The Cryptocrash is in full swing and more than $1.2 trillion has been wiped from the market since its $3 trillion all-time high in November 2021.
Bitcoin has suffered particularly badly this year, steadily slumping from its peak of almost $67,000 just under three months ago to less than $38,000 - its lowest price since September.
The question, of course, is when (or if) the bad times will go away. So who do you turn to for guidance in these troubled times?
Last week, one financial expert told us that it is probably a very bad idea to take crypto investment advice from Kim Kardashian.
This prompted a man called Chris Kniel to write a truly epic letter to the Financial Times this week which said anyone who buys crypto marketed by celebrities “can hardly be called an ‘ordinary investor’” and should instead be described in “more realistic terms that come to mind” such as “fool, moron, idiot, gullible”.
But what about rockstar Gene Simmons? Well, anyone who has plowed their life savings into crypto and sobbed as their nest egg went rotten this year may - or may not - be reassured to hear that the long-tongued Kiss legend is optimistic about the future of crypto.
“??Just for the record, I’m a HODLer!” he tweeted. “I ain’t selling anything. I have 14 crypto/DeFi holdings and I have faith the really good times are right around the corner.”
That’s OK then. We’re sure everything’s fine.
Mega-Whale Feeding Frenzy
There is not much positivity on offer in the crypto sector right now. Or so you might think.
Certainly, anyone who bought the dip and got dunked will be feeling a little apprehensive as the top cryptos plunge downward.
But there have been some deep rumblings in the realm of the mega-whales - the name for super-sized investors who hold more than 10,000 Bitcoins.
“In the past 3 months, 10 new Bitcoin whale addresses have reappeared that hold 10k or more $BTC,” the crypto analyst house Santimant tweeted. “This is a 12.7% increase from the 9-year all-time low amount of mega whale addresses that were recorded in late October.”
Do the whales know something we don’t?
Bitecoin Up by 2,800,000,000%
A little know crypto called Bitecoin has skyrocketed in value by a staggering amount which means anyone who bought a cent’s worth a week ago is now sitting on a fortune of $27million.
Or at least that’s what it says on CoinMarketCap.
So have you missed yet another chance to get rich and turn your sorry life around? On this occasion, we’re glad to say: probably not.
Sharat Chandra, VP of Research and Strategy at EarthID, a self-sovereign Identity Management Platform, told The Economic Times that Bitcoin was “a pretty risky proposition”.
"More than 90 percent of Bitecoin is held by top five wallets and these whales can manipulate prices at their will,” he said.
At the time of writing, Coingecko’s charts show the price of Bitecoin has dived in value from just under one cent to, well, a number that is just a decimal point followed by a great fat handful of zeroes.
“How can we change this token for another so as not to lose everything?” one poor soul tweeted.
“??Beware of this coin, it is totally a scam,” another person alleged in a tweet which we British people might say was “stating the bleeding obvious” if the initial price slide reports are true.
“I bought a billion of them, but I was surprised after a week that my wallet contains only 200 coins, avoid entering the contract address into your wallet account so as not to lose your money.”
Reality bites.
Bitcoin For Tonga
Hundreds of Bitcoin donations have been made to a Tonga relief fund set up after a gigantic volcanic eruption caused an “unprecedented disaster”.
A fundraising wallet set up by Tongan politician and self-professed crypto advocate Lord Fusitu’a raised more than $40,000 within three days of going live.
“Tonga received hundreds of #Bitcoin donations after volcano devastation because everything else failed,” said a Twitter user that was retweeted by Lord Fusitu’a.
“Bitcoin is the only hope.”
Zuck’s NFT Party
Mark Zuckerberg is probably not the sort of person who enjoys seeing anyone else making money. WhatsApp was doing well, so he bought it. Snapchat was hot, so he snapped up Instagram and crushed it. The reality was grim so he invited us all to move into his creepy corporate virtual hell world (which he calls The Metaverse). You get the idea.
Now Big Zucker is making yet another bid to beat down an exciting new market if reports that Facebook and Instagram will soon allow users to mint and sell non-fungible tokens are to be believed.
The Financial Times said Meta, Facebook’s company, was seeking to “join the rush of companies trying to capitalize on the digital collectible craze”.
“Teams at Facebook and Instagram are readying a feature that will allow users to display their NFTs on their social media profiles, as well as working on a prototype to help users create - or mint - the collectible tokens, according to several people familiar with the matter,” the newspaper wrote.
Non-Fungible Titan
Elon Musk has not been impressed with Twitter’s introduction of a feature that lets users “show off the NFTs you own in a hex-shaped profile picture on your Twitter account”.
“This is annoying,” he tweeted. “Twitter is spending engineering resources on this bs while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!?”
The billionaire was once plagued by “Fake Elon” spammers with names like Elon Tusk or similar who mobbed his tweets with messages containing false promises of free crypto that were designed to tempt people onto scam websites.
Intel Inside The Blockchain
The tech giant Intel is planning to launch a crypto mining chip called “Bonanza Mine” at the fascinating-sounding International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISCC) in February, Tom’s Hardware reported.
Described as an “ultra-low-voltage energy-efficient Bitcoin mining ASIC”, it is not clear whether the chip is part of a research project or if it will be released to the public.
It’s fair to say the release of an Intel chip that mines crypto would be a big deal for the sector.
It looks like this year’s International Solid-State Circuits Conference will be the most exciting one yet. Which probably isn’t saying much.
