2018 Cryptocurrency Crash (Elliott Wave)

[exstasie]

SL triggered. Hmm, yep seems 11.600-800 zone is immienient.

That's why it's usually a good idea to place the stop loss somewhere above/below the price pivot. Price often comes back to retest the high/low before reversing the trend, running everyone's stops. It's still possible this is a "last point of supply" before moving down, but you're right, it's definitely threatening to push new highs now.

Above $12,000 or so, sellers are no longer in control.

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[shunyata]

The current 9th weekend has already started with a 10% decline. Statistically, this would equate to a 77% chance of a bear market underway.

Calculated how?

I can't say for sure we're out of the bear market but the current trend is clearly up. Trade the trend till you are wrong  then reassess. Shorting an uptrend just because an a,b,c 1,2,3 progression says so is just too risky for me. All the Elliot Wave people I've seen have been calling for us to go back to 5k since the start of the uptrend and getting wrecked the whole time. From what I've seen from you and others it appears to me that Elliot Wave is most accurate on weekly charts or longer and not as accurate on daily charts or shorter. Either that or it's not being applied correctly.

There's math traders, there's TA traders, there's fundamental traders, there's trend traders, there's gut traders. None of them are right all the time but if you can combine them properly hopefully you can be right more than 50% of the time and that's all you can really hope for. Risk management is where the profit is made in trading.

Trading masterluc's chart https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/YRZvdurN-The-target-of-current-bubble-lays-between-40k-and-110k/ has still proven correct.

[muf18]

The current 9th weekend has already started with a 10% decline. Statistically, this would equate to a 77% chance of a bear market underway.

Calculated how?

I can't say for sure we're out of the bear market but the current trend is clearly up. Trade the trend till you are wrong  then reassess. Shorting an uptrend just because an a,b,c 1,2,3 progression says so is just too risky for me. All the Elliot Wave people I've seen have been calling for us to go back to 5k since the start of the uptrend and getting wrecked the whole time. From what I've seen from you and others it appears to me that Elliot Wave is most accurate on weekly charts or longer and not as accurate on daily charts or shorter. Either that or it's not being applied correctly.

There's math traders, there's TA traders, there's fundamental traders, there's trend traders, there's gut traders. None of them are right all the time but if you can combine them properly hopefully you can be right more than 50% of the time and that's all you can really hope for. Risk management is where the profit is made in trading.

Trading masterluc's chart https://www.tradingview.com/chart/BTCUSD/YRZvdurN-The-target-of-current-bubble-lays-between-40k-and-110k/ has still proven correct.

But thinking that extrapolating charts will make it isn't wise thing to think.
Why?
Because you must include volume. Do you know what volume must be to support 40K price, let alone 100K ?
Going from 10$ to 1000$, wasn't that hard when volume with 10$ was 100.000$, or maybe a million.
Just multiply it x30-x50, and it will make it there.
Now multiply price of current BTC price to volume (and it will require more, volume, because rising so exponentially it would make it selling pressure, even harder, because it's just unrealistic price for an asset, because still BTC is mostly used as a speculation vehicle)
50-100B$? Or more? And that's only for BTC. There would have to be like literally more volume than on the most of the stock exchanges, and that's just a really big and wishful thinking, especially seeing that when interest widen off - the volume is literally slummered, and is going down and down.
And a lot of volume is only bots trading, it really makes you think how much real activity is there.

BTW. - I wonder how mining would work - and would it consume energy not of a small state, at 100K, it would consume energy of a big country.
Inflating prices of GPUs also, and probably CPUs... Hell, you don't want to see it really, it would really messed up consumer electronics prices, badly.

But I can be wrong. Just makes you think it would actually drain volume from real stock exchanges into tokens world exchanging.
Wow, and it would be strange to see.

[xxxx123abcxxxx]

The Rally Resumes II

Bitcoin has taken out the 11250 (Bitfinex) high; and hence, the stop-loss on the short position has been triggered at a 7% loss.

Fibonacci resistance clusters, zone 1:
@11306: 38.2% retracement of the downtrend from 17-DEC-2017
@11626: 50% retracement of the downtrend from 06-JAN-2018
@11652: The first leg of the rally (i.e. 6000-9075) times 1.236 in length, would equal the second leg of the rally (i.e. 7851-11652).
@11528: Average

Fibonacci resistance clusters, zone 2:
@12100: The first leg of the rally (i.e. 6000-9075) times 1.382 in length, would equal the second leg of the rally (i.e. 7851-12100).
@12293: 38.2% retracement of entire Bitcoin market.
@12463: The first leg of the rally (i.e. 6000-9075) times 1.5 in length, would equal the second leg of the rally (i.e. 7851-12463).
@12285: Average

Cumulative average: 11907

At time of writing, taking out the low of 10900 would suggest the rally losing momentum. The low of 10122 is the current key level between the bulls & bears.

