Bitcoin below 65k — is now the moment to purchase?

[ThunderBird]

Anyone else picking some up while it's down? It just reached a 90 day low. To me that's a discount haha.

If there's any argument against me buying, tell me now before I spend myself into obvlivion

 

[grandpa_is_healthier]

In my opinion, not at this point. It's still falling.

 

[dogmom]

The way bitcoin swings up and down is something I've never been able to make sense of.

That said, at one point there was a drop, and a number of sellers — my primary supplier among them — would not accept bitcoin while that was going on.

 

[maokai]

A bounce would be nice so I can sell everything one last time.

With quantum computing and AI moving forward and exploits happening all the time, the long-term picture doesn't look great to me. For the short term, I suppose the usual advice holds — buy the dip — but as for me, I'm not going to keep hanging onto this hot potato much longer.

 

[Vash]

I have a few purchase orders lined up under 60k

 

[ThunderBird]

Vash_ said:

I have a few purchase orders lined up under 60k

If it drops to 58000, I'll throw in another 800 bucks too, lol

 

[wildweasel]

ThunderBird said:

Anyone else picking some up while it's down? It just reached a 90 day low. To me that's a discount haha.

If there's any argument against me buying, tell me now before I spend myself into obvlivion

Sharing my 2c as a person who has been in crypto for over 10 years now.

Back in the day I was a fairly big miner, and I've been watching crypto prices for ages.

Don't buy — this isn't a dip. Or to put it another way, it isn't the bottom.

Over the past several years Bitcoin got hugely overbought, driven by a mix of hype, consumer sentiment, and big institutional investors who decided it made sense to diversify their enormous portfolios with it.

Now, the gradual price bleed we've been watching for roughly the last year comes down to many of those institutional investors unwinding their bitcoin and other crypto positions. They do hold, but dumping everything at once would tank the market and cost them heavily, since crypto markets have nowhere near the volume that stock or bond markets do to soak up fast liquidations.

So what we're looking at isn't a dip — it's what happens when some very large fish in a fairly small pond sell off slowly to avoid crashing the market and underselling themselves.

That said, I'm no wizard. The future isn't something I can see, and I'm not omniscient. This is just my honest take as someone who's been around the crypto industry far longer than most.

 

[frankpeptid]

wildweasel said:

ThunderBird said:

Anyone else picking some up while it's down? It just reached a 90 day low. To me that's a discount haha.

If there's any argument against me buying, tell me now before I spend myself into obvlivion

Sharing my 2c as a person who has been in crypto for over 10 years now.

Back in the day I was a fairly big miner, and I've been watching crypto prices for ages.

Don't buy — this isn't a dip. Or to put it another way, it isn't the bottom.

Over the past several years Bitcoin got hugely overbought, driven by a mix of hype, consumer sentiment, and big institutional investors who decided it made sense to diversify their enormous portfolios with it.

Now, the gradual price bleed we've been watching for roughly the last year comes down to many of those institutional investors unwinding their bitcoin and other crypto positions. They do hold, but dumping everything at once would tank the market and cost them heavily, since crypto markets have nowhere near the volume that stock or bond markets do to soak up fast liquidations.

So what we're looking at isn't a dip — it's what happens when some very large fish in a fairly small pond sell off slowly to avoid crashing the market and underselling themselves.

That said, I'm no wizard. The future isn't something I can see, and I'm not omniscient. This is just my honest take as someone who's been around the crypto industry far longer than most.

what's the floor here? some people are saying it could drop close to zero — what do you all think? just a clueless bystander over here... please don't shoot me. lol

 

[wildweasel]

frankpeptid said:

wildweasel said:

ThunderBird said:

Anyone else picking some up while it's down? It just reached a 90 day low. To me that's a discount haha.

If there's any argument against me buying, tell me now before I spend myself into obvlivion

Sharing my 2c as a person who has been in crypto for over 10 years now.

