back to article Why is Bitcoin fscked? Here are three reasons: South Korea, India... and now China clamps down on cryptocurrencies

China has become the latest nation to attempt to cripple crypto-coin trading within its borders. Banks on the mainland have informed state media they will "step up measures" to eliminate citizens trading in cryptocurrencies using overseas websites, with the help of the Middle Kingdom's Great Firewall, in addition to the …

  1. Mayday
    Megaphone

    Still

    If I can't (easily and cheaply, i.e. no silly $20+ fee) buy a coffee, do my shopping or even a big ticket item such as a house or car then why should I bother at all?

    None of the tightening down as mentioned in the article helps either of course.

  2. Mark 110

    Nowhere near corrected

    "Amid the turmoil, Bitcoin – the cyber-cash poster child – has seen a massive drop (or "price correction" depending on whose side you're on) that has cut its trading price from a high of nearly $20,000 in mid-December to under $7,000 in early February. Crypto? More like crypt-doh!"

    Once its back around £500 we might consider it to be corrected.

    Seriously though, since the purpose of a currency is to be traded in exchange for goods and services, and therefore it has value, I would be interested to know how much Bitcoin is actually traded in exchange for goods and services (as opposed to being traded for other currencies), and how that compares to a normal currency like the pound or the dollar.

    If bitcoin is actually being used to buy stuff it might have some value.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nowhere near corrected

      "If bitcoin is actually being used to buy stuff it might have some value"

      I am a relative layman in bitcoin compared to some, but my experience of it is this.

      Couple of years ago I thought I'd give it a punt. Bought an S7 with PSU from eBay, around the £650 mark. That was the maximum I was willing to gamble.

      As BTC went up in value, traded up the S7 for a T9 (slightly higher power consumption than an S9, and rumoured to be more reliable), but later got an S9 as well anyway. Both those miners were bought in BTC. No cold cash spent.

      Over the two years I've spent around £3.5k with retailers who accept BTC. I also have two miners which would sell for £5k on eBay, and around 0.7BTC in my wallet at the moment. The two miners earned somewhere around the 2.0-2.5BTC mark in 2017. At the current value, that's about £10k. Note I don't have to pay for the electricity I use (work perk), which made it worthwhile for me to look into.

      Not a bad return, but I understand some folk have done way better than little old me. I've no objection to my mining buying me more stuff, nor would I object to anyone wanting to pay me in BTC for something (no-one has ever asked!)

      Anyway, if the value of them falls and falls, hopefully I'm left with SOMETHING....! But if it doesn't and the whole thing collapses tomorrow, I've made about £2.9k in "goods" and I'll use the miners as paperweights. Big, LOUD, paperweights.

      1. Mike Friedman

        Re: Nowhere near corrected

        I'm sure your work would love to know that they're supporting your hobby/side business with their power and resources.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Nowhere near corrected

          "I'm sure your work would love to know that they're supporting your hobby/side business with their power and resources"

          Nothing at all to do with you Mike, and no dishonesty involved, smart-arse.

          I'm self-employed, pay for my own office, and the electricity is thrown in inclusive. If that upsets you, take it up with my landlord. In the mean time, I'll run miners and the 12 or so computers etc I've got in there until the cows come home. And my fridge and kettle too. God knows I pay enough rent in the place.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Nowhere near corrected

            "pay for my own office, and the electricity is thrown in ......... God knows I pay enough rent in the place"

            It's almost as if your landlord is charging you for the electricity required to mine bitcoins. And as electricity in the UK (even before your landlords mark up) cists more than the mined bitcoin are worth your landlord is laughing all the way to the bank.

            Don't expect your miners to have any second hand value either unless you can find a buyer who has "free" electricity too ...... or has to heat their home with electric power.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Nowhere near corrected

              "It's almost as if your landlord is charging you for the electricity required"

              If I mine or not I pay the same rent - what difference does your analysis make to me?

              "Don't expect your miners to have any second hand value.."

              I don't - and if they don't I'm still in credit.

          2. inmypjs Silver badge

            Re: Nowhere near corrected

            "I'm self-employed, pay for my own office, and the electricity is thrown in inclusive. If that upsets you, take it up with my landlord."

