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Bitcoin hits $10,000
- thisisit 9y agoAre we going get every other bitcoin price milestone on the frontpage now? Earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796503 Then two days ago for 9k: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15782222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15786821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15786821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15779933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15779933 at 7k: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15609264 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15609264
- ilaksh 9y agoRight and in a few months or years it will be on the front page when it hits 20k and then 40k.
- jacquesm 9y agoMakes you wonder what triggers people have for themselves to sell their 'stash'. 10 fold increases in a year won't last for very long.
- petercooper 9y agoThere's a FOMO narrative of "$1,000,000 BTC if it goes mainstream" going around which has fuelled speculative investments from some people I know (myself included - obviously using money I am totally OK with losing given how far-fetched an outcome it is).
- pishpash 9y agoI would like to see a calculation of $1M/BTC and the assumptions.
- kwelstr 9y agoYes, that was written at the very beginning of bitcoin. The thought is that bitcoin can be divided into 100,000,000 satoshis and a dollar can be divided into 100 cents, so to make 1 satoshi = 1 cent means 1 bitcoin = 1,000,000 dollars.
- mrb 9y agoMeh. Bitcoin has seen 5 or 6 years with 10 fold increases.
- wslh 9y agoOne trigger to sell is when you have enough to retire. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are creating a lot of millionaries. Probably more than startups and in a shorter time. Can't back up this, it is based on how many rich people exist around me in this field (where I also work) vs. friends struggling to make their companies scale even if they are doing well at a tiny scale.
- pishpash 9y agoFor most people that'll require either almost all their savings in bitcoins for 10x or a significant portion for 100x. Neither is "easy."
- wslh 9y agoIt was easy for early adopters/believers/patient-people comparing with other options. More thinking about people outside US who don't have access to a lot of opportunities at an early stage.
- Lerc 9y agoI feel like the $10,000 mark was a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. There were a number of people early in the year saying $10,000 by the end. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here. Last few bubbles had phases of * hey, bitcoin is going up * Bitcoin is going way up, This rate seems unsustainable. * OK, this is fucking crazy now. (this lasts about a day) * <POP!> I'd say we're in the late stages of the second phase.
- pault 9y agoSeriously? It was $6000 a month ago... to me this is firmly in the fucking crazy stage. It feels a lot like the last run up to $1,100 before the 80% drop (I cashed out at $1,000 just before the pop by dumb luck, but failed to buy back in).
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoor it could go to 100k, or 1mn in 6 months time. It's impossible to predict. The crazy thing is that the intrinsic value of bitcoin has gone down recently (ie. you can't really use it for payments now), and yet the price still goes up. If BTC really is going to become an alternate value store to Gold, this makes total sense.
- LeoJiWoo 9y agoThe true believers really imagine it will replace paper currency. So there is no need to sell.
- hndamien 9y agoThis is the correct answer. Also, many of them have sold previously for reasons and lived/ live with severe regret. This is how HODLers are born.
- orourkek 9y agoPersonally, my sell threshold is when my BTC is worth enough (after CG taxes) to pay off my student loans. Given the latest price increases, it's getting very close :)
- cconroy 9y agoI think more and more people will start to realize this is the 'local' currency of the web. I plan on trying to exit fiat (USD) completely in the next decade. Exciting times!!
- mrb 9y agoMost comprehensive all-time Bitcoin price history chart you will find online, to give some perspective: http://bitcoin.zorinaq.com/price/ http://bitcoin.zorinaq.com/price/ (Chart is interactive, see instructions at the bottom. I made it.)
- joelrunyon 9y agoYou should fix the Y axis. Completely misleading.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mrb 9y agoA logarithmic scale is the proper way to show an exponentially increasing value.
- Simon_says 9y agoYou would use something other than a logarithmic scale? Seems like the right choice here.
- narrator 9y ago7 years ago: The first bitcoin article on HN with comments! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1532670 One of the posters says the feds will shut it down. I also thought this too. This remains one of the most enduring mysteries of Bitcoin to me. Why has the government taken such a hands off approach?
- Retric 9y agoBecause it's awesome from a government standpoint with every single transaction being public it's very easy to track. Various proposals to generate anonymity have been created, but with the sky high transaction costs none of them are currently viable.
- albertgoeswoof 9y agoIf this was true it would be quite naive, given there are now cryptocurrencies with anonymous transactions out there (e.g. Monero, zcash etc.), which could completely replace bitcoin - or at the very least are easy to transact with.
