20 ms·

Bitcoin hits 3-year peak, nears record high on U.S. ETF approval

282 points by mrb 10y ago

spcelzrd 10y ago
If history has taught me anything, this is the best time to buy.
- brilliantcode 10y ago
  I hope this is sarcasm....literally the worst time to buy a stock is when people near you are buying it.
- iopq 10y ago
  Probably the best time to sell, actually. Buy when it crashes and stays "uninteresting" for a year.
  - pvdebbe 10y ago
    I'm curious if people have shorted bitcoin to any meaningful extent.
    - iopq 10y ago
      I think there were some experiments with options, but I'm not sure how popular that is
timeal 10y ago
Bitcoin is within 0.4% of its all-time high (http://www.coindesk.com/price/ http://www.coindesk.com/price/ - peaked at $1165.89 in 2013). ATH breakout could and probably is going to happen any minute now... In fact many exchanges have already reached their ATH in the previous hours.
- vocatus_gate 10y ago
  It just hit it: $1167 on Coinbase.
  - timeal 10y ago
    Actually it's the Bitcoin Price Index ATH that was $1165.89 (Nov 2013), while the Coinbase ATH was $1175 (Jan 2017). Both ATH were surpassed in the last hour.
    - vocatus_gate 10y ago
      Ah, good to know, thanks.
jankotek 10y ago
And it is result of stable growth over past year...
pdog 10y ago
> The SEC will decide by March 11 whether to approve one filed almost four years ago by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. If approved, it would be the first bitcoin ETF issued and regulated by a U.S. entity. This would combine the ridiculous volatility of bitcoin with the all-day tradeability of an ETF. What could go wrong?
- mrb 10y ago
  60 ETFs are more volatile than Bitcoin: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-01/five-reasons-the-winklevoss-bitcoin-etf-should-be-approved https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-01/five-reas...
  - slg 10y ago
    It doesn't list all of the ETFs that are more volatile but the one they do list is a leveraged ETF. I would imagine most of the other 59 are as well. These leveraged ETFs are specifically designed to be multiple times more volatile than the market they represent. They are meant for traders to speculate on movement of the markets and no sane person would hold them for any extended period of time. A Bitcoin ETF being more stable than them is not an accomplishment and anyone saying as much is showing a complete misunderstanding of the goals of those two investment vehicles.
    - mrb 10y ago
      Similarly, a Bitcoin ETF is "specifically designed" to track Bitcoin's volatility for traders who want to speculate on movements of BTC. There is nothing wrong with that, just like there is nothing wrong with these 60 other ETFs. My point is the initial poster (pdog) is wrong to assume volatility was a problem in and of itself for these ETFs.
      - slg 10y ago
        >Similarly, a Bitcoin ETF is "specifically designed" to track Bitcoin's volatility for traders who want to speculate on movements of BTC. Except the Bitcoin ETF isn't leveraged like the example ETF. To borrow a term from your linked article, "It’s a wolf in wolf’s clothing." The example ETF is designed to be volatile, it is clear up front, and anyone investing knows it. The Bitcoin ETF isn't designed to be volatile, it just is because of the volatility of Bitcoin. If the Bitcoin ETF is marketed as a buy and hold type investment, then the volatility is a problem.
out_of_protocol 10y ago
Another all time high (or so): Over 100k transactions in mempool (waiting to be confirmed) https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/all.html https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/all.html
- colordrops 10y ago
  I wonder how many people are aware of the ongoing and raging battle between big blockers who want a hard fork to upgrade block size, and small blockers, who want a soft fork that adds functionality to make side chains feasible. I am strongly biased for one of these, but won't say which to avoid being attacked. Awaiting the propaganda wave in response to my comment...
  - mchristen 10y ago
    Doubtful, the crew at r/bitcoin do a great job of stifling any opposing discussion and sadly r/bitcoin is way more popular then r/btc. One could be a regular visitor to r/bitcoin and have no clue that there is a huge political battle going on amongst the users, miners and developers.
    - adrianpike 10y ago
      > One could be a regular visitor to r/bitcoin and have no clue that there is a huge political battle going on amongst the users, miners and developers. True story, I'm one of those visitors. Off to go read up on some stuff, apparently.
    - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
      If there's nothing else you can agree on in the Blocksize debate, the censorship in that subreddit is reprehensible.
      - smokeyj 10y ago
        It's strange that reddit would enable that kind of activity. Are moderation logs not public? Makes me wonder what other communities are oblivious to moderators influence.
Someone1234 10y ago
It would be interesting to see a breakdown of WHAT Bitcoin are being trading for (e.g. pure investment, black market goods, standard commercial goods/services). Without a good understand of what drives Bitcoin's use it is hard to tell if this is an investment bubble or legitimate organic growth. I will say I don't run across all too many sites that support payment via Bitcoin, I know they exist, but it hasn't expanded to be commonplace. But I've read the drug market on e.g. Tor is alive and well. So maybe that drives a lot of this trading.