Back in the day I was a fairly big miner, and I've been watching crypto prices for ages.

Don't buy — this isn't a dip. Or to put it another way, it isn't the bottom.

Over the past several years Bitcoin got hugely overbought, driven by a mix of hype, consumer sentiment, and big institutional investors who decided it made sense to diversify their enormous portfolios with it.

Now, the gradual price bleed we've been watching for roughly the last year comes down to many of those institutional investors unwinding their bitcoin and other crypto positions. They do hold, but dumping everything at once would tank the market and cost them heavily, since crypto markets have nowhere near the volume that stock or bond markets do to soak up fast liquidations.

So what we're looking at isn't a dip — it's what happens when some very large fish in a fairly small pond sell off slowly to avoid crashing the market and underselling themselves.

That said, I'm no wizard. The future isn't something I can see, and I'm not omniscient. This is just my honest take as someone who's been around the crypto industry far longer than most.

what's the floor here? some people are saying it could drop close to zero — what do you all think? just a clueless bystander over here... please don't shoot me. lol

I don't have the ability to say what the floor will be. If someone truly knew that, they'd hardly be hanging around a forum—they'd be off on a super yacht circling the globe.

If my life savings were on the line, my bet would be that it won't reach zero within the next 10 years. Still, I think your question misses what actually matters.

What matters isn't "will its value drop to zero dollars?" What matters is "how can I feel reasonably sure about when to buy or sell?"

That answer comes from observing long-term trends and waiting for things to settle. It's no different from stocks or bonds: timing a dip or a peak is impossible, so don't bother trying. Instead, track trends over time and aim to act during an upswing rather than at a local bottom or top.

 

[5byfive]

Microsoft claims a working quantum chip will arrive by 2029. Nearly every form of cryptography would be at risk. Whether the blockchain can withstand that, I'm not sure. My guess is that a large amount of capital will pull out until safety is demonstrated.

 

[wildweasel]

5byfive said:

Microsoft claims a working quantum chip will arrive by 2029. Nearly every form of cryptography would be at risk. Whether the blockchain can withstand that, I'm not sure. My guess is that a large amount of capital will pull out until safety is demonstrated.

honestly, a 100% non-issue. I work right alongside cryptography and it is part of what my job role demands I understand... quantum machines dont crack any of the crypto we actually rely on today. What they force is one of two things: either 1) the key space has to grow to offset the extra power that algorithms such as Shor's bring (easy to do), or 2) you move to a different crypto primitive (equally easy). AES-256 already counts as quantum resistant, and that is part of why current cipher algos moved up from AES128 to AES256 in the first place. If it were ever needed, AES512 would get standardized, and it would be 2^256 times harder to factor than AES256... suppose a quantum machine could somehow factor AES256 in 1 second, then shifting to AES512 would demand 10^67 centuries to break, which outruns the lifetime of the universe. The arithmetic simply behaves like that.

There are also complete cipher suites for which no known quantum-native algorithm reduces the complexity at all, lattice fields being the obvious example

Number theory has studied this question thoroughly, so nothing actually becomes 'broken' - what happens is that we start playing a game of using larger numbers, or of switching primitives. As long as key sizes scale up, or as long as we avoid leaning on prime factorization and discrete logarithms for our complexity, modern cryptography stays secure against quantum algorithms.

Within cryptocurrency specifically, algos have already gone 'broken' before - this is not new territory at all.



Whenever that happens, and a hashing algo is either at risk or already 'broken', the community carries out a 'fork'. Parameters, or primitives, get adjusted to something safe. With post-quantum work that normally amounts to scaling the key size up, since you rarely have to swap primitives at all - larger primes usually do the job

Should quantum turn into a genuine threat, they would just move off elliptic curve and onto lattice, or onto something else that avoids factorization and discrete logarithms. That call belongs to the developers, honestly.