- quickthrower2 9y agoHow does a government stop it? And if they could, could they also stop illegal file sharing in a similar way?
- modeless 9y agoThey ban exchanging Bitcoin for fiat currencies, which completely disconnects Bitcoin from the traditional financial system. Underground and in-person exchanges would continue but at much lower volumes with higher friction and fees, and the value of Bitcoin would crash. This is diffrerent from file sharing because file sharing does not need a connection to the traditional financial system to be useful for most people.
- programmarchy 9y ago
- zeep 9y agothis time, it's for real... (the last time a 10k value was posted on HN, I could not find 1 bitcoin for 10k on my exchange (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796503) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15796503))
- ChuckMcM 9y agoIf this keeps up buying $100 in Bitcoin would seem to be inexpensive ransomware insurance.
- nly 9y agoI don't follow it but I read somewhere the other day that it now costs tens of dollars worth to actually make a transaction on the blockchain. If this is true then it seems to me that it's effectively become an inter-bank settlement protocol (which may not be that surprising or bad of an outcome given its inherent latency)
- empath75 9y agoNo bank would use it because of volatility.
- paulie_a 9y agoNot that I am aware huge fan of banks. Or crypto currency..a bank absolutely would if it made them money by using that volatility
- 6nf 9y agoIt's dropped back to about $2 now, still expensive but not insane.
- fourstar 9y agoThat's why I use LTC.
- cocktailpeanuts 9y agoOne thing I learned since learning about cryptocurrencies: NEVER trust "something you read somewhere". A lot of them are propaganda or people who have no idea how it actually works scratching the surface. Do your own research if you're curious about it and don't want to feel left out. It's never too late to make an actual informed decision afterwards. I've seen so many otherwise intelligent people just keep dismissing Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies without even knowing how they actually work. Don't be those people. Try to read some books about the actual technology that runs Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies and THEN make a decision whether you think it's a scam or not. Even if you think you think it's a scam or a bubble or whatever, at least then you'll be actually making an independent judgment on a new piece of technology that nobody--including the inventor him/herself--fully understands.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mostly_harmless 9y agoIt broke 9000 yesterday, didn't it? That's more than 10% in a day. Is there any reason it is up, other than speculation?
- empath75 9y agoTether hyperinflation. Edit: I should clarify. Bitfinex printed 95 million worth of tether in the last two days, and used it to buy btc. When your prices are denominated in Monopoly money, the sky is the limit.
- zenlikethat 9y agoThis is the story that's missing here. When one of the major exchanges is starting to look insolvent and USDT is getting scarier and scarier by the day, a flight from USDT into Bitcoin is not surprising...
- dahdum 9y agoTether is being issued because institutional money is coming in through USDT. https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/7fsfwl/daily_discussion_monday_november_27_2017/dqfwq33/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/7fsfwl/dail...
- heartbreak 9y agoDon’t believe everything you read on the Internet.
- QML 9y agoThat makes no sense; if institutional money were to come into cryptocurrency (that is, fiat to crypto) -- which is a taxable event -- why would they be going into USDT when the main goal of USDT is to be stable? Essentially, that means people will be losing money.
- deorder 9y agoIndeed. When that happens the people that did not exchange their USDT for BTC on time, while BTC and other cryptocoins are crashing as well, will be the ones holding a worthless USDT not backed by actual dollars.
- wintom 9y ago“Rosenstreich at online trading firm Swissquote said bitcoin’s surge harks to the surprises of the U.K. referendum on European Union membership and President Trump’s election. “We have underestimated the populist movements,” he said. “There is growing unease on how central banks and governments are managing fiat currencies. Ordinary people globally understand why a decentralized asset is the ultimate safe haven.”” That’s the reason for 10k and it will be the reason for 100k. 100k puts the market at cap at a trillion, it’s not that crazy if you remember that Gold is several times that and other than looking good as jewelry it has no other real intrinsic value. No one likes to talk about that though, they like to demonize bitcoin which actually does something gold could never do. Force trust in a world where you can’t trust anything.
- ad_hominem 9y agoI wish Bitcoin was as decentralized as everyone says it is. Unlike fiat cash or gold, you can't spend it without an internet connection (in order to sync up the public ledger and submit the transaction). You're subject to miners to approve your transactions, which in theory should be democratized, but isn't really since it's based on computing power, which in turn can be bought or centralized in mining pools. You're subject to a small cabal of developers' whims in having to use the reference client and hardforks to patch up bugs in the protocol. In theory that should also be democratized, with people free to use whatever forks they want, but in practice it's centralized with everyone fleeing to whichever fork all the mining pools go with.