- bookbinder 10y ago
  Sites that support Bitcoin don't usually make a big deal about it. For example, Microsoft.com accepts bitcoin.
- mrb 10y ago
  "So maybe that drives a lot of this trading" No data supports this. For some reason articles occasionally still make this claim, but no sources support this. In fact I am aware of a study that reports the opposite: that Bitcoin commerce is no longer driven by "sin" activities but instead by legitimate enterprises: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers2.cfm?abstract_id=2808762 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers2.cfm?abstract_id=2808762
  - mathattack 10y ago
    I've seen anecdotally a lot of use for cross-border payments. (Try wiring $500 to grandma, and see how many middlemen take a share)
    - awa 10y ago
      well, there are bunch of services which make it easy (e.g. xoom.com) and allow tracking of transactions and verification of transfers etc.
      - alanfalcon 10y ago
        Unrelated: I remember when xoom.com was an e-mail service provider with free web space back in 1999. Feels weird to see URLs recycled like this. http://web.archive.org/web/19990508170650/http://www.xoom.com/home/ http://web.archive.org/web/19990508170650/http://www.xoom.co...
artursapek 10y ago
The BTC price really is crazy. There's no telling where it is going to end up. The long term chart is pretty amusing: https://cryptowat.ch/bitstamp/btcusd/1w https://cryptowat.ch/bitstamp/btcusd/1w
- timeal 10y ago
  It's clear where it's headed on the log chart. Up! https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price?scale=1&timespan=all https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price?scale=1&timespan...
- Frogolocalypse 10y ago
  I think this site is the easiest to show bitcoin value charts in various time-scales. http://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/price/2y/USD?c=e&t=l http://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/price/2y/USD?c=e&t=l And you can download the data-points if you want.
sputknick 10y ago
I'm curious how others on HN feel: I think Bitcoin is an evolutionary dead-end and the future is Ethereum. Ethereum is more powerful and allows more development on top of it than Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin still holds sway because it was first, but I think Ethereum has a brighter future. Anyone have a good rebuttal, or am I on the mark?
- deweller 10y ago
  Ethereum is an incredibly ambitious and exciting project. I really want Ethereum to succeed, and it probably will. But it is easy to underestimate the widespread adoption and trust in Bitcoin. Bitcoin will always be the standard cryptocurrency store of value. There may end up being 10 other globally useful blockchains, but they will all use Bitcoin as their base store of value and medium of value exchange.
  - brilliantcode 10y ago
    It's already abandoned. There's no major players adopting it.
    - brilliantcode 10y ago
      feel free to prove me wrong by posting ethereum adoption by Fortune 500 instead of downvoting.
      - DennisP 10y ago
        I don't have much handy right now, but after this Enterprise Ethereum launch event on Monday there might be more information available: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/enterprise-ethereum-alliance-launch-tickets-31647140449 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/enterprise-ethereum-alliance-la...
- UweSchmidt 10y ago
  After the DAO debacle the Ethereum story is dead to me: - it is not feasible to write or verify safe "smart contracts" without having excellent code analysis skills. Similarly to cryptography you really have to get it right. This is on top of the security problems of bitcoin (securing your computer, securing the exchange, understanding and persecute any crime committed against you) - the DAO hack was not handled well by the community, to me it seems everyone is in it to make some quick money, or maybe for the lulz? There was a fork, and now you get to experience a massive cognitive dissonance when moving between /r/ethereum and /r/ethereumclassic; nothing constructive can come out of this. - the blockchain technology makes it quite difficult to build practical apps (judging from my experience building a tic tac toe game for two players on a private blockchain, and the quality of the stuff that was out there last time I checked).
delegate 10y ago
Great, the MacBook Pro that I bought back in 2014 with Bitcoin is now worth over $8,000 ! People bought drugs on SilkRoad back when the price was $2 / bitcoin. Those must have been some of the most expensive drugs in history !
- colordrops 10y ago
  Can't the same be said of any monetary instrument that has changed in value due to deflation or inflation?
  - joelhaus 10y ago
    Your point illustrates why half of the federal reserve's mandate from congress is price stability. See Macroeconomics 101... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply OP's point seems to be that inflation of bitcoin value is built in, effectively resulting in de minimis velocity and seeking out of alternative stores of value which are more stable. Bitcoin is how I would design a currency if I wanted it to self implode.