[shunyata]

But thinking that extrapolating charts will make it isn't wise thing to think.
Why?
Because you must include volume. Do you know what volume must be to support 40K price, let alone 100K ?
Going from 10$ to 1000$, wasn't that hard when volume with 10$ was 100.000$, or maybe a million.
Just multiply it x30-x50, and it will make it there.
Now multiply price of current BTC price to volume (and it will require more, volume, because rising so exponentially it would make it selling pressure, even harder, because it's just unrealistic price for an asset, because still BTC is mostly used as a speculation vehicle)
50-100B$? Or more? And that's only for BTC. There would have to be like literally more volume than on the most of the stock exchanges, and that's just a really big and wishful thinking, especially seeing that when interest widen off - the volume is literally slummered, and is going down and down.
And a lot of volume is only bots trading, it really makes you think how much real activity is there.

BTW. - I wonder how mining would work - and would it consume energy not of a small state, at 100K, it would consume energy of a big country.
Inflating prices of GPUs also, and probably CPUs... Hell, you don't want to see it really, it would really messed up consumer electronics prices, badly.

But I can be wrong. Just makes you think it would actually drain volume from real stock exchanges into tokens world exchanging.
Wow, and it would be strange to see.

I don't really see what volume has to do with price. You just buy or sell a different amount of BTC. If the volume is 100M USD traded it doesn't make a difference if BTC is $1 or $100K the only difference is at $1 there's 100M BTC traded that day and at $100K there's 1000 BTC traded that day. It's divisible to 8 decimal places, we'll have to soon switch to talking in millibits.

The energy argument has been eloquently addressed by Andreas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T0OUIW89II

[muf18]

You must support it by volume, because:
1/ Early-adopters power of selling is huge
2/ A lot of people will want to cash out their profits
3/ Miners are selling their BTC for cash, because you can't pay with BTC to companies, which are distributing energy

If I may think, what is currently going on isn't clearly any of the satoshis vision - because we have:
1/ Massive speculation - driven by greed only
2/ No adoption - bussiness are actually withdrawing usage of BTC, sometimes even in favour of BCH - which is a joke btw. - but this is reality
3/ Store of value ? So what - holding wallet.dat file, with anticipation of more people sucking in ? Great, it's a great use-case (especially with those swings).

Trading smaller amounts of BTC will only make it less usable - fees will kill it in the end.
It will be not a usable asset, with probably horrific price, and hoarded by some people - which if they want to cash-out, will crash the price, or would have to sell it for years.
It's how it ends in reality.
Not a currency. Not a good store of value (stable with slight uptrend - it's a store of value).

If crypto will still be under the shoe of BTC, it won't be good for them at all.

Free float is also bad - it's too little free float misguiding a lot of people of real supply.
If at least those early adopters would sell their coins, free float would be better, and it would at least make it somehow usable, with lower price, and usable fees, and more coins in circulation without perpetual pumps periods all the time.

Btw. his response isn't even a response - in reality, there aren't a lot of investments that builds in electric plants, and if they are they are used within their safety margin, and BTC wasteful of energy did make a little to help it.
It's called workaround of the problem, not a real solution, I guess it's only just to justify horrendic usage of electricity.
I agree about arbitrage market - but it also makes patological situation like these in Venezuela, which is clearly odd.
Also having cheap electricity doesn't mean, that you have to waste it just for simple SHA256 calculation, which is clearly straight non-sense.
It's now whole ecosystem based on it, so it's not possible probably to alter it, and they wouldn't change it anyway, because they would lose support of mining pools etc.

Bitcoin is accepted in a lot of exchanges. With development of new exchages it will lose eventually it's status.
Just need time for exchanges to adopt new crypto with pairs, and that's (and we need more un-tethered exchanges).

[PalindromemordnilaP]

We still have few months left before the end of 1st quarter and bitcoin had already shown to us its presence and dominance once again climbing back to 11K USD mark several days after the bloody cryptos happened.

[drays]

...Massive speculation - driven by greed only...
...No adoption - bussiness are actually withdrawing usage of BTC, sometimes even in favour of BCH...
...holding wallet.dat file, with anticipation of more people sucking in ?...