- Joeboy 9y ago> I wish Bitcoin was as decentralized as everyone says it is. I'm trying to cash out some of mine and I've been downloading the blockchain for four days now. I had to buy a new hard drive before I could even start. I've read that it takes over an hour to do a transaction now, although I'm not yet in a position to verify that. If you look on the btc related subreddits nobody recommends using a proper client as Satoshi intended, it's all about accounts on websites offering a service that could reasonably be described as "banking".
- gtrubetskoy 9y agoBack in September I've written down my thoughts on how Bitcoin price is determined in a two part blog (the second part is about pricing), and back then I concluded that Bitcoin will falter if it does not reach the cap closer to that of gold, which has to do with the total "capacity" of Bitcoin as store of value, which is its market cap. It still has more than 10x of growth to get there. [1] https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/22/bitcoin-value/ https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/22/bitcoin-value/ [2] https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/25/bitcoin-value-2/ https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/25/bitcoin-value-2/
- sillysaurus3 9y agoThe most remarkable aspect of bitcoin is that if Satoshi is a single person, it's the first time in history someone has become a billionaire by themselves. It's not quite that clear cut, but it's not too far off.
- Shank 9y agoThe only problem is that Satoshi's coins are watched like a hawk. Satoshi can't liquidate any of them, or even really move them without causing an immediate reaction in the community. Exchanges might halt trading, whilst it would immediately give away his or her identity. If the price of bitcoin doesn't crash following a coin movement, Satoshi's life is most certainly at risk. If it does, then the coins are worth nothing.
- wallace_f 9y agoWhy would Satoshi's life be at risk?
- sillysaurus3 9y agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1lfobc/i_am_a_timetraveler_from_the_future_here_to_beg/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1lfobc/i_am_a_time...
- giarc 9y agoWait - is that user in any relation to this Luka Magnotta? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luka_Magnotta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luka_Magnotta)
- wallace_f 9y agoJesus Christ, that is a psychopath. "During the video, the 1987 New Order song "True Faith" He must have liked American Psycho What was his motive? The Wikipedia doesn't seem to say
- miguelrochefort 9y agoI bought my first Bitcoin at $10. Of course, I had to sell it at $20...
- jacquesm 9y agoAt the present rate that is less than a year. Time to buy some more. /s
- deorder 9y agoBe careful. There is evidence that certain parties are issuing fake dollars called USDT / Tether from which they buy cryptocoins (incl. BTC) to artificially increase the price: https://mobile.twitter.com/bitfinexed https://mobile.twitter.com/bitfinexed (One of the people monitoring the situation) https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7g5yml/my_investigation_of_tether_scam_and_some/ https://np.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/7g5yml/my_investigation... (Some more info) Make sure you are able to get out on time if needed. Investigate and decide for yourself. There is a lot of censoring and vote manipulation going on. I am not going to point fingers, but just that you are aware.
- dahdum 9y agoThe Friedman memo showed they were 1-1 cash/usdt back in September, and they've stated clearly it's institutional money coming in. In fact, that's exactly what I would expect for large buyers trying to spread their purchases across exchanges who don't use USD directly. "I agree that if no one was able to get fiat in or out of Tether and USDT were still being issued that would be a huge problem. As it stands, however, institutional customers are able to deposit USD to Tether, and this is how USDT is being issued." https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/7fsfwl/daily_discussion_monday_november_27_2017/dqfwq33/ https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/7fsfwl/dail...
- wils1245 9y agoIf you believe them you must believe that they've received $250 million dollars in the month of November alone. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/ https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/tether/ This on a daily pattern that looks like a step function. Where could this money possibly be coming from? Anonymous millionaires?
- dahdum 9y agoHedge funds, family offices, etc.. $250M isn't all that much. Arrington is trying to raise a $100M crypto fund, Novogratz is raising a $500M one.
- 9y ago
- Cookingboy 9y agoDisclaimer: I do own BTC. But I really can’t see how this is not just an instrument for some people to get very rich in a very short amount of time on the back of others. Can it reach 100k? Absolutely. 1M? Who knows. 10M/BTC? Someone on Reddit said it will get close. But in the end I do think it will be remembered as a global mania instead of the creation of a new asset class. I do believe in block chain and the value of crypto currency in general, but I just don’t see how BTC will be the winning asset in the end, if anything Etherum has a lot more solid foundation and is a lot more scalable technically.