- iLoch 10y ago
  You must be familiar with the pizza story? http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2013/12/23/the-bitcoin-pizza-purchase-thats-worth-7-million-today/#2f69a29b6449 http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2013/12/23/the-bitcoin-...
  - giarc 10y ago
    Those two pizza's were worth $11.6 million in today's value.
    - paulpauper 10y ago
      were gonna start seeing a lot of 'most expensive' soon due to opportunity cost loss
- jikachu2 10y ago
Aqueous 10y ago
Some are quite bearish on the possibility of the ETF actually being approved: http://www.coindesk.com/needham-bitcoin-etf-attract-300-million-assets-approved/ http://www.coindesk.com/needham-bitcoin-etf-attract-300-mill...
gigatexal 10y ago
hindsight being what it is, i sure do wish i hadn't written off bitcoin when it was less than a dollar a coin.
- cjg 10y ago
  If only you assigned it a probability of success near zero rather than at zero...
dmix 10y ago
This is how Bitcoin must progress. Slow and steady. A platform like this can't be the result of rocket like growth and instantly transform marketplaces. Much of finance is based on stable assured systems. This is a good sign overall. Even if BTC isn't the right answer as a currency.
- cjbprime 10y ago
  The price of Bitcoin has nearly tripled in the last year, and dropped from $1150 to $750 last month. It's neither slow nor steady.
  - fpgaminer 10y ago
    It's also at a 0% increase relative to ~3 years ago. 0% is ... very steady.
    - kylebenzle 10y ago
      That's a silly thing to say.
  - dwaltrip 10y ago
    Volatility has been decreasing by meaningful amounts every year, and will continue to do so if the market size & ecosystem keep growing.
  - mrb 10y ago
    It's getting slower and steadier. This tripling from $400 to ~$1200 took a good part of a year, but last time Bitcoin did $400 to $1200 it was done in 20 days (last 3 weeks of Nov 2013). That's a huge reduction of volatility.
ns8sl 10y ago
I sold my bitcoins to take a vacation when it was around 300. Mt. Gox had imploded and I was guessing it would take longer than this to rebound. Wrong!
- eminkel 10y ago
  Same, but used it to pay off all CC debt. I think I made a good choice. Might start auto-buying them again.
- baby 10y ago
  I sold all my bitcoins for almost nothing during the crash :(
jcoffland 10y ago
Bitcoin has now hit its all time high.
jcslzr 10y ago
i think BTC price used to be manipulated by big money, but now its seems that with this volume its not so easy
ungzd 10y ago
> web-based "cryptocurrency" Do the article authors have at least 0.01% understanding of what bitcoin is? Or what web is? I'm very suprised of technical incompetence of authors writing about technical stuff in top newspapers.
- sowbug 10y ago
  If you mean that web == HTML + internet ports 80/443 etc., then it's a forgivable error. s/web/internet/ doesn't make the article any more or less effective at getting the main points across (price high, ETF rumors).
toephu2 10y ago
I haven't seen a single bitcoin exchange that is stable and trustworthy enough to put your money in (Mt. Gox used to be the biggest and most reputable and we all know how that turned out). Converting from your real currency in to and out of bitcoin is still very difficult. Almost every exchange gets hacked sooner or later or gets shutdown due to government regulations.
- AlphaWeaver 10y ago
  That may be true, but we've come a long way. Coinbase insures all currency they store in online storage, and offline storage is significantly more secure and less hackable. USD in Coinbase accounts is FDIC insured too! It's not perfect, but we've certainly come closer to a safer exchange world.
  - Zak 10y ago
    Coinbase also blocks accounts from buying and refuses explanation. They may be a little safer, but they're still far from reliable.
    - wyager 10y ago
      That's what happens when an organization is KYC/AML compliant. Legal compliance and customer experience are mutually incompatible in finance.
    - mrb 10y ago
      It's just because Coinbase is being extremely/overly cautious about detecting and fighting fraud. They will refuse to let you buy/sell if your account/documentation is a bit suspicious. And they can't explain you why you were tagged (or else fraudsters would simply ask why and would adjust their operations accordingly.)
    - asciimo 10y ago
      It's pretty easy to transfer your coins to an external wallet, and then spend it as you please.
    - 10y ago
STRML 10y ago
We've been watching the ETF with interest. To gauge market sentiment, we launched an ETF approval binary contract (https://www.bitmex.com/app/trade/COIN_BH17 https://www.bitmex.com/app/trade/COIN_BH17). COIN_BH17 saw a jump from 35% to nearly 50% today. Optimism on the ETF is rising.
- Frogolocalypse 10y ago
  Even as a long-time holder of bitcoin, I don't see how the Coin ETF will be approved. There is so much risk in the ETF that your investment may be wiped out instantly. I wouldn't approve it. My expectation is that it will be rejected, and the price of bitcoin will crash back to about USD$700 or so, and continue its long march upwards. It's important to recognize that that crash would still mean that bitcoin has almost doubled in value vs the US dollar in the past year. It has doubled in value over the past six months.
  - kobeya 10y ago