BTC has forked 3 times already, and one of those came from an algorithm change. Monero went through several rounds purely to stop ASIC attacks on its algorithm. litecoin sits at 2, while etherum is somewhere past 10.

None of that is unusual. Once crypto communities decide post-quantum cryptography needs addressing, they will address it, exactly as they already did back when ASIC mining was wrecking their algos

 

[mybodyisasewer]

What any currency or investment is worth comes down to whatever buyers in that market will pay. The US Dollar and Mongolian government bonds are the same way: neither carries intrinsic or tangible value (antibiotics, ammunition, MREs, iodine tablets do).

Zero won't happen, because at $1 I'd scoop up every coin. But $1 won't happen either, since at $2 somebody with deeper pockets than mine takes the whole supply. And $2 won't happen, because at $3 an even richer... you see where this goes.

So what's the bottom? No idea. If I knew, I'd borrow a shitload of money and make a shitload more. My guess: the floor sits around 50k.

Quantum computing is a hypothetical threat, sure, but it's distant enough that paying for my HGH worries me more — I probably won't be alive for that mess.

Beyond that, whoever cracks BTC first drives it to zero and wins the internet money game valued at $0. BTC can hard fork anytime and swap the encryption protocol for one that holds up, or a whole new crypto could take over. I also doubt anyone is anywhere near enough power to meaningfully crack 2 passes of SHA256. AND if someone did have that power, government secrets, blackmail and other targets are far more valuable to crack than BTC. It's a hypothetical threat with no effect on the current price. Most of us just want to buy drugs.

Should BTC go to zero, I'll switch to another currency — monero, litecoin, something else — another option will always exist. Price fluctuations don't matter when I buy and spend the crypto on the same day.

Use BTC as a speculative investment if you want. It's a bloodbath, always has been. Risk appetites differ; I just like to watch and chuckle.

 

[CJsMom]

frankpeptid said:

wildweasel said:

ThunderBird said:

Anyone else picking some up while it's down? It just reached a 90 day low. To me that's a discount haha.

If there's any argument against me buying, tell me now before I spend myself into obvlivion

Sharing my 2c as a person who has been in crypto for over 10 years now.

Back in the day I was a fairly big miner, and I've been watching crypto prices for ages.

Don't buy — this isn't a dip. Or to put it another way, it isn't the bottom.

Over the past several years Bitcoin got hugely overbought, driven by a mix of hype, consumer sentiment, and big institutional investors who decided it made sense to diversify their enormous portfolios with it.

Now, the gradual price bleed we've been watching for roughly the last year comes down to many of those institutional investors unwinding their bitcoin and other crypto positions. They do hold, but dumping everything at once would tank the market and cost them heavily, since crypto markets have nowhere near the volume that stock or bond markets do to soak up fast liquidations.

So what we're looking at isn't a dip — it's what happens when some very large fish in a fairly small pond sell off slowly to avoid crashing the market and underselling themselves.

That said, I'm no wizard. The future isn't something I can see, and I'm not omniscient. This is just my honest take as someone who's been around the crypto industry far longer than most.

what's the floor here? some people are saying it could drop close to zero — what do you all think? just a clueless bystander over here... please don't shoot me. lol

I've noticed the same thing — folks betting it'll drop close to zero. Are they out of their minds? Not sure. For me, the volatility is way too much — I stick with USDT or USDC, though it's fun to watch from the sidelines.

 

[5byfive]

wildweasel said:

5byfive said:

Microsoft claims a working quantum chip will arrive by 2029. Nearly every form of cryptography would be at risk. Whether the blockchain can withstand that, I'm not sure. My guess is that a large amount of capital will pull out until safety is demonstrated.

honestly, a 100% non-issue. I work right alongside cryptography and it is part of what my job role demands I understand... quantum machines dont crack any of the crypto we actually rely on today. What they force is one of two things: either 1) the key space has to grow to offset the extra power that algorithms such as Shor's bring (easy to do), or 2) you move to a different crypto primitive (equally easy). AES-256 already counts as quantum resistant, and that is part of why current cipher algos moved up from AES128 to AES256 in the first place. If it were ever needed, AES512 would get standardized, and it would be 2^256 times harder to factor than AES256... suppose a quantum machine could somehow factor AES256 in 1 second, then shifting to AES512 would demand 10^67 centuries to break, which outruns the lifetime of the universe. The arithmetic simply behaves like that.

