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Ask HN: How much money can actually be taken out of cryptocurrency?

• nicholas73 9y ago
  One thing is for certain - a lot less money went into the system than its current face value. It's the old stock market saying - better to sell on the way up than down.
• mgnr 9y ago
  Daily volumes on exchanges is usually > 100,000 bitcoins, hence USD$~413,900,000 at current price (source: https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/24h https://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/24h) If you wanted to liquidate USD$1,000,000,000 over a quarter (~90 days), that would be USD$~11,111,112 per day, a bit under 3% of the daily volume. That would probably have a small negative impact on the price. Moreover, if you were that size, you'd probably go through over-the-counter shops (such as https://cumberlandmining.com/ https://cumberlandmining.com/), reducing your slippage even more.
• paulpauper 9y ago
  A common misconception is that BTC must be sold on an exchange. If someone has a large amount they could sell it on a secondary market or to a private buyer offmarket.
  • coralreef 9y ago
    Is there some sort of bitcoin escrow service that would manage that transaction?
    • miroslav5411 9y ago
      Hello Coralreef - about the escrow for BTC. Yes, there are such services. Typically used for large transactions
• alt_f4 9y ago
  You could sell all of it. But, for such a large trade, the market will move, so your BTC priced at USD$1,000,whatever will be worth much less. The trick would be to sell in many smaller batches.
• imhoguy 9y ago
  Like in any Ponzi scheme - FIFO with profit. Anyway whatever you want to sell you need to find enough buyers who will pay what you want. Simply supply and demand works here [0]. See more topics on microeconomics to get better understanding how markets work. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand