5 ms·

Bitcoin Falls Below $2,000

23 points by urahara 9y ago

midnitewarrior 9y ago
Bitcoin is on sale!
- nickster 9y ago
  Is now really the time to buy?
  - dsil 9y ago
    Maybe, or maybe not
  - orclev 9y ago
    Maybe? Depends on how it shakes out. Now is certainly the time to speculate, you've got probably a 1/3 chance of making money off it. The three possible outcomes would be, a) bitcoin never recovers, you lose the money you're speculating with, b) bitcoin recovers and you picked the winning side, congratulations, you bet when everyone was running away and it payed off, or c) bitcoin recovers, but you picked the losing side, you lost your money. Should you be "investing" in bitcoin right now? Absolutely not, that's a stupid investment, but so far as gambles go there are worse odds.
    - andirk 9y ago
      "Absolutely not" invest in Bitcoin? Do you have data to back up this absolute claim?
      - robbfitzsimmons 9y ago
        The scare quotes around "invest" in the parent imply (correctly, in my view) that buying anything with this kind of volatility / lack of intrinsic value is not an investment, rather a speculative bet.
        placeybordeaux 9y ago
        Yeah I have put a pretty significant amount of money into bitcoin and have seen amazing returns. If I thought of it as an investment I'd feel like a fool for not putting more, but as it stands I view it more as a hobby.
      - orclev 9y ago
        Sure, the value is highly unpredictable and swings around massively, not to mention the current squabbling that brings the future of the currency into question (not all crypto-currencies mind you, this is specific to bitcoin). Investments have risk profiles associated with them, for most long term investments people expect minimal risk in exchange for minimal rewards. Some more aggressive investment profiles trade more risk for greater rewards. But even the riskiest of investment portfolios pales in comparison to the levels of risk you see in the bitcoin market. Don't get me wrong, I myself have purchased a decent amount of all the crypto-currencies out there, and was one of the earlier purchasers and miners in bitcoin (sadly I lost most of my early mining results when MtGox melted down), but I've also never deluded myself into thinking this has been a wise long term investment, it's a gamble pure and simple. If you go into the bitcoin market investing anything you can't afford to lose at the drop of a hat you're an idiot, whether it pays off or not. Even if it works, that doesn't mean it wasn't a stupid idea in the first place.
      - oxide 9y ago
        Isn't a speculative market driven by gossip and rumors? I think the burden of proof is on you to prove why it is time to buy up BTC as an investment and not a wild gamble.
  - faragon 9y ago
    Now people is panicking, so it is likely that the sooner you sell, the better.
    - sushid 9y ago
      I'm sure people were panicking when it fell from $2,500 to $2,000.
  - andirk 9y ago
    If you believe that cryptocurrency will be part of our future, then yes. Otherwise, I don't know. There's also Ethereum and many other alt coins with a total market cap of over $70 billion https://coinmarketcap.com/ https://coinmarketcap.com/ .
  - avenoir 9y ago
    I think the biggest uncertainty is what happens to exchanges on and after august 1st. So the recommendation at this point is to take your coins and move them to a secure personal wallet. I think if you can make a purchase and have the transaction clear prior to the fork date with some time to spare to move your funds than perhaps you should be okay.
  - fullshark 9y ago
    The time to buy is either before or after Aug 1. Unfortunately no one knows which it is.
    - ljk 9y ago
      why Aug 1?
      - fullshark 9y ago
        There might be a bitcoin split: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-beginners-guide-surviving-bip-148-uasf/ https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-beginners-guide...
    - placeybordeaux 9y ago
      My personal recommendation would be to have your bitcoins held by a private key you control on Aug 1st. I'd expect tx fees to be pretty bad leading up to Aug 1st as people move BTC out of exchanges.
oldstrangers 9y ago
And now its up around $2,150. Why even write these articles.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ajross 9y ago
  You're complaining about the headline, not the article. A commodity that is trading 30% below a peak it set just one month ago is absolutely newsworthy, are you serious? If the SP500 did this we'd be posting in a 5000-comment thread and asking how long the recession would last.
  - colecut 9y ago
    That's because the SP500 doesn't regularly swing violently like the crypto market
    - oldstrangers 9y ago
      Exactly, this is an everyday thing. Sometimes its hourly.
    - ajross 9y ago
