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Bitcoin Price Chart

objectivistbrit 10y ago
Up-to-date price here: http://www.coindesk.com/price/ http://www.coindesk.com/price/
lma21 10y ago
Can someone please explain why the price has been increasing? I haven't properly followed any news behind bitcoin lately...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- hultner 10y ago
  Taking a wild guess I'd suppose increased political instability would be a driving factor some of them being: * Britain, Brexit * Italy, uncertainty around euro and leadership * France, Presidential candidates are more aligned with Russian/Putin-values then earlier * USA, Trump being elected to president as an outlier These things will of course also drive political uncertainty in the rest of the world which will naturally put value of fiat currency in speculation, gold certificates are already sold at a much greater rate then available gold so bitcoin is a viable alternative. Another explanation could be current lack of institutional investors in the bitcoin market, once BtC ETF's (stock traded funds) correlated to bitcoin value starts popping up there is a much higher likelyhood for institutions to enter the market. At this moment I only know of one, XBT in Sweden but the Winklevoss brothers are trying to open one up in the US. My post may contain errors, if so please correct me.
  - drcross 10y ago
    As someone following Bitcoin I would mostly agree with this. While Bitcoin cannot be considered a proper (or in any way safe) alternative to Fiat I think it's growth highlights a dissatisfaction with central banking as more people become educated about it.
- 3pt14159 10y ago
  Anecdotal, I know, but I've seen a uptick in ransomware aimed at very large organizations.
  - rebuilder 10y ago
    Maybe a week ago, news had it that a Liechtenstein bank had their customer info stolen by someone who's now threatening to expose tax dodgers unless paid 10% of each accounts balance, in Bitcoin. Related? Who knows. This kind of noise is in the news all the time.
- larrydag 10y ago
  Can someone explain why volume is so low? Has speculation decreased dramatically with Bitcoin?
  - rtkwe 10y ago
    I think a large amount of speculation has moved off block into exchanges where it's harder to track.
- the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
  I would assume that people like to speculate with the currency. Since there is limited supply people expect the value to go up. As they buy it becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. (Also I assume the cost of mining is going up as well)
- antouank 10y ago
  I thought also in countries like Venezuela and Argentina, where the local currencies are devaluating fast, they are using bitcoin as an easy way to get money exchanged. For example : https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-miners-make-big-profits-but-fear-for-safety-in-venezuela/ https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-miners-make-big-prof...
- wyldfire 10y ago
  Bitcoin's price increase attributed to increasing Chinese demand for cryptocurrency according to interview with BTCC CEO Bobby Lee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3z-VXbk9_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3z-VXbk9_o
- applecore 10y ago
  Supply and demand.
- koonsolo 10y ago
  As I already said in another comment: Might have something to do with the demonization of the 500 and 1000 rupee bills. Which seems like another serious blow to the credibility of fiat money.
- DanielleMolloy 10y ago
  What about ransomware? The variants I know usually have to be paid by Bitcoin.
- xiphias 10y ago
  I will sell all my Bitcoins when politicians stop inflating fiat currencies...until then I won't work so that they can inflate all my money away.
hultner 10y ago
As someone a bit out of the loop, how is the whole block size debacle evolving?
- davotoula 10y ago
  It's not. There's a lot of arguing and a main proponent of the "big blocks" camp has organised enough miners to current bitcoin scaling enhancements. They demand bigger blocks before they allow further scaling enhancements.
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    Doesn't segwit help mitigate some of the congestion?
    - thescriptkiddie 10y ago
      No, segwit fixes the transaction malleability problem, which is unrelated to scaling.
    - tinfoilman 10y ago
      Not out the box, To make use of Segwit wallet software must upgrade to support it, that is a lot of work for Wallets Devs that generally are not getting paid for their work. It is arriving as a soft fork to get round cores instances that hard forks cannot happen (even tho other cryptos have done it. Eth/XMR). The soft fork is not backwards compatible and bits exchanged by segwit will only be protected by segwit enabled nodes but in fairness with a 95% activation threshold that will be 95% of the network. We have a number of mining pools now stating that they will not run segwit without a hard fork for a block size increase, the est hashrate is 10-15% that will refuse to run it, this will either mean core need to change their 95% requirement OR simply say no block size increase and no segwit. Personally and sadly if bitcoin cannot grow past its current limits, I do not believe it will keep its first mover position. Just seems insane that something that was marked as a global payment network is limited in its size. It is like limiting BGP routing tables to a size and saying "only certain people can play", and if you want to play, just pay more.
pedrocr 10y ago
It's amazing how well the historical bitcoin pricing curve[1] matches the Gartner hype cycle conceptual curve[2]. One of the criticisms of the Gartner curve is how unscientific it is but at least in this case the behavior matches pretty well. [1] http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zv http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25z... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hype-Cycle-General.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hype-Cycle-General.png
- dlevi 10y ago
  a) You should use log scale[1] b) The same "hype cycle" has been repeated in 2011 (bottom $0,001, top $32, crash to $2) 2013 (bottom $10ish, top $266, crash to $55) and 2014 (bottom $70ish, peak $1200ish, crash to $350ish) - always reaching higher highs and bottoming out to higher lows. Therefore, zoom out and you will see that Bitcoins has "interim bubbles", but the long time trend has nothing to do with Gartner's hype cycle. [1] https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzl https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25... [2] https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzl https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zvz...