    That's not the metric by which ETFs are approved or denied.
    - Frogolocalypse 10y ago
      I'd say the risk of a fork of the thing that you're supposedly tracking, such that you might not even know what you are tracking anymore, is a serious risk that the SEC would consider to be a problem. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for it to be approved. But for that reason, I don't think it will be.
      - kobeya 10y ago
        That is something they would consider.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - tlrobinson 10y ago
kobeya 10y ago
Shill much?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- dang 10y ago
  Accusations of astroturfing or shillage are not allowed on HN without evidence. Please don't do this again. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716677 and marked it off-topic.
  - kobeya 10y ago
    You should consider detaching comments that divert a thread to discussing competition when it is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Is is a well known and commonly practiced discussion hijacking technique that does nothing more than decrease the value of a discussion forum.
Frogolocalypse 10y ago
The moderators of /r/bitcoin owe you nothing. If you don't like their moderation policy, go somewhere else. No-one is forcing you to read them, and you can't force yourself to be read by the people who go there if the people there don't want to read what you have to say. Hearn tried to fork bitcoin, and learned the hard way that the people who use bitcoin didn't like his direction. He then had a whiny rage-quit, and has been throwing rocks from over the fence ever since.
- Fantastic_T 10y ago
  You're deflecting with a change of subject. This is the kind of attitude that is typical of the pro-censorship crowd.
  - Frogolocalypse 10y ago
    You were the one brought up /r/bitcoin in a discussion about Hearn, not me. And you did it in order to trash /r/bitcoin in an account you created an hour ago. You're exactly the type of user that moderation was invented for.
- dang 10y ago
  You've been breaking the HN guidelines repeatedly by being personally abusive and uncivil in your comments. We ban accounts that do that, so please stop doing that. I'm sure you can make your points without stooping to that level, and HN will be better for it. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721183 and marked it off-topic.
Frogolocalypse 10y ago
And the world moved on, I'm sure.
- dang 10y ago
  This comment breaks the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721187 and marked it off-topic.
  - Frogolocalypse 10y ago
    One of the things i like about ycombinator is the active and consistent moderation policy.
paulpauper 10y ago
Bitcoin is surging because it's a globally accepted store of value and means of commerce, and the fixed quantity prevents devaluation. Unlike gold, all transactions can be done remotely and confidentially, an there are no storage cost, eliminating all the problems that are associated with storing large quantities of gold. IMHO, all dips will continue to be bought and the price will keep rising...$4,000/coin is possible...been long since 2013, so I am biased in that regard, but there are real fundamentals here too. Foreign currencies have lost anywhere from 30%to 99% of their value against the US dollar since 2013. Beginning around 2002 and ending around 2011, many foreign governments carelessly amassed substantial infrastructure debts that now they are struggling to pay off (due to economic weakness for these foreign economies and the surging US dollar), creating a cycle of inflation and currency depreciation, making Bitcoin more attractive to own for people and businesses in these countries. Bitcoin is rising because citizens and businesses have lost faith in the competence of their governments, and rightfully so. America is an exception in that it's well-managed and strong economically and fiscally (especially relative to these foreign economies), which explains the flight to the US dollar, and also Bitcoin. For example, in 2013, depositors at Cyrus' largest bank lost 48% of their savings above 100,0000 Euros: NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Depositors at bailed-out Cyprus' largest bank will lose 47.5% of their savings exceeding 100,000 euros ($132,000), the government said Monday. The figure comes four months after Cyprus agreed on a 23 billion-euro ($30.5 billion) rescue package with its euro partners and the International Monetary Fund. In exchange for a 10 billion euro loan, deposits worth more than the insured limit of 100,000 euros at the Bank of Cyprus and smaller lender Laiki were raided in a so-called bail-in to prop up the country's teetering banking sector. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/29/bank-of-cyprus-depositors-lose-savings/2595837/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/29/bank... A second factor may be the rise of global authoritarianism, unrest, and unease, reducing confidence in keeping money in banks, and assets that face geopolitical risk...Bitcoin, because it's decentralized, is immune to geopolitical risk. As long as you have your wallet, you have your wealth.
- amenghra 10y ago
  http://www.usdebtclock.org/ http://www.usdebtclock.org/ (although the whole debt thing is complicated with state/federal bank owning a large piece of the debt).

