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So bitcoin went up because they were going to fork, and now it's going up again because they will not? k Edit: Otoh, looks like it's seeing a bit of a drop no

So bitcoin went up because they were going to fork, and now it's going up again because they will not? k Edit: Otoh, looks like it's seeing a bit of a drop now, but I doubt it will hit the pre-anticipation levels.

icey 9y ago
It's possible that either decision attracted a different class of buyer. Altcoins have been dumping recently as people sold their holdings to buy Bitcoin in case there was a fork in order to get more of the forked coin (like what happened with Bitcoin Cash). Canceling Segwit2x may have caused traditional investors (e.g. those with less risk appetite) to feel that there are fewer questions about which chain survives a fork; they could have been waiting to put money into the market until there was a clear sense of which Bitcoin fork would be the successful one. Altcoins are surging at the moment, so I believe that lends some credence to the first group being people trying to move into BTC to get more free coin.
- ifdefdebug 9y ago
  > waiting to put money into the market until there was a clear sense of which Bitcoin fork would be the successful one. I don't know, only if they did not understand that it's a win-win-win situation... they would have equal amount of coins on both chains so none of the three possible outcomes would be actually losing.
  - AgentME 9y ago
    It's possible that confusion and conflict coming from there being two chains (imagine if a user sends bitcoin to a retailer who then claims they never received a payment because they were actually expecting coins on the b2x fork) could depress the price. Now we know that won't happen.
    - ifdefdebug 9y ago
      I stand corrected, didn't consider the case of both chains crashing due to the fork.
asdfasdfas112 9y ago
don't be mad. buy bitcoin! to the mooooooon
pishpash 9y ago
The only conclusion is bitcoin is not going up for any of these reasons.
- deevolution 9y ago
  I remember seeing a chart that correlated botcoins price with it's Google search volume.
  - bdcravens 9y ago
    correlation != causation
    - it_learnses 9y ago
      we are not looking for causation here. simply correlation is sufficient to predict the trend.
    - MichaelBurge 9y ago
      I think that searching for Bitcoin is causally related to market demand for Bitcoin(i.e. the price). Because if you want anything(like cheese or furnace filters), you'll then search for it on Google.
      - jiggunjer 9y ago
        It could be people were just curious, and after being served ads by Google they got an impulse to buy. Just playing devils advocate.
  - Kiro 9y ago
    It's the other way around.
    - Marazan 9y ago
      It's actually more complicated. With previous bubble spikes bitcoin price starts rising first then search term follows but search term then peaks before the price peaks.
pwaai 9y ago
Market fundamentals seem non existant here. At least a few years ago, when there were bad news the prices would reflect that. Now, it seems to go up anytime bitcoin is mentioned at all, regardless whether the market understands the implications or not.
- thefalcon 9y ago
  Yep. In September Business Insider reported a 91% correlation between the price of Bitcoin and searches for Bitcoin on Google: http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-correlation-google-search-2017-9/ http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-correlation-goo...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- zanny 9y ago
  This is why I got out of bitcoin trading. It used to correlate to the general attitude about it. Now the coins and miners are so centralized the real driving force of bitcoins price is the thousand wallets holding 95% of all BTC. Its like trying to predict market movements for a stock where 95% of the shares in a company are owned by one person. It isn't up to anyone else but that person where the price trends, because the behavior of the 5% crumbs mean nothing against the behavior of that one holder. The price will simply go up when the whales want it to, and go down when said whales want to cash out. Fees could go up or down, China could do X or Y, the Fed could regulate it or not, and the general opinions of the ecosystem don't matter whatsoever - price is fairly solely dictated by the whims of a few dozen elites nowadays.
  - justzisguyuknow 9y ago
    It seems like yes the day-to-day fluctuations may be at the whim of the large wallets, but how can they actually be in control of the price over longer periods? Or if they can, then given that it's in their interest for the price to keep rising long-term, why not hold and go along for the ride?
byset 9y ago
I guess people say all kinds of things, but I don't recall anyone arguing that Bitcoin was going up because of the impending fork. It certainly wasn't the conventional wisdom.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- thefalcon 9y ago
  There was a spate of articles calling Bitcoin forks "dividends" and other such nonsense which I'm sure a lot of people bought into.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  There was tons of discussion around the price and the fork. Why wouldn't the prospect of free money make it a sellers market? Bitcoin Cash fork brought Bitcoin holders 7-20% free coins.
  - shanusmagnus 9y ago
    Because this wasn't like BCash -- it was a hostile fork, with no replay protection, such that the two forks could not reasonably co-exist without first a major cataclysm. The best case result (according to most) would be the preservation of value on whichever chain survived. Anyone investing in the last couple of days looking for a dividend would have been a total imbecile.
    - bdcravens 9y ago
      Markets are filled with and driven by tons of imbeciles :-)
- Kiro 9y ago
  > It certainly wasn't the conventional wisdom. It was for sure. Where do you get your Bitcoin news?
  - 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
olalonde 9y ago
Trying to explain Bitcoin price movements is a futile exercise.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  Not in this case; it's actually pretty simple. There was anticipation of "free" coins after the fork, as there was when Bitcoin Cash forked. Price rose as people bought coins that would later be forked. Now it's cancelled, "free" coins are gone, so people see no need to tie up that money.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - matthewbauer 9y ago
    I guess what's weird is the idea that you could split two coins and the two coins price is greater than the original. That doesn't make any sense even though it happened with Bitcoin cash.
    - tpallarino 9y ago
      It's not that weird. It's like any exchange of goods, both parties can come out with an advantage by getting something they want. In the case of Bitcoin Cash, 2 sides of the community got what they wanted.
      - davidmanescu 9y ago
        The interested parties on either side would have been better off buying pre-fork and selling the one they didn't want, rather than buying after the fork, even though the end result is the same. That is irrational.
        tpallarino 9y ago
        If people trade based upon information asymmetry, then the fact that Bitcoin Cash actually had miners, didn't crash fatally, and was capable of sending transactions constitutes an enormous change in the information landscape. Pre fork BTC price + risk premium ~ BTC post fork + BCH Pretend like the fork actually taking place and working successfully as comparable to a company's earning reports. The second that news comes in, it prices itself in almost immediately.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
guiomie 9y ago
What is interesting is that the BTC price went up on the email announcement and it started going down an hour later when coindesk released the news. I guess different type of investors/speculators read different news source ...
- mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
  Do you really think it has anything to do with that?
  - guiomie 9y ago
    Yah.
PaulAJ 9y ago
The price swings are probably driven by people with future positions on one chain or the other.
ringaroundthetx 9y ago
Different people are buying and selling. There were many people that sold off a lot of their altcoins for bitcoin, so that they could be positioned for the fork coins. They are buying their altcoins again. There are many people that can't make any decision in the face of uncertainty, and have shaky confidence in bitcoin to begin with, now the biggest uncertainty is gone and they are able to buy now that this is out the way.
alexcnwy 9y ago
Shorts covering
austenallred 9y ago
You must be new to this. Literally any change shows that bitcoin will win. Something bad for bitcoin? And it still can't stop it! Look at how resilient it is! Something good for bitcoin? TOLD YOU SO to the moon!
- saalweachter 9y ago
  All Bitcoin news results in new people saying "I should buy some Bitcoin", so it doesn't matter so much what the news is as long as it reaches new people who will think they're missing out. Not to use the B-word, but bubbles will continue to inflate as long as there are enough new people to put new money in.
  - rocqua 9y ago
    Count on that greater fool that will later be willing to buy for an even more ridiculous price than you did!
    - jiggunjer 9y ago
      True for gold too, yet that bubble manages to be pretty stable over the decades.
      - saalweachter 9y ago
        I mean, it depends on your definition of "stable"? The yearly deltas in the price of gold between 2009 and 2015 are +31%, +8%, +9%, -28%, 0%, -12%. It's stable relative to, say, BitCoin, but if my salary changed that much I'd hardly call it "a stable income", and if my weight changed that much I'd definitely not call it "a stable weight".
        hndamien 9y ago
        If there is a fool born every minute, and we have 10 minute blocks, then this can continue ad infinitum and therefore produce a great medium of exchange and store of value. It is like a better version of Hawala. If this is the case, then it would appear to be that the greater fools are the ones holding onto a depreciating currency.
matthewbauer 9y ago
I guess a "rising tide lifts all boats". Or at least a bubble does.
guiambros 9y ago
It's more complicated than just a fork. Differently than the previous hard fork that split blockchains and created Bitcoin Cash, SegWit2X didn't offer replay protection, which means it was basically like a self-inflicted 51% attack [1], orchestrated by the core devs and other proponents. The fact that is was called off gave temporary relief to the markets. It's hard to predict what will happen now, but at least it avoided tanking the market next week (for now). [1] https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-bogeyman-cometh-segwit2x-51-attack/ https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-bogeyman-cometh-segwit2x-5...

