Bitcoins: Pump & dump leave investors distraught

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By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi, June 17: Crypto currencies along with their bellwether Bitcoins are gasping for breath.

Ferocious global inflation and rising fears of the US entering into recession by 2024 have hammered speculative investments worldwide.

Bitcoins, the mystique crypto currency, has climbed down from its peak of over USD 63,000 to rest now at a little over USD 20,000. It will now need to triple in value to reach its peak. Its copycats, who came in herd and hoard, re now beyond recognition amid mass dumping and desertion of investors and manipulators.

Billionaire entrepreneur and Tesla CEO’s sweet talks a few months ago to take Bitcoins for his cars had sent the crypto investors on wild dreams, with punters even claiming that it reaching USD 2,00,000 wasn’t too far away in time.

In India, the newspapers suddenly stopped carrying full page advertisements of the cryptocurrencies and their exchanges after the government began readying a legislative bill to regulate their trade.

The Bill remains slotted in a corner of the government corridor, as there seems no common views on how to regulate a new market in which Indians have poured billions of US dollars in their bids to become rich overnight.

While the government initially applied its mind on regulating the crypto-currencies, it slipped away from the agenda after the rout in their valuation while the new crops of the start-up exchanges began laying off employees.

The developed countries and the emerging economies in a coordinated move had sought to regulate the crypto-currencies amid assessments within the governments of the potential misuse of the assets for routing black money and terror funding.

Crypto-currencies are power guzzlers. Their gigantic set ups of servers used by the coin-miners consumer electricity at a scale which is shocking.

This is in the back drop of the climate change acquiring alarming proportions, accelerating desertification worldwide according to the report of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

The harsh reality of the climate change is already making millions of people across the world to become victims of hunger, as the global productions of foodgrains dip.

The contributions of the crypto-currencies in the economy and environment remain suspect except for the growing adoption of the block chain technology.

The traders claim that the best hope for the crypto-currency will be when the Central banks, particularly the US Fed, pause their rate hikes while their firefight the galloping inflation.

But in speculative investment, pump and dump strategies are well known tools of the fat money to make the newcomers in the trade bankrupt as they dismount at the right time to send the dream crashing down.