            You are screwing over the landlord's other tenets who are subsidising your relatively huge use of electricity. The only upsetting thing is knowing there are asshole jerks in the world who see nothing at all wrong in screwing over other people just because they can.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Nowhere near corrected

              LOL, get a grip!

              I'm not screwing over anybody. If the electricity wasn't "inclusive", they wouldn't advertise it as such. I've been in there 5 years and only mined for 2 - rent has barely budged! Are you telling me everyone else's has gone up to cover my mining?!

              Or with me subsidising the gym which I never go into, or me subsidising the conference facilities I never use, are the other tentants having my pants down??

              "screwing over other people" - haha - get off your high horse you muppet.

            2. Claptrap314 Silver badge

              Re: Nowhere near corrected

              I meant to jump on this. This is essentially what Google did to get itself kicked out of the commercial data centers when it created blade servers. Nice exploit, for them.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nowhere near corrected

        > I'll use the miners as paperweights. Big, LOUD, paperweights.

        Spare a thought for Samsung who've just spent a stack tooling up for ASIC having seen how much TSMC made from Antminers etc....at least those folk who bought enormous GPU based rigs can repurpose for password cracking and other useful and/or nefarious purposes.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          In a heating dominated climate

          Especially one where electricity is typically used for heat, there's no such thing as "wasted" electricity, at least not during days when you'd have the heat on anyway.

          Maybe some clever company needs to create a new line of electric heaters that use their power for bitcoin mining (or cloud computing or whatever) instead of resistance coils. They can advertise "heat that pays for itself"...

          1. Naselus

            Re: In a heating dominated climate

            "Maybe some clever company needs to create a new line of electric heaters that use their power for bitcoin mining (or cloud computing or whatever) instead of resistance coils. They can advertise "heat that pays for itself"..."

            I seem to recall that someone did try and kickstart a similar idea, but it wasn't practical - basically, your initial install costs are so high compared to using traditional radiators or space heaters (and electric heating is so expensive anyway, compared to gas) that it's not a remotely attractive addition to an existing building.

            1. 's water music
              Happy

              Re: In a heating dominated climate

              >>"Maybe some clever company needs to create a new line of electric heaters that use their power for bitcoin mining (or cloud computing or whatever) instead of resistance coils. They can advertise "heat that pays for itself"..."

              I seem to recall that someone did try and kickstart a similar idea, but it wasn't practical - basically, your initial install costs are so high compared to using traditional radiators or space heaters (and electric heating is so expensive anyway, compared to gas) that it's not a remotely attractive addition to an existing building.

              Ahh, but have you seen my kickstarter for a gas powered bitcoin miner/heater? A better investment than my cold-fusion rig was (great mining, crap heating...)

          2. MyffyW Silver badge

            Re: In a heating dominated climate

            "Maybe some clever company needs to create a new line of electric heaters that use their power for bitcoin mining"

            Microsoft published a paper a few years ago on what they dubbed the "Data Furnace" - essentially the heat of running servers provides domestic space heating. For me the biggest obstacle is that the processing power becomes uneconomic after a few years, so needs to be regularly replaced (unlike my age-year old gas boiler).

          3. -maniax-

            Re: In a heating dominated climate

            Free heat?

            From a computing radiator?

            You mean like the Q.Rad from www.qarnot.com?

            They're probably not optimised for crypto currency and Qarnot only supply them for locations where 20 or more devices are needed but I guess you could always open a sauna to use them in :)

            Oh, and you don't get access to the processing power unless you buy access to them

            1. bombastic bob Silver badge
              Devil

              Re: In a heating dominated climate

              makes Antarctica the best place to mine Bitcoin

              1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

                Re: In a heating dominated climate

                Not entirely a joke. The bigs ARE siting data centers to take advantage of ambient temperatures. Don't expect datacenters to ever be a major industry in Tunisia or Malaysia.

      3. garbidge

        Re: Nowhere near corrected

        I mined just over 2 BTC on a laptop, back when GPU mining was still cool. It was worth about $5 at the time the laptop got purloined in a burgling.