There are also complete cipher suites for which no known quantum-native algorithm reduces the complexity at all, lattice fields being the obvious example

Number theory has studied this question thoroughly, so nothing actually becomes 'broken' - what happens is that we start playing a game of using larger numbers, or of switching primitives. As long as key sizes scale up, or as long as we avoid leaning on prime factorization and discrete logarithms for our complexity, modern cryptography stays secure against quantum algorithms.

Within cryptocurrency specifically, algos have already gone 'broken' before - this is not new territory at all.



Whenever that happens, and a hashing algo is either at risk or already 'broken', the community carries out a 'fork'. Parameters, or primitives, get adjusted to something safe. With post-quantum work that normally amounts to scaling the key size up, since you rarely have to swap primitives at all - larger primes usually do the job

Should quantum turn into a genuine threat, they would just move off elliptic curve and onto lattice, or onto something else that avoids factorization and discrete logarithms. That call belongs to the developers, honestly.

BTC has forked 3 times already, and one of those came from an algorithm change. Monero went through several rounds purely to stop ASIC attacks on its algorithm. litecoin sits at 2, while etherum is somewhere past 10.

None of that is unusual. Once crypto communities decide post-quantum cryptography needs addressing, they will address it, exactly as they already did back when ASIC mining was wrecking their algos

Whether this turns into a real problem, I can't say, but perception carries more weight here than what's actually happening. Let 1 wallet fall into the wrong hands and the market tanks — no direct link required. AI and Quantum together mean we're heading into years of nonstop security headaches. Picture a password manager getting cracked and a huge theft following. The blockchain itself being blameless won't matter. Fear takes over, and you get a viscous circle: sales push prices down, lower prices trigger more sales. The media will pounce next. They're only beginning to cover it now, but once things start failing it'll be plastered everywhere. My guess is plenty of people, big players included, will choose to wait on the sidelines and watch how it unfolds. I'm a bitcoin fan and I'd genuinely love to see it adopted far more widely than it is today, but I worry a long stretch of uncertainty lies ahead.

 

[BBA1969]

ThunderBird said:

Vash_ said:

I have a few purchase orders lined up under 60k

If it drops to 58000, I'll throw in another 800 bucks too, lol

My sole purpose for BTC is paying vendors. By definition, all the crypto I deposit is essentially spent.

 

[GrandmaJ]

Man, I'm terrible at this crypto stuff. Had no clue the price could actually go down! Well, that's a lesson for me: don't just park your BTC in Exodus hoping to catch a deal later. What I lost could've paid for a couple of kits. And here I was thinking I was finally getting the hang of it....

 

[wildweasel]

5byfive said:

wildweasel said:

5byfive said:

Microsoft claims a working quantum chip will arrive by 2029. Nearly every form of cryptography would be at risk. Whether the blockchain can withstand that, I'm not sure. My guess is that a large amount of capital will pull out until safety is demonstrated.

honestly, a 100% non-issue. I work right alongside cryptography and it is part of what my job role demands I understand... quantum machines dont crack any of the crypto we actually rely on today. What they force is one of two things: either 1) the key space has to grow to offset the extra power that algorithms such as Shor's bring (easy to do), or 2) you move to a different crypto primitive (equally easy). AES-256 already counts as quantum resistant, and that is part of why current cipher algos moved up from AES128 to AES256 in the first place. If it were ever needed, AES512 would get standardized, and it would be 2^256 times harder to factor than AES256... suppose a quantum machine could somehow factor AES256 in 1 second, then shifting to AES512 would demand 10^67 centuries to break, which outruns the lifetime of the universe. The arithmetic simply behaves like that.