      The crypto market is more volatile for sure, but this is still the second biggest one-month hit it's taken and the worst decline in three years. Again, if the SP500 did that it would be news, not finger-in-ear complaints about coverage.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  - r00fus 9y ago
    You're discounting the volatility of said commodity. Prices (approx) for the last 30/60/90 days are: 2500, 1700, 1200.
  - 9y ago
faragon 9y ago
Is there any reason for the Bitcoin being worth anything? Even in North Korea or Cuba it is easier to hold USD than Bitcoin. I'm sorry for the late investors, but people was warned since long ago.
- orclev 9y ago
  Same reason gold is worth something, it's a limited resource that's fungible and a large enough people are willing to trade in to make it useful for acquiring goods.
  - ianai 9y ago
    Gold has use cases. What are the use cases for Bitcoin? Are any of them compelling? So compelling that a Trump or a Buffet would ever tangle with them? (I chose those two names as two extremes - not related but a spectrum.)
    - eof 9y ago
      Globally distributed ledger that you can trust without having to trust any specific entity; that has to be worth /something/ right?
    - andirk 9y ago
      NBA star Dennis Rodman shilled PotCoin in North Korea http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/technology/dennis-rodman-north-korea-potcoin/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/technology/dennis-rodman-nor... , a place where I'm sure execution is the punishment for pot. And probably for coin too.
    - orclev 9y ago
      Nobody investing in gold is doing it because of the industrial applications of the metal. If you're valuing gold based on its uses it's massively overvalued. The use case for bitcoin, or more accurately what it gives you that no other currency (except other cryptocurrencies) gives you is being decentralized, finite, and digital. The first and last points in particular make it very suitable for usage on the internet since it can be freely traded for goods and services across international borders while not being tied to any particular country. It remains to be seen if enough of a market can develop around bitcoin to stabilize its price (or indeed the price of any of the cryptocurrencies). The reason traditional fiat currency prices are as stable as they are is that they're coupled to the value of the goods a country trades which tend not to fluctuate up and down much. In theory cryptocurrencies value should be tied to the value of all the goods and services that they can be used to purchase, but since so few goods are actually purchasable using those currencies currently, the vast majority of their current value is derived from speculation in the market which causes the huge swings in value we see.
DeerSpotter 9y ago
Because of this, i am finally understanding how markets work. hype, hyyyype, HYYYpe, HYPE, HYYYYYYYYYYYPE, short sell, PANIC
- mikeschmatz 9y ago
  Except you can't short it
  - ratinacage 9y ago
    There are a few exchanges that let you short sell.
7ewis 9y ago
Ethereum fell too. It's on it's way back up though, slowly. Hope it continues... definitely bought it at the wrong time.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  FOMO is real
NationLider 9y ago
Satoshi invented Bitcoin in 2008 because the banks thought it would be a good idea to deliberately crash the world's financial system and bet on it crashing. So, the banks did crash it, and millions of people ended up getting hurt. That's why you see all those hungry and confused people living on the streets with eyes like broken Christmas lights. Have respect for the beautiful gift Nakamoto gave us. Satoshi Nakamoto didn't invent Bitcoin so people could "cash out" at a higher dollar value. Bitcoin gives us an honest money system that we own, free from the tyrannical rule of the banks, there is no dollar value for that.
patrickg_zill 9y ago
I've noticed that it seems to fall on weekends and then go up on Monday or Tuesday. Wondering if I should put in some cash on an exchange to see if I can make money from this observation ...
- andirk 9y ago
  I tried to calculate when the big buyer/seller "whales" go to sleep to figure out what their time zone was. It pointed to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean :/
  - milcron 9y ago
    Whales indeed.
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  You should, it will be great for you to discover how wrong you are and how unpredictable the market is.
  - patrickg_zill 9y ago
    Anyone who wants to, can go here https://www.coinbase.com/charts?locale=en-US https://www.coinbase.com/charts?locale=en-US My observations track roughly to weekends, at least over the last month or so.
    - fiatjaf 9y ago
      After the cash is on you can't change your predictions anymore.
irresolute 9y ago
The real reason of declining of cryptocurrency is due to the shut down of AlphaBay. Alpha Bay was basically the replacement for Silk Road after that site was also shut down.