icey 9y ago

It's possible that either decision attracted a different class of buyer. Altcoins have been dumping recently as people sold their holdings to buy Bitcoin in case there was a fork in order to get more of the forked coin (like what happened with Bitcoin Cash). Canceling Segwit2x may have caused traditional investors (e.g. those with less risk appetite) to feel that there are fewer questions about which chain survives a fork; they could have been waiting to put money into the market until there was a clear sense of which Bitcoin fork would be the successful one. Altcoins are surging at the moment, so I believe that lends some credence to the first group being people trying to move into BTC to get more free coin.

ifdefdebug 9y ago
> waiting to put money into the market until there was a clear sense of which Bitcoin fork would be the successful one. I don't know, only if they did not understand that it's a win-win-win situation... they would have equal amount of coins on both chains so none of the three possible outcomes would be actually losing.
- AgentME 9y ago
  It's possible that confusion and conflict coming from there being two chains (imagine if a user sends bitcoin to a retailer who then claims they never received a payment because they were actually expecting coins on the b2x fork) could depress the price. Now we know that won't happen.
  - ifdefdebug 9y ago
    I stand corrected, didn't consider the case of both chains crashing due to the fork.

asdfasdfas112 9y ago

don't be mad. buy bitcoin! to the mooooooon

pishpash 9y ago

The only conclusion is bitcoin is not going up for any of these reasons.

deevolution 9y ago
I remember seeing a chart that correlated botcoins price with it's Google search volume.
- bdcravens 9y ago
  correlation != causation
  - it_learnses 9y ago
    we are not looking for causation here. simply correlation is sufficient to predict the trend.
  - MichaelBurge 9y ago
    I think that searching for Bitcoin is causally related to market demand for Bitcoin(i.e. the price). Because if you want anything(like cheese or furnace filters), you'll then search for it on Google.
    - jiggunjer 9y ago
      It could be people were just curious, and after being served ads by Google they got an impulse to buy. Just playing devils advocate.
- Kiro 9y ago
  It's the other way around.
  - Marazan 9y ago
    It's actually more complicated. With previous bubble spikes bitcoin price starts rising first then search term follows but search term then peaks before the price peaks.

pwaai 9y ago

Market fundamentals seem non existant here. At least a few years ago, when there were bad news the prices would reflect that. Now, it seems to go up anytime bitcoin is mentioned at all, regardless whether the market understands the implications or not.

thefalcon 9y ago
Yep. In September Business Insider reported a 91% correlation between the price of Bitcoin and searches for Bitcoin on Google: http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-correlation-google-search-2017-9/ http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-price-correlation-goo...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
zanny 9y ago
This is why I got out of bitcoin trading. It used to correlate to the general attitude about it. Now the coins and miners are so centralized the real driving force of bitcoins price is the thousand wallets holding 95% of all BTC. Its like trying to predict market movements for a stock where 95% of the shares in a company are owned by one person. It isn't up to anyone else but that person where the price trends, because the behavior of the 5% crumbs mean nothing against the behavior of that one holder. The price will simply go up when the whales want it to, and go down when said whales want to cash out. Fees could go up or down, China could do X or Y, the Fed could regulate it or not, and the general opinions of the ecosystem don't matter whatsoever - price is fairly solely dictated by the whims of a few dozen elites nowadays.
- justzisguyuknow 9y ago
  It seems like yes the day-to-day fluctuations may be at the whim of the large wallets, but how can they actually be in control of the price over longer periods? Or if they can, then given that it's in their interest for the price to keep rising long-term, why not hold and go along for the ride?

byset 9y ago

I guess people say all kinds of things, but I don't recall anyone arguing that Bitcoin was going up because of the impending fork. It certainly wasn't the conventional wisdom.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
thefalcon 9y ago
There was a spate of articles calling Bitcoin forks "dividends" and other such nonsense which I'm sure a lot of people bought into.
bdcravens 9y ago
There was tons of discussion around the price and the fork. Why wouldn't the prospect of free money make it a sellers market? Bitcoin Cash fork brought Bitcoin holders 7-20% free coins.
- shanusmagnus 9y ago
  Because this wasn't like BCash -- it was a hostile fork, with no replay protection, such that the two forks could not reasonably co-exist without first a major cataclysm. The best case result (according to most) would be the preservation of value on whichever chain survived. Anyone investing in the last couple of days looking for a dividend would have been a total imbecile.
  - bdcravens 9y ago
    Markets are filled with and driven by tons of imbeciles :-)
Kiro 9y ago
> It certainly wasn't the conventional wisdom. It was for sure. Where do you get your Bitcoin news?
- 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

olalonde 9y ago

Trying to explain Bitcoin price movements is a futile exercise.