  - pedrocr 10y ago
    There will always be smaller price fluctuations than the long-term trend. I'm not sure why you think a log scale is a better comparison either. Note I wasn't just comparing the shape of the curves, the actual descriptions of the hype cycle match the bitcoin story fairly well. Anyway it was just a curiosity, eyeballing price charts and thinking you see meaning is a time-tested method for being wrong...
    - itsnotlupus 10y ago
      Anecdotally, that exact graph has been posted on the bitcoin subreddits frequently since 2011, each time fitting the price chart rather well. On that basis, it's not crazy to imagine that today's long term trend will become tomorrow's fluctuation once more.
    - 10y ago
klackerz 10y ago
I believe India may be contributing to the price increase due to the whole demonetisation thing going on here.
MildlySerious 10y ago
What I find most interesting about the rise in the last months, is that it seems organic. No huge bubbles, no temporary rises in volume. Just growth. I'm not saying it's not speculative by any means, but it does have a healthier and more solid feel, which I personally welcome.
- koonsolo 10y ago
  Might have something to do with the demonisation of the 500 and 1000 rupee bills? I don't have any evidence, but this seems another blow to the credibility of fiat money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_500_and_1000_rupee_note_demonetisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_500_and_1000_rupee_note...
  - djaychela 10y ago
    I've seen a number of news pieces coming up in my Google feed saying that adoption in India has increased hugely as a result, such as [1], and it would make some sense given that many do have mobile phones. I'm not sure about a blow to the credibility of fiat money, but it may be a reaction to what could be viewed as a very difficult policy for a huge number of people to deal with, but then that's the kind of thing that helps adoption of alternatives. [1]http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/%E2%80%98Bitcoin-adoption-in-India-sees-surge%E2%80%99/article16716798.ece http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/%E2%80%98Bitcoin-a...
- panarky 10y ago
  Note that Ethereum has collapsed from $21.50 to $7.88 or -63% following a series of hacks, forks and bugs. $1 billion in market cap is gone from Ethereum, and a large part of that has probably moved into old, boring, reliable Bitcoin. Note that the ETHBTC pair dropped from a high of 0.037 to 0.010, or -73%. Since the dollar has strengthened during this time due to Brexit and Trump, you would expect ETHUSD to be more severe. The fact that ETHBTC has been hurt even more may indicate that there's more driving Bitcoin demand than just rotation out of Ethereum.
- xiphias 10y ago
  This is the kind of thinking that starts bubbles :)
dsugarman 10y ago
I thought long-term steady increases in BTC value would be because of long-term steady increases in volume, but volume looks like it's fallen off a cliff. What is going on here?
- joantune 10y ago
  Low, constant 'buy' volume. Are people using Bitcoin to store their funds more and more?
  - wyldfire 10y ago
    Yes, everyone is "hodl"-ing because the people who came before them got 100x or more gains. They're all praying that the steadily decreasing inflation curve and steady demand naturally yields higher exchange rates.
  - xiphias 10y ago
    Every time somebody buys/sells bitcoins she just makes exchanges and algo traders richer. Bitcoin is awesome as a store of value...for everything else, there's Mastercard.
- rebuilder 10y ago
  Can't say for sure, but it could be because speculation has historically been a major driver of volume and low volatility is bad for speculators. So while there's certainly been a good deal of ups and downs recently, overall the market has been, for Bitcoin, relatively boring. Also, a lot of the hyperbullish types might be wary of going all in again, having been burned before.
- hultner 10y ago
  How are transactions prices progressing and are congestion due to block size limits becoming a real problem? If anyone here is heavily involved or invested in bitcoin, what's your opinion on blockchain scalability? Especially with the current blocksize lock, is it viable to keep it at this point if institutional investors enter the market and transaction volume rapidly increases?
- 10y ago
ionwake 10y ago
Just a reminder, no one on hackernews took Bitcoin as anything more than just an uninteresting scam, and this was as little as 3 years ago. It was a just a big joke. It was invented in 2008 and it was appearing in conferences around 2011. But by summer 2013 , there still had not been one article on the front page about bitcoin. I seem to remember comments on here mostly just deriding it if it was ever mentioned. (Please correct me if I am wrong). I just feel this is important to share, not even HN knows what a hot technology is, even if it has been in the same room for years. It is interesting and sometimes I wonder what other emergent tech is on the scene which many know little about.
- solotronics 10y ago
  revolutionary things are rejected by the establishment at first
  - ionwake 10y ago
    I mean if the HN crowd can't recognise an intriguing new emergent technology, who does? I am genuinely interested to know.
    - JBReefer 10y ago
      What if we get it, but don't think it's intriguing?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- andrewpi 10y ago
  I'm not sure why you say that. There are plenty of bitcoin stories on HN going back far longer than 3 years. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2524631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2524631
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
siavosh 10y ago
Are there any good articles/resources that address the challenges of Bitcoin becoming anything more than a security vs a currency given it's similarity to being a restrictive Gold Standard like currency? Recently I've seen some older talks by Yanis Varoufakis saying bitcoin can't work as a currency, and I'm curious if there's a response from the Bitcoin community? https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-dangerous-fantasy-of-apolitical-money/ https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-danger...
- xiphias 10y ago
  We have enough good enough currencies, but the world was missing a good store of value. Gold is too hard to store/buy/sell reliably (and with small margin). It will be a better currency after it's accepted as a store of value by much more people.