282 points by mrb 10y ago

spcelzrd 10y ago

If history has taught me anything, this is the best time to buy.

brilliantcode 10y ago
I hope this is sarcasm....literally the worst time to buy a stock is when people near you are buying it.
iopq 10y ago
Probably the best time to sell, actually. Buy when it crashes and stays "uninteresting" for a year.
- pvdebbe 10y ago
  I'm curious if people have shorted bitcoin to any meaningful extent.
  - iopq 10y ago
    I think there were some experiments with options, but I'm not sure how popular that is

timeal 10y ago

Bitcoin is within 0.4% of its all-time high (http://www.coindesk.com/price/ http://www.coindesk.com/price/ - peaked at $1165.89 in 2013). ATH breakout could and probably is going to happen any minute now... In fact many exchanges have already reached their ATH in the previous hours.

vocatus_gate 10y ago
It just hit it: $1167 on Coinbase.
- timeal 10y ago
  Actually it's the Bitcoin Price Index ATH that was $1165.89 (Nov 2013), while the Coinbase ATH was $1175 (Jan 2017). Both ATH were surpassed in the last hour.
  - vocatus_gate 10y ago
    Ah, good to know, thanks.

jankotek 10y ago

And it is result of stable growth over past year...

pdog 10y ago

> The SEC will decide by March 11 whether to approve one filed almost four years ago by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. If approved, it would be the first bitcoin ETF issued and regulated by a U.S. entity. This would combine the ridiculous volatility of bitcoin with the all-day tradeability of an ETF. What could go wrong?

mrb 10y ago
60 ETFs are more volatile than Bitcoin: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-01/five-reasons-the-winklevoss-bitcoin-etf-should-be-approved https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-01/five-reas...
- slg 10y ago
  It doesn't list all of the ETFs that are more volatile but the one they do list is a leveraged ETF. I would imagine most of the other 59 are as well. These leveraged ETFs are specifically designed to be multiple times more volatile than the market they represent. They are meant for traders to speculate on movement of the markets and no sane person would hold them for any extended period of time. A Bitcoin ETF being more stable than them is not an accomplishment and anyone saying as much is showing a complete misunderstanding of the goals of those two investment vehicles.
  - mrb 10y ago
    Similarly, a Bitcoin ETF is "specifically designed" to track Bitcoin's volatility for traders who want to speculate on movements of BTC. There is nothing wrong with that, just like there is nothing wrong with these 60 other ETFs. My point is the initial poster (pdog) is wrong to assume volatility was a problem in and of itself for these ETFs.
    - slg 10y ago
      >Similarly, a Bitcoin ETF is "specifically designed" to track Bitcoin's volatility for traders who want to speculate on movements of BTC. Except the Bitcoin ETF isn't leveraged like the example ETF. To borrow a term from your linked article, "It’s a wolf in wolf’s clothing." The example ETF is designed to be volatile, it is clear up front, and anyone investing knows it. The Bitcoin ETF isn't designed to be volatile, it just is because of the volatility of Bitcoin. If the Bitcoin ETF is marketed as a buy and hold type investment, then the volatility is a problem.

out_of_protocol 10y ago

Another all time high (or so): Over 100k transactions in mempool (waiting to be confirmed) https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/all.html https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/all.html

colordrops 10y ago
I wonder how many people are aware of the ongoing and raging battle between big blockers who want a hard fork to upgrade block size, and small blockers, who want a soft fork that adds functionality to make side chains feasible. I am strongly biased for one of these, but won't say which to avoid being attacked. Awaiting the propaganda wave in response to my comment...
- mchristen 10y ago
  Doubtful, the crew at r/bitcoin do a great job of stifling any opposing discussion and sadly r/bitcoin is way more popular then r/btc. One could be a regular visitor to r/bitcoin and have no clue that there is a huge political battle going on amongst the users, miners and developers.
  - adrianpike 10y ago
    > One could be a regular visitor to r/bitcoin and have no clue that there is a huge political battle going on amongst the users, miners and developers. True story, I'm one of those visitors. Off to go read up on some stuff, apparently.
  - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
    If there's nothing else you can agree on in the Blocksize debate, the censorship in that subreddit is reprehensible.
    - smokeyj 10y ago
      It's strange that reddit would enable that kind of activity. Are moderation logs not public? Makes me wonder what other communities are oblivious to moderators influence.