There are also complete cipher suites for which no known quantum-native algorithm reduces the complexity at all, lattice fields being the obvious example

Number theory has studied this question thoroughly, so nothing actually becomes 'broken' - what happens is that we start playing a game of using larger numbers, or of switching primitives. As long as key sizes scale up, or as long as we avoid leaning on prime factorization and discrete logarithms for our complexity, modern cryptography stays secure against quantum algorithms.

Within cryptocurrency specifically, algos have already gone 'broken' before - this is not new territory at all.



Whenever that happens, and a hashing algo is either at risk or already 'broken', the community carries out a 'fork'. Parameters, or primitives, get adjusted to something safe. With post-quantum work that normally amounts to scaling the key size up, since you rarely have to swap primitives at all - larger primes usually do the job

Should quantum turn into a genuine threat, they would just move off elliptic curve and onto lattice, or onto something else that avoids factorization and discrete logarithms. That call belongs to the developers, honestly.

BTC has forked 3 times already, and one of those came from an algorithm change. Monero went through several rounds purely to stop ASIC attacks on its algorithm. litecoin sits at 2, while etherum is somewhere past 10.

None of that is unusual. Once crypto communities decide post-quantum cryptography needs addressing, they will address it, exactly as they already did back when ASIC mining was wrecking their algos

Whether this turns into a real problem, I can't say, but perception carries more weight here than what's actually happening. Let 1 wallet fall into the wrong hands and the market tanks — no direct link required. AI and Quantum together mean we're heading into years of nonstop security headaches. Picture a password manager getting cracked and a huge theft following. The blockchain itself being blameless won't matter. Fear takes over, and you get a viscous circle: sales push prices down, lower prices trigger more sales. The media will pounce next. They're only beginning to cover it now, but once things start failing it'll be plastered everywhere. My guess is plenty of people, big players included, will choose to wait on the sidelines and watch how it unfolds. I'm a bitcoin fan and I'd genuinely love to see it adopted far more widely than it is today, but I worry a long stretch of uncertainty lies ahead.

compromised wallets are a constant occurrence. there have been instances where blockchains got broken, and the fix has been to pick a block from before the breach and fork from that moment, adding a new protection that stops the attack going forward and discarding everything from the breach.

none of this is novel. the problem already has a solution.

That said, you're correct: nothing prevents pop-sci outlets and mainstream media fear-mongering from scaring people about subjects they don't completely grasp, and panic selling happens in every financial market

 

[hotsauceboss]

wildweasel said:

5byfive said:

wildweasel said:

5byfive said:

Microsoft claims a working quantum chip will arrive by 2029. Nearly every form of cryptography would be at risk. Whether the blockchain can withstand that, I'm not sure. My guess is that a large amount of capital will pull out until safety is demonstrated.

honestly, a 100% non-issue. I work right alongside cryptography and it is part of what my job role demands I understand... quantum machines dont crack any of the crypto we actually rely on today. What they force is one of two things: either 1) the key space has to grow to offset the extra power that algorithms such as Shor's bring (easy to do), or 2) you move to a different crypto primitive (equally easy). AES-256 already counts as quantum resistant, and that is part of why current cipher algos moved up from AES128 to AES256 in the first place. If it were ever needed, AES512 would get standardized, and it would be 2^256 times harder to factor than AES256... suppose a quantum machine could somehow factor AES256 in 1 second, then shifting to AES512 would demand 10^67 centuries to break, which outruns the lifetime of the universe. The arithmetic simply behaves like that.

