Ho, ho . . . whoa: Bitcoin, other cryptocurrencies plunge on Christmas Eve
Bitcoin down 13% after rebounding from Friday’s mini-crash
The price of bitcoin veered as sharply as Santa’s sleigh in pre-Christmas weekend trading, plunging more than 14% Sunday after Saturday was spent making up much of the 30% loss from Friday’s cryptocurrency mini-crash.
On Sunday afternoon, bitcoin BTCUSD, +5.45% was last trading at $13,200, after starting the day above the $15,000 mark.
Bitcoin wasn’t alone: Every major cryptocurrency was suffering double-digit-percentage losses as of Sunday afternoon, according to CoinMarketCap.com, with ethereum down 12% to $662 and bitcoin cash — bitcoin’s rival offshoot — down $19% to $2,762.
On Friday, bitcoin plummeted nearly 30% to $10,834.94 at its low point, ethereum fell as much as 33% and bitcoin cash fell as much as 37%. Trading recovered somewhat Saturday, with bitcoin rallying about 8%.
Just one week ago, bitcoin hit an all-time high price above $20,000 — it’s lost almost a quarter of that since.
Some experts say the wild swings shouldn’t worry investors unless they are leveraged. “This is a beast that has a unique personality, so a 20% to 30% move doesn’t matter at all,” market analyst Naeem Aslam wrote for MarketWatch last week. Aslam said that investors in bitcoin for the long term will likely still come out ahead.
Despite the volatile week, bitcoin is still up about 1,300% this year, and has an industry-leading market cap of about $224 billion.
Crypto economics: time to remove intermediaries
ReplyDeleteThere are mediators in any economic relations. There are so many of them that even laws treat mediation as a separate type of activity.
Thus, the Civil Code identifies five types of intermediaries:
• Commercial representatives: they receive instructions from entrepreneurs and fulfill them;
• Commission agents: try to sell goods produced by the manufacturer;
• Attorneys receive orders from entrepreneurs to sell goods and try to promote sales as much as possible;
• Agents: conclude contracts for sale of goods on behalf of entrepreneurs;
• Distributors: conduct wholesale trade in goods which are delivered to them by the producer.
Do we need the above mediators? Undoubtedly, in some cases they perform useful functions. For example, if the manufacturer is experiencing difficulties with sale of goods or it is difficult to deal with the nuances of the legislation, it chooses a good intermediary and pays it for high-quality services.
There is nothing wrong with the above example. However, the problem is that this does not always happen. Most often, intermediaries do not do anything, but want to get a percent (and rather big) of each transaction.
Apparently, what’s wrong with that? Many believe that if producers need intermediaries and are willing to pay them, then so be it. However, such an opinion is fundamentally wrong.
After all, the manufacturer lays down the cost of intermediary services in the value of the goods. Because of this, product prices are constantly rising, and buyers spend more and more money. In the short term, it is only consumers that suffer. But in the long run, economic growth and living standards are declining.
Crypto economy breaks artificial barriers between the producer and the end user of goods. They will be able to interact with each other through platforms that do not obey anyone.
Industrial decentralization is the future. Both buyers of goods and the companies that produce them will benefit from the crypto economy. Ultimately, this will make society healthier and fairer.
Middlemen will disappear from production with the advent of the Yodse platform. It is a unique space where producers and consumers find each other. Yodse assumes only direct interaction between users; there is no place for intermediaries here.
https://yodse.io/