18 ms·

Bitcoin Surges Past $400

408 points by Timshel 11y ago

x5n1 11y ago
here we go again.
julianpye 11y ago
That may become the fastest journey across the Gartner trough of disillusionment that I have seen. So it answers Fred Wilsons's question at http://avc.com/2014/09/the-bitcoin-hype-cycle/ http://avc.com/2014/09/the-bitcoin-hype-cycle/
- notahacker 11y ago
  From Wilson's blog you'd conclude the opposite though, that the speed of the journey across the Gartner trough of disillusionment had been much slower and dragged much deeper into the trough than he'd been expecting at the time. Wilson thought it was "well into" the trough phase by Sep 2014, with the price around ~$400 after one mini-recovery proved illusory. It then halved again, and has taken more than a year for this latest mini recovery to take it up to the heady heights of the bottom of Wilson's "trough"... That trough sure looks long compared with that brief late 2013 spike.... http://www.coindesk.com/price/#2010-07-18,2015-11-03,close,bpi,USD http://www.coindesk.com/price/#2010-07-18,2015-11-03,close,b...
- gavazzy 11y ago
  I think it's far more like this: http://imgur.com/bcf2DbW http://imgur.com/bcf2DbW
LoSboccacc 11y ago
I keep biting my finger off, trading bitcoins seems so nice but to enter you need to give RID access to shady merchant, which is a bummer. Anyone know an exchange where btc can be bought simply with paypal?
- edward 11y ago
  What does RID mean? PayPal T&C says virtual currency isn't allowed.
  - throwaway049 11y ago
    I assumed it meant real identity
  - LoSboccacc 11y ago
    sorry it's a direct debt/bank transfer, sometimes I forget to translate acronyms
- sktrdie 11y ago
  Nope since paypal is chargeback-able. You can try localbitcoins if you don't want to give out your info.
- TimSchumann 11y ago
  Ranked in order of my preference. https://www.coinbase.com/global https://www.coinbase.com/global - Initial setup can be slow, as with identity verification, but once you're set up buying is relatively painless. Withdrawing can sometimes be slow, expect to wait 2 to 5 business days after purchasing before you can withdraw. Shadiness Level - Just shady enough it might work. 4.5 stars would cupcake again. (They're a YC company too, so you'd be helping, airquotes, the cause - as it were. https://www.bitstamp.net/ https://www.bitstamp.net/ - Better for trading, more like an actual exchange whereas Coinbase is much more of a broker/dealer. (Correct me if I'm wrong on that someone who would know better) Shadiness Level - Low. They're venture backed, Slovenian based, and good peoples in my experience. https://btc-e.com/ https://btc-e.com/ - Great for variety of coins traded. Based on my experience I'd recommend. That being said... Shadiness Level - Moderate. Nobody really knows who runs the site, although there has been speculation. I think they're based out of Russia. https://www.bitfinex.com/ https://www.bitfinex.com/ - This would be my go to for actual trading if I wanted to make/lose a lot of money. Based in Singapore IIRC. Shadiness Level - Low from what I've heard, just low on the list because I haven't had any personal experience with them. Something about Singapore and Financial makes me think of super villains though. https://localbitcoins.com/ https://localbitcoins.com/ - Limited by who is selling in your area, have to meet in person, cash only, and markup is usually high. (5% to 7.5% above market) Shadiness Level - hit-or-miss, ranges from awesome people to scum of the earth types. Make sure you meet in a public place.
Marazan 11y ago
Hmm, time o check the googlentrends "bitcoin" chart vs the bitcoin price chart again. They had a 1to1 correlation last time I looked. EDIT: Just went back to look and peek Google Trends interest in Bitcoin happens prior to peek Bitcoin price so public interest leads Bitcoin price as I suggest. Trends crash before the price does.
- tjbiddle 11y ago
  Correlation does not imply causation.
  - lololomg 11y ago
    Nobody said it did
  - Marazan 11y ago
    You're the kind of person who upon seeing a gun shot victim and as the coroner says, " He was killed by a bullet entering the body and piercing the heart" would shout out "Correlation does not imply causation" reflexively. Do you really not think the general population's interest in bitcoin has any effect on the price?
    - verroq 11y ago
      Or maybe price is driving the interest?
      - vanderZwan 11y ago
        Perfectly fair question, but I highly doubt there would be a 1:1 causal relation from BC price to twitter mentions of it. Trending topics are more of a critical-mass "hashtags trending with exponential growth" kind of thing.
        makomk 11y ago
        Nearly all the Twitter mentions of it I've seen lately were people talking about the price rise.
sonium 11y ago
It is however less likely to be due to exchange manipulations this time because the exchanges are more diversified.
- pille 11y ago
  No, not really. If you can manipulate the price on one exchange, it will drag the prices in the other exchanges along with it. MtGox's high BTC rates were too close to arbitrage until it was clear you wouldn't get your money out.
  - aianus 11y ago
    I was arbitraging MtGox vs US/Canadian exchanges up until 6 months before they blew up. The spread was easily 3% even then. Thankfully they took 28 days to wire me $10k and I saw the writing on the wall and stopped in time.
mtgx 11y ago
All aboard the speculation train!
est 11y ago
The China factor behind this "surge" is because this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company) started doing business in China. It's growing very huge.
- trymas 11y ago
  +1 Somehow I refuse to believe that this surge in price is natural.
  - hellofunk 11y ago
    Price fluctuation in tradeable products of any kind is never "natural", it is supply/demand-driven. And supply and demand are complex forces with much turbulence from a vast number of influences.
    - Retric 11y ago
      Speculation is a thing. BC is still infinitesimal in terms of the global economy and even relatively tiny movements of money can underline or pop a bubble.
      - hellofunk 11y ago
        Yes, and speculation is one of the forces affecting demand. There is no such thing as a "natural" price move in any tradeable product. The term has no meaning; all trading is based on some form of speculation or other forces.
        Retric 11y ago
        People use "natural" or "baseline" to refer to the price a commodity returns to after a bubble burst. Though, price movements are more chaotic than that and you can have short term spikes, swings from external effects ex: natural disasters, short term 'bubbles', and demand from things like tax policy changes so "natural" is somewhat vague. So, the implication is it's what happens when you remove short term and artificial effects.
Zarkonnen 11y ago
Tulip bulbs! Got your tulip bulbs right here!
- ojr 11y ago
  tulips that can be transfer digitally anywhere in the world at a low fee...
  - maheart 11y ago
    I'd like to also add: - There is no "Federal Reserve" type entity attempting to influence BitCoin (whether that's a good thing or not, is complicated...) - Privacy (with the help of Zerocoin)
  - bduerst 11y ago
    Assuming the network isn't overloaded again, and that you don't care about refunds or insurance.
  - Dylan16807 11y ago
    If you wanted to sell a tulip ownership certificate this century it would also be digitally anywhere in the world at a low fee...
    - ojr 11y ago
      Low just like Western Union and Moneygram got it ;)
- exprx 11y ago
  I sense unwarranted criticism here – it's not like the ups and downs of BitCoin are going to affect a major economy any time soon (or ever). It's more a good thing there's this new game speculators can play; even if someone games the system, it isn't going to affect anything of value (e.g. a company producing something of value). It's not like BitCoin is ever going to be a major currency, or a real currency, really. The distribution of it is even more skewed, and artificially so, than that of any real currency. (And no, it isn't analogous to early investors in a business.)
_Marak_ 11y ago
Price surge is in direct correlation with Winklevoss "Gemini" exchange going online on October 8th. https://gemini.com/ https://gemini.com/ This chart shows the price surge starting the exact same day Gemini went online: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60ztgSzm1g10zm... I really hope this is genuine growth, but I have a sneaking suspicion it could be partially due to market manipulation by Gemini. The Winklevoss twins have a lot of money riding on this play.