- nwah1 9y agoI heard a rumor that it will hit 1 trillion dollars. It sounded legit.
- _justinfunk 9y agoThe rumor I heard was that it will hit 1 quadrillion dollars.
- koonsolo 9y agoFunny, but on the other hand, if Bitcoin reaches 1 million dollars, how much will the dollar still be worth? So first part could be rise of Bitcoin, second part fall of dollar. 1 trillion dollars is within reach! ;)
- mancerayder 9y agoWas the rumor on Reddit, though? Because if so, I'm loading up on BTC. To the moon, as they say over there.
- zzxxddere333 9y agoWhy not both? If you can see value in decentralized cryptocurrencies, I think you can make the mental leap for the case of bitcoin.
- cjensen 9y agoI wonder how many tulips you can buy with a bitcoin?
- jacquesm 9y agoYou want the bulbs, the tulips are almost worthless.
- tehlike 9y agoComparing tulip bulbs to bitcoin is madness.
- LeoPanthera 9y agoThis is such a lazy comment and it comes up every time. It contributes absolutely nothing.
- cjensen 9y agoPointing out the obvious in a minimum of words is not lazy. Expecting people to stop pointing out the obvious is optimistic at best.
- 40acres 9y agoHow do you transfer Bitcoin into fiat currency? There was a Bitcoin ATM in Portland, OR a while back but I'm not sure how it worked and haven't really heard of other ways to liquidate BTC.
- w-ll 9y agoNever heard of Coinbase.com a S12 YCombinator start-up?
- jameskegel 9y agoYou can use a Bitpay Visa card and just send bitcoin to it like loading up a debit card. It has my name on it and my employer can pay me in bitcoin if they like this way as well, it's very easy actually.
- ilaksh 9y agoThere are a lot of ways. You could use Coinbase or an exchange. Or Bitpay. You could also try localbitcoins.com. Or just find a person who is hyped about it and help them set up a wallet then make a deal.
- wallace_f 9y agoCan someone explain to me why bitcoin should be priced so high relative to other cryptocurrencies? The conspiracy theorist in me wants to say that the best way to undermine trust in cryptocurrencies is to create market turmoil. This would not just undermine trust in cryptocurrency, but serve to embolden the Fed's 'Price Stability' justification.
- scott_karana 9y agoPopularity, and all that naturally follows.
- QML 9y agoI'd have to argue it's because Bitcoin went net-positive after the BCH fork -- that shows a bit of resilience and probably would inspire false confidence in speculators.
- posedge 9y agoFirst mover advantage. The Bitcoin paper and idea are world famous and while nowadays everyone has read/heard and is talking about Bitcoin, almost no one knows about other cryptocurrencies. Also I suppose the community is much larger and there are more miners.
- goseeastarwar 9y agoI'd love to force disclaimers on bitcoin ownership prior to commenters trying to convince us how decentralized currency will change the world and hit $1M eventually. It's called talking your book, which isn't illegal, but wildly disingenuous. FOMO is why the number keeps going up, these other reasons are window dressing for utter nonsense.
- bluepirate 9y agoI bought a laptop with BTC a few months ago. Also MDMA.
- HN15718653 9y agoHonest question: Is Bitcoin used in significant quantities for "legitimate"/legal transactions? I don't know a single person who has bought anything with a Bitcoin, or received payment. From my non-economic POV, it sure seems like /pure speculation/.
- antimora 9y agoFrom the outside, as nonuser, I cannot understand how this currency price surge helps the currency as a medium of exchange. Wouldn't this signal everyone to hold on their bitcoins? Doesn't this hurt the adoption in the long run?
