Has HN been run over by corporate guys? Only their news are left, and many other news stories per day that got many upvotes and/or comments get hidden from the frontpage very quickly.
I might get downvoted for this but what kind of value add articles tracking bitcoin price really do? There has been a lot articles about breaching 5k, 10k, 15k etc and now this.
In the same way Facebook gatekeepers get paid because people want to interact with each other - Bitcoin rewards a similar kind of vulture that wants their "free lunch" because people want to exchange resources (trading medium).
Everyone blindly jumps aboard because "get rich quick". I wonder if these Bitcoin "angel" investors actually produce things with their hands, or if they seek to reinvest their gains into building something useful to people.
This seems like the regular pattern. It goes up for a while, then you see a drop back of about 30% of the rise. Then after a short while it picks up again and in not time it has recovered from the drop, to gain more value. Then repeat.
I have invested a small amount in bitcoins, and just wait until it hits $100k. If I lose all, bad luck. The amount invested is worth the risk.
I'm in the same as you. I've been dumping a few hundred a month into BTC, ETC and LTC for a few months and at the time of writing (BTC is currently hovering around 14k) my investment is worth 3x what I've put in.
While I'd love to see crypto disrupt the current financial system, it's just fun to be a part of the ride. I see this as play money. It's fun to track the price up and down.
It will have to do a repeat of the 2012-today run up for me to make huge money - something I'm not expecting - and unless it does this, I'll not be cashing out. If it happens then awesome, if it crashes tomorrow then I've spent a bit of money for a bit of added excitement in my day.
> While I'd love to see crypto disrupt the current financial system
Late reply. I don't agree. I think a disruption of the financial system will create only trouble. Taking back control from the banks is something else, and stopping split second speculation by algorithms would result in more stability. If you mean that by disruption, I agree of course, but for me this is not a disruption, as it fits in the current system.
This is accurate and you can easily see it through a cursory look at the full history of coin value. These articles have always served as a Buy signal. Whether or not one believes this time will be different is another question.
I wouldn't say 0 utility but for sure not anywhere near it is now.
Tulips still have "utility" today but a single one does not buy you a house anymore ;)
I think a "single" bitcoin doesn't mean anything, especially compared to a physical good (it makes some sense when you are making a performance comparison to other CCs but not too much).
You can buy a house with enough bitcoins as long as you have buyers. You can say the same thing for tulips as well.
That's the problem I think with the futures market; because BTC is / can be anonymized, there can be big mules that short BTC, then sell off their BTC. Because the BTC trade is susceptible for panic, other people will start panic selling, further lowering the price. And the bigger mules that shorted BTC earn money both from selling their assets at a high price and the shorting.
Why would you even consider shorting BTC in the last few days? There was no negative news at all. Might look smart in hindsight but complete speculation IMO for this short timeframe.
On an asset with no fundamental value, shorting is appealing because it can create the negative news cycle. Short enough and you get headlines like the one in the OP: "Bitcoin plunges by X%". Suddenly you'll have longs looking to sell and more shorts hoping to get in.
Told a friend that was very much into bitcoin to sell everything two days ago. But my logic is the following : if an asset is overvalued because of hype, then the moment everybody knows about the existence of the asset is when the value reaches its peak. With the recent news about bitcoin reaching 20k and everybody in the general public wondering about investing, i thought we reached that moment.
True, but that doesn't matter to people who don't know aything about it. They just read "Bitcoin guy sells everything". It's not like the media is going to properly explain it in the article, or tried writing a less click-baity title.
I suspect a lot of the transaction fees and congestion have been from people transferring to exchanges to sell. Though it wouldn't surprise me if someone was doing market manipulation via spam transactions; that certainly seems like something that could potentially be profitable.
Would be nice to know how many bitcoins will be locked in wallets whose value is inferior to transaction costs if the fees stay at this price or higher.
Please don't offer investment advice; you can't predict what BTC will do. It's an even worse way to gamble than stock trading is.
Also anyone saying to buy, sell, or hold BTC is doing so out of self-interest. People saying to sell? They shorted BTC. Buy? They bought a bunch and want it to climb, they intend to sell. Hold? They have a bunch and are looking for that dank 10x - 100x duplication bonus.
Tell you what. I'll stop offering investment advice if you stop putting words in my mouth. :)
It goes without saying that BTC isn't an investment. It's speculation. But there's nothing wrong with this, and everyone comes to the table knowing the stakes.
Uh huh, and all of my "Buy in at $3,900; buy in at $5,800" comments were downvoted too.
It's remarkable how influential groupthink is. Everyone is panic selling, so of course the logical action is to buy. It's never a good time to buy when everyone's been buying! This is the only correct time to do a long-term bet.
This is all quite mistaken for day trading, but that's not this strategy.