Up-to-date price here: http://www.coindesk.com/price/ http://www.coindesk.com/price/

lma21 10y ago

Can someone please explain why the price has been increasing? I haven't properly followed any news behind bitcoin lately...

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
hultner 10y ago
Taking a wild guess I'd suppose increased political instability would be a driving factor some of them being: * Britain, Brexit * Italy, uncertainty around euro and leadership * France, Presidential candidates are more aligned with Russian/Putin-values then earlier * USA, Trump being elected to president as an outlier These things will of course also drive political uncertainty in the rest of the world which will naturally put value of fiat currency in speculation, gold certificates are already sold at a much greater rate then available gold so bitcoin is a viable alternative. Another explanation could be current lack of institutional investors in the bitcoin market, once BtC ETF's (stock traded funds) correlated to bitcoin value starts popping up there is a much higher likelyhood for institutions to enter the market. At this moment I only know of one, XBT in Sweden but the Winklevoss brothers are trying to open one up in the US. My post may contain errors, if so please correct me.
- drcross 10y ago
  As someone following Bitcoin I would mostly agree with this. While Bitcoin cannot be considered a proper (or in any way safe) alternative to Fiat I think it's growth highlights a dissatisfaction with central banking as more people become educated about it.
3pt14159 10y ago
Anecdotal, I know, but I've seen a uptick in ransomware aimed at very large organizations.
- rebuilder 10y ago
  Maybe a week ago, news had it that a Liechtenstein bank had their customer info stolen by someone who's now threatening to expose tax dodgers unless paid 10% of each accounts balance, in Bitcoin. Related? Who knows. This kind of noise is in the news all the time.
larrydag 10y ago
Can someone explain why volume is so low? Has speculation decreased dramatically with Bitcoin?
- rtkwe 10y ago
  I think a large amount of speculation has moved off block into exchanges where it's harder to track.
the_mitsuhiko 10y ago
I would assume that people like to speculate with the currency. Since there is limited supply people expect the value to go up. As they buy it becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. (Also I assume the cost of mining is going up as well)
antouank 10y ago
I thought also in countries like Venezuela and Argentina, where the local currencies are devaluating fast, they are using bitcoin as an easy way to get money exchanged. For example : https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-miners-make-big-profits-but-fear-for-safety-in-venezuela/ https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-miners-make-big-prof...
wyldfire 10y ago
Bitcoin's price increase attributed to increasing Chinese demand for cryptocurrency according to interview with BTCC CEO Bobby Lee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3z-VXbk9_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3z-VXbk9_o
applecore 10y ago
Supply and demand.
koonsolo 10y ago
As I already said in another comment: Might have something to do with the demonization of the 500 and 1000 rupee bills. Which seems like another serious blow to the credibility of fiat money.
DanielleMolloy 10y ago
What about ransomware? The variants I know usually have to be paid by Bitcoin.
xiphias 10y ago
I will sell all my Bitcoins when politicians stop inflating fiat currencies...until then I won't work so that they can inflate all my money away.

