MICHEL PIREU: Bitcoin’s creepy crumble creates cryptoccurrency cryptic puzzle
I will no’ be tellin’ ye ‘I told ye so’, but I will be usin’ words to that effect ... I was right, aye? — Marcum, in bestselling author Suzan Tisdale’s Isle of the Blessed. Schadenfreude — the pleasure or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the failure or humiliation of others — is something many a "wise" investor will have experienced as the cryptocurrency market came crashing down last week. Cryptocurrencies fell in value by more than 25% in 24 hours and about $100bn in "value" simply disappeared in one day last week, says the digital currency-tracking site CoinDesk. Bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, was down more than 60% from its record high of only two months ago. The value of each unit of bitcoin dropped as low as $7,700 on Friday, compared to $10,000 on Wednesday and about $20,000 at its peak in December. So, what happened? That’s a difficult one to answer — the drastic drop in cryptocurrencies is about as easy to explain as their insane rise in 201...
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