    2. hellwig

      Re: Nowhere near corrected

      If you are a business with a bottom-line, why would you hold-on to bitcoin? At regular intervals, you have to pay suppliers, employees, etc... Sure, sell a $20k car for a couple bitcoin, but that same model car will still sell for $20k tomorrow, will it still be worth the couple bitcoin you got for it today?

      Unless the whole system starts to accept bitcoin (at which case, isn't it just a normal currency like anything else?), it HAS to be converted to money somehow.

      A government-backed currency like the US dollar or Euro has security. Bitcoin has nothing, and you'd be a fool to depend on it (like a company depends on their revenue). It might have made a good investment, but anyone trying to feed their family with it is a fool.

    3. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Nowhere near corrected

      "from a high of nearly $20,000 in mid-December to under $7,000 in early February"

      this sounds more like a ponzi scheme than investment, WORSE than commodity margin trading [how George Soros earned most of HIS money as I recall].

      Here's why: Suppose "Old George" decides he wants to break the bank on Bitcoin the way he did on the GBP a few years back. So he slowly buys up Bitcoin when it's not doing much, and encourages others to do so [through perhaps nefarious means, advertising, whatever] until the price is driven artificially up. THEN, he decides to SELL OFF his assets, driving the price DOWN. He makes a bit of money. The price is driven SO LOW it's way below what he paid for the bitcoin from before. And his piece of the pie was SO LARGE, it makes a YUGE difference in the market price.

      THEN, he waits a bit for things to calm down, and starts buying again. The price goes back up, he's got the same number of bitcoins as before, but he MADE A BOATLOAD OF CASH by manipulating the market.

      Does this look ANYTHING like what has happened recently, not just with Bitcoin, but in the U.S. Stock Exchange?

      These methods are well-known. Yet, investors STILL get manipulated into behaving like cattle. Go fig.

      post edit: I just thought of this description: Sell HIGH, buy LOW.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @bombastic bob

        Bitcoin is so thinly traded you don't need to assume someone is manipulating it. Only that the holder of one of the 90% of bitcoins that haven't been seen in the blockchain for years decides now that is the time to start selling them. If you hold hundreds of thousands of bitcoins you can't just dump them all on the market and collect your billion dollars, the price would crash before you sold a few percent of them. So you start small and if the price isn't moving too much you sell more, until the price crashes. Then you stop for a while, let the bitcoin boosters who will say "hey this downturn is a buying opportunity!" push the price back up, then sell more.

        I wonder if anyone is tracking which bitcoins are traded to know when ones that haven't been seen for years (or never since creation) have appeared on the exchanges in the past couple months?

        1. bombastic bob Silver badge
          Unhappy

          Bitcoin is so thinly traded

          ew. that makes it even WORSE.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The problem as I see it

    BTc hit the wall due to three different factors: mining uses energy and energy is getting more expensive.

    Also the actual hardware has reached its limit as I mentioned earlier (namely 28nm) below which chips become exponentially more expensive to manufacture reliably although some enterprising folks are starting to refurbish Antminers and other dedicated units to overcome long term reliability issues.

    The third problem is that as a medium of exchange its "value" is negotiable, there are a finite number circulating not including ones kept "on ice" so to speak. As more countries ban it the main players sell off their stocks out of fear causing the price to drop.

    I would not be surprised at all if this is a last gasp tactic by the major banks to scare off small time investors. They could just as easily ban buying/selling of precious metals and in fact some countries already have for similar reasons.

    In fact this is an argument in favor of Bitcoin and similar blockchain currencies because it is less likely that one country can control it. Anarchy at its finest!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The problem as I see it

      Hardware limits? hahaha. I think your info is at least 8 years out of date on that.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The problem as I see it

      Not quite. Hardware is getting quicker and more power efficient, but the miners are buying more and more hardware so the electricity bills are going up. This would be fine if they could mine more coin but the algorithm adjusts the mining difficulty to compensate for the total computung capacity and keep the block rate constant. Alternatively if the value of bitcoin is rising the increased value keeps things proffitable, but the value is falling. So the miners are facing a problem and need to sell their inventories of coins. When more people want to sell than buy the price is pushed down even more.

      I think that the next increase in mining difficullty is due tomorrow at about 6PM. This is going to be very painfull for the miners so some will shut down. The question is, will enough remain to keep bitcoin trading liquid?