23 points by urahara 9y ago

midnitewarrior 9y ago

Bitcoin is on sale!

nickster 9y ago
Is now really the time to buy?
- dsil 9y ago
  Maybe, or maybe not
- orclev 9y ago
  Maybe? Depends on how it shakes out. Now is certainly the time to speculate, you've got probably a 1/3 chance of making money off it. The three possible outcomes would be, a) bitcoin never recovers, you lose the money you're speculating with, b) bitcoin recovers and you picked the winning side, congratulations, you bet when everyone was running away and it payed off, or c) bitcoin recovers, but you picked the losing side, you lost your money. Should you be "investing" in bitcoin right now? Absolutely not, that's a stupid investment, but so far as gambles go there are worse odds.
  - andirk 9y ago
    "Absolutely not" invest in Bitcoin? Do you have data to back up this absolute claim?
    - robbfitzsimmons 9y ago
      The scare quotes around "invest" in the parent imply (correctly, in my view) that buying anything with this kind of volatility / lack of intrinsic value is not an investment, rather a speculative bet.
      - placeybordeaux 9y ago
        Yeah I have put a pretty significant amount of money into bitcoin and have seen amazing returns. If I thought of it as an investment I'd feel like a fool for not putting more, but as it stands I view it more as a hobby.
    - orclev 9y ago
      Sure, the value is highly unpredictable and swings around massively, not to mention the current squabbling that brings the future of the currency into question (not all crypto-currencies mind you, this is specific to bitcoin). Investments have risk profiles associated with them, for most long term investments people expect minimal risk in exchange for minimal rewards. Some more aggressive investment profiles trade more risk for greater rewards. But even the riskiest of investment portfolios pales in comparison to the levels of risk you see in the bitcoin market. Don't get me wrong, I myself have purchased a decent amount of all the crypto-currencies out there, and was one of the earlier purchasers and miners in bitcoin (sadly I lost most of my early mining results when MtGox melted down), but I've also never deluded myself into thinking this has been a wise long term investment, it's a gamble pure and simple. If you go into the bitcoin market investing anything you can't afford to lose at the drop of a hat you're an idiot, whether it pays off or not. Even if it works, that doesn't mean it wasn't a stupid idea in the first place.
    - oxide 9y ago
      Isn't a speculative market driven by gossip and rumors? I think the burden of proof is on you to prove why it is time to buy up BTC as an investment and not a wild gamble.
- faragon 9y ago
  Now people is panicking, so it is likely that the sooner you sell, the better.
  - sushid 9y ago
    I'm sure people were panicking when it fell from $2,500 to $2,000.
- andirk 9y ago
  If you believe that cryptocurrency will be part of our future, then yes. Otherwise, I don't know. There's also Ethereum and many other alt coins with a total market cap of over $70 billion https://coinmarketcap.com/ https://coinmarketcap.com/ .
- avenoir 9y ago
  I think the biggest uncertainty is what happens to exchanges on and after august 1st. So the recommendation at this point is to take your coins and move them to a secure personal wallet. I think if you can make a purchase and have the transaction clear prior to the fork date with some time to spare to move your funds than perhaps you should be okay.
- fullshark 9y ago
  The time to buy is either before or after Aug 1. Unfortunately no one knows which it is.
  - ljk 9y ago
    why Aug 1?
    - fullshark 9y ago
      There might be a bitcoin split: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-beginners-guide-surviving-bip-148-uasf/ https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-beginners-guide...
  - placeybordeaux 9y ago
    My personal recommendation would be to have your bitcoins held by a private key you control on Aug 1st. I'd expect tx fees to be pretty bad leading up to Aug 1st as people move BTC out of exchanges.

