Posted on 08/25/2018 8:28:15 AM PDT by NRx
SAN FRANCISCO — Pete Roberts of Nottingham, England, was one of the many risk-takers who threw their savings into cryptocurrencies when prices were going through the roof last winter.
Now, eight months later, the $23,000 he invested in several digital tokens is worth about $4,000, and he is clearheaded about what happened.
"I got too caught up in the fear of missing out and trying to make a quick buck," he said this week. "The losses have pretty much left me financially ruined."
Mr. Roberts, 28, has a lot of company. After the latest round of big price drops, many cryptocurrencies have given back all of the enormous gains they experienced last winter. The value of all outstanding digital tokens has fallen by about $600 billion, or 75 percent, since the peak in January, according to data from the website coinmarketcap.com.
The virtual currency markets have been through booms and busts before — and recovered to boom again. But this bust could have a more lasting impact on the technology's adoption because of the sheer number of ordinary people who invested in digital tokens over the last year, and who are likely to associate cryptocurrencies with financial ruin for a very long time.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
they ran out of greater fools, with the last batch holding their now worthless bags ...
People should read up on PONZI it may spare them losing their money.
Yep. It’s nothing more than an especially successful ponzi scheme with excellent marketing. Those silly “Bitcoins” are very nearly useless in the marketplace.
The price schedule for bitcoin was published as going down over time in the first place.
The computing price was silly and retarded, too.
Why would anyone consider it an “investment”??
IOW, their currency is worthless.
At 1,000,000% inflation rate, any currency would be worthless.
Turned $23k into $4k?
He would have had better odds with a state lottery.
If losing $23K will bring you to financial ruin, you have no business investing in anything.
“If losing $23K...”
...is what you call “investing”...
“...you have no business investing in anything.”
"It's a new online currency that's been developed. Uh, it's just like actual money, except you can't see it, hold it, or spend it on anything."
I'm in!
An individual on a bulletin board specializing in cruises described his scheme to get a ‘free’ cruise costing $10K. He planned to invest the $10K in Bitcoin and by the time of the cruise, it would be worth $20K allowing him to pocket $10K and use the other $10K to pay for his cruise, ie, a ‘free’ cruise. He hasn’t come back to tell us how that worked for him.
Note: Article prepared and written by the public relations department of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, whose own version of a crypto “bitcoin” is still on the drawing boards.
“I got too caught up in the fear of missing out ...”
This motive has been at the core of every asset bubble going back to the Tulip bulbs.
Fortunately for the guy in this story, he is in his 20’s.
It's not dissimilar to MLM scams, where there's no product, just the system itself to sell; there's no exclusive territories; there is no way to relate supply (which is basically infinite) to demand (which is unquantifiable). Yeah, they all had a real good thing goin'. Maduro's pushing the second such bitcoin for Venezuela right now. That should indicate how much such stuff is worth. Thanks NRx.
I tried to understand it, I really did. I can understand almost everything in Math and Economics people present to me; my mind works that way. I kind of get it that a means of bartering and hiding money from our government masters is a desirable goal. I get it that money isn't real anymore except gov can say what is money.
I thought it seemed incredibly naïve that people assumed that the gov wouldn't pull the plug on BitCoin when it was cutting into its control over transactions and not fulfilling gov's clandestine purposes anymore. I'm not sure the idea will ever totally die. A "placeholder" for barter, maybe a private form of money for venues where goods are bought and sold, will become more prevalent.
You have a reliable source for those claims? And by reliable I mean something other than Alex Jones or World Nut Daily etc.
I missed the dot com boom...and the collapse.
If you had stood up, this joke would have killed you.
Depends on when he bought and sold. It was under a dollar many years ago and went to 15,000 back in Dec.
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