  4. adnim

    I am confused

    I have this algorithm that generates numbers and provides evidence that those numbers were generated and not copied. Please pay me for the numbers I have generated.

    Whilst I accept that generation and speculation in bit coin markets may well earn the clever and adventurous miner/speculator a few $/£. It actually does not have any real value.

    Apparently Charlie Chaplin once said "I would rather have a nice cup of tea and a bun than a bitcoin". Citation needed.

    I guess the same can be said about gold... It is useless when you are hungry, unless there is someone that wants it enough to feed you in exchange.

    1. Blank Reg

      Re: I am confused

      The difference is that gold actually has uses and it really does exist, and so will always have a non-zero value.

      Bitcoin is fundamentally worthless.

      1. ratfox
        Trollface

        Re: I am confused

        SO IS THE DOLLAR!!1! etc. etc.

      2. kernelpickle

        Re: I am confused

        False.

        Value is just a construct of the mind, and is in no way related to tangibility or utility. If we all agree that something has value, then it's valuable, and subject to supply and demand like anything else.

        If we were to apply your constraints [is tangible/has utility] to the labor market, then it would be literally the opposite of what it is. Folks that work hard, doing things with their hands and serving a real purpose would be paid much more than someone working in management, human resources, marketing, etc...

        Once upon a time, paper money wasn't any different that crypto-currency--because we went through numerous failed currencies in the U.S. before they moved to a gold backed currency. Even though it's no longer backed by gold, the U.S. dollar still has value, because people still have enough confidence in it, to continue trading it for goods and services.

        If we all agree not to use Bitcoin, and have no faith in it's value, it won't be worth anything--but the fact that there was inflated confidence is the reason why the bubble was so big. Eventually we'll all be using Crypto-currencies for everything, because it beats the system we have now where we rely upon centralized banks to move our money around for us in a purely digital realm.

        When you realize just how little cash physically exists in circulation, as compared to the amount the amount actually in use, it's staggering. If everyone made a run on the banks, and called in all their debts to be paid in full, with cash, it'd be all over--the entire system would break down.

        Crypto-currency beats cash, in the fact that all the digital transactions are the same has handing physical cash to someone in person, and unlike gold--could feasibly be used in direct transactions, without having to be liquidated. As it currently stands, the stuff is just too valuable to trade directly, and it's being traded more like stocks than money--hence the ICO's, but there's still potential. Also the physical space required to store it are much less cumbersome than finding a place to keep large amounts of gold.

        1. Richard 12 Silver badge

          Re: I am confused

          The "becoming too valuable to trade with" is due to the repeated fundamental design flaw of all cryptocurrencies to date.

          Fiat currency is created by borrowing, and destroyed when the loan is repaid.

          Until a cryptocurrency allows that to happen, they will not be currencies and can only be assets to be traded in, not with.

          And in fact they are and will remain pyramid or ponzi schemes.

          The proof-of-work and proof-of-stake stuff is very interesting. I wonder what it'll actually get used for in ten year's time.

        2. Blank Reg

          Re: I am confused

          Bitcoin isn't being used as a currency in any substantial way, if it were then it's value would be much more stable. Instead it's nothing but a pyramid scheme, people buying in because they are afraid they will miss out. And now selling out while they can still get something back.

          A currency is nothing more than a store of value that can easily be transferred to someone else. Bitcoin is terrible as a currency as it's more difficult, more expensive and slow to transfer to someone else. It's only appeal as a currency is it's anonymity, though cash has that feature as well, but it's mostly only criminals that care about that aspect.

        3. inmypjs Silver badge

          Re: I am confused

          "When you realize just how little cash physically exists in circulation, as compared to the amount the amount actually in use, it's staggering."

          Only staggering if you are an idiot that has no concept of how our monetary systems work.

      3. inmypjs Silver badge

        Re: I am confused

        "Bitcoin is fundamentally worthless"

        So are bits of paper with $ or £ printed on them, but, they are still extremely useful facilitating trade.

        Outside of speculation cryptocurrencie's main utility is evading taxes and the law. I posted here weeks ago all governments would like to ban them, but, only the most draconian can get away with it. I expect to see more.