- zilian 11y ago
  Your claim is really US-centric. Most of the exchange's volume right now is from China. China is driving this and I don't see how an american-bank-only exchange would be the main reason, if there is one.
  - _Marak_ 11y ago
    I guess no one remembers MTGOX and the Willy bot. I'll take my down-votes in stride. Only the future will reveal the truth.
    - bdcravens 11y ago
      Of course they do. The volume required to do Willy-style manipulation is far greater than what is occurring on Gemini.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- TylerE 11y ago
  No it isn't. Volume on Gemini is miniscule, less than 1% of the chinese exchanges.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    The suggestion that it is market manipulation by the Winklevosses related to Gemini doesn't mean that its a result of action on Gemini; an effort to use existing exchanges that can support the volume to drive Bitcoin in a way that would increase public perception of the attractiveness of Bitcoin to position the sales pitch for Gemini as a "grown up" exchange isn't entirely unthinkable. Not that I think its likely, mind you, just that "the action isn't on Gemini" isn't sufficient to rebut that the movement is related to Gemini. I think, though, that MMM still seems likely to explain more of it, and other China-specific conditions may explain more of the China-focused movement. Manipulation around Gemini, while not inconceivable, seems to be a bit more of a leap from the evidence available.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
It's amusing to me how, on this subject, Hacker News comments draw closer to regular internet comments in terms of the ratio of detailed discussion to biting one-liners. I'm inclined to think that it demonstrates how very silly the whole thing is, that even us eggheads get snarkily dismissive, but I'm sure some will disagree...
- AndrewGaspar 11y ago
  Referring to Hacker News posters as 'eggheads' in the large is a little too gracious.
sfjailbird 11y ago
There is a LOT of talk about "blockchain technology" going around these days. It seems like another "cloud", i.e. some vague concept that consultants can sell to CTOs who are afraid of appearing behind the technology curve. New clothes for the emperor. Since bitcoin is the reference implementation of "blockchain technology" obviously all this interest rubs off. And since bitcoin at this point is all promise without much reality behind it (like a "pre-monetization" startup), it is a great vehicle for hype driven speculation, meaning that any price increase drives further speculation, until the next hard crash.
- Marazan 11y ago
  The Economist had an article of the magical wonders of the blockchain last week that kind of skimped on the downsides.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Why is it that the worst things always become the most popular? I mined my first bitcoin before it hit a dollar, so it's nothing against bitcoin, just as acknowledgement of the ridiculousness of the trend of cloud computing is nothing against the cloud itself. Why can't we get a fad that's reasonable for once? I just don't get how people convert these specialized things that may help some companies sometimes into widespread hysteria, where every company feels like they have to go all in. Companies regularly take their basically-fine hardware offline so they can start renting the same or worse from Amazon, because then they can tell people that they're "in the cloud". I know one company that used to have all their stuff running on hardware and working pretty much fine. They switched to "the cloud" because they thought it was cool. They now pay Amazon the amount of money it'd take to re-buy all the hardware that used to run their site each and every month. I should figure this out because if I can see one of these trends coming and time it right I could make a lot of money.
- aianus 11y ago
  Maybe you should do some research before calling it a "vague concept that consultants can sell to CTOs". It's the first distributed, decentralized ledger that successfully operates in the presence of malicious nodes. The white paper and reference implementation represent a fundamental breakthrough in computer science (a solution to the famous and previously unsolved Byzantine Generals problem). Bitcoin is a big deal whether you want to realize it or not.
csomar 11y ago
There is nothing that can guarantee that this ride is real, but here are a few things: 1. However big is MMM, it's probably too small for the size of the bitcoin economy right now. Remember that if you are transacting in bitcoin, there is one party buying and the other one selling. So you are not rising the price to the moon. 2. The number of transactions has been growing again as of late. It's heating at the blockchain right now ( https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions ). With 1MB, bitcoin can support less than 300k transactions a day. 3. The total output volume is jumping to crazy levels ( https://blockchain.info/charts/output-volume?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address= https://blockchain.info/charts/output-volume?timespan=all&sh... ) only seen in bubbles. 4. I have a localbitcoins post. I usually get 1-2 requests per week. In the last few days, well, I really lost count. 5. Google trends is spiking: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin But maybe this is happening because bitcoin price is rising, not the other way around? 6. If the price is rising fast, the supply will dry because nobody wants to sell an appreciating asset. If an asset is appreciating, it'll drive demand. Which will drive the price higher. 7. Media will start talking about it. It'll drive more people. It'll drive the price more. 8. We'll see if the new fancy infrastructure that bitcoin got is rock-solid. 9. If you don't own the keys, you don't own the bitcoins. 10. It's nice, but only if you bought the dip and sold before the crash.
- jcfrei 11y ago
  > However big is MMM, it's probably too small for the size of the bitcoin economy right now [...] That's very hard to quantify, but there might well be a feedback loop involving the media which leads to a price increase caused by MMM Global. The following Google Trends data for South Africa and the Philippines shows a nice correlation between searches for bitcoin and MMM Global: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US&geo=ZA&cmpt=q&q=bitcoin,+MMM+Global&tz=Etc/GMT-1&content=1 http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US&geo=ZA&cmpt=q&...
  - csomar 11y ago
    That's why I used "probably". The thing is, transacting with bitcoin will not raise the price exponentially. BTC is already being exchanged in many millions of dollars a day. So unless MMM turns out to be a billion-dollar ponzi scheme I don't really think it'll affect the BTC price much.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- joosters 11y ago
  Oh no, another "Here's a huge market. Now imagine if only 1% of them buy your product" article to add to the junk pile.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      How is control of these bitcoin being transferred to someone who is willing to accept the controlled currency? Presumably they would have to be in mainland China. I guess someone who is more able to circumvent the controls traditionally might be able to move the money out and could sell bitcoin to profit from that capability. edit: argh.
amelius 11y ago
Could somebody comment on how "future proof" the bitcoin technology really is? How large can the trading volumes become, and is there a limit? What advances have been made in crypto-currencies that will replace bitcoin?
- kristofferR 11y ago
  Bitcoin is in constant development, so it's a hard question to answer. If Bitcoin core development suddenly stopped right now it wouldn't be very future proof. Trading volumes are irrelevant from a scaling perspective, what matters is number of transactions per second (tps). Right now Bitcoin has a really low capacity, just 7tps, way below VISA for example. However, progress is underway on creating the Lightning Network [2], which will enable billions of transactions per day. Just 11 days ago a major requirement of the Lightning network was merged into Bitcoin core, and things are moving fairly quickly in the right direction. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability [2] https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/ I doubt anything will replace Bitcoin, further crypto-currency advances will likely be built on top of it (like the Lightning Network and sidechains). Ethereum is looking incredibly promising (has been dubbed Bitcoin 2.0), but I think it will be used primarily as a blockchain programming framework instead of as an alternative currency.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - DennisP 11y ago