Everyone is panic selling, so of course the logical action is to buy.
A great many companies watch their stock crash... and then become worthless and cease trading. Buying those crashes was not a good move.
This is the only correct time to do a long-term bet.
A great many companies that didn't experience a crash in their stock nonetheless were great long-term bets, and some investors made their fortunes this way.
Actually a "death spiral" is basically built-in to bitcoin.
If the value stays at this level for a while and the hashpower increases so that miners rely on this level of income, a drop of say 30% could mean that almost all miners are running in the red (except those with free electricity). The resulting long block times could cause the price to crash more, discouraging even more miners, until a block is just never produced again. The difficulty adjustment requires 2016 blocks to be mined.
It will inevitably be forked to try and save it, but that might not take off...
BTC will die eventually--albeit slowly. $26 transaction fees are insane and unsustainable imho. My money is on proof of stake like Ardor.
I'd like to see something with GBI built in, and maybe less deflationary. Not completely, as it's nice when saving money makes it worth more, but the only reason to have btc now is to hodl and make more ... till it's worth shit... and you can't sell it at all.
I mean really you can't even really use it for utility any more... Say I wanted to buy hosting with bitcoin... I pay $15 a month for hosting, so that's 15 in btc, PLUS $26 to send the btc? well fuck that.. nvm.. guess I'll just hodl like everyone else...
1. BTC is useful as a store of wealth. A rich saudi would be very happy to dump their fortune into BTC and then wait several years. It would be much safer than storing it in banks where they are held hostage in hotels until they agree to pay N% of their fortune to be released. (Apparently this actually happens.)
2. BTC is a speculator's currency. The whole point is to speculate, and not much more than that. But that's literally the point, and the fact that it's absurd doesn't change how real it is.
3. Fluctuations will be with BTC forever due to #2. This has always been true and will continue to be true. Periods of inactivity will become longer, but then eventually speculators will notice it's a lucrative deal again.
4. Speculators have a crucial ability: they can manipulate the market. It's common for people to dump N million into the market to cause a small rally, at which point everyone else starts buying. This happened to Ripple. No one cared about Ripple until however many months ago that was, when it suddenly surged overnight due to this.
5. BTC has immense inertia because it was the first, and continues to be the most valuable. As long as the core team doesn't screw with it at all – including trying to "extend" it with bigger block sizes or any other convenience features – then BTC should stay a fine store of wealth. Satoshi planned for the long term.
6, The above points do not hold for other currencies. Others have some of these points, but not all of them. Hence BTC remains a solid bet.
7. All of this can be mistaken, but after seeing this behavior many, many times, at this point it's fine to gamble that you won't be wrong this time.
8. Don't put in more money than you're willing to lose.
Too bad I can't really take advantage of it. But if anything, that just makes me a disinterested player. Rather more persuasive than someone with a vested interest.
Bitcoin is only going to get bigger, much much bigger. For those doubting the scaling potential, don't forget it's software and software is not static thing. There is now too much money in it, and the money directly translates into interest to keep Bitcoin running and succeeding.
The protocol may change or even fork come time, but the chain will not, if you have coins now, your store of value is written in stone, and will be there in whatever form we have in the future.
> There is now too much money in it, and the money directly translates into interest to keep Bitcoin running and succeeding.
Like tech stocks in 1999? 2007 subprime mortgages?
> It's going to be the new gold
You mean my dentist can fill my teeth with it, I can give it as a shiny necklace to my girlfriend, I can use it as a conductor for my stereo? You mean it's actually something I can use?
Common now, gold isn't valuable because of its conductive properties, and nobody uses it to fill teeth anymore.
Gold is valuable, because
a) There's a fixed supply.
b) The material itself is proof that you actually posses it.
c) It's durable and easily quantifiable.
It's a store of value, that cannot be overruled, either you have it or not, that simple. There is nothing quite like it, and that's why governments are hoarding gold reserve in underground basements.
Bitcoin takes this concept even further and ensures that your coins cannot be forcefully taken from you (given you store them right ofc). They are essentially just a piece of information, and that is enough to universally validate your ownership, without a doubt.
There is immense value in the technology, I'm sure its here to stay. Again, maybe not the current iteration, but whatever Bitcoin evolution we end up with, it will very likely come out of this blockchain.
But we will see. Maybe it IS gonna die tomorrow after all.
Even if bitcoin for some reason disappears (and I don't believe the doomsday scenario is anywhere in the near future), the blockchain technology on which it is built is revolutionary, and the financial sector is researching it and developing new applications at a furious pace.
Whatever the future of bitcoin itself and whoever he is, "Satoshi Nakamoto" will go down in history as a great inventor.
https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/944048619174457344...
The only real difference is that because Bitcoin's value is now so high, even comparatively small dips are massive in USD terms.