If you look at coinmarketcap, the top is a sea of red.
BTCD has gone from .004 to .0045, ~10% higher level, which doesnt seem like much, but when all the other coins are down 5%, 10%, 15% or more, gaining and holding onto 10% is quite good. I read that many people are actually trading crypto on margin! As if there isnt enough volatility for them just trading 1:1?!
Anyway, BTC and LTC have some places that are allowing short selling and this explains the freefall in LTC price. I think bitfinex is the culprit and guess what DRK trades there too, so maybe all this downward pressure is caused by the liquidation selling of people who had long position and of course this forced selling into not so liquid markets makes the drop exaggerated.
My advice, DONT MARGIN TRADE CRYPTO!
Silly peoples. It is dangerous enough to trade highly liquid markets with a lot of historical data to allow for reasonably accurate price predictors. To do this in relatively thinly traded crypto markets which are already apt to change +/- 10% daily is, well, I cant think of better word, stupid.
For things like USD, EUR, the price doesnt change much at all. a 1% change in a day is a tremendous move, like giant earthquake, everything is being revalued type of move. 0.1% is still quite a large move, so if all day everything is +/- 0.1% it gets very boring as you can make or lose much money, so what's the fun in that?
Enter margin trading. 0.1% is too boring, the answer is simple use 100:1 margin, now you get the much more interesting +/- 10% per day with occasional 50%+ days. Gee, that sounds like what crypto is without margin!
So, there is a big storm of uncontrolled selling that is feeding back on itself (as the price goes lower, it triggers more liquidation selling, which causes the price to go lower, etc.) I have no idea the extent of the margin trading, but until ALL their accounts are liquidated (they deserve it! bringing wall street crazy to crypto crazy is just crazy crazy) this selling could continue. So, if at the end of all this BTCD is still where it is, that means it has actually gained quite a bit. I would not be surprised at ~30% to 40% drop, so that would be BTC at $400 USD, I guess we are almost there!
BTCD is now at all time high ranking of #15 and I will predict now that BTCD will rank higher than LTC, possibly before end of this year, but primarily from its dropping down to where it belongs. What value does a coin that has faster blockchain than BTC have? It does have a rather large number of merchants that accept it, but does that make it worth so much? I think not.
Whatever we do, let us never allow BTCD to get traded on bitfinex or any exchange that offers margin! crazy crazy
James
You are right, margin trading is killing crypto. All it takes is a couple of whales lending out BTC to people who go long on BTC and then, right before going short themselves, crash the price. This is how they get rich while the noobs get burned.