    Most of the things you can do with smart contracts in Ethereum involve some kind of currency...crowdfunding, smart locks, prediction markets, etc. It's possible to implement subcurrencies with Ethereum contracts, but native ether is more efficient, a little easier to work with, and is the one currency you can be sure everyone on the network has.
  - mike_hearn 11y ago
    Lightning isn't going to happen any time soon. Bear in mind it's not even block chain based, nodes are stateful and control signing keys, and no existing software works with it. Lightning will require entirely new wallets to be created for it, and those wallets will be very complicated. It's a multi-year project at most. The reality is that Bitcoin will fall apart if too much load is placed on it, and it's getting closer to its (entirely arbitrary) 1mb scale ceiling too fast for comfort.
spooningtamarin 11y ago
how would one trade bitcoin fast enough to profit? can one short bitcoin in a single day? last time I tried it was insanely slow to buy bitcoin, and then sell it...
- brianpetro_ 11y ago
  Magnr give the best margins I've found, 10:1. You can short sell too. My referral link https://www.magnr.com/?r=79019 https://www.magnr.com/?r=79019
jbssm 11y ago
Actually the break of price parity between China and Western exchanges is historically very bad news for bitcoin. It will mark China as purely speculative and will break ties with the only force that was keeping the price at the 300 USD level in the past months. It's similar to what happened with MTGox. When the price parity was over (although there was always a ~1-2% premium on MtGox price) bitcoin crashed hard and never recovered.
TomGullen 11y ago
I find it ironic that if MMM is having an impact on the price, that irrational actors (people buying into MMM) are inflating the price of Bitcoin (mainly promoted by libertarians). Anyway, the up swing is impressive now and can't be dismissed as normal volatilty: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitfinex/btcusd https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitfinex/btcusd There will be a big drop at some point, no one really wants to sell when it's rising like this. This sort of upward movement is exactly why a lot of people have bought Bitcoin. Trying to time the top will be hard though. I imagine a subsequent drop of ~25% would be likely. It's fun to be back at a time of thinking about when to sell again.
- bby 11y ago
  what is MMM?
- celticninja 11y ago
  If it is MMM driven then at some point the organisers will want to cash out, a huge dump/sell of coins across multiple exchanges would kill the price, however they are unlikely to be able to sell all of their coins so it would hurt their remaining assets. A slow sell off would make more sense but given the illegal nature of the scheme they may not have a choice in the matter.
  - hippich 11y ago
    they have to cash out all the time, since they need to keep paying their members to get more youtube videos about "MMM pays XXX $"
- dopamean 11y ago
  Where did you get 25% from?
cryptojuice 11y ago
Time to dust off the ol mining rig, LTC to the moon!
- bdcravens 11y ago
  Too bad difficulty increases mean your old rig will return a small % of what it did before (if any at all)
bkolobara 11y ago
And it's starting again. Kraken is now down for me http://i.imgur.com/quLUvxf.png http://i.imgur.com/quLUvxf.png
edward 11y ago
The price is now $500.
- sakopov 11y ago
  It seems to have hit the ceiling at $500. The price has backed off a few times throughout the day.
murbard2 11y ago
The convoluted way they tie this to DAH is somewhat hilarious.
sakopov 11y ago
I don't know if this is good outside of just pure speculation profit. Bitcoin seemed to hit a fairly decent stable point around $250 before this new bubble.
g8oz 11y ago
The Economist had a cover story last week on blockchain tech. http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21677198-technology-behind-bitcoin-could-transform-how-economy-works-trust-machine http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21677198-technology-be... I'm sure that helped.
dear 11y ago
"The blockchain is the new shining star, and it spills over to the bitcoin world as well.”
SpendBig 11y ago
In the mean time, CasinoCoin gambles its way up as an alternative coin.
nvk 11y ago
For anyone that has been around BTC for long enough, this is expected, but also expect more rallies and more crashes. Quick plug: If you are looking for a secure wallet with good privacy for your fresh Bitcoin, Try [Coinkite Multisig](https://coinkite.com/multisig https://coinkite.com/multisig), up to m-of-15, any/all keys can be generated offline, option to escrow backup, notifications, multi-user-multisig, support, notifications, works well with Ledgers, and the list goes on!
- dkns 11y ago
  Why was this expected? Care to explain to someone who isn't around BTC?
  - bduerst 11y ago
    There's a lot of pump and dumps [1] with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. [1] https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Pump-and-Dump-Char.png https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/P...
    - Atheros 11y ago
      There is no evidence of a pump currently happening. This is not a pump and dump.
      - bduerst 11y ago
        Right - they asked about Bitcoin in general which is rife with pump and dumps. The bubble right now is mostly a response to the MMM buzz.
a3voices 11y ago
The Bitcoin dream of it being accepted by banks and replacing fiat currency will never come true, especially since financial institutions are focusing on blockchain technology as opposed to Bitcoin. This recent price increase will possibly be viewed as a dead cat bounce.
- mrb 11y ago
  What people like you who raise this argument forget is that the success of a blockchain is intertwined with the success of whatever currency/reward is granted to the miners who make the blockchain work. So if Bitcoin's blockchain is adopted by banks, then Bitcoin the currency will succeed. And if banks adopt another blockchain, then the currency of that blockchain will succeed. It is literally impossible to have a functioning decentralized blockchain without a proper reward/currency built on it to incentivize miners to mine on it.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - berns 11y ago
    The only "bitcoin" that can succeed is the one that is originated from a sovereign state. For then it has the monopoly and can enforce its taxing power that is what ultimately gives value to fiat currency.
    - mrb 11y ago
      A currency has value because it is accepted, no matter who accepts it (sovereign state or merchants, doesn't matter).
      - berns 11y ago
        It is accepted because it is needed. Everybody needs it to pay taxes, other than that it has no value.
        11y ago
gesman 11y ago
More people are realizing that China and Greece are very close to default. There are more holes in these economies than their respective governments has fingers to plug them in. Flight to bitcoin is the only natural and logical progression.
- dragontamer 11y ago
  Where the hell is the flight to gold and bonds then? Something else is going on. Gold is still at $1,120ish USD. There is no flight to safety.
  - gesman 11y ago
    Two reasons. 1. US markets are priming for a temporary rise till approx. end of spring / mid-year 2016. 2. Gold is no longer safe bet in the light of a large scale government defaults and rather drastic domino effort that will follow. For how long do you think Fed are going to kick the can down the road?
    - dragontamer 11y ago
      > 2. Gold is no longer safe bet in the light of a large scale government defaults and rather drastic domino effort that will follow. That makes no sense what so ever.
      - gesman 11y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 In case of drastic economic downturn this is a possibility along with currency devaluation. Back then there were no bitcoin in existence. Today it is.
        dragontamer 11y ago