hultner 10y ago

As someone a bit out of the loop, how is the whole block size debacle evolving?

davotoula 10y ago
It's not. There's a lot of arguing and a main proponent of the "big blocks" camp has organised enough miners to current bitcoin scaling enhancements. They demand bigger blocks before they allow further scaling enhancements.
- wyldfire 10y ago
  Doesn't segwit help mitigate some of the congestion?
  - thescriptkiddie 10y ago
    No, segwit fixes the transaction malleability problem, which is unrelated to scaling.
  - tinfoilman 10y ago
    Not out the box, To make use of Segwit wallet software must upgrade to support it, that is a lot of work for Wallets Devs that generally are not getting paid for their work. It is arriving as a soft fork to get round cores instances that hard forks cannot happen (even tho other cryptos have done it. Eth/XMR). The soft fork is not backwards compatible and bits exchanged by segwit will only be protected by segwit enabled nodes but in fairness with a 95% activation threshold that will be 95% of the network. We have a number of mining pools now stating that they will not run segwit without a hard fork for a block size increase, the est hashrate is 10-15% that will refuse to run it, this will either mean core need to change their 95% requirement OR simply say no block size increase and no segwit. Personally and sadly if bitcoin cannot grow past its current limits, I do not believe it will keep its first mover position. Just seems insane that something that was marked as a global payment network is limited in its size. It is like limiting BGP routing tables to a size and saying "only certain people can play", and if you want to play, just pay more.

pedrocr 10y ago

It's amazing how well the historical bitcoin pricing curve[1] matches the Gartner hype cycle conceptual curve[2]. One of the criticisms of the Gartner curve is how unscientific it is but at least in this case the behavior matches pretty well. [1] http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zv http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25z... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hype-Cycle-General.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hype-Cycle-General.png

dlevi 10y ago
a) You should use log scale[1] b) The same "hype cycle" has been repeated in 2011 (bottom $0,001, top $32, crash to $2) 2013 (bottom $10ish, top $266, crash to $55) and 2014 (bottom $70ish, peak $1200ish, crash to $350ish) - always reaching higher highs and bottoming out to higher lows. Therefore, zoom out and you will see that Bitcoins has "interim bubbles", but the long time trend has nothing to do with Gartner's hype cycle. [1] https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzl https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25... [2] https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zvzl https://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zvz...
- pedrocr 10y ago
  There will always be smaller price fluctuations than the long-term trend. I'm not sure why you think a log scale is a better comparison either. Note I wasn't just comparing the shape of the curves, the actual descriptions of the hype cycle match the bitcoin story fairly well. Anyway it was just a curiosity, eyeballing price charts and thinking you see meaning is a time-tested method for being wrong...
  - itsnotlupus 10y ago
    Anecdotally, that exact graph has been posted on the bitcoin subreddits frequently since 2011, each time fitting the price chart rather well. On that basis, it's not crazy to imagine that today's long term trend will become tomorrow's fluctuation once more.
  - 10y ago

klackerz 10y ago

I believe India may be contributing to the price increase due to the whole demonetisation thing going on here.

