Interestingly enough, crypto has once again seen over ONE TRILLION DOLLARS leave the total market cap. We have been here before. The crypto market drop that spanned from May-11-2021 to July-20-2021 and dipped as low as as $1.204 trillion violently shook the confidence of "up-only" crypto enthusiasts.
Crypto then reached all-time-highs on the ensuing bull run and peaked over $2.35 trillion just 2 months later on Sept-5-2021. By November-8-2021, the cap had stretched to nearly $2.9 trillion which helped boost BTC, ETH, & many other altcoin/crypto assets boldly into the limelight. Fast forward 6 months, and here we are on a pullback to some of the old crypto stomping grounds, only to find enhanced FUD in the chatter surrounding the sustainable future of cryptocurrency.
This time the market correction had Bitcoin ($BTC) pulling back to $28K but maintaining 43% of the crypto market dominance. Ethereum ($ETH) has slipped back to $2K but still maintains 20% market dominance. With stablecoins and DeFi protocols undertaking scrutiny in the wake of an algorithmic debauchery by TerraUSD ($UST) and Terra Labs ($LUNA), many traders and investors are likely holding back their fiat money to see the market reactions. The orderbooks at major centralized exchanges (CEX's) like Coinbase & Kraken continue to have large amounts of money looking to buy back in with limit orders set in discounted positions.
Today, the entire market has dropped even more while Americans slept. The speculative trading of selling and buying and rinsing and repeating is only adding to the volatility and growing concern for the health of the crypto market as a whole. Supply and demand is the very basis of crypto. Surveys have pegged crypto enthusiasts to a belief that crypto can be useful in hedging against inflation; a belief that crypto is the solution to broken fiat currency systems that drive countries into unfathomable debts. These same enthusiasts, myself included, continue to exit their crypto positions back into fiat currency holdings. Why? This is done to "buy back in at lower prices to increase profit during crypto assets volatility." The mentality of making money with money may be the problem??
PICTURE THIS, everyone in your household is hungry for dinner. What they have been doing and are currently doing is not getting them fed. Here you come to save the day! You enter the situation with a bag of groceries that, when combined and cooked, will make the perfect meal to satisfy the hungry household. Before you could prepare this savory meal you realize that the groceries are being ransacked by the hungry mob.
Some of the mob was fed; some were not and remain hungry. You had the best intentions to assure that ALL of the hungry individuals were served a fair and balanced meal. You don't understand why the mobsters didn't have a little more empathy and concern for the whole community?
As you contemplate the grocery investment that has led to no meal for some and your own hungry demise, you compare it to your once belief in what appeared to be a thriving crypto ecosystem at Terra Luna. The return of TerraUSD to the dollar peg ($1.00) and the story of how LUNA would suffer a price drop until the UST was able to reunite with the peg led many people to believe that buying both LUNA and UST can help feed the hungry situation that disabled the once stable UST.
How would this repeg play-out if for every $500K of repair work there was an equivalent size sell order on the other side of the order books? How do we buy in and not fulfill the hungry sellers? How does it all work for an algorithmic stablecoin to return to stable? How did it fall so quickly, but yet, it takes the bulls forever to get up the staircase to recovery?
LUNA fell from grace to a $700m mkt cap, and under a dollar in price, to help its accomplice UST. LUNA then found enough capital interest to bounce back UP to nearly $2B before midnight. But, this morning we awake to see the price of LUNA at $0.05 and the cap under $350m total. UST also dropped again from $0.82 to $0.44....while we slept. Remember, crypto markets never sleep. Many questions are spiraling around the Terra situation regarding whether or not it can be turned around.
The Terra thing opens many other questions in the midst of Crypto market FUD:
Tether - Will stablecoins and their underlying security hold up to scrutiny?
AVAX - Will Avalanche emerge in the wake of Terra?
Coinbase - Will CEO Armstrong be able to avoid company bankruptcy?
Chainlink - Are you financially relevant or just conceptually appealing?
Market Cap - Where is it gonna go next?
The real question is: Will there be a DECENTRALIZED FINANCE protocol(s) that solves the economic conundrum of establishing trustless, permissionless, peer-to-peer cashless global non-custodial banking replicates that serve the greater good??? Lending, BORROWING, INTEREST yielding through farming & staking. Is a trustworthy benevolent answer or resolution even possible. If everyone prospered from their money making money, then is it safe to assume there would be no individuals in our industrial workforce? Would it make sense to allow wealth to be distributed equally? Considering Bitcoin has been most helpful in countries that have failed financial systems and balances, like El Salvador, should have raised warning flags to participants of "thriving economies".
Why would folks with capital and power that they have either slaved for, killed for, or killed slaves for allow "lesser" economies to play catch up financially? Why would the "silent generation" and the baby boomers allow generation X & millennials to accomplish financial security through technology? We can't have kids getting filthy rich before they learn all about being filthy. Because of this we have many people risking more than they can afford to risk...and during crypto "corrections" risking more than you can afford to risk can be completely devastating rendering you hopeless. In fact, some people have lost it all chasing the "bitcoin billionaire dream"
Read this to enhance your inhibitions:
Please, keep in mind this is an opinion piece where nothing should be telling you to buy, sell, hold, or do anything else in cryptos without Doing Your Own Research.
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