        If you're worried the evil gov'mt is gonna steal your gold, then why won't they just steal your BTC too? There's a reason why Swiss safety deposit boxes of gold exist. You gotta pull that crap out of the country. Hell, if the US Government just declared ownership of the BTC Network through subpeonas, they can effectively 51% attack it and double-spend all the BTC they want anyway. So no, your hyperbole does not convince me.
ca98am79 11y ago
From a technical standpoint, BTC formed a nice base around $200-$250 over most of 2015. It was mostly quiet in the news, so it was an ideal time to invest. Now it is breaking out to the upside of that base. Sell when your neighbor tells you to invest in bitcoin. There is a chance the price could go nuts (e.g. $1 million/BTC) - it could be a serious bubble, because of the technology behind it, and the implications it could have to the world. "It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower." - William O'Neil
jarboot 11y ago
The little pile of bitcoins I had laying around from a couple weeks ago has doubled in price. Should I spend them now in anticipation of a bubble bursting or wait for the price to possibly go up?
- godzillabrennus 11y ago
  As with any volatile investment you should get out when you are ahead, or in need of the money. You may lose out on further gains but the likelihood of another crash is high. It's better to win than lose.
  - aianus 11y ago
    > It's better to win than lose. Mathematically that's just not true. In objective terms not winning an extra $100 is exactly the same as losing $100. This psychological fallacy (called 'loss aversion') is the primary reason the average player loses at poker. They're afraid of losing $100 when they might be behind but they constantly fail to extract that extra $100 value bet when they know they're likely ahead.
- erickhill 11y ago
  Oh, you should probably sell them. Just like when I sold all of my Apple stock when it shot up to $30, purchased at ~$20. :/
- ck2 11y ago
  My logic is always sell half, keep half. Less regret maybe.
- oberstein 11y ago
  Depends what you expected those initial coins to do. Did you get them as a speculative investment with a chance of "interest" of x%/year? Then a 100% increase is pretty damn good as far as investments go, you shouldn't feel too bad about selling now. You'll have regret if it continues to grow to the moon, so maybe sell half or 3/4. But also calculate the potential unrealized earnings if it went to the moon -- i.e. if your little pile was only worth $100, now $200, even if it doubles twice more the difference is just $600.
wsxcde 11y ago
A counterpoint to some of the pro-bitcoin hype. The developers are still arguing about the 1MB blocksize limit. Currently bitcoin is limited to a theoretical maximum of 7 transactions per second (~60k transactions per day). This figure was derived assuming the smallest possible transaction size but of course real transactions are larger and the practical maximum is only about 2-3 transactions per second (~20k transactions per day). This should have been a pretty easy limit to change, it's just a #define in the code. But some core developers are against it and we're deadlocked and have been this way for at least a year. There is an alternative client called bitcoinxt, this supports larger blocksizes but has literally no support among either the miners or chinese exchanges which are driving the rally. (See https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-block-sizes-e047bc9f830 https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-block-sizes-e047bc9f830 for a summary.) A number of DoS attacks on the bitcoin network: some based on spamming lots of fee paying transactions, some based on retransmitting slightly modified versions of existing transactions, have rendered it practically inoperable for days on end. The fee paying attack isn't terribly expensive, costing only a few tens of thousands of dollars per day, while the "malleability" attack costs literally nothing other than an internet connection. There hasn't been any significant progress on solutions for either of these problems. The bitcoiner response to this is that you shouldn't have been affected by either of these if you used the right client or paid the right fees, but imperfect clients and fixed fees are a reality of the bitcoin ecosystem so I don't see how wishing them away changes anything. One of bitcoin's biggest advantages was supposed to be the ability to quickly react to changing circumstances by modifying the protocol. Recent events have shown this is pretty much impossible: too many people are too heavily invested in its current form, and they want no risks and hence no change. Techniques which supposedly allow risk free changes (called sidechains) still have a long way to go before we can be convinced they work as intended. Besides they're not even fully implemented on the bitcoin testnet, let alone real bitcoin. Overall, even if people are buying into the "blockchain" tech, it doesn't seem to me that they would be interested in bitcoin itself because of the problems I've outlined. I think the safe money is still on this being a repeat of the Willybot/Mt Gox fiasco where the exchange operator used nonexistent dollars to buy bitcoin and drive the price higher. Other people were sucked in by the uptrend and they ended up with nonexistent bitcoin/dollars which they weren't able to withdraw from the exchange.
xacaxulu 11y ago
I slowly bought about 25 BTC since January. Honestly this is very exciting right now and I've basically been daytrading for the last few days. I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it's been enjoyable to set alerts for different price points then buy/sell as necessary. I like the liquidity and 0 government involvement/taxation - something I couldn't do with stock/options/CDs etc.
- blantonl 11y ago
  If you convert BTC to $$ or your local currency, expect a tax situation.
  - thescriptkiddie 11y ago
    Why would you want to do that when you can just pay for things directly?
    - Goronmon 11y ago
      Why would you want to do that when you can just pay for things directly? That doesn't change the fact that in many places you'll still owe taxes, regardless if you don't cash out in a distinct step somewhere. At least as far as I understand things.
  - xacaxulu 11y ago
    Local transactions from anonymous accounts. I'm not going to file anything.
- TomAnthony 11y ago
  Where are you doing your trading?
  - burrox 11y ago
    Can you do this sort of thing in Coinbase?
jcslzr 11y ago
its because all those youtubers talking about a dollar collapse, because the fed wont raise the interest rate (more like the fed can not raise rates)
chrisbennet 11y ago
Bitcoin seems more like a speculative commodity than a currency. As long as Bitcoin is experiencing such instability, how can it be useful as a currency?
- Synaesthesia 11y ago
  It's been stable for a long time before this jump, and over much of its history. Yeah it is disruptive! It's very easy to use as a currency since it's the only way you can send value instantly around the globe with almost no cost and without any regulatory issues.
  - chrisbennet 11y ago
    Ok, that makes more sense. Thanks.
- xixi77 11y ago
  yeah, it's definitely a commodity. but same can be said about other speculative commodities such as gold or silver, and they've been used as currencies (ok, not quite, but close enough) for thousands of years :) not to mention that instability in actual currencies happens all the time, if you look outside of the post-ww2 first world.
nosuchthing 11y ago
Normal people don't buy groceries with bitcoins. Actually I don't think I've ever seen a local brick & mortar business advertise their ability or willingness to accept BTC.
jdc 11y ago
Coincidentally, the Economist published two articles on Bitcoin two days ago, one of which was featured on the front page print edition (which I just got in the mail today). http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21677198-technology-behind-bitcoin-could-transform-how-economy-works-trust-machine http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21677198-technology-be... http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21677228-technology-behind-bitcoin-lets-people-who-do-not-know-or-trust-each-other-build-dependable http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21677228-technology-b...
- jdc 11y ago
  Too late to edit now, but it turns out the articles were actually published four days ago.