...Trading smaller amounts of BTC will only make it less usable - fees will kill it in the end....
...It will be not a usable asset, with probably horrific price, and hoarded by some people - which if they want to cash-out, will crash the price, or would have to sell it for years...
...Not a currency. Not a good store of value (stable with slight uptrend - it's a store of value)...

...his response isn't even a response - in reality, there aren't a lot of investments that builds in electric plants, and if they are they are used within their safety margin, and BTC wasteful of energy did make a little to help it.
...it's only just to justify horrendic usage of electricity...

...Bitcoin is accepted in a lot of exchanges. With development of new exchages it will lose eventually it's status...
Just need time for exchanges to adopt new crypto with pairs, and that's (and we need more un-tethered exchanges).

Sorry to say this, but I am starting to get an impression you either have a FUD agenda, or you have really twisted and biased perception of BTC. You are turning either to alarmist or hater.

I won't go into details, as it will eat a lot of screen space and a lot of my time, but around 80% of what you wrote above is completely subjective, biased and/or plainly wrong from my perspective.

I am not sure what do you do in crypto with such outlook. Instead of spreading panic and misinformation disguised as "facts", just open a bunch of short positions together with your "guru" - the OP of this thread - and try to to make money based on your twisted "vision".

[g-uid]

...Massive speculation - driven by greed only...
...No adoption - bussiness are actually withdrawing usage of BTC, sometimes even in favour of BCH...
...holding wallet.dat file, with anticipation of more people sucking in ?...

...Trading smaller amounts of BTC will only make it less usable - fees will kill it in the end....
...It will be not a usable asset, with probably horrific price, and hoarded by some people - which if they want to cash-out, will crash the price, or would have to sell it for years...
...Not a currency. Not a good store of value (stable with slight uptrend - it's a store of value)...

...his response isn't even a response - in reality, there aren't a lot of investments that builds in electric plants, and if they are they are used within their safety margin, and BTC wasteful of energy did make a little to help it.
...it's only just to justify horrendic usage of electricity...

...Bitcoin is accepted in a lot of exchanges. With development of new exchages it will lose eventually it's status...
Just need time for exchanges to adopt new crypto with pairs, and that's (and we need more un-tethered exchanges).

Sorry to say this, but I am starting to get an impression you either have a FUD agenda, or you have really twisted and biased perception of BTC. You are turning either to alarmist or hater.

I won't go into details, as it will eat a lot of screen space and a lot of my time, but around 80% of what you wrote above is completely subjective, biased and/or plainly wrong from my perspective.

I am not sure what do you do in crypto with such outlook. Instead of spreading panic and misinformation disguised as "facts", just open a bunch of short positions together with your "guru" - the OP of this thread - and try to to make money based on your twisted "vision".

Ignore the babble gents and keep doing what you're doing. It's very interesting.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Elliot aside, we are nearing the descending channel's upper line. I also noticed that Finex shorts are increasing, while Longs decreasing. 4H RSI is nearing oversold as well.

[xxxx123abcxxxx]

RSI divergence against price action on the 4-hr may suggest a forthcoming trend-reversal.

Taking out the low of 10900 (Bitfinex/Coinbase) would suggest the rally is losing momentum.
The low of 10308 (Bitfinex) and 10279 (Coinbase) is the current key level between the bulls & bears.

[exstasie]

My TA perspective is mostly classical. There should be significant horizontal resistance near the apex and breakdown level of the January consolidation, $11,250-$12,200. We are also approaching time targets for this rally. I'm hoping for a spike into that overhead resistance before the rally takes a breather. It lines up well with the .382 of the downtrend as well:

The bear case is still possible here, at least for a move down to the $8,000 area. I'm sitting on my hands after selling into this spike over the past few days. The daily candle closes in 5 minutes, and for now it's a shooting star (bearish):



We've overlapped the previous $11,250 high, which suggests that bulls are tired. That was a really nice reaction off the profit-taking area mentioned above, and good selling volume too.

[muf18]

...Massive speculation - driven by greed only...
...No adoption - bussiness are actually withdrawing usage of BTC, sometimes even in favour of BCH...
...holding wallet.dat file, with anticipation of more people sucking in ?...

...Trading smaller amounts of BTC will only make it less usable - fees will kill it in the end....
...It will be not a usable asset, with probably horrific price, and hoarded by some people - which if they want to cash-out, will crash the price, or would have to sell it for years...
...Not a currency. Not a good store of value (stable with slight uptrend - it's a store of value)...