There are also complete cipher suites for which no known quantum-native algorithm reduces the complexity at all, lattice fields being the obvious example

Number theory has studied this question thoroughly, so nothing actually becomes 'broken' - what happens is that we start playing a game of using larger numbers, or of switching primitives. As long as key sizes scale up, or as long as we avoid leaning on prime factorization and discrete logarithms for our complexity, modern cryptography stays secure against quantum algorithms.

Within cryptocurrency specifically, algos have already gone 'broken' before - this is not new territory at all.



Whenever that happens, and a hashing algo is either at risk or already 'broken', the community carries out a 'fork'. Parameters, or primitives, get adjusted to something safe. With post-quantum work that normally amounts to scaling the key size up, since you rarely have to swap primitives at all - larger primes usually do the job

Should quantum turn into a genuine threat, they would just move off elliptic curve and onto lattice, or onto something else that avoids factorization and discrete logarithms. That call belongs to the developers, honestly.

BTC has forked 3 times already, and one of those came from an algorithm change. Monero went through several rounds purely to stop ASIC attacks on its algorithm. litecoin sits at 2, while etherum is somewhere past 10.

None of that is unusual. Once crypto communities decide post-quantum cryptography needs addressing, they will address it, exactly as they already did back when ASIC mining was wrecking their algos

Whether this turns into a real problem, I can't say, but perception carries more weight here than what's actually happening. Let 1 wallet fall into the wrong hands and the market tanks — no direct link required. AI and Quantum together mean we're heading into years of nonstop security headaches. Picture a password manager getting cracked and a huge theft following. The blockchain itself being blameless won't matter. Fear takes over, and you get a viscous circle: sales push prices down, lower prices trigger more sales. The media will pounce next. They're only beginning to cover it now, but once things start failing it'll be plastered everywhere. My guess is plenty of people, big players included, will choose to wait on the sidelines and watch how it unfolds. I'm a bitcoin fan and I'd genuinely love to see it adopted far more widely than it is today, but I worry a long stretch of uncertainty lies ahead.

compromised wallets are a constant occurrence. there have been instances where blockchains got broken, and the fix has been to pick a block from before the breach and fork from that moment, adding a new protection that stops the attack going forward and discarding everything from the breach.

none of this is novel. the problem already has a solution.

That said, you're correct: nothing prevents pop-sci outlets and mainstream media fear-mongering from scaring people about subjects they don't completely grasp, and panic selling happens in every financial market

After a compromise occurs, what becomes of every legitimate transaction that took place later?

 

[wildweasel]

hotsauceboss said:

wildweasel said:

5byfive said:

wildweasel said:

5byfive said:

Microsoft claims a working quantum chip will arrive by 2029. Nearly every form of cryptography would be at risk. Whether the blockchain can withstand that, I'm not sure. My guess is that a large amount of capital will pull out until safety is demonstrated.

honestly, a 100% non-issue. I work right alongside cryptography and it is part of what my job role demands I understand... quantum machines dont crack any of the crypto we actually rely on today. What they force is one of two things: either 1) the key space has to grow to offset the extra power that algorithms such as Shor's bring (easy to do), or 2) you move to a different crypto primitive (equally easy). AES-256 already counts as quantum resistant, and that is part of why current cipher algos moved up from AES128 to AES256 in the first place. If it were ever needed, AES512 would get standardized, and it would be 2^256 times harder to factor than AES256... suppose a quantum machine could somehow factor AES256 in 1 second, then shifting to AES512 would demand 10^67 centuries to break, which outruns the lifetime of the universe. The arithmetic simply behaves like that.

There are also complete cipher suites for which no known quantum-native algorithm reduces the complexity at all, lattice fields being the obvious example

Number theory has studied this question thoroughly, so nothing actually becomes 'broken' - what happens is that we start playing a game of using larger numbers, or of switching primitives. As long as key sizes scale up, or as long as we avoid leaning on prime factorization and discrete logarithms for our complexity, modern cryptography stays secure against quantum algorithms.