408 points by Timshel 11y ago

x5n1 11y ago

here we go again.

That may become the fastest journey across the Gartner trough of disillusionment that I have seen. So it answers Fred Wilsons's question at http://avc.com/2014/09/the-bitcoin-hype-cycle/ http://avc.com/2014/09/the-bitcoin-hype-cycle/

notahacker 11y ago
From Wilson's blog you'd conclude the opposite though, that the speed of the journey across the Gartner trough of disillusionment had been much slower and dragged much deeper into the trough than he'd been expecting at the time. Wilson thought it was "well into" the trough phase by Sep 2014, with the price around ~$400 after one mini-recovery proved illusory. It then halved again, and has taken more than a year for this latest mini recovery to take it up to the heady heights of the bottom of Wilson's "trough"... That trough sure looks long compared with that brief late 2013 spike.... http://www.coindesk.com/price/#2010-07-18,2015-11-03,close,bpi,USD http://www.coindesk.com/price/#2010-07-18,2015-11-03,close,b...
gavazzy 11y ago
I think it's far more like this: http://imgur.com/bcf2DbW http://imgur.com/bcf2DbW

LoSboccacc 11y ago

I keep biting my finger off, trading bitcoins seems so nice but to enter you need to give RID access to shady merchant, which is a bummer. Anyone know an exchange where btc can be bought simply with paypal?

edward 11y ago
What does RID mean? PayPal T&C says virtual currency isn't allowed.
- throwaway049 11y ago
  I assumed it meant real identity
- LoSboccacc 11y ago
  sorry it's a direct debt/bank transfer, sometimes I forget to translate acronyms
sktrdie 11y ago
Nope since paypal is chargeback-able. You can try localbitcoins if you don't want to give out your info.
TimSchumann 11y ago
Ranked in order of my preference. https://www.coinbase.com/global https://www.coinbase.com/global - Initial setup can be slow, as with identity verification, but once you're set up buying is relatively painless. Withdrawing can sometimes be slow, expect to wait 2 to 5 business days after purchasing before you can withdraw. Shadiness Level - Just shady enough it might work. 4.5 stars would cupcake again. (They're a YC company too, so you'd be helping, airquotes, the cause - as it were. https://www.bitstamp.net/ https://www.bitstamp.net/ - Better for trading, more like an actual exchange whereas Coinbase is much more of a broker/dealer. (Correct me if I'm wrong on that someone who would know better) Shadiness Level - Low. They're venture backed, Slovenian based, and good peoples in my experience. https://btc-e.com/ https://btc-e.com/ - Great for variety of coins traded. Based on my experience I'd recommend. That being said... Shadiness Level - Moderate. Nobody really knows who runs the site, although there has been speculation. I think they're based out of Russia. https://www.bitfinex.com/ https://www.bitfinex.com/ - This would be my go to for actual trading if I wanted to make/lose a lot of money. Based in Singapore IIRC. Shadiness Level - Low from what I've heard, just low on the list because I haven't had any personal experience with them. Something about Singapore and Financial makes me think of super villains though. https://localbitcoins.com/ https://localbitcoins.com/ - Limited by who is selling in your area, have to meet in person, cash only, and markup is usually high. (5% to 7.5% above market) Shadiness Level - hit-or-miss, ranges from awesome people to scum of the earth types. Make sure you meet in a public place.

Marazan 11y ago

Hmm, time o check the googlentrends "bitcoin" chart vs the bitcoin price chart again. They had a 1to1 correlation last time I looked. EDIT: Just went back to look and peek Google Trends interest in Bitcoin happens prior to peek Bitcoin price so public interest leads Bitcoin price as I suggest. Trends crash before the price does.

tjbiddle 11y ago
Correlation does not imply causation.
- lololomg 11y ago
  Nobody said it did
- Marazan 11y ago
  You're the kind of person who upon seeing a gun shot victim and as the coroner says, " He was killed by a bullet entering the body and piercing the heart" would shout out "Correlation does not imply causation" reflexively. Do you really not think the general population's interest in bitcoin has any effect on the price?
  - verroq 11y ago
    Or maybe price is driving the interest?
    - vanderZwan 11y ago
      Perfectly fair question, but I highly doubt there would be a 1:1 causal relation from BC price to twitter mentions of it. Trending topics are more of a critical-mass "hashtags trending with exponential growth" kind of thing.
      - makomk 11y ago
        Nearly all the Twitter mentions of it I've seen lately were people talking about the price rise.

sonium 11y ago

It is however less likely to be due to exchange manipulations this time because the exchanges are more diversified.

pille 11y ago
No, not really. If you can manipulate the price on one exchange, it will drag the prices in the other exchanges along with it. MtGox's high BTC rates were too close to arbitrage until it was clear you wouldn't get your money out.
- aianus 11y ago
  I was arbitraging MtGox vs US/Canadian exchanges up until 6 months before they blew up. The spread was easily 3% even then. Thankfully they took 28 days to wire me $10k and I saw the writing on the wall and stopped in time.

mtgx 11y ago

All aboard the speculation train!

est 11y ago

The China factor behind this "surge" is because this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMM_(Ponzi_scheme_company) started doing business in China. It's growing very huge.

trymas 11y ago
+1 Somehow I refuse to believe that this surge in price is natural.
- hellofunk 11y ago
  Price fluctuation in tradeable products of any kind is never "natural", it is supply/demand-driven. And supply and demand are complex forces with much turbulence from a vast number of influences.
  - Retric 11y ago
    Speculation is a thing. BC is still infinitesimal in terms of the global economy and even relatively tiny movements of money can underline or pop a bubble.
    - hellofunk 11y ago
      Yes, and speculation is one of the forces affecting demand. There is no such thing as a "natural" price move in any tradeable product. The term has no meaning; all trading is based on some form of speculation or other forces.
      - Retric 11y ago
        People use "natural" or "baseline" to refer to the price a commodity returns to after a bubble burst. Though, price movements are more chaotic than that and you can have short term spikes, swings from external effects ex: natural disasters, short term 'bubbles', and demand from things like tax policy changes so "natural" is somewhat vague. So, the implication is it's what happens when you remove short term and artificial effects.

Zarkonnen 11y ago

Tulip bulbs! Got your tulip bulbs right here!

ojr 11y ago
tulips that can be transfer digitally anywhere in the world at a low fee...
- maheart 11y ago
  I'd like to also add: - There is no "Federal Reserve" type entity attempting to influence BitCoin (whether that's a good thing or not, is complicated...) - Privacy (with the help of Zerocoin)
- bduerst 11y ago
  Assuming the network isn't overloaded again, and that you don't care about refunds or insurance.
- Dylan16807 11y ago
  If you wanted to sell a tulip ownership certificate this century it would also be digitally anywhere in the world at a low fee...
  - ojr 11y ago
    Low just like Western Union and Moneygram got it ;)
exprx 11y ago
I sense unwarranted criticism here – it's not like the ups and downs of BitCoin are going to affect a major economy any time soon (or ever). It's more a good thing there's this new game speculators can play; even if someone games the system, it isn't going to affect anything of value (e.g. a company producing something of value). It's not like BitCoin is ever going to be a major currency, or a real currency, really. The distribution of it is even more skewed, and artificially so, than that of any real currency. (And no, it isn't analogous to early investors in a business.)