...his response isn't even a response - in reality, there aren't a lot of investments that builds in electric plants, and if they are they are used within their safety margin, and BTC wasteful of energy did make a little to help it.
...it's only just to justify horrendic usage of electricity...

...Bitcoin is accepted in a lot of exchanges. With development of new exchages it will lose eventually it's status...
Just need time for exchanges to adopt new crypto with pairs, and that's (and we need more un-tethered exchanges).

Sorry to say this, but I am starting to get an impression you either have a FUD agenda, or you have really twisted and biased perception of BTC. You are turning either to alarmist or hater.

I won't go into details, as it will eat a lot of screen space and a lot of my time, but around 80% of what you wrote above is completely subjective, biased and/or plainly wrong from my perspective.

I am not sure what do you do in crypto with such outlook. Instead of spreading panic and misinformation disguised as "facts", just open a bunch of short positions together with your "guru" - the OP of this thread - and try to to make money based on your twisted "vision".

I don't have FUD agenda.
Why would I have that? I just make assumption on what I see, and make my own research into it.
It wasn't like this always. It was normal in 2015, and quite normal in 2016. Just started a year ago.

Do you really not see how even this forum has transformed?
Into a big spam mess. I mean, there must be some catharsis in this space, to clean it, for the sake of development of whole sector.

I was always a supporter of cryptocurrencies, and assets. But not the way markets are functioning today. It clearly shows they aren't efficient, just plainly dumb.
It's odd and strange, and it doesn't make sense at all:

1/ Forks having any meaningful value - BCH made this, and other forks was given green light to come and flood
2/ Ongoing scams. Not just ICO scams with exit-scams. I mean a lot of them don't have any sense. Blockchaining art? Let's Blockchain life...
3/ Market abusers. It's really bad.
4/ Most of the valuation not based on anything besides speculation - and that's ok, but when you see XRP at 1$ (3$ was just crazy), you wonder how it's possible, when it's not even anywhere used practically? The same is with a lot of other projects, just Ripple is one of the most ridicoulous one. And if it's repeating it clearly shows, that markets aren't working right.
Distinguish XRP token from company and their usage of tech, which not necessary need token - wow, that must be surprise to a lot of newbies buying it.

Other than that, yeah I expect a big drop in a lot of cc. But not to "crush" it. To clean it. To make it better.

[d5000]

I fully support what muf18 said. It's not FUD. The problems he raises - excessive speculation, very low "real" adoption - are there.

Multiple times I heard (and continue to hear/read) opinions that "bubbles are necessary" because otherwise the general public won't know about Bitcoin. Bubbles and speculation would rise adoption.

I think that could have been true in the past. But this year it has changed. In many countries, everybody knows what Bitcoin is, now - and mostly they associate it with speculation, with "getting rich quick". And not with the things Satoshi envisioned (privacy, control for everyone, decentralization, global payment means that doesn't discriminate nobody).

So my opinion is that the cryptocurrency space has to mature, and it has to mature as fast as possible. A bear market is an opportunity, in this sense. However, the current speculation hype could go on for a while still. I don't even rule out a new ATH this year (although I don't really believe it). That would not be so good as most forum users are thinking here. It would make people associate BTC even more with a getting rich quick scheme, inciting them to invest too much, and too late (typical FOMO effect). And it would make governments more suspicious. Bans would not be the end of cryptocurrency, but a very restrictive global regulation would drop the price to very low amounts and "burn" many people - and Bitcoin would have a hard time to recover.

The "best case" for Bitcoin would be a stabilization somewhere between $5000 and $9000. Once it crosses $10K people are looking again for ATHs, and if it goes too deep in this bear market, then many people would get disappointed and would become Bitcoin enemies.

Now back to TA - we dropped a bit, maybe the $11800 region is already viewed as a test on the upper limit of the bearish channel.

[DPoS2]

You must support it by volume, because:
1/ Early-adopters power of selling is huge
2/ A lot of people will want to cash out their profits
3/ Miners are selling their BTC for cash, because you can't pay with BTC to companies, which are distributing energy

If I may think, what is currently going on isn't clearly any of the satoshis vision - because we have:
1/ Massive speculation - driven by greed only
2/ No adoption - bussiness are actually withdrawing usage of BTC, sometimes even in favour of BCH - which is a joke btw. - but this is reality
3/ Store of value ? So what - holding wallet.dat file, with anticipation of more people sucking in ? Great, it's a great use-case (especially with those swings).