Within cryptocurrency specifically, algos have already gone 'broken' before - this is not new territory at all.



Whenever that happens, and a hashing algo is either at risk or already 'broken', the community carries out a 'fork'. Parameters, or primitives, get adjusted to something safe. With post-quantum work that normally amounts to scaling the key size up, since you rarely have to swap primitives at all - larger primes usually do the job

Should quantum turn into a genuine threat, they would just move off elliptic curve and onto lattice, or onto something else that avoids factorization and discrete logarithms. That call belongs to the developers, honestly.

BTC has forked 3 times already, and one of those came from an algorithm change. Monero went through several rounds purely to stop ASIC attacks on its algorithm. litecoin sits at 2, while etherum is somewhere past 10.

None of that is unusual. Once crypto communities decide post-quantum cryptography needs addressing, they will address it, exactly as they already did back when ASIC mining was wrecking their algos

Whether this turns into a real problem, I can't say, but perception carries more weight here than what's actually happening. Let 1 wallet fall into the wrong hands and the market tanks — no direct link required. AI and Quantum together mean we're heading into years of nonstop security headaches. Picture a password manager getting cracked and a huge theft following. The blockchain itself being blameless won't matter. Fear takes over, and you get a viscous circle: sales push prices down, lower prices trigger more sales. The media will pounce next. They're only beginning to cover it now, but once things start failing it'll be plastered everywhere. My guess is plenty of people, big players included, will choose to wait on the sidelines and watch how it unfolds. I'm a bitcoin fan and I'd genuinely love to see it adopted far more widely than it is today, but I worry a long stretch of uncertainty lies ahead.

compromised wallets are a constant occurrence. there have been instances where blockchains got broken, and the fix has been to pick a block from before the breach and fork from that moment, adding a new protection that stops the attack going forward and discarding everything from the breach.

none of this is novel. the problem already has a solution.

That said, you're correct: nothing prevents pop-sci outlets and mainstream media fear-mongering from scaring people about subjects they don't completely grasp, and panic selling happens in every financial market

After a compromise occurs, what becomes of every legitimate transaction that took place later?

In the past, the outcome hinged on whether the chain was hard forked or the block got rolled back. Usually, developers put forward a proposal and the community casts votes on how to proceed; sometimes developers act unilaterally and instruct everyone to move to the new chain, though that happens less often and mainly on smaller networks.

A decade ago, an attack targeted a huge smart contract on the ethereum network — that's likely the best-known instance. The network opted to hard fork in response, and every transaction on the original chain after the fork was reversed.

The hard fork wasn't embraced by the whole Ethereum community, which is how Ethereum Classic came into being. It preserves the Ethereum network's original, unmodified blockchain.

Bitcoin Cash offers another hard fork illustration, though in that situation they simply picked a moment in time; everything up to it stayed valid, while everything afterward took place on their separate network.

Should an entire cryptocurrency network suddenly find itself compromised by some kind of existential threat, an emergency community consensus would likely be triggered to determine the desired course of action and how to deal with it. Honestly, the decision rests with them: perhaps a vote favors a hard fork that alters the algorithm while preserving all transactions except those appearing suspicious, or perhaps they discard everything and fork from a "last known good" block. In most cases, it would essentially amount to a community vote.

 

[px1984]

dogmom said:

The way bitcoin swings up and down is something I've never been able to make sense of.

That said, at one point there was a drop, and a number of sellers — my primary supplier among them — would not accept bitcoin while that was going on.

It all comes down to supply and demand.

An asset's worth is just where those two forces intersect — basic economics at work.

Bitcoin won't collapse to zero, since its value sits far above that point. The real question is whether it could settle well below where it is now. Right now we're in a bear market with bitcoin sliding, but 60k stands out as a crucial support level, and buying around there would be logical. That said, if it falls significantly further and then can't climb back over 60k, there's a solid chance you'd be able to pick it up at 40k.