Bitcoin gets battered right before 2018 calls half time
The half time show will feature a chorus of critics predicting bitcoin's death.
After inflating almost audibly in late 2017, the start of 2018 saw bitcoin's peak burst, with "I told you so" echoing through the market.
But the stuff refused to go to zero, and holders unknowingly buckled up for six months of struggling against a market with unusually heavy gravity. It was quite an adjustment for those used to the buzzy low gravity days of mid to late 2017, when even the lightest touch like a partnership announcement could bump a coin 20% in as many minutes.
It was probably even more of an adjustment for anyone who jumped on while bitcoin neared its peak, which a heck of a lot of people did. All in all, things might be going rather well when you consider that about half of all the people to touch crypto have been burned.
Highlights of the year to date include the time prices went down, and that incident in early May when bitcoin rang $10,000's doorbell then ran away before it could answer.
Now just a couple of days before 2018 half time, bitcoin has received its heartiest beating yet and fallen to a new yearly low, dropping about 20% in the month of June and 60% over the course of the year.
How you know it's a bear market
"I want to encourage you all to ignore the price of crypto and the headlines which will inevitably start to come up," Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says to new hires. "Our job is to rise above that, finding our own intrinsic source of motivation, to come in and do our best work, regardless of what other people think."
It's safe to say that speech is reserved for market downturns.
But on the whole, most early adopters remain unphased and similarly note that it's a crypto phase they've seen before. Of course, cryptocurrency in 2018 is absolutely nothing like 2015 and no one's seen it before, but it's a nice calming sentiment anyway.
Downturns or not, most exchanges have busied themselves with broad expansion plans. Even as prices remain uninspiring, many VC funds have committed to more buying, keen to fill their pockets while prices are down, and the proliferating altcoin market is adding a lot of value to the future. Prices might be waffling, but the tech is sharper than ever.
Disclosure: At the time of writing the author holds ETH, IOTA, ICX, VET, XLM, BTC, NANO
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