    2. vtcodger Silver badge

      Re: I am confused

      "I have this algorithm that generates numbers and provides evidence that those numbers were generated and not copied. Please pay me for the numbers I have generated."

      All you need is a good story to wrap around your product and you're set. Regretably, the current story -- that your numbers are wealth tokens -- may be becoming a bit shopworn. Try something sexier -- cures baldness, will lengthen one's life by decades, Will cause the purchaser to lose 20 kilograms ...

  5. FuzzyTheBear
    WTF?

    I knew they were maniacs ..

    but it's getting ridiculous ... I quote

    " ... step up measures" to eliminate citizens trading in cryptocurrencies using overseas websites..

    Eliminate citizens ? Ain't that a bit harsh a penalty for having a few worthless junk coins ?

  6. Richard 12 Silver badge

    Basic economics killed Bitcoin as a currency

    It's inherently deflationary, and so encourages people to hoard, not spend it.

    A store of value that is hoarded is not a currency, it's an investment - like buying old wines, paintings etc that ypu never intend to drink or display.

    The underlying blockchain technology is interesting and I am sure will become useful for something or other, but Bitcoin itself is a classic Ponzi scheme.

    A lot of people have indeed made a lot of money, and a lot of marks have lost even more.

    It's not worthless yet, but it will be - and yes, there will still be more winners - and losers - before the last few are left holding some worthless bytes.

    1. Naselus

      Re: Basic economics killed Bitcoin as a currency

      It's not a classic Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme has a very specific meaning which Bitcoin doesn't fit at all.

      In a Ponzi scheme, the initial investors receive dividends which are paid for out of the capital of newer investors. The capital is never put to productive use - the scheme's runner keeps as much of it as he can and pays above-market dividends out to continue attracting new investment. As such, more or less by definition, an asset cannot be a Ponzi scheme.

      There have been several Ponzi schemes launched using crypto-currencies as a cover for how they alledge to turn market-beating profits. But the currencies are not Ponzi schemes in themselves, so stop saying that they are as it just makes it clear you don't know what the term actually means.

      1. MonkeyCee

        Re: Basic economics killed Bitcoin as a currency

        @ Naselus: I completely agree, it's not a Ponzi.

        It *could* be considered a boiler room scam, which is pretty common in crypto. The good ol' pump and dump. :)

      2. Richard 12 Silver badge

        Re: Basic economics killed Bitcoin as a currency

        The initial investors receive dividends from later investors...

        Yep. That's how Bitcoin has worked.

        I suppose you can argue about whether its a pyramid, a boiler room or a Ponzi variant, but the overall result is very similar.

  7. PhilipN Silver badge

    Other side of the ... ummm ...coin

    Without a doubt the PRC will have been investigating its very own crypto-currency, which will be introduced when it has sufficient (i.e. complete) controls built in for the "protection" of the Party. After all there are ways to monitor digital transactions which do not apply to attache cases stuffed with bank notes.

    In the mean time, hear this Rest of the World, Wechat Pay* and Alipay* are sweeping across the region like a tidal wave. Sorry - have swept.

    *Not for speculation I know, but crypto-currency is supposedly intended to pay for stuff, yes?

  8. a_yank_lurker

    Problem with Bitcoin

    Bitcoin has a real problem with being readily available, stable, and in common use as a medium of exchange. So far it is failing as a viable currency. The key bit about currency is its use a medium of exchange for goods, labor, and services.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Problem with Bitcoin

      It also has the problem that every single transaction needs to be replicated to all of the distributed places where the block hashing work is done, hashed by a hugely slow, severely bandwidth limited and horrendously computationally expensive hashing process before being redistributed to all the distributed places for the next block in the chain to be hashed. And it's only then that you can find out if your transaction has or hasn't been included in a the chain and is therefore valid.

      1. rmason

        Re: Problem with Bitcoin

        I'm unsure why AC was downvoted there.

        That *is* an inherent issue, and is why steam and others stopped taking BTC.

        Transaction length/delay to complete was silly, transaction fees were silly and the volatility (silly again) meant that what the customer paid at point of purchase could be "worth" a vastly different amount come the time the transaction actually completed, sometimes at a benefit to the seller, sometimes not.

