'The Music Has Stopped': Crypto Firms Quake as Prices Fall

[brooklynite]

New York Times

A global industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars rose up practically overnight. Now it is crashing down.

After weeks of plummeting cryptocurrency prices, Coinbase said on Tuesday that it was cutting 18 percent of its employees, after layoffs at other crypto companies like Gemini, BlockFi and Crypto.com. High-profile start-ups like Terraform Labs have imploded, wiping away years of investments. On Sunday, an experimental crypto bank, Celsius, abruptly halted withdrawals.

The pullback in the crypto ecosystem illustrates the precariousness of the structure built around these risky and unregulated digital assets. The total value of the cryptocurrency market has dropped by about 65 percent since autumn, and analysts predict the sell-off will continue. Stock prices of crypto companies have cratered, retail traders are fleeing and industry executives are predicting a prolonged slump that could put more companies in jeopardy.

“The tide has gone out in crypto, and we’re seeing that many of these businesses and platforms rested on shaky and unsustainable foundations,” said Lee Reiners, a former Federal Reserve official who teaches at Duke University Law School. “The music has stopped.”

[Ocelot II]

1. All those tulip bulbs might make a nice garden next spring, though.

[Hugin]

5. Are tulip bulbs edible?

Might make a delicious soup.

ON EDIT: The flowers are edible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip#Culinary_uses

[Ocelot II]

6. They're mildly poisonous.

Eating tulip bulbs can cause dizziness, nausea, abdominal pain and, rarely, convulsions and death. The analogy continues....

[Hugin]

8. I guess the vegetation is...

Barring allergies. However, that requires patience.

Still more analogy.

[Hugin]

2. "A global industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars..."

Well, no. It was only worth what it's investors said it was worth and others were willing to buy into.

Good thing I kept my Burt Bucks.

[Beakybird]

3. I remember Paul Krugman predicted this year's ago.

The crypto bros probably thought he was an imbecile.

[ripcord]

4. Maybe the price of graphics cards will drop now nt

[oioioi]

7. Crypto optimist: Bitcoin to $1,000,000 by 2030 'pretty lofty' at this point

One long-time crypto optimist is questioning another's bullish long-term call on bitcoin prices amid the latest plunge in prices for digital currencies.

"I think that is pretty lofty," Valkyrie CEO Leah Wald said on Yahoo Finance Live (video above) when asked about Cathie Wood's Ark Invest calling for bitcoin prices to reach $1 million by 2030 in its January 2022 "Big Ideas" report.

"Bitcoin’s market capitalization still represents a fraction of global assets and is likely to scale as nation-states adopt as legal tender," Ark stated, listing several factors for its aggressive projection: (1) maturing bitcoin investor base focused on the long-term; (2) bitcoin taking market share as a global settlement network; and (3) institutional investors are being attracted to the space.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crypto-optimist-bitcoin-to-1000000-by-2030-155113653.html

[TlalocW]

9. I've been using my crypto currency

To invest in NFTs of Beanie Babies holding tulips. I'm gonna be rich.

TlalocW

[tenderfoot]

11. You'll have plenty for Pokemon cards and Pogs too!

[andym]

10. There would be utility in digital currencies if issued by nations

such as the USA and China. That could spell doom for volatile unstable decentralized "crypto."