bdcravens 9y ago
Not in this case; it's actually pretty simple. There was anticipation of "free" coins after the fork, as there was when Bitcoin Cash forked. Price rose as people bought coins that would later be forked. Now it's cancelled, "free" coins are gone, so people see no need to tie up that money.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- matthewbauer 9y ago
  I guess what's weird is the idea that you could split two coins and the two coins price is greater than the original. That doesn't make any sense even though it happened with Bitcoin cash.
  - tpallarino 9y ago
    It's not that weird. It's like any exchange of goods, both parties can come out with an advantage by getting something they want. In the case of Bitcoin Cash, 2 sides of the community got what they wanted.
    - davidmanescu 9y ago
      The interested parties on either side would have been better off buying pre-fork and selling the one they didn't want, rather than buying after the fork, even though the end result is the same. That is irrational.
      - tpallarino 9y ago
        If people trade based upon information asymmetry, then the fact that Bitcoin Cash actually had miners, didn't crash fatally, and was capable of sending transactions constitutes an enormous change in the information landscape. Pre fork BTC price + risk premium ~ BTC post fork + BCH Pretend like the fork actually taking place and working successfully as comparable to a company's earning reports. The second that news comes in, it prices itself in almost immediately.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

guiomie 9y ago

What is interesting is that the BTC price went up on the email announcement and it started going down an hour later when coindesk released the news. I guess different type of investors/speculators read different news source ...

mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
Do you really think it has anything to do with that?
- guiomie 9y ago
  Yah.

PaulAJ 9y ago

The price swings are probably driven by people with future positions on one chain or the other.

ringaroundthetx 9y ago

Different people are buying and selling. There were many people that sold off a lot of their altcoins for bitcoin, so that they could be positioned for the fork coins. They are buying their altcoins again. There are many people that can't make any decision in the face of uncertainty, and have shaky confidence in bitcoin to begin with, now the biggest uncertainty is gone and they are able to buy now that this is out the way.

alexcnwy 9y ago

Shorts covering

austenallred 9y ago

You must be new to this. Literally any change shows that bitcoin will win. Something bad for bitcoin? And it still can't stop it! Look at how resilient it is! Something good for bitcoin? TOLD YOU SO to the moon!

saalweachter 9y ago
All Bitcoin news results in new people saying "I should buy some Bitcoin", so it doesn't matter so much what the news is as long as it reaches new people who will think they're missing out. Not to use the B-word, but bubbles will continue to inflate as long as there are enough new people to put new money in.
- rocqua 9y ago
  Count on that greater fool that will later be willing to buy for an even more ridiculous price than you did!
  - jiggunjer 9y ago
    True for gold too, yet that bubble manages to be pretty stable over the decades.
    - saalweachter 9y ago
      I mean, it depends on your definition of "stable"? The yearly deltas in the price of gold between 2009 and 2015 are +31%, +8%, +9%, -28%, 0%, -12%. It's stable relative to, say, BitCoin, but if my salary changed that much I'd hardly call it "a stable income", and if my weight changed that much I'd definitely not call it "a stable weight".
      - hndamien 9y ago
        If there is a fool born every minute, and we have 10 minute blocks, then this can continue ad infinitum and therefore produce a great medium of exchange and store of value. It is like a better version of Hawala. If this is the case, then it would appear to be that the greater fools are the ones holding onto a depreciating currency.

matthewbauer 9y ago

I guess a "rising tide lifts all boats". Or at least a bubble does.

guiambros 9y ago

It's more complicated than just a fork. Differently than the previous hard fork that split blockchains and created Bitcoin Cash, SegWit2X didn't offer replay protection, which means it was basically like a self-inflicted 51% attack [1], orchestrated by the core devs and other proponents. The fact that is was called off gave temporary relief to the markets. It's hard to predict what will happen now, but at least it avoided tanking the market next week (for now). [1] https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-bogeyman-cometh-segwit2x-51-attack/ https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoins-bogeyman-cometh-segwit2x-5...