a few years ago. Then it climbed up again, to what, over $100,000?
A somewhat interesting article on Bitcoin: The Bitcoin Field Guide exudes pre-crash optimism.
Trumps plan to allow crypto in 401ks is going to jumpstart crypto and solidify it as a stable currency.
If the NYT lies about so many other things, why should we think they are not lying now?
Gotta get the chocolate Bitcoin 🍫 ones
Remove the tinfoil first
Get enough of it for a great hat
Only one person has the private key to decrypt the ownership. Many people can know it exists without knowing the owner.
At least, that's the theory. And the blockchain tech can be used for other transactions besides crypto currency. The way it's marketed to us small govt conservative/libertarian types is that ownership of land or whatever wouldn't be managed by a courthouse copy of a deed. The person selling the item can record transfer of ownership publicly in the same blockchain tech that records ownership of crypto currency. Getting away from govt knowledge of transfers is good, right? At least that's how it's marketed .... so they can do illegal things that they don't let the rest of us get away with.
Apparently, the biggest crypto investors are all kind of drug cartels and Russian oligarchs.
I would not be surprised if types like Putin, Xi, Maduro or Khamenei were major crypto investors.
It seems to me like pyramid scheme backed by these shady characters.
or maybe because we deserve privacy and don’t need the government snooping on the personal lives of US citizens
“Cypto exists to give an untraceable way to transfer money to high level criminal activities and make such activities easier to commit, think ransomware.”
And that ability was sold to Conservatives as a means to keep government out of your financial hair.
What is cryptic is how nothing can be worth something.”
Spot on.
funny how they say things like “Nearly $2 trillion of wealth has evaporated”
yet do they ever say “Nearly $2 trillion of wealth has been created out of nothing” — something which they could have said a short while ago.
We have only returned to the value it had in October 2024, some 16 months ago. Talk about a pro-increase-in-value bias in the reporting.
welllll, it also is lightening fast and dirt cheap to transact!!! and, half the world doesn’t pay banking FEEs that are out of control. So it will be around on phones in India, Africa and other emerging markets for a long time and supply and demand will make NOW a buying point for Bitcoin in about 2+ years when it trades at $200K+... ymmv
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