MildlySerious 10y ago

What I find most interesting about the rise in the last months, is that it seems organic. No huge bubbles, no temporary rises in volume. Just growth. I'm not saying it's not speculative by any means, but it does have a healthier and more solid feel, which I personally welcome.

koonsolo 10y ago
Might have something to do with the demonisation of the 500 and 1000 rupee bills? I don't have any evidence, but this seems another blow to the credibility of fiat money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_500_and_1000_rupee_note_demonetisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_500_and_1000_rupee_note...
- djaychela 10y ago
  I've seen a number of news pieces coming up in my Google feed saying that adoption in India has increased hugely as a result, such as [1], and it would make some sense given that many do have mobile phones. I'm not sure about a blow to the credibility of fiat money, but it may be a reaction to what could be viewed as a very difficult policy for a huge number of people to deal with, but then that's the kind of thing that helps adoption of alternatives. [1]http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/%E2%80%98Bitcoin-adoption-in-India-sees-surge%E2%80%99/article16716798.ece http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/%E2%80%98Bitcoin-a...
panarky 10y ago
Note that Ethereum has collapsed from $21.50 to $7.88 or -63% following a series of hacks, forks and bugs. $1 billion in market cap is gone from Ethereum, and a large part of that has probably moved into old, boring, reliable Bitcoin. Note that the ETHBTC pair dropped from a high of 0.037 to 0.010, or -73%. Since the dollar has strengthened during this time due to Brexit and Trump, you would expect ETHUSD to be more severe. The fact that ETHBTC has been hurt even more may indicate that there's more driving Bitcoin demand than just rotation out of Ethereum.
xiphias 10y ago
This is the kind of thinking that starts bubbles :)

dsugarman 10y ago

I thought long-term steady increases in BTC value would be because of long-term steady increases in volume, but volume looks like it's fallen off a cliff. What is going on here?

joantune 10y ago
Low, constant 'buy' volume. Are people using Bitcoin to store their funds more and more?
- wyldfire 10y ago
  Yes, everyone is "hodl"-ing because the people who came before them got 100x or more gains. They're all praying that the steadily decreasing inflation curve and steady demand naturally yields higher exchange rates.
- xiphias 10y ago
  Every time somebody buys/sells bitcoins she just makes exchanges and algo traders richer. Bitcoin is awesome as a store of value...for everything else, there's Mastercard.
rebuilder 10y ago
Can't say for sure, but it could be because speculation has historically been a major driver of volume and low volatility is bad for speculators. So while there's certainly been a good deal of ups and downs recently, overall the market has been, for Bitcoin, relatively boring. Also, a lot of the hyperbullish types might be wary of going all in again, having been burned before.
hultner 10y ago
How are transactions prices progressing and are congestion due to block size limits becoming a real problem? If anyone here is heavily involved or invested in bitcoin, what's your opinion on blockchain scalability? Especially with the current blocksize lock, is it viable to keep it at this point if institutional investors enter the market and transaction volume rapidly increases?
10y ago

ionwake 10y ago

Just a reminder, no one on hackernews took Bitcoin as anything more than just an uninteresting scam, and this was as little as 3 years ago. It was a just a big joke. It was invented in 2008 and it was appearing in conferences around 2011. But by summer 2013 , there still had not been one article on the front page about bitcoin. I seem to remember comments on here mostly just deriding it if it was ever mentioned. (Please correct me if I am wrong). I just feel this is important to share, not even HN knows what a hot technology is, even if it has been in the same room for years. It is interesting and sometimes I wonder what other emergent tech is on the scene which many know little about.

solotronics 10y ago
revolutionary things are rejected by the establishment at first
- ionwake 10y ago
  I mean if the HN crowd can't recognise an intriguing new emergent technology, who does? I am genuinely interested to know.
  - JBReefer 10y ago
    What if we get it, but don't think it's intriguing?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
andrewpi 10y ago
I'm not sure why you say that. There are plenty of bitcoin stories on HN going back far longer than 3 years. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2524631 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2524631
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

siavosh 10y ago

Are there any good articles/resources that address the challenges of Bitcoin becoming anything more than a security vs a currency given it's similarity to being a restrictive Gold Standard like currency? Recently I've seen some older talks by Yanis Varoufakis saying bitcoin can't work as a currency, and I'm curious if there's a response from the Bitcoin community? https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-dangerous-fantasy-of-apolitical-money/ https://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2013/04/22/bitcoin-and-the-danger...

xiphias 10y ago
We have enough good enough currencies, but the world was missing a good store of value. Gold is too hard to store/buy/sell reliably (and with small margin). It will be a better currency after it's accepted as a store of value by much more people.