_Marak_ 11y ago

Price surge is in direct correlation with Winklevoss "Gemini" exchange going online on October 8th. https://gemini.com/ https://gemini.com/ This chart shows the price surge starting the exact same day Gemini went online: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60ztgSzm1g10zm... I really hope this is genuine growth, but I have a sneaking suspicion it could be partially due to market manipulation by Gemini. The Winklevoss twins have a lot of money riding on this play.

zilian 11y ago
Your claim is really US-centric. Most of the exchange's volume right now is from China. China is driving this and I don't see how an american-bank-only exchange would be the main reason, if there is one.
- _Marak_ 11y ago
  I guess no one remembers MTGOX and the Willy bot. I'll take my down-votes in stride. Only the future will reveal the truth.
  - bdcravens 11y ago
    Of course they do. The volume required to do Willy-style manipulation is far greater than what is occurring on Gemini.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
TylerE 11y ago
No it isn't. Volume on Gemini is miniscule, less than 1% of the chinese exchanges.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  The suggestion that it is market manipulation by the Winklevosses related to Gemini doesn't mean that its a result of action on Gemini; an effort to use existing exchanges that can support the volume to drive Bitcoin in a way that would increase public perception of the attractiveness of Bitcoin to position the sales pitch for Gemini as a "grown up" exchange isn't entirely unthinkable. Not that I think its likely, mind you, just that "the action isn't on Gemini" isn't sufficient to rebut that the movement is related to Gemini. I think, though, that MMM still seems likely to explain more of it, and other China-specific conditions may explain more of the China-focused movement. Manipulation around Gemini, while not inconceivable, seems to be a bit more of a leap from the evidence available.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

It's amusing to me how, on this subject, Hacker News comments draw closer to regular internet comments in terms of the ratio of detailed discussion to biting one-liners. I'm inclined to think that it demonstrates how very silly the whole thing is, that even us eggheads get snarkily dismissive, but I'm sure some will disagree...

AndrewGaspar 11y ago
Referring to Hacker News posters as 'eggheads' in the large is a little too gracious.

sfjailbird 11y ago

There is a LOT of talk about "blockchain technology" going around these days. It seems like another "cloud", i.e. some vague concept that consultants can sell to CTOs who are afraid of appearing behind the technology curve. New clothes for the emperor. Since bitcoin is the reference implementation of "blockchain technology" obviously all this interest rubs off. And since bitcoin at this point is all promise without much reality behind it (like a "pre-monetization" startup), it is a great vehicle for hype driven speculation, meaning that any price increase drives further speculation, until the next hard crash.

Marazan 11y ago
The Economist had an article of the magical wonders of the blockchain last week that kind of skimped on the downsides.
cookiecaper 11y ago
Why is it that the worst things always become the most popular? I mined my first bitcoin before it hit a dollar, so it's nothing against bitcoin, just as acknowledgement of the ridiculousness of the trend of cloud computing is nothing against the cloud itself. Why can't we get a fad that's reasonable for once? I just don't get how people convert these specialized things that may help some companies sometimes into widespread hysteria, where every company feels like they have to go all in. Companies regularly take their basically-fine hardware offline so they can start renting the same or worse from Amazon, because then they can tell people that they're "in the cloud". I know one company that used to have all their stuff running on hardware and working pretty much fine. They switched to "the cloud" because they thought it was cool. They now pay Amazon the amount of money it'd take to re-buy all the hardware that used to run their site each and every month. I should figure this out because if I can see one of these trends coming and time it right I could make a lot of money.
aianus 11y ago
Maybe you should do some research before calling it a "vague concept that consultants can sell to CTOs". It's the first distributed, decentralized ledger that successfully operates in the presence of malicious nodes. The white paper and reference implementation represent a fundamental breakthrough in computer science (a solution to the famous and previously unsolved Byzantine Generals problem). Bitcoin is a big deal whether you want to realize it or not.

csomar 11y ago

There is nothing that can guarantee that this ride is real, but here are a few things: 1. However big is MMM, it's probably too small for the size of the bitcoin economy right now. Remember that if you are transacting in bitcoin, there is one party buying and the other one selling. So you are not rising the price to the moon. 2. The number of transactions has been growing again as of late. It's heating at the blockchain right now ( https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions ). With 1MB, bitcoin can support less than 300k transactions a day. 3. The total output volume is jumping to crazy levels ( https://blockchain.info/charts/output-volume?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address= https://blockchain.info/charts/output-volume?timespan=all&sh... ) only seen in bubbles. 4. I have a localbitcoins post. I usually get 1-2 requests per week. In the last few days, well, I really lost count. 5. Google trends is spiking: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin But maybe this is happening because bitcoin price is rising, not the other way around? 6. If the price is rising fast, the supply will dry because nobody wants to sell an appreciating asset. If an asset is appreciating, it'll drive demand. Which will drive the price higher. 7. Media will start talking about it. It'll drive more people. It'll drive the price more. 8. We'll see if the new fancy infrastructure that bitcoin got is rock-solid. 9. If you don't own the keys, you don't own the bitcoins. 10. It's nice, but only if you bought the dip and sold before the crash.

jcfrei 11y ago
> However big is MMM, it's probably too small for the size of the bitcoin economy right now [...] That's very hard to quantify, but there might well be a feedback loop involving the media which leads to a price increase caused by MMM Global. The following Google Trends data for South Africa and the Philippines shows a nice correlation between searches for bitcoin and MMM Global: http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US&geo=ZA&cmpt=q&q=bitcoin,+MMM+Global&tz=Etc/GMT-1&content=1 http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US&geo=ZA&cmpt=q&...
- csomar 11y ago
  That's why I used "probably". The thing is, transacting with bitcoin will not raise the price exponentially. BTC is already being exchanged in many millions of dollars a day. So unless MMM turns out to be a billion-dollar ponzi scheme I don't really think it'll affect the BTC price much.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

joosters 11y ago
Oh no, another "Here's a huge market. Now imagine if only 1% of them buy your product" article to add to the junk pile.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    How is control of these bitcoin being transferred to someone who is willing to accept the controlled currency? Presumably they would have to be in mainland China. I guess someone who is more able to circumvent the controls traditionally might be able to move the money out and could sell bitcoin to profit from that capability. edit: argh.

amelius 11y ago

Could somebody comment on how "future proof" the bitcoin technology really is? How large can the trading volumes become, and is there a limit? What advances have been made in crypto-currencies that will replace bitcoin?

