How Facebook's Libra is going to affect Bitcoin prices

Bradley Prior

Bradley Prior

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How Facebook's Libra is going to affect Bitcoin prices

Facebook is the latest major company to step into the world of cryptocurrency, and its first foray into these volatile waters has made major ripples, attracting attention from governments and blockchain enthusiasts alike.

The company’s cryptocurrency is named Libra, and the blockchain on which its runs is named the Libra Blockchain.
 
It means very little. Apart from it's centralised corporate controlled nature, Libra will be a "stable coin" with no floating market based value. Essentially, it will end up being nothing more than a glorified version of Zapper or Snapscan that works off a prepaid Facebook wallet.
 
“The cryptocurrency market has turned bullish again globally, but I don’t expect us to see a return to the kind of hype witnessed in 2017 until some time after the Bitcoin halving event next year,” he said.
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He has no idea what he's talking about. Altcoins have been dumping and it's only Bitcoin and few out of the top 100 that have increased in value. Everything else has decreased relative to Bitcoin. The house of cards is going to come crashing down at some point.
 
I can't find in the article the correlation between BTC price and Libra?
 
Daruk said:
In other words BTC has gained the most. Altcoins have not been dumping. If you're comparing BTC to USD then do the same for alts.
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This has been explained at length in the other thread. Altcoins have been dumping into BTC pushing up the price. Altcoins only appear to have gone up due to the increased BTC price but against BTC, the currency everyone is trading with, they have gone down. Their gains aren't independent apart from a handful of coins.
 
Swa said:
This has been explained at length in the other thread. Altcoins have been dumping into BTC pushing up the price. Altcoins only appear to have gone up due to the increased BTC price but against BTC, the currency everyone is trading with, they have gone down. Their gains aren't independent apart from a handful of coins.
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This. Most altcoin/btc trading pairs are far into red territory. They're only showing USD gains because BTC is doing the heavy lifting. Alts are generally doing quite bad.
 
Daruk said:
In other words BTC has gained the most. Altcoins have not been dumping. If you're comparing BTC to USD then do the same for alts.
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Right now, ETH is down 33% on a year ago. BTC is up 96%. In USD. This might be a temporary divergence but you have to admit most alts have been struggling and haven’t seen the same resurgence (yet?) as BTC.
 
garp said:
Right now, ETH is down 33% on a year ago. BTC is up 96%. In USD. This might be a temporary divergence but you have to admit most alts have been struggling and haven’t seen the same resurgence (yet?) as BTC.
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The alt sell off is pushing up the price of BTC. But because most alts are going down in BTC terms they look even worse every time BTC dumps.
 
garp said:
It means very little. Apart from it's centralised corporate controlled nature, Libra will be a "stable coin" with no floating market based value. Essentially, it will end up being nothing more than a glorified version of Zapper or Snapscan that works off a prepaid Facebook wallet.
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Lol they'll have to negotiate with regulators which will make it easier for other exchanges and it'll add 2 billion plus potential users...
 
Daruk said:
BTC is almost 50% down on a year and a half ago, does that mean it's dumping?
Here's ETH's movement of late:

View attachment 682131

That's $120 - $300. well over 100% in just over 7 months. Market cap from $14 billion to $33 billion in the same timeframe. In who's books is that considered dumping? There's been a bit of minor sell-off while BTC purchases have increased... hardly dumping. About 6% in Market cap lost, no doubt to BTC mostly, over 6 months.
Relative to BTC, Alts haven't been performing quite as well. They certainly haven't been dumping. Action is always relative to timeframe.
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But in terms of their ATH, ETH is still 80% down from it, while BTC is only down 40% from ATH, and with the exception of LTC so are most other alts - so all I'm saying is that in terms of a recovery from the peak, alts are lagging way behind. I don't particularly buy the line that this is only because people are selling out of alts into BTC, though, or that this is some kind of dump. ETH, for instance bottomed out at $86 so it's current $288 price shows good growth. The alts are mostly all well up on their post-crash lows.
 
backstreetboy said:
Lol they'll have to negotiate with regulators which will make it easier for other exchanges and it'll add 2 billion plus potential users...
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I don't think it's that clear cut - they might gain a large amount of people that will use their payment mechanism, but that doesn't necessarily translate into users of broader crypto - it sounds like the way they're structuring this is going to be more like a prepaid wallet payment scheme that happens to have an underlying crypto asset, albeit centrally controlled with a pre-set price. Would it make much difference to crypto if, say, Zapper or Snapscan added a billion users and instead of Rands they used Mzansi-Widgets or something at a fixed rate? I suppose there would be more people accustomed to using cash out of a digital wallet, but would that translate to broader demand for crypto? And as for regulators, it sounds like they're smoothing the path by embedding themselves with the major payment processors and generally doing all the kinds of centralised, controlled things crypto can't or won't do. I get what you're saying though, that over time this could open the door to people looking for alternatives to a system tightly coupled with the FB ecosystem, and they'll be more familiar with digitised stores of value, but I'm not sure how quickly or exuberantly that will happen. I suspect the vast majority will just find it cool they can pay for stuff out of a wallet tightly coupled with FB and that it's at some level some kind of a "crypto" thing, and leave it at that.
 
Swa said:
Which side do you want to look at?
https://www.tradingview.com/markets/cryptocurrencies/prices-all/
Switch to BTC and performance. Almost all are down and losing.
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Short term, yes, but the major alts are generally still very well up on their bear market lows. You could make the case that they're just lagging BTC whose market dominance is currently at 60%+ when it was below 40% during the peak. If that ratio corrects itself while BTC retains its current levels then there is big potential for upward price movements in the alts - alternatively, it could be a more permanent loss of faith in the alts.. only time will tell.
 
garp said:
Short term, yes, but the major alts are generally still very well up on their bear market lows. You could make the case that they're just lagging BTC whose market dominance is currently at 60%+ when it was below 40% during the peak. If that ratio corrects itself while BTC retains its current levels then there is big potential for upward price movements in the alts - alternatively, it could be a more permanent loss of faith in the alts.. only time will tell.
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Bitcoin just lost 10% of its value so those alts also did because their value is tied to BTC. When BTC goes up again they'll look even worse against it.
 
Thor said:
Do you like centralized 'cryptos'?
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They're using the technology not the philosophy. Their whitepaper is quite clear on this. Not sure where this notion that everything blockchain needs to be decentralised comes from; companies can deploy the tech however they want. So again, how is it a scam?
 
saor said:
Not sure where this notion that everything blockchain needs to be decentralised comes from; companies can deploy the tech however they want. So again, how is it a scam?
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Use a DB then, don't piggyback and create a printing press for your company.
Scam #1 = Tether
Scam #2 = Libra
 
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