Trading smaller amounts of BTC will only make it less usable - fees will kill it in the end.
It will be not a usable asset, with probably horrific price, and hoarded by some people - which if they want to cash-out, will crash the price, or would have to sell it for years.
It's how it ends in reality.
Not a currency. Not a good store of value (stable with slight uptrend - it's a store of value).

If crypto will still be under the shoe of BTC, it won't be good for them at all.

Free float is also bad - it's too little free float misguiding a lot of people of real supply.
If at least those early adopters would sell their coins, free float would be better, and it would at least make it somehow usable, with lower price, and usable fees, and more coins in circulation without perpetual pumps periods all the time.

Btw. his response isn't even a response - in reality, there aren't a lot of investments that builds in electric plants, and if they are they are used within their safety margin, and BTC wasteful of energy did make a little to help it.
It's called workaround of the problem, not a real solution, I guess it's only just to justify horrendic usage of electricity.
I agree about arbitrage market - but it also makes patological situation like these in Venezuela, which is clearly odd.
Also having cheap electricity doesn't mean, that you have to waste it just for simple SHA256 calculation, which is clearly straight non-sense.
It's now whole ecosystem based on it, so it's not possible probably to alter it, and they wouldn't change it anyway, because they would lose support of mining pools etc.

Bitcoin is accepted in a lot of exchanges. With development of new exchages it will lose eventually it's status.
Just need time for exchanges to adopt new crypto with pairs, and that's (and we need more un-tethered exchanges).

You are close to a lot of truths but miss the underlying reasons why BTC is the ocean that lifts all crypto boats.  Right now that is the main value of Bitcoin.  So much value goes through BTC into the other cryptos and then stays in crypto.  Many people do not want to pull their money out of crypto and will slosh it around all the other areas so there are many people wanting tickets into the crypto show and not many leaving the club so BTC price stays high

[vit05]

I fully support what muf18 said. It's not FUD. The problems he raises - excessive speculation, very low "real" adoption - are there.

Multiple times I heard (and continue to hear/read) opinions that "bubbles are necessary" because otherwise the general public won't know about Bitcoin. Bubbles and speculation would rise adoption.

I think that could have been true in the past. But this year it has changed. In many countries, everybody knows what Bitcoin is, now - and mostly they associate it with speculation, with "getting rich quick". And not with the things Satoshi envisioned (privacy, control for everyone, decentralization, global payment means that doesn't discriminate nobody).

So my opinion is that the cryptocurrency space has to mature, and it has to mature as fast as possible. A bear market is an opportunity, in this sense. However, the current speculation hype could go on for a while still. I don't even rule out a new ATH this year (although I don't really believe it). That would not be so good as most forum users are thinking here. It would make people associate BTC even more with a getting rich quick scheme, inciting them to invest too much, and too late (typical FOMO effect). And it would make governments more suspicious. Bans would not be the end of cryptocurrency, but a very restrictive global regulation would drop the price to very low amounts and "burn" many people - and Bitcoin would have a hard time to recover.

The "best case" for Bitcoin would be a stabilization somewhere between $5000 and $9000. Once it crosses $10K people are looking again for ATHs, and if it goes too deep in this bear market, then many people would get disappointed and would become Bitcoin enemies.

Now back to TA - we dropped a bit, maybe the $11800 region is already viewed as a test on the upper limit of the bearish channel.

But why parallel problems would negatively affect Bitcoin rather than strengthen it? I think the more common of projects like Bitconect get close to zero when they show flaws, this should strengthen solid projects like Bitcoin.

Cleaning up the market should strengthen those projects that prove to be functional and useful.

[nndep3m]

How does the OP here have only 5 merit from this post? This represents everything wrong with the merit system. He predicted the actual crash of the crypto market! Incredible. Well done.

[muf18]

RSI divergence against price action on the 4-hr may suggest a forthcoming trend-reversal.

Taking out the low of 10900 (Bitfinex/Coinbase) would suggest the rally is losing momentum.
The low of 10308 (Bitfinex) and 10279 (Coinbase) is the current key level between the bulls & bears.

Took out 10900, 300USD to 10300.

Prolonged and extended, but seems to go this way.

[fabiorem]

Other than that, yeah I expect a big drop in a lot of cc. But not to "crush" it. To clean it. To make it better.

Sorry to say that, but a fall below $5000 would not make bitcoin better, it would just kill it.

The fall starting in December prompted a lot of merchants who were accepting bitcoin to refuse it since.