kristofferR 11y ago
Bitcoin is in constant development, so it's a hard question to answer. If Bitcoin core development suddenly stopped right now it wouldn't be very future proof. Trading volumes are irrelevant from a scaling perspective, what matters is number of transactions per second (tps). Right now Bitcoin has a really low capacity, just 7tps, way below VISA for example. However, progress is underway on creating the Lightning Network [2], which will enable billions of transactions per day. Just 11 days ago a major requirement of the Lightning network was merged into Bitcoin core, and things are moving fairly quickly in the right direction. [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability [2] https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/ I doubt anything will replace Bitcoin, further crypto-currency advances will likely be built on top of it (like the Lightning Network and sidechains). Ethereum is looking incredibly promising (has been dubbed Bitcoin 2.0), but I think it will be used primarily as a blockchain programming framework instead of as an alternative currency.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- DennisP 11y ago
  Most of the things you can do with smart contracts in Ethereum involve some kind of currency...crowdfunding, smart locks, prediction markets, etc. It's possible to implement subcurrencies with Ethereum contracts, but native ether is more efficient, a little easier to work with, and is the one currency you can be sure everyone on the network has.
- mike_hearn 11y ago
  Lightning isn't going to happen any time soon. Bear in mind it's not even block chain based, nodes are stateful and control signing keys, and no existing software works with it. Lightning will require entirely new wallets to be created for it, and those wallets will be very complicated. It's a multi-year project at most. The reality is that Bitcoin will fall apart if too much load is placed on it, and it's getting closer to its (entirely arbitrary) 1mb scale ceiling too fast for comfort.

spooningtamarin 11y ago

how would one trade bitcoin fast enough to profit? can one short bitcoin in a single day? last time I tried it was insanely slow to buy bitcoin, and then sell it...

brianpetro_ 11y ago
Magnr give the best margins I've found, 10:1. You can short sell too. My referral link https://www.magnr.com/?r=79019 https://www.magnr.com/?r=79019

jbssm 11y ago

Actually the break of price parity between China and Western exchanges is historically very bad news for bitcoin. It will mark China as purely speculative and will break ties with the only force that was keeping the price at the 300 USD level in the past months. It's similar to what happened with MTGox. When the price parity was over (although there was always a ~1-2% premium on MtGox price) bitcoin crashed hard and never recovered.

TomGullen 11y ago

I find it ironic that if MMM is having an impact on the price, that irrational actors (people buying into MMM) are inflating the price of Bitcoin (mainly promoted by libertarians). Anyway, the up swing is impressive now and can't be dismissed as normal volatilty: https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitfinex/btcusd https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitfinex/btcusd There will be a big drop at some point, no one really wants to sell when it's rising like this. This sort of upward movement is exactly why a lot of people have bought Bitcoin. Trying to time the top will be hard though. I imagine a subsequent drop of ~25% would be likely. It's fun to be back at a time of thinking about when to sell again.

bby 11y ago
what is MMM?
celticninja 11y ago
If it is MMM driven then at some point the organisers will want to cash out, a huge dump/sell of coins across multiple exchanges would kill the price, however they are unlikely to be able to sell all of their coins so it would hurt their remaining assets. A slow sell off would make more sense but given the illegal nature of the scheme they may not have a choice in the matter.
- hippich 11y ago
  they have to cash out all the time, since they need to keep paying their members to get more youtube videos about "MMM pays XXX $"
dopamean 11y ago
Where did you get 25% from?

cryptojuice 11y ago

Time to dust off the ol mining rig, LTC to the moon!

bdcravens 11y ago
Too bad difficulty increases mean your old rig will return a small % of what it did before (if any at all)

bkolobara 11y ago

And it's starting again. Kraken is now down for me http://i.imgur.com/quLUvxf.png http://i.imgur.com/quLUvxf.png

edward 11y ago

The price is now $500.

sakopov 11y ago
It seems to have hit the ceiling at $500. The price has backed off a few times throughout the day.

murbard2 11y ago

The convoluted way they tie this to DAH is somewhat hilarious.

sakopov 11y ago

I don't know if this is good outside of just pure speculation profit. Bitcoin seemed to hit a fairly decent stable point around $250 before this new bubble.

g8oz 11y ago

The Economist had a cover story last week on blockchain tech. http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21677198-technology-behind-bitcoin-could-transform-how-economy-works-trust-machine http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21677198-technology-be... I'm sure that helped.

dear 11y ago

"The blockchain is the new shining star, and it spills over to the bitcoin world as well.”

SpendBig 11y ago

In the mean time, CasinoCoin gambles its way up as an alternative coin.

nvk 11y ago

For anyone that has been around BTC for long enough, this is expected, but also expect more rallies and more crashes. Quick plug: If you are looking for a secure wallet with good privacy for your fresh Bitcoin, Try [Coinkite Multisig](https://coinkite.com/multisig https://coinkite.com/multisig), up to m-of-15, any/all keys can be generated offline, option to escrow backup, notifications, multi-user-multisig, support, notifications, works well with Ledgers, and the list goes on!

dkns 11y ago
Why was this expected? Care to explain to someone who isn't around BTC?
- bduerst 11y ago
  There's a lot of pump and dumps [1] with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. [1] https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Pump-and-Dump-Char.png https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/P...
  - Atheros 11y ago
    There is no evidence of a pump currently happening. This is not a pump and dump.
    - bduerst 11y ago
      Right - they asked about Bitcoin in general which is rife with pump and dumps. The bubble right now is mostly a response to the MMM buzz.

a3voices 11y ago

The Bitcoin dream of it being accepted by banks and replacing fiat currency will never come true, especially since financial institutions are focusing on blockchain technology as opposed to Bitcoin. This recent price increase will possibly be viewed as a dead cat bounce.

mrb 11y ago
What people like you who raise this argument forget is that the success of a blockchain is intertwined with the success of whatever currency/reward is granted to the miners who make the blockchain work. So if Bitcoin's blockchain is adopted by banks, then Bitcoin the currency will succeed. And if banks adopt another blockchain, then the currency of that blockchain will succeed. It is literally impossible to have a functioning decentralized blockchain without a proper reward/currency built on it to incentivize miners to mine on it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- berns 11y ago
  The only "bitcoin" that can succeed is the one that is originated from a sovereign state. For then it has the monopoly and can enforce its taxing power that is what ultimately gives value to fiat currency.
  - mrb 11y ago
    A currency has value because it is accepted, no matter who accepts it (sovereign state or merchants, doesn't matter).
    - berns 11y ago
      It is accepted because it is needed. Everybody needs it to pay taxes, other than that it has no value.
      - 11y ago

gesman 11y ago

More people are realizing that China and Greece are very close to default. There are more holes in these economies than their respective governments has fingers to plug them in. Flight to bitcoin is the only natural and logical progression.