- blueprint 9y agoIt can also signal that you have enough money to buy what you wanted to buy in the first place... while encouraging saving. Maybe not super bad. You're right that if its function is as a currency then it should be used but it's hard to make that case for Bitcoin. For Monero, it's very clear: Monero's anonymity is strongest when it is actually used – when there are more transaction outputs from which to choose, and so usage of it is to be encouraged – especially when the alternative is the influx of hordes of speculators who merely hold or trade and don't contribute to the technology nor community in any way. Well, except perhaps in providing comedy material…
- bluepirate 9y agoMaybe the price jumping high because organization like Amazon will announce that they will start accepting BTC soon
- dustinmoris 9y agoUnlike gold a BTC has absolutely no use beyond whatever its current use is. The only way for a BTC to be ever in demand is if enough people trust each other that nobody will start selling it in large mass and therefore entirely flooring the value of it. However trust is not exactly a great foundation for a currency's value. Gold has at least has some useful applications outside of banking. For a start it looks beautiful, it is highly in demand in fashion and jewellery an it has also great application in electronics. This is a much better foundation for being resilient against a complete loss of value and promising longevity. Besides BTC has serious flaws in order to attract a critical mass. It is extremely unsustainable - for example buying a sandwich with BTC requires more energy than a house for an entire week. This is alone is just horrible, especially in times when we should be trying to save our planet and not waste energy for shits like this. Secondly with it's current volatility the people who own BTC are much much less likely to spend it somewhere, because of the hope of gaining more value. However if nobody is willing to spend their BTC then adoption will lack and eventually counter act on it's value. Thirdly you can't really convert the value of BTC into hard cash and even if you could, before you'd finish converting a large amount of BTC into cash you'd have halved the price of the BTC as part of the exercise. Overall the technology behind it is interesting, but BTC I honestly think will massively flop and the current hype comes from pure greed. Investors trying to convince the populus to buy into BTC so they can finally cash out, but the reality is that for the normal person BTC is literally too cryptic to jump on the train and tech savvy people know better that it's too late now. It's too volatile and anything can happen. You don't buy expensive assets which are so widely known that they are in the news every day. This is too late.. we just watch and wait for the burst.
- baddox 9y agoWhat percentage of the value of gold do you think is due to its “inherent” value in jewelry or electronics? I’d wager it’s incredibly tiny, and I don’t understand your argument that gold is a reasonable store of value only because it has some tiny bit of “inherent” value.
- dustinmoris 9y agoIt has a lot with it to do, because a lot of today's asset value is based on pure emotions of investors and their feelings and if something is actually physical, which you can see, hold in your hands, which has a very shiny appearance, is being worn by rich people around their necks and is used in the most sophisticated electronics (which itself is required for the world to function nowadays) influences one's feelings a lot - so yes, the fact that gold has these attributes plays a huge role IMHO. On the other hand a BTC is literally just a made up hashsum which is not only extremely volatile on the markets, but could also very easily just physically disappear through loss, theft or just malfunction.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- m3kw9 9y agoI’m note sure if bitcoin can be a viable currency if the price movements are so volatile. It’s all good the the volatility moving the price up, carrying it in any big amount without insurance feels like gambling right now
- guiomie 9y agoThe way it is being pitched now by the community is that is isn't a currency, but a store of value.
- _justinfunk 9y agoThis is my hangup with it. The libertarian dreams of a decentralized currency can never happen if people expect their money to rapidly increase in value. Why would I buy a pizza today, or a house, or an island, with BTC if in 6 months, that same BTC would be worth 10x.
- karmapolic 9y agoI heard pretty much the same bs when it hit 5k. And now, oh boy, when is it going to hit 100k now.
- dcw303 9y agoI'd like to see Bitcoin gain more utility as a payment platform. I'm hoping that CME's plan to offer futures contracts gives merchants the stability they need to offer products priced in BTC online.
- sosa2k 9y agoI vividly remember when it crashed down from around 900 a few years ago and the /r/bitcoin subreddit literally had suicide hotlines pinned.
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- tehlike 9y agoI am surprised to see very little mention of monero, given that it's closer to true anonymity than other cryptocurrencies.
- atomicnumber1 9y agoPeople from the start have been predicting the death of Bitcoin and yet keeps going strong. What going on here ?
- skydv 9y agosee you at 100k bitch
- googletazer 9y agoSometimes when I think if humanity met extremely advanced alien civilization - what kind of "stuff" could they use to trade? At one point I thought - it must be information, pieces of information are ultimately valuable. BTC might be something close to that. Foggy thoughts, but its a foggy concept.
- nikolay 9y agoWell, there are only that many people with speculators mentality who will keep buying. At one point, all this will collapse. It's very easy to be profiting when there's momentum upwards - just like it used to be with DotCom... until everybody lost and the economy couldn't recover for years! I know a friend who lost everything, including his house during the DotCom putting every single penny into the stock market, including his 401(k), etc.