Someone1234 10y ago

It would be interesting to see a breakdown of WHAT Bitcoin are being trading for (e.g. pure investment, black market goods, standard commercial goods/services). Without a good understand of what drives Bitcoin's use it is hard to tell if this is an investment bubble or legitimate organic growth. I will say I don't run across all too many sites that support payment via Bitcoin, I know they exist, but it hasn't expanded to be commonplace. But I've read the drug market on e.g. Tor is alive and well. So maybe that drives a lot of this trading.

bookbinder 10y ago
Sites that support Bitcoin don't usually make a big deal about it. For example, Microsoft.com accepts bitcoin.
mrb 10y ago
"So maybe that drives a lot of this trading" No data supports this. For some reason articles occasionally still make this claim, but no sources support this. In fact I am aware of a study that reports the opposite: that Bitcoin commerce is no longer driven by "sin" activities but instead by legitimate enterprises: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers2.cfm?abstract_id=2808762 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers2.cfm?abstract_id=2808762
- mathattack 10y ago
  I've seen anecdotally a lot of use for cross-border payments. (Try wiring $500 to grandma, and see how many middlemen take a share)
  - awa 10y ago
    well, there are bunch of services which make it easy (e.g. xoom.com) and allow tracking of transactions and verification of transfers etc.
    - alanfalcon 10y ago
      Unrelated: I remember when xoom.com was an e-mail service provider with free web space back in 1999. Feels weird to see URLs recycled like this. http://web.archive.org/web/19990508170650/http://www.xoom.com/home/ http://web.archive.org/web/19990508170650/http://www.xoom.co...

artursapek 10y ago

The BTC price really is crazy. There's no telling where it is going to end up. The long term chart is pretty amusing: https://cryptowat.ch/bitstamp/btcusd/1w https://cryptowat.ch/bitstamp/btcusd/1w

timeal 10y ago
It's clear where it's headed on the log chart. Up! https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price?scale=1&timespan=all https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price?scale=1&timespan...
Frogolocalypse 10y ago
I think this site is the easiest to show bitcoin value charts in various time-scales. http://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/price/2y/USD?c=e&t=l http://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/price/2y/USD?c=e&t=l And you can download the data-points if you want.

sputknick 10y ago

I'm curious how others on HN feel: I think Bitcoin is an evolutionary dead-end and the future is Ethereum. Ethereum is more powerful and allows more development on top of it than Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin still holds sway because it was first, but I think Ethereum has a brighter future. Anyone have a good rebuttal, or am I on the mark?

deweller 10y ago
Ethereum is an incredibly ambitious and exciting project. I really want Ethereum to succeed, and it probably will. But it is easy to underestimate the widespread adoption and trust in Bitcoin. Bitcoin will always be the standard cryptocurrency store of value. There may end up being 10 other globally useful blockchains, but they will all use Bitcoin as their base store of value and medium of value exchange.
- brilliantcode 10y ago
  It's already abandoned. There's no major players adopting it.
  - brilliantcode 10y ago
    feel free to prove me wrong by posting ethereum adoption by Fortune 500 instead of downvoting.
    - DennisP 10y ago
      I don't have much handy right now, but after this Enterprise Ethereum launch event on Monday there might be more information available: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/enterprise-ethereum-alliance-launch-tickets-31647140449 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/enterprise-ethereum-alliance-la...
UweSchmidt 10y ago
After the DAO debacle the Ethereum story is dead to me: - it is not feasible to write or verify safe "smart contracts" without having excellent code analysis skills. Similarly to cryptography you really have to get it right. This is on top of the security problems of bitcoin (securing your computer, securing the exchange, understanding and persecute any crime committed against you) - the DAO hack was not handled well by the community, to me it seems everyone is in it to make some quick money, or maybe for the lulz? There was a fork, and now you get to experience a massive cognitive dissonance when moving between /r/ethereum and /r/ethereumclassic; nothing constructive can come out of this. - the blockchain technology makes it quite difficult to build practical apps (judging from my experience building a tic tac toe game for two players on a private blockchain, and the quality of the stuff that was out there last time I checked).

delegate 10y ago

Great, the MacBook Pro that I bought back in 2014 with Bitcoin is now worth over $8,000 ! People bought drugs on SilkRoad back when the price was $2 / bitcoin. Those must have been some of the most expensive drugs in history !