oldstrangers 9y ago

And now its up around $2,150. Why even write these articles.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ajross 9y ago
You're complaining about the headline, not the article. A commodity that is trading 30% below a peak it set just one month ago is absolutely newsworthy, are you serious? If the SP500 did this we'd be posting in a 5000-comment thread and asking how long the recession would last.
- colecut 9y ago
  That's because the SP500 doesn't regularly swing violently like the crypto market
  - oldstrangers 9y ago
    Exactly, this is an everyday thing. Sometimes its hourly.
  - ajross 9y ago
    The crypto market is more volatile for sure, but this is still the second biggest one-month hit it's taken and the worst decline in three years. Again, if the SP500 did that it would be news, not finger-in-ear complaints about coverage.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- r00fus 9y ago
  You're discounting the volatility of said commodity. Prices (approx) for the last 30/60/90 days are: 2500, 1700, 1200.
- 9y ago

faragon 9y ago

Is there any reason for the Bitcoin being worth anything? Even in North Korea or Cuba it is easier to hold USD than Bitcoin. I'm sorry for the late investors, but people was warned since long ago.

orclev 9y ago
Same reason gold is worth something, it's a limited resource that's fungible and a large enough people are willing to trade in to make it useful for acquiring goods.
- ianai 9y ago
  Gold has use cases. What are the use cases for Bitcoin? Are any of them compelling? So compelling that a Trump or a Buffet would ever tangle with them? (I chose those two names as two extremes - not related but a spectrum.)
  - eof 9y ago
    Globally distributed ledger that you can trust without having to trust any specific entity; that has to be worth /something/ right?
  - andirk 9y ago
    NBA star Dennis Rodman shilled PotCoin in North Korea http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/technology/dennis-rodman-north-korea-potcoin/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/technology/dennis-rodman-nor... , a place where I'm sure execution is the punishment for pot. And probably for coin too.
  - orclev 9y ago
    Nobody investing in gold is doing it because of the industrial applications of the metal. If you're valuing gold based on its uses it's massively overvalued. The use case for bitcoin, or more accurately what it gives you that no other currency (except other cryptocurrencies) gives you is being decentralized, finite, and digital. The first and last points in particular make it very suitable for usage on the internet since it can be freely traded for goods and services across international borders while not being tied to any particular country. It remains to be seen if enough of a market can develop around bitcoin to stabilize its price (or indeed the price of any of the cryptocurrencies). The reason traditional fiat currency prices are as stable as they are is that they're coupled to the value of the goods a country trades which tend not to fluctuate up and down much. In theory cryptocurrencies value should be tied to the value of all the goods and services that they can be used to purchase, but since so few goods are actually purchasable using those currencies currently, the vast majority of their current value is derived from speculation in the market which causes the huge swings in value we see.

DeerSpotter 9y ago

Because of this, i am finally understanding how markets work. hype, hyyyype, HYYYpe, HYPE, HYYYYYYYYYYYPE, short sell, PANIC

mikeschmatz 9y ago
Except you can't short it
- ratinacage 9y ago
  There are a few exchanges that let you short sell.

7ewis 9y ago

Ethereum fell too. It's on it's way back up though, slowly. Hope it continues... definitely bought it at the wrong time.

bdcravens 9y ago
FOMO is real

NationLider 9y ago

Satoshi invented Bitcoin in 2008 because the banks thought it would be a good idea to deliberately crash the world's financial system and bet on it crashing. So, the banks did crash it, and millions of people ended up getting hurt. That's why you see all those hungry and confused people living on the streets with eyes like broken Christmas lights. Have respect for the beautiful gift Nakamoto gave us. Satoshi Nakamoto didn't invent Bitcoin so people could "cash out" at a higher dollar value. Bitcoin gives us an honest money system that we own, free from the tyrannical rule of the banks, there is no dollar value for that.

patrickg_zill 9y ago

I've noticed that it seems to fall on weekends and then go up on Monday or Tuesday. Wondering if I should put in some cash on an exchange to see if I can make money from this observation ...

andirk 9y ago
I tried to calculate when the big buyer/seller "whales" go to sleep to figure out what their time zone was. It pointed to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean :/
- milcron 9y ago
  Whales indeed.
fiatjaf 9y ago
You should, it will be great for you to discover how wrong you are and how unpredictable the market is.
- patrickg_zill 9y ago
  Anyone who wants to, can go here https://www.coinbase.com/charts?locale=en-US https://www.coinbase.com/charts?locale=en-US My observations track roughly to weekends, at least over the last month or so.
  - fiatjaf 9y ago
    After the cash is on you can't change your predictions anymore.

irresolute 9y ago

The real reason of declining of cryptocurrency is due to the shut down of AlphaBay. Alpha Bay was basically the replacement for Silk Road after that site was also shut down.