When it was going up, merchants were accepting it with open arms.

So you can see that if the price fall too much, adoption will shrink. A lot of people will be burned, including merchants who were holding bitcoin.

You just want to crush it, to buy it cheap, but I doubt it will go up again if adoption is compromised. That why I cant take bears seriously, because you dont take user adoption into account, you dont take mining costs into account, you just say three digits, do some TA pointing to a worst case scenario, and thats it.

Worse case scenario, bitcoin is over, you can buy it cheap but nobody will want it anymore. Think of the families who will be burned by it, think of the children, of the average people who are not nerdish enough to understand LN. They will be bitcoin's enemies, adoption will be compromised. Banks will have the upper hand again.

I agree with your point concerning the original intent, but I disagree theres no adoption happening. In Venezuela the people are using it against a tyrannical socialist government, to buy food and clothing. In Korea adoption is massive, in Japan there was 500k merchants using it. I dont know if they are using it now.

User support continues to be 8k. Anything below that is dangerous to bitcoin future. Thats why some people might think you have a agenda behind your remarks.

[muf18]

Other than that, yeah I expect a big drop in a lot of cc. But not to "crush" it. To clean it. To make it better.

Sorry to say that, but a fall below $5000 would not make bitcoin better, it would just kill it.

The fall starting in December prompted a lot of merchants who were accepting bitcoin to refuse it since.

When it was going up, merchants were accepting it with open arms.

So you can see that if the price fall too much, adoption will shrink. A lot of people will be burned, including merchants who were holding bitcoin.

You just want to crush it, to buy it cheap, but I doubt it will go up again if adoption is compromised. That why I cant take bears seriously, because you dont take user adoption into account, you dont take mining costs into account, you just say three digits, do some TA pointing to a worst case scenario, and thats it.

Worse case scenario, bitcoin is over, you can buy it cheap but nobody will want it anymore. Think of the families who will be burned by it, think of the children, of the average people who are not nerdish enough to understand LN. They will be bitcoin's enemies, adoption will be compromised. Banks will have the upper hand again.

I agree with your point concerning the original intent, but I disagree theres no adoption happening. In Venezuela the people are using it against a tyrannical socialist government, to buy food and clothing. In Korea adoption is massive, in Japan there was 500k merchants using it. I dont know if they are using it now.

User support continues to be 8k. Anything below that is dangerous to bitcoin future. Thats why some people might think you have a agenda behind your remarks.

Exactly the opposite. Merchants were accepting Bitcoin most in 2015-early 2017 period. When price was below 2000$.
When price continued to surged up, also fees continued to surge up, and volatility made it impossible except from speculators to keep it.
If it's medium of money transmission, price shouldn't matter in fact.
It's not being used as currency, the fact is Litecoin and Ethereum are more used as a currencies, than BTC, due to fees.

In 2015 BTC was at the lowest point (at least from 2014), and it was accepted more than in late 2013 and 2014.
Strange isn't it?
Speculation mania =/= adoption, but I think nobody really sees that way, only see $$ in their eyes.
If you want succeed BTC, why in fact you make it harder to succeed?
High price is making it difficult to achieve any meaningful adoption.

Venezuela is good example, of embezzlement of goverement, but they are using US$, and cryptocurrencies, as medium of money.
Within country US$ is more popular, but outside - yes, they have to use to cc, cause it's possible to use it without restricted banking system.
And that's noble case - just what volume they are doing ? I guess no more than a few millions.
And even then it's better just to mine for them, cause of almost free electricity (a lot of are doing it), not buying, because they can't even buy 0.1BTC I guess now (I think that maybe 0.1LTC or 0.1ETH they can buy).
And I agree - it's superb, that it's international, thanks to blockchain, and global acceptation on various exchanges. But I think, also for them price swings are hard, maybe not so much as inflation eating their savings, but price swings 50-70% in month, are quite hard to accept for me, as a means of payment for shorter periods than a few days.

In Korea there is massive speculation, almost nobody pay there with crypto - and yes I know it first hand, because I asked my friends from there - some of them are speculating on it, but they don't pay with, they are more thinking it, as a fun way to make money.
Japan maybe a little different - still not so much services really using as a money transmission.
I guess there is less than 1% volume now using cryptocurrencies as money transimission (I guess it's about 0.1-0.5%).
So I think about 50-70M$ is circulating as a money transimission to buy/sell products. Maybe a little more (100M$), but that's max.
Rest is pure speculation.