Crypto currency

Zambo

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No. You can go on coinmarketcap.com and see that the market cap of all crypto combined has plummeted over the past year.
Maybe I’m understanding it wrong. Gold is a finite resource, but the market cap of gold goes down too. If someone suddenly found a giant supply of gold somewhere, the law of supply and demand would tend to make the price per oz goes down but the total market cap would still be subject to fluctuations that might be net positive or negative. But whatever the market cap, an individual with a set amount of gold sees the value of his share go down for the same reason that printing money makes the value of every dollar I already own go down. What am I missing?
 
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URGatorBait

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Seems to me that the main lure of BTC in the beginning was that it had a guaranteed limited supply, aka the "gold standard." You can't just 'print' more BTC easily, it has to be "mined" like gold to slowly and predictable increase the supply in a very conservative fashion. Seems on the surface like a good way to combat the way fiat currencies get devalued by the printing press.

Anyone else think that the constant barrage of alternative crypto (Etherium, Dogecoin, etc) basically has the same effect as printing fiat currency? I just checked and there are currently 37, ....yes thirty-seven......active cryptocurrencies being traded. What is to stop someone else from inventing a new one tomorrow, and the next day?
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Bernardo de la Paz

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Maybe I’m understanding it wrong. Gold is a finite resource, but the market cap of gold goes down too. If someone suddenly found a giant supply of gold somewhere, the law of supply and demand would tend to make the price per oz goes down but the total market cap would still be subject to fluctuations that might be net positive or negative. But whatever the market cap, an individual with a set amount of gold sees the value of his share go down for the same reason that printing money makes the value of every dollar I already own go down. What am I missing?
If someone suddenly found a huge supply of gold, the impact on the market cap would depend on the price elasticity of demand for gold. For example, let's say the demand for gold was perfectly inelastic. That would mean that the same amount of gold would be purchased regardless of the price. So if the supply suddenly increased, the price and market cap would drop. Conversely, imagine the demand for gold was perfectly elastic. In that case the price for gold wouldn't change with the increase in supply. All of the new supply would be sold at the original price and the market cap would increase.

The highly elastic scenario arises when something has very good substitutes. In the case of gold imagine that gold was a small portion of the overall precious metals market and consumers had no preference for gold over silver, platinum, palladium, etc... other than price. In this scenario a large increase in the supply of gold might be a miniscule increase in the supply of precious metals -- all of which equally preferred by consumers -- and thus little change in price.

What this all has to do with your original question about the impact of altcoins on bitcoin is that you really aren't asking about an increase in bitcoin supply. You are really asking whether the market views altcoins as a very good substitute for bitcoin and whether that is impacting the demand for bitcoin as the supply of altcoins increases.

With bitcoin not being a tangible asset and the quantity being mostly irrelevant, it's really about the amount of money that investors want held in bitcoin. Now if altcoins are a perfect substitute and thus bitcoin is synonymous with crypto, and if all other variables remain the same, what you would expect to see as the supply of altcoins increases is that the total market cap of crypto would remain the same, but the market share of bitcoin would decrease.

So if bitcoin was 50% of the crypto market a year ago, and is still 50% today, then I would guess that the new altcoins are viewed by the market as substitutes for other altcoins and not bitcoin. If as new altcoins are introduced, bitcoin's market share shrank, I would guess that altcoins were viewed as a substitute. That would just be a guess though, because it could also be that altcoins are viewed as a higher risk/reward and that the market preference for riskier, higher return assets has increased.
 

Zambo

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You are really asking whether the market views altcoins as a very good substitute for bitcoin and whether that is impacting the demand for bitcoin as the supply of altcoins increases.
Correct. What do you think?

Seems there would be plenty of people who invest in this stuff simply to make day-trader quick money, and might shun an established btc for the lure of quick money getting in on the new shiny alternative. If you view the total demand for crypto as being at least somewhat inelastic than I’d think the dynamic would tend to hold the price of btc down.
 

Bernardo de la Paz

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Correct. What do you think?

Seems there would be plenty of people who invest in this stuff simply to make day-trader quick money, and might shun an established btc for the lure of quick money getting in on the new shiny alternative. If you view the total demand for crypto as being at least somewhat inelastic than I’d think the dynamic would tend to hold the price of btc down.
I would look at whether the market share of Bitcoin has changed within the overall crypto market. If it hasn't changed I would say altcoins haven't had an impact.

If the share has changed (and I cared enough to do this) I would then take a look at segmenting the market. It could be for example that Bitcoin is losing share to Ethereum, but not doge or whatever other shiitcoin is out there. And really Bitcoin should lose share to some of the others because it's inferior to some of them from a technology standpoint.
 

Egor's Assistant

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Could this be a modern day version of the Wild Wild West?

This FTX implosion is fascinating. It's a deep rabbit hole of corruption with tons of connections in high places. Ukraine did bitcoin fundraising on their platform. Founder gave $50 Million to the Dems this midterm election cycle. Might be some money laundering going on.
 

Egor's Assistant

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sln651Z5ngQm.jpeg
 

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