Cryptocurrency has been a mixed bag of bull and bear market trends since it began in 2009. Some love it while others hate it. Whether you are an avid supporter or have woken up to the fact that it isn’t real money, and instead carries a lot of risk, there are those investors who rise to the excitement of potentially get rich. Today’s article touches on the highs and lows in the market, and the recent six-month Bitcoin decline.
Whether you like it or not the trend line cannot be ignored. There are those savvy investors who milk off market channeling, meaning buying low and selling high. When share prices are hiking up and hit a plateau, they sell to profit from the increase. Other unsavvy (inexperienced) players hop on board anyway, and watch their investment fall. If you are spread betting then you can even short your bet, so savvy traders can profit from dropping stock prices.
What is the excitement (hype) behind this trillion plus dollar cryptocurrency market you might be asking yourself? Decentralized financial transactions and international money transfers that are not on the radar for the inland revenue. In other words, dishonest (dodgy) business could be going on criminally and likely no one would know. Yes, according to my research Bitcoin is traceable which basically means, transactions on blockchain could be traced, alas crypto owners support this theory.
However, I’ve concluded coins are bouncing around and when they are via cryptocurrency exchange communities the purported “traceability” of cryptocurrency is routinely touted as the foil to criminal use of crypto.
This specious line of reasoning claims that since cryptocurrency is “traceable,” bad actors would be foolish to use it. Yet there is an ever-growing list of crypto hacks, crypto thefts, crypto scams, bitcoin ransomware events, etc. that proves bad actors use crypto regardless of purported cryptocurrency traceability.
The biggest myth in crypto is that “all crypto transactions are recorded on the blockchain.” Actually, most crypto transactions occur within exchanges. The exchange transactions occur on private ledgers and internally match buyers and sellers. These transactions are not posted on the blockchain.
Therefore, there is no record of the internal crypto exchange transaction to trace on the blockchain. This is only one aspect to consider. If it invites monkey business then investors are associated with it. The fact, there are so many cryptocurrencies that investors buy into begs the question of how many are scams. We have witnessed Terra blockchain protocol and payment platform, and the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, who were both involved in a number of events that contributed to the collapse of the crypto market in 2022.
Some companies that have been involved in crypto scams include:
Coobe.im: A fraudulent trading platform
Genie Pro xchange: A fraudulent trading platform
tnegcoin.com: A fraudulent trading platform
legionfxtrader.com: A fraudulent trading platform
metae5exchange.com: A fraudulent trading platform
daletrades.com: A fraudulent trading platform
Then we have billionaire Changpeng Zhao the founder of Binance a crypto exchange. He went to prison for violating anti-money laundering (AML) laws at his crypto exchange. He was released from US custody in September 2024 after serving a four-month sentence for money laundering violations. Another was Do Kwon a co-founder of Terra who also went to prison but was released after just four months. His company tanked in value and wiped out $40 billion in investors' funds.
Back in November 2021 Bitcoin reached 67K, and now almost three years on it is less than 62k. When the share price rose sharply at the beginning of this year it was due to Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) being introduced whereby experts said Bitcoin would be worth over a million dollars a token by 2030. Wannabee investors all excited (see blue circle in chart) purchased into it and low and behold Bit"coins" are going back down. What are the experts predictions now?
According to Binance the recent price prediction input for Bitcoin may increase by +5% and reach $ 83,412.68 by 2030. Now they are being conservative, but when it spiked over ETFs they over exaggerated. These firms promote cryptocurrency unscrupulously to make more money, and authorities let it slide.
I could go on, but there isn’t time to write a book at this moment. The bottom line is monopoly money doesn’t cut it for me.
Take care!
Prof. Carl Boniface
Vocabulary builder:
Bull and bear (n) = a bull market occurs when securities are on the rise while a bear market happens when securities fall for a sustained period of time.
Purported (adj) = claimed, alleged, unsupported, unsubstantiated
Touted (v) = to tout is to hype up, advertise, flaunt, push, peddle
Foil (n) = a setback of an enterprice; defeat. As a verb to thwart, prevent, frustrate, stop, halt, hinder
Specious (adj) = false, hollow, erroneous, baseless, inaccurate, phony
Monkey business (n) = mischievous or deceitful behavior. "She wasn't going to have any monkey business where the reputation of her only daughter was concerned."
Tanked in (phrasal verb) = to decrease suddenly or fail completely. The company's shares tanked on Wall Street. The reviews for the movie weren't great but no one thought that it would tank so spectacularly.
Let it slide (idiom) = to do nothing about (something, such as another person's mistake or bad behavior): to ignore (something). "You were late this morning. I'll let it slide this time, but don't let it happen again."
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