  9. Claptrap314 Silver badge

    Fiat benefit

    The ultimate backing of fiat "money" is the payment of taxes. Quite literally, the deal is this: "come up with a certain number of these tokens, or we send the boys over and take your house". After that, there is really very, very little difference. There is no intrinsic value. You want a Confederate Dollar? How about some Zimbabwean? Venezuelan? George Soros made his billions by attacking confidence in a fiat currency. That was hard, because millions of people were using it as a medium of exchange. Crypto currencies are going to be just as vulnerable to manipulation as any other form of money which is being traded at the same scale. First, it was nerds. Then the druggies. Then ransoms. Then pure speculation. The recent c-coin bubble is the natural result of a new form of payment crossing a certain threshold of awareness.

    Sure, if c-coins were in as broad use as the dollar, then they would likely be preferable. Which means that the US government is VERY motivated to prevent that from happening.

    One of the things that I could not understand about c-coins twenty years ago is what would stop a nation-state from pump & dumping just to destroy confidence. I still don't understand this. What if China decides to actively undermine the currencies instead of just blocking its "citizens" from use?

    1. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: Fiat benefit

      Could it be that the reason a state or non-state actor has so far not pumped and dumped on a grand scale is because it takes so bloody long to complete a transaction.

  10. onefang

    "an outright ban on the use of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for illegal purposes"

    Yeah, I'm sure that making it illegal is gonna stop the people that use them for illegal purposes from using them for illegal purposes. They'll just have to find legal ways to pay for their illegal things.

  11. mark l 2 Silver badge

    Even fiat currencies can get undermined by rogue states or criminals. If enough fake cash is created and distributed then people loose confidence in the currency and the value of the real money get's devalued.

    It has happened before, Germany had virtually flawless counterfeit US dollars and British pound notes at the end of WW2 but never got around to circulating them in large numbers. It's also believe that North Korea is behind better than the original copies of US $100 notes called the 'supernote'.

  12. WilliamBurke
    WTF?

    What's it good for?

    I never understood what crypto-currencies are good for. So you have a currency that's difficult to trace. Great if you are an extortionist, drug dealer or tax evader (other crimes available). Sooner or later governments will cotton on to this and crack down.

    A side effect that seems to have taken over as the main purpose is that you can speculate in it. Because it's new and relatively small in total volume, fluctuations in BC are larger than in other currencies, allowing for larger gains and losses in a short time. But you may as well bet on or against the Zimbabwean Dollar if you want to play this game.

  13. Not also known as SC
    Trollface

    Meanwhile, India's government ...signaled an outright ban on the use of Bitcoin ... for illegal purposes...

    Does this mean that prior to this decision it was legal in India to use Bitcoin etc for illegal purposes?

  14. Joe Harrison

    Why is it always Bitcoin

    Why is nobody bothered about banning the other 1000+ cryptocurrencies, for example https://putincoin.org/

    Ah maybe it's because totally unlike the holy Bitcoin (to which they are functionally identical) the others are merely quasi-worthless strings of hex.

    Some inconsistency in here somewhere and I can't put my finger on it.

  15. Tom 7

    The way to make money mining bitcoin

    is to get a book on Ai and use your mining rigs to learn how to work out which coin is going to be next to overvalue by a few orders of magnitude.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Missing the forest for the trees

    Bitcoin is still up ~8x what it was last January. If you average its gain since inception, you'll end up with about 80% YoY return. That's far from what I would call failure.

    As for transaction speed, the Lightning Network is already being tested on the mainnet. It won't be long before cheap, near instant transactions are possible.

  17. Herby

    Fool...Money...

    Soon parted. To me it seems that fools are the ones who dabble in Bitcoin. Given a chance, it can be rigged, and the mining is mostly a zero sum game when you consider energy costs (at least in the USA).

    Sorry, I'm not using my machine to heat the house, especially since it is a nice balmy 65 degrees (F) outside. Winter is over.

    Maybe that is the reason the value tanked. Winter is over (mostly) and nicer weather is around the corner, and soon we switch on the air conditioning. Sounds as good as any other excuse for the value of Bitcoin.

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