colordrops 10y ago
Can't the same be said of any monetary instrument that has changed in value due to deflation or inflation?
- joelhaus 10y ago
  Your point illustrates why half of the federal reserve's mandate from congress is price stability. See Macroeconomics 101... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply OP's point seems to be that inflation of bitcoin value is built in, effectively resulting in de minimis velocity and seeking out of alternative stores of value which are more stable. Bitcoin is how I would design a currency if I wanted it to self implode.
iLoch 10y ago
You must be familiar with the pizza story? http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2013/12/23/the-bitcoin-pizza-purchase-thats-worth-7-million-today/#2f69a29b6449 http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2013/12/23/the-bitcoin-...
- giarc 10y ago
  Those two pizza's were worth $11.6 million in today's value.
  - paulpauper 10y ago
    were gonna start seeing a lot of 'most expensive' soon due to opportunity cost loss
jikachu2 10y ago

Aqueous 10y ago

Some are quite bearish on the possibility of the ETF actually being approved: http://www.coindesk.com/needham-bitcoin-etf-attract-300-million-assets-approved/ http://www.coindesk.com/needham-bitcoin-etf-attract-300-mill...

gigatexal 10y ago

hindsight being what it is, i sure do wish i hadn't written off bitcoin when it was less than a dollar a coin.

cjg 10y ago
If only you assigned it a probability of success near zero rather than at zero...

dmix 10y ago

This is how Bitcoin must progress. Slow and steady. A platform like this can't be the result of rocket like growth and instantly transform marketplaces. Much of finance is based on stable assured systems. This is a good sign overall. Even if BTC isn't the right answer as a currency.

cjbprime 10y ago
The price of Bitcoin has nearly tripled in the last year, and dropped from $1150 to $750 last month. It's neither slow nor steady.
- fpgaminer 10y ago
  It's also at a 0% increase relative to ~3 years ago. 0% is ... very steady.
  - kylebenzle 10y ago
    That's a silly thing to say.
- dwaltrip 10y ago
  Volatility has been decreasing by meaningful amounts every year, and will continue to do so if the market size & ecosystem keep growing.
- mrb 10y ago
  It's getting slower and steadier. This tripling from $400 to ~$1200 took a good part of a year, but last time Bitcoin did $400 to $1200 it was done in 20 days (last 3 weeks of Nov 2013). That's a huge reduction of volatility.

ns8sl 10y ago

I sold my bitcoins to take a vacation when it was around 300. Mt. Gox had imploded and I was guessing it would take longer than this to rebound. Wrong!

eminkel 10y ago
Same, but used it to pay off all CC debt. I think I made a good choice. Might start auto-buying them again.
baby 10y ago
I sold all my bitcoins for almost nothing during the crash :(

jcoffland 10y ago

Bitcoin has now hit its all time high.

jcslzr 10y ago

i think BTC price used to be manipulated by big money, but now its seems that with this volume its not so easy

ungzd 10y ago

> web-based "cryptocurrency" Do the article authors have at least 0.01% understanding of what bitcoin is? Or what web is? I'm very suprised of technical incompetence of authors writing about technical stuff in top newspapers.

sowbug 10y ago
If you mean that web == HTML + internet ports 80/443 etc., then it's a forgivable error. s/web/internet/ doesn't make the article any more or less effective at getting the main points across (price high, ETF rumors).

toephu2 10y ago

I haven't seen a single bitcoin exchange that is stable and trustworthy enough to put your money in (Mt. Gox used to be the biggest and most reputable and we all know how that turned out). Converting from your real currency in to and out of bitcoin is still very difficult. Almost every exchange gets hacked sooner or later or gets shutdown due to government regulations.

AlphaWeaver 10y ago
That may be true, but we've come a long way. Coinbase insures all currency they store in online storage, and offline storage is significantly more secure and less hackable. USD in Coinbase accounts is FDIC insured too! It's not perfect, but we've certainly come closer to a safer exchange world.
- Zak 10y ago
  Coinbase also blocks accounts from buying and refuses explanation. They may be a little safer, but they're still far from reliable.
  - wyager 10y ago
    That's what happens when an organization is KYC/AML compliant. Legal compliance and customer experience are mutually incompatible in finance.
  - mrb 10y ago
    It's just because Coinbase is being extremely/overly cautious about detecting and fighting fraud. They will refuse to let you buy/sell if your account/documentation is a bit suspicious. And they can't explain you why you were tagged (or else fraudsters would simply ask why and would adjust their operations accordingly.)
  - asciimo 10y ago
    It's pretty easy to transfer your coins to an external wallet, and then spend it as you please.
  - 10y ago

STRML 10y ago

We've been watching the ETF with interest. To gauge market sentiment, we launched an ETF approval binary contract (https://www.bitmex.com/app/trade/COIN_BH17 https://www.bitmex.com/app/trade/COIN_BH17). COIN_BH17 saw a jump from 35% to nearly 50% today. Optimism on the ETF is rising.

