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Bitcoin Price Tops $1,000 in First Day of 2017 Trading
- 67726e 10y agoOK, I'll be that guy. Is this actually intellectually stimulating to hackers? Should I start posting stock tickers for karma?
- johndevor 10y agoJust the world's first digital, decentralized currency succeeding. Hackers can and will use it to create new and fascinating projects.
- rhino369 10y agoIs it succeeding or are people gambling on the value of it?
- adamnemecek 10y ago> or are people gambling on the value of it? Welcome to investing. Adoption is success.
- jbmorgado 10y agoIs this a currency or just a (totally speculative) stock then?
- rebuilder 10y agoHow would you decide that?
- adamnemecek 10y agoIt's Forex which is both.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- eli 10y agoDoes a skyrocketing penny stock imply a successful company?
- fuzzy-logic 10y agoIf it stays 'skyrocketed', yes.
- jron 10y agoA penny stock that skyrockets and holds value is no longer a penny stock. Bitcoin is 8 years old and has hit $1000 USD twice now over multiple years. The "market cap" is currently over 16 billion dollars. It would place 68th when compared with 192 countries M1 money supply (2015) data: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2214rank.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... The hash rate securing the network is currently at 2.5 quintillion operations per second which is really 5 quintillion SHA256 operations every second: http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ Speaking of pennies... if every operation was a penny laid flat on earth, you could cover the surface of the earth, land and sea, twice over every second. Bitcoin surpassed the penny stock phase a long time ago.
- hillz 10y agoIt's used every day in some legitimate ways. For example, Premise Data Corporation pays their data collectors in almost entirely bitcoin. https://medium.com/@premisedata/premise-payouts-get-easier-with-bitcoin-af057e49bf39#.rzz2qk2m8 https://medium.com/@premisedata/premise-payouts-get-easier-w...
- kneel 10y agoBoth although it's hard to tell how much is success and how much is speculation. Bitcoin's dirty little secret: Illegal drugs/services.
- rebuilder 10y agoIt's hardly a secret. It was designed to be a tool for circumventing states' financial control. Illicit transactions are an obvious application.
- pmorici 10y agoIf you can't buy drugs with it then I'd argue it isn't money. In Baltimore you can trade a bottle of name brand laundry detergent for drugs. I guess that is a clean secret though.
- elif 10y agoMy belief is that after the crashes, few weak hands remain. Brexit's speculation bubble was extremely tame and corrected back to modest growth after only days. Only in the last couple weeks has the growth looked particularly bubbley. Fully unqualified speculation from a casual investor: I suspect the correction goes to no lower than $800.
- ryandvm 10y agoSkyrocketing value is not a desirable trait for a would be currency.
- rebuilder 10y agoThat's true, but it's also the only thing you can expect if Bitcoin succeeds. Eventually the volatility should subside somewhat, as the market grows. It already has, although obviously it's still a roller coaster ride. How much volatility an uncontrolled currency exhibits should be interesting to see if Bitcoin sticks around for good.
- hendzen 10y agoWhy exactly will the volatility ever subside? Currencies that are considered stable are not magically so - this is the result of a careful balancing act by central banks. Bitcoin doesn't have an equivalent entity managing the rate of increase in the money supply.
- rebuilder 10y agoI'm not saying it will go away, I'm just saying, as the trading volume and usage of BTC increases, the amount of money it takes to move the market grows higher. This should result in lower volatility than we have now, but how much lower is an open question we'll see answered if Bitcoin keeps growing.
- johndevor 10y agoFor the same reason that the volatility of gold subsided. Bigger pool of water = smaller splash when you throw the rock in.
- pmorici 10y agoDuring the adoption phase the value needs to appreciate. Think about if you wanted to use a currency to do a $1 million USD transaction. If there is only $500k of that currency in USD terms you are going to have a hard time. So the value of the currency needs to be an order of magnitude or more above the largest transactions it will accommodate.
- 67726e 10y agoI'm more than happy to read technical matters, but it's gone up and down over and over. It's no more interesting that posting Google or Apple stock prices. It's becoming a dead horse with these price posts.
- 67726e 10y agoIt's been out for years. Price reports are not novel or interesting anymore. Might as well post USD reports.
- mrb 10y agoThere has been so many critics of cryptocurrencies on HN that hopefully this 3-year high makes people stop and ponder on why Bitcoin has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectation over the last 8 years...
- readhn 10y agoThe psychology of any market is the same. Nothing has changed in centuries. What goes up...just come down.
- pg314 10y ago> beyond anyone's wildest expectation over the last 8 years... Some people were saying it was going to take over the world and replace fiat currencies. That hasn't happened yet. And when it crossed $1000 for the first time, some people expected it to keep going up exponentially. It's gone beyond the expectations of many sceptics, I give you that.
- sanswork 10y agoIt hasn't succeeded anywhere over the past 3 years except in price. Given peoples expectations 3 years ago I'd go so far as to say it has wildly failed everyone in the bitcoin spaces expectations.