dragontamer 11y ago
Where the hell is the flight to gold and bonds then? Something else is going on. Gold is still at $1,120ish USD. There is no flight to safety.
- gesman 11y ago
  Two reasons. 1. US markets are priming for a temporary rise till approx. end of spring / mid-year 2016. 2. Gold is no longer safe bet in the light of a large scale government defaults and rather drastic domino effort that will follow. For how long do you think Fed are going to kick the can down the road?
  - dragontamer 11y ago
    > 2. Gold is no longer safe bet in the light of a large scale government defaults and rather drastic domino effort that will follow. That makes no sense what so ever.
    - gesman 11y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 In case of drastic economic downturn this is a possibility along with currency devaluation. Back then there were no bitcoin in existence. Today it is.
      - dragontamer 11y ago
        If you're worried the evil gov'mt is gonna steal your gold, then why won't they just steal your BTC too? There's a reason why Swiss safety deposit boxes of gold exist. You gotta pull that crap out of the country. Hell, if the US Government just declared ownership of the BTC Network through subpeonas, they can effectively 51% attack it and double-spend all the BTC they want anyway. So no, your hyperbole does not convince me.

ca98am79 11y ago

From a technical standpoint, BTC formed a nice base around $200-$250 over most of 2015. It was mostly quiet in the news, so it was an ideal time to invest. Now it is breaking out to the upside of that base. Sell when your neighbor tells you to invest in bitcoin. There is a chance the price could go nuts (e.g. $1 million/BTC) - it could be a serious bubble, because of the technology behind it, and the implications it could have to the world. "It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower." - William O'Neil

jarboot 11y ago

The little pile of bitcoins I had laying around from a couple weeks ago has doubled in price. Should I spend them now in anticipation of a bubble bursting or wait for the price to possibly go up?

godzillabrennus 11y ago
As with any volatile investment you should get out when you are ahead, or in need of the money. You may lose out on further gains but the likelihood of another crash is high. It's better to win than lose.
- aianus 11y ago
  > It's better to win than lose. Mathematically that's just not true. In objective terms not winning an extra $100 is exactly the same as losing $100. This psychological fallacy (called 'loss aversion') is the primary reason the average player loses at poker. They're afraid of losing $100 when they might be behind but they constantly fail to extract that extra $100 value bet when they know they're likely ahead.
erickhill 11y ago
Oh, you should probably sell them. Just like when I sold all of my Apple stock when it shot up to $30, purchased at ~$20. :/
ck2 11y ago
My logic is always sell half, keep half. Less regret maybe.
oberstein 11y ago
Depends what you expected those initial coins to do. Did you get them as a speculative investment with a chance of "interest" of x%/year? Then a 100% increase is pretty damn good as far as investments go, you shouldn't feel too bad about selling now. You'll have regret if it continues to grow to the moon, so maybe sell half or 3/4. But also calculate the potential unrealized earnings if it went to the moon -- i.e. if your little pile was only worth $100, now $200, even if it doubles twice more the difference is just $600.

wsxcde 11y ago

A counterpoint to some of the pro-bitcoin hype. The developers are still arguing about the 1MB blocksize limit. Currently bitcoin is limited to a theoretical maximum of 7 transactions per second (~60k transactions per day). This figure was derived assuming the smallest possible transaction size but of course real transactions are larger and the practical maximum is only about 2-3 transactions per second (~20k transactions per day). This should have been a pretty easy limit to change, it's just a #define in the code. But some core developers are against it and we're deadlocked and have been this way for at least a year. There is an alternative client called bitcoinxt, this supports larger blocksizes but has literally no support among either the miners or chinese exchanges which are driving the rally. (See https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-block-sizes-e047bc9f830 https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-block-sizes-e047bc9f830 for a summary.) A number of DoS attacks on the bitcoin network: some based on spamming lots of fee paying transactions, some based on retransmitting slightly modified versions of existing transactions, have rendered it practically inoperable for days on end. The fee paying attack isn't terribly expensive, costing only a few tens of thousands of dollars per day, while the "malleability" attack costs literally nothing other than an internet connection. There hasn't been any significant progress on solutions for either of these problems. The bitcoiner response to this is that you shouldn't have been affected by either of these if you used the right client or paid the right fees, but imperfect clients and fixed fees are a reality of the bitcoin ecosystem so I don't see how wishing them away changes anything. One of bitcoin's biggest advantages was supposed to be the ability to quickly react to changing circumstances by modifying the protocol. Recent events have shown this is pretty much impossible: too many people are too heavily invested in its current form, and they want no risks and hence no change. Techniques which supposedly allow risk free changes (called sidechains) still have a long way to go before we can be convinced they work as intended. Besides they're not even fully implemented on the bitcoin testnet, let alone real bitcoin. Overall, even if people are buying into the "blockchain" tech, it doesn't seem to me that they would be interested in bitcoin itself because of the problems I've outlined. I think the safe money is still on this being a repeat of the Willybot/Mt Gox fiasco where the exchange operator used nonexistent dollars to buy bitcoin and drive the price higher. Other people were sucked in by the uptrend and they ended up with nonexistent bitcoin/dollars which they weren't able to withdraw from the exchange.

xacaxulu 11y ago

I slowly bought about 25 BTC since January. Honestly this is very exciting right now and I've basically been daytrading for the last few days. I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it's been enjoyable to set alerts for different price points then buy/sell as necessary. I like the liquidity and 0 government involvement/taxation - something I couldn't do with stock/options/CDs etc.

blantonl 11y ago
If you convert BTC to $$ or your local currency, expect a tax situation.
- thescriptkiddie 11y ago
  Why would you want to do that when you can just pay for things directly?
  - Goronmon 11y ago
    Why would you want to do that when you can just pay for things directly? That doesn't change the fact that in many places you'll still owe taxes, regardless if you don't cash out in a distinct step somewhere. At least as far as I understand things.
- xacaxulu 11y ago
  Local transactions from anonymous accounts. I'm not going to file anything.
TomAnthony 11y ago
Where are you doing your trading?
- burrox 11y ago
  Can you do this sort of thing in Coinbase?

jcslzr 11y ago

its because all those youtubers talking about a dollar collapse, because the fed wont raise the interest rate (more like the fed can not raise rates)

chrisbennet 11y ago

Bitcoin seems more like a speculative commodity than a currency. As long as Bitcoin is experiencing such instability, how can it be useful as a currency?

Synaesthesia 11y ago
It's been stable for a long time before this jump, and over much of its history. Yeah it is disruptive! It's very easy to use as a currency since it's the only way you can send value instantly around the globe with almost no cost and without any regulatory issues.
- chrisbennet 11y ago
  Ok, that makes more sense. Thanks.
xixi77 11y ago
yeah, it's definitely a commodity. but same can be said about other speculative commodities such as gold or silver, and they've been used as currencies (ok, not quite, but close enough) for thousands of years :) not to mention that instability in actual currencies happens all the time, if you look outside of the post-ww2 first world.

nosuchthing 11y ago

Normal people don't buy groceries with bitcoins. Actually I don't think I've ever seen a local brick & mortar business advertise their ability or willingness to accept BTC.

jdc 11y ago

Coincidentally, the Economist published two articles on Bitcoin two days ago, one of which was featured on the front page print edition (which I just got in the mail today). http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21677198-technology-behind-bitcoin-could-transform-how-economy-works-trust-machine http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21677198-technology-be... http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21677228-technology-behind-bitcoin-lets-people-who-do-not-know-or-trust-each-other-build-dependable http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21677228-technology-b...

jdc 11y ago
Too late to edit now, but it turns out the articles were actually published four days ago.