Frogolocalypse 10y ago
Even as a long-time holder of bitcoin, I don't see how the Coin ETF will be approved. There is so much risk in the ETF that your investment may be wiped out instantly. I wouldn't approve it. My expectation is that it will be rejected, and the price of bitcoin will crash back to about USD$700 or so, and continue its long march upwards. It's important to recognize that that crash would still mean that bitcoin has almost doubled in value vs the US dollar in the past year. It has doubled in value over the past six months.
- kobeya 10y ago
  That's not the metric by which ETFs are approved or denied.
  - Frogolocalypse 10y ago
    I'd say the risk of a fork of the thing that you're supposedly tracking, such that you might not even know what you are tracking anymore, is a serious risk that the SEC would consider to be a problem. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for it to be approved. But for that reason, I don't think it will be.
    - kobeya 10y ago
      That is something they would consider.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - tlrobinson 10y ago

kobeya 10y ago

Shill much?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dang 10y ago
Accusations of astroturfing or shillage are not allowed on HN without evidence. Please don't do this again. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716677 and marked it off-topic.
- kobeya 10y ago
  You should consider detaching comments that divert a thread to discussing competition when it is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand. Is is a well known and commonly practiced discussion hijacking technique that does nothing more than decrease the value of a discussion forum.

Frogolocalypse 10y ago

The moderators of /r/bitcoin owe you nothing. If you don't like their moderation policy, go somewhere else. No-one is forcing you to read them, and you can't force yourself to be read by the people who go there if the people there don't want to read what you have to say. Hearn tried to fork bitcoin, and learned the hard way that the people who use bitcoin didn't like his direction. He then had a whiny rage-quit, and has been throwing rocks from over the fence ever since.

Fantastic_T 10y ago
You're deflecting with a change of subject. This is the kind of attitude that is typical of the pro-censorship crowd.
- Frogolocalypse 10y ago
  You were the one brought up /r/bitcoin in a discussion about Hearn, not me. And you did it in order to trash /r/bitcoin in an account you created an hour ago. You're exactly the type of user that moderation was invented for.
dang 10y ago
You've been breaking the HN guidelines repeatedly by being personally abusive and uncivil in your comments. We ban accounts that do that, so please stop doing that. I'm sure you can make your points without stooping to that level, and HN will be better for it. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721183 and marked it off-topic.

Frogolocalypse 10y ago

And the world moved on, I'm sure.

dang 10y ago
This comment breaks the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721187 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721187 and marked it off-topic.
- Frogolocalypse 10y ago
  One of the things i like about ycombinator is the active and consistent moderation policy.

paulpauper 10y ago

Bitcoin is surging because it's a globally accepted store of value and means of commerce, and the fixed quantity prevents devaluation. Unlike gold, all transactions can be done remotely and confidentially, an there are no storage cost, eliminating all the problems that are associated with storing large quantities of gold. IMHO, all dips will continue to be bought and the price will keep rising...$4,000/coin is possible...been long since 2013, so I am biased in that regard, but there are real fundamentals here too. Foreign currencies have lost anywhere from 30%to 99% of their value against the US dollar since 2013. Beginning around 2002 and ending around 2011, many foreign governments carelessly amassed substantial infrastructure debts that now they are struggling to pay off (due to economic weakness for these foreign economies and the surging US dollar), creating a cycle of inflation and currency depreciation, making Bitcoin more attractive to own for people and businesses in these countries. Bitcoin is rising because citizens and businesses have lost faith in the competence of their governments, and rightfully so. America is an exception in that it's well-managed and strong economically and fiscally (especially relative to these foreign economies), which explains the flight to the US dollar, and also Bitcoin. For example, in 2013, depositors at Cyrus' largest bank lost 48% of their savings above 100,0000 Euros: NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Depositors at bailed-out Cyprus' largest bank will lose 47.5% of their savings exceeding 100,000 euros ($132,000), the government said Monday. The figure comes four months after Cyprus agreed on a 23 billion-euro ($30.5 billion) rescue package with its euro partners and the International Monetary Fund. In exchange for a 10 billion euro loan, deposits worth more than the insured limit of 100,000 euros at the Bank of Cyprus and smaller lender Laiki were raided in a so-called bail-in to prop up the country's teetering banking sector. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/29/bank-of-cyprus-depositors-lose-savings/2595837/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/29/bank... A second factor may be the rise of global authoritarianism, unrest, and unease, reducing confidence in keeping money in banks, and assets that face geopolitical risk...Bitcoin, because it's decentralized, is immune to geopolitical risk. As long as you have your wallet, you have your wealth.

amenghra 10y ago
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ http://www.usdebtclock.org/ (although the whole debt thing is complicated with state/federal bank owning a large piece of the debt).