"Crypto-Mania Collapse Update: $638 Billion Gone"

Last week we were focused on Ethereum which dropped from $302.33 on September 1 to a recent $197.72, off 27 cents. That was the most dramatic decline among the most popular cryptocurrencies but drawing back the focus, the whole group is....

Here's Wolf Street:

Of the seven biggest, six have plunged by 78% to 92%.

Cryptocurrencies and tokens are multiplying like rabbits: There are now 1,926 listed on CoinMarketCap.com, 500 more than early 2018. And even as the number of cryptos continues to swell, each crypto constantly creates new units through “mining.” This dilution and hyperinflation is worse than with all but the worst fiat currencies, such as the Venezuelan bolivar.

Cryptos are “decentralized.” That was one of the major selling points in whitepapers full of intelligent-sounding gobbledygook and other propaganda promoted in myriad ways, including by an army of crypto trolls and celebrities paid by the tweet. Because cryptos are decentralized, everyone can create their own, and all kinds of outfits are mining new units of existing cryptos. It’s really just a big joke. But people are losing large amounts usually expressed in their hated fiat currency. The pain is real. And the numbers are big.

At the peak on January 7, total market cap was $704 billion, per CoinMarketCap at the time.
But new cryptos arrive all the time, and cryptos are also multiplying themselves via the mining process. CoinMarketCap figures the market cap going backwards, based on today’s existing cryptos to arrive at a theoretical market cap at a date in the past, as if all those new cryptos and tokens had already existed on that day in the past. And by this measure, the theoretical market cap for January 7 was $830 billion.


Based on this measure, the aggregate market cap has plunged 77%, from $830 billion to $192 billion in eight months. $638 billion vanished or transferred to those who sold in time from those who didn’t.

The good thing for the US economy is that much of this market cap destruction has hit people around the globe, and people in the US got whacked by only a portion of it....MUCH MORE

Last week: 
Crypto: "The collapse of ETH is inevitable"

"Vitalik Buterin accepts his brainchild, Ethereum, will collapse" (ETH)

"Someone paid $170,000 for the most expensive CryptoKitty ever" (ETH)
Get me out of this ETH and into anything else (seriously)