- mrb 10y ago"It hasn't succeeded anywhere over the past 3 years except in price." You must have been living under a rock :) In 3 years, the daily transaction rate grew 8x(!)—clearly a sign that Bitcoin use is growing: a combination of more users, more businesses, etc. An interesting aspect of looking at transaction rate is that it naturally excludes "simple speculators": those who purchase BTC on exchanges and leave the coins stored at the exchange (because a trade never even leaves a trace on the blockchain.) The number of Bitcoin ATMS has doubled in 18 months: http://themerkle.com/number-of-bitcoin-atms-has-more-than-doubled-in-past-18-months/ http://themerkle.com/number-of-bitcoin-atms-has-more-than-do... In 3 years, the global network speed grew from 10 to 2000 petahash/sec. Millions of dollars were poured by many vendors into developing cutting edge 16nm mining ASICs—clearly a sign that at least multiple tech businesses are betting on a long-term success of Bitcoin. As of August 2015 160k merchants accepted Bitcoin (up from 100k one year or so earlier): http://research.ark-invest.com/bitcoin-currency http://research.ark-invest.com/bitcoin-currency Bitcoin commerce is no longer driven by "sin" activities since Nov 2013 but instead legitimate commerce is growing and now accounting for the bulk of transactions: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2808762 https://ssrn.com/abstract=2808762 The largest publicly traded company, MSFT, started accepting Bitcoin (though just for Xbox games and Windows apps): http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/11/7375771/microsoft-supports-bitcoin-payments http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/11/7375771/microsoft-support... March 2015: largest funding round ever for a Bitcoin company for $116 million: http://themerkle.com/secretive-silicon-valley-bitcoin-startup-raises-us116m-funding/ http://themerkle.com/secretive-silicon-valley-bitcoin-startu... And more, and more... Bitcoin economic activity/interest has never looked so healthy.
- chx 10y agohttps://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/08/bitcoin-isnt-the-future-of-money-its-either-a-ponzi-scheme-or-a-pyramid-scheme/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/08/bitco...
- sidko 10y agoYou'll find a lot of such dismissive articles about Bitcoin throughout its existence. Here's a collection of 'Bitcoin obituaries' if you want to reinforce that view: https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/ https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/
- chx 10y agoIt's not an obituary, it's a fact. I am tired of rehearsing how a currency is enforced to be accepted in the issuing country, has a monetary authority etc. Otherwise while theoretically it could be called a currency, that's a thing for dictionary writers, it's just not usable in everyday life therefore anyone pushing for it has a not-entirely-straight agenda. There's no killer app for bitcoin yet and it's hard to even imagine a (legal) one. It's possible future blockchains will be better but so far, this is not.
- asdfasdfa11112 10y agoIf you are in the US, what is your opinion on the common prison trope that smokes are money in prisons?
- jron 10y agoBy that rational, any publicly traded commodity is a ponzi\pyramid scheme. Anything with a finite supply and demand will command a price. The market doesn't care if you dislike the speculative nature of bitcoin; it is simple supply and demand at work. You could make the exact same arguments against gold but that doesn't stop central banks of the world from hording it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_reserve The only differences are 3,500 years of history and... teleportation.
- kneel 10y agoBitcoin is living up to it's reputation as digital gold. The Chinese are running away from RMB and buying bitcoin, Venezuelans are running away from Bolivares into Bitcoin. And to a lesser extent some Indians are escaping the Rupee. It'll be really interesting to see how governments try to deal with decentralized currencies if they really take off. Governments lose a lot of control when they can't control money.
- smokeyj 10y agoMakes me wonder what other essential functions of society can be digitized, decentralized, and put out of reach of irresponsible government entities.
- jacobush 10y agoInto the reach of irresponsible private entities
- stale2002 10y agoThe difference being that irresponsible governments use force to require you to use their services. At least if a private party screws me over, I can stop doing business with them.
- jacobush 10y agoYou are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars/bitcoins
- firebones 10y agoBravo. It's time to watch "Network" again! https://sfy.ru/?script=network https://sfy.ru/?script=network
- rixrax 10y agoTo the moon!!!
- firebones 10y agoDogecoin ironically seemed to capture the potential of everycoin: failure, hype, what have you.
- legulere 10y agoIsn't that a problem because it will mean also higher transaction costs (in dollar)?
- pmorici 10y agoNo, as Bitcoin appreciates the transaction costs go down in Bitcoin terms and stay the same in fiat currency terms everything else being equal.
- firebones 10y agoWhen the block rewards decrease, the transaction costs will necessarily have to increase. Right now, the block mining reward dwarfs the transaction cost (effectively subsidizing it). So what increase in transaction volume (relative to capacity) will have to happen in order to keep transaction rates so low? Right now, it looks like there needs to be an order of magnitude volume increase for mining interest to remain.
- pmorici 10y agoMiners costs are denominated in their local currency so you need to look at the USD or CNY value of the transaction fees over time not the BTC amount to understand the financial picture as seen by miners. In USD terms transaction fees have increased more than 7x over the course of 2016. [0] The block reward only halves roughly every 4 years so total USD denominated fees are growing much faster than the coinbase reward is shrinking. Long term either the block size will have to be raised or the average value transferred per transaction will have to go up to increase fees. Either way rising Bitcoin price isn't bad for the cost of transactions. If anything it makes the coinbase more valuable and causes miners to care less about transaction fees. [0] https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd
- csomar 10y agoThe transaction costs are not fixed (they are set by the sender). The fee depends on the number of transactions on the waiting list.
- readhn 10y ago"Double top" Just like gold it will deflate.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- droffel 10y agoCheck out Monero, they've solved the scaling incentive problem. https://www.getmonero.org https://www.getmonero.org
- firebones 10y agoI suspect that based on current course and speed, there's only room for one winner in the coin space. So good luck, Monero.
- out_of_protocol 10y agoDon't think so. Looks like there are still the idea of blocks that should be verified by every single node in the network. I really want to see some "scaling solution" but that's not it
- aphextron 10y agoSo is Bitcoin a currency or an investment vehicle? How can such volatility in a currency be considered desirable?
- readhn 10y agoIt's simply a highly speculative and volatile vehicle. It's not a currency or am investment.