So if you want to know the reason for the dump, it's because of COINBASE CEO Brian Armstrong spreading the news that the Trump administration will try to regulate non-custodial wallets.
Yeah, good luck with that, bitches.
The reason Armstrong is so fucked up about this is because it's really a regulation on Coinbase, not on self-custodial wallets. The government doesn't have the leverage to mandate anything in that regard. The only thing they can regulate are the centralized onboarding ramps for crypto. I talk more about how government can easily defeat crypto through centralized institutions like Coinbase, Paypal and Celsius here and here. If you're new to crypto, this is something you need to know.
I predicted this in previous articles. If any crypto project becomes too centralized, the government will control it through regulation of the central entity without the need to defeat any cryptocurrency technically. This is exactly what we are seeing play out in this case, but it is definitely nothing to take the entire market like this. Here's why.
Brian Armstrong only cares about this because this news is going to tank Coinbase, not crypto. The regulation attempts to force Coinbase to collect information on users before withdrawals, a near possible task. What's more, anybody with any knowledge of crypto will simply go to another exchange. If you have any stock in Coinbase, I would sell it now. The rest of us will be just fine. Fuck Coinbase. You guys had a good run and made money. Slink off quietly into the sunset and let decentralization do its thing.
This comes from me, a person who is a fan of what the rest of you would call FUD. Most of crypto thinks of any critique as FUD. This is actual FUD coming from Armstrong, because he's only doing it because his business is in the crosshairs.
This does, however, beg the point that I constantly try to make about the apathy that many crypto investors have about centralized entities forcing their way into crypto. PayPal is literally useless and only hurts the industry by custodying and siloing bitcoin. Celsius is going to eventually fuck everyone who puts crypto in it. BINANCE US is a catastrophe waiting to happen. But half the idiots in crypto don't seem to understand that more regulations will come down the pike if this is allowed to happen. What's more, if PayPal and other centralized entities like that sissy ass Celsius wallet gather the majority of any coin, the government basically has control of that coin.
Well, I'm off to restructure my portfolio so I don't get liquidated because of this asshole running off at the mouth over something that only affects his crappy ass business. I should be thanking him, because he's giving me a chance to buy some more ether below $500.
(By the way, I predicted that the market would dump before BTC hit its ATH here, but I definitely couldn't predict why it would dump. All I know is that when the market paused right before ATH, it was expressing uncertainty, so any negative catalyst would have tanked it.)