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Bitcoin (BTC) is up by +22% in a single day, valued at over $14,600

65 points by jurajmasar 9y ago

juanmirocks 9y ago
This is becoming a joke. Meanwhile, transactions times in both BTC and ETH are getting ridiculously slow.
- zeep 9y ago
  I just bought some and I will sell when it reaches 5x if it ever does.
  - Nuzzerino 9y ago
    If you're buying in order to speculate, why not sell gradually into the gains? Your strategy seems like it is taking what is already a high-risk, and artificially making the risk higher than needed... Also, the time to buy is almost never after/during a large boom, heh.
    - mjfl 9y ago
      buy high, sell low!
      - zeep 9y ago
        I tried to do that on coinbase and it won't let me
    - zeep 9y ago
      because if you sell gradually, it doesn't move as fast... since this is getting downvoted, I will give a simple example... if you have $2 and it goes up 100% (two-fold incease), than you have $4... but if you cash half your money, then you have only $1 invested, and you are stuck with $3 instead of $4 ... and lost 25%. Not sure if my math is 100% right, but if you are betting on value going up, you lost money.
      - sidlls 9y ago
        The "if" parts of your comment need more thought that you've given them.
        zeep 9y ago
        It depends on your goals, but maybe... we'll see if I was too late in the game to make a quick profit.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      That's the only way to win long-term in gambling. Cash out winnings over your stake.
  - tossaway1 9y ago
    I'm gonna do the same but sell when it gets to 10x. Have fun being half as rich as me!
    - Nuzzerino 9y ago
      Amateur! True bitcoin maestros never sell for less than a 100x profit :P
    - zeep 9y ago
      that's fine, I just like to set a goal and stick to it... enjoy the extra cash (maybe).
    - zeep 9y ago
      we are already at 100% profits... let's wait a bit longer
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- arcticfox 9y ago
  As someone that has been in since 2013, I don't even recognize the current scene. The only reason the vast majority of people are getting into it is to get rich. It seems totally unsustainable, but the only incentives for people on the inside are to loudly convince others to join them.
  - juanmirocks 9y ago
    Last day I saw a magazine on cryptocurrencies in a kiosk in Germany (in German language). As Warrent Buffett used to say, "When everybody and your taxi driver talks about your stocks... it's time to sell". It's impossible to predict. Anyway, I'm investing with a buy & hold philosophy.
    - tudorconstantin 9y ago
      Crypto currencies are the first investment where everybody and your taxi driver gets to buy before the institutional investors.
  - Gargoyle 9y ago
    I agreed with your first sentence, but then was confused by sentences 2 and 3. That's exactly the scene I recognize from 2011 until now.
- sergiotapia 9y ago
  This looks promising to improve transaction speeds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3k
  - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
    Looks very promising! For those that don't want to click on the video (uploaded today), I've copied the description below: "In this video Laolu (co-founder of Lightning Labs) demonstrates a multi-hop payment on Bitcoin's mainnet which travels across the 3 major Lightning implementations. In the demo Laolu (a.k.a roasbeef) sends a payment from our Lightning desktop app (https://github.com/lightninglabs/ligh... https://github.com/lightninglabs/ligh...) to Starblocks, a coffee payment demo." "This payment marks the first multi-hop, cross-implementation payment on Bitcoin's mainnet. All transaction performed in the video were performed completely off-chain, instantly, and with virtually zero fees. Lightning allows instant, low-fee payments on Bitcoin, enabling the system to scale further for the next wave of adoption. Additionally, Lightning unlocks a new class of use cases for Bitcoin enabled by the ability to instantly send low-fee payments on the system."
- darawk 9y ago
  Transaction times are slow because there are so many of them. What you're saying is sort of equivalent to "look at how much traffic there is at that mall, it's going to fail".
  - juanmirocks 9y ago
    The number of transactions is close to nothing compared to credit card transactions. The current blockchain networks have to improve a lot.
    - zzxxddere333 9y ago
      There are several projects on track to improve blockchain speeds by several orders of magnitude. So, in other words, it's a solved problem. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
    - natrius 9y ago
      To understand what's happening, you have to observe how things have evolved. Bitcoin was advertised as digital cash. Tons of nerds envisioned a future of the whole world buying coffee with Bitcoin. As it became clear that the current network could never fulfill that vision, the whole community evolved its belief system to support the value of the currency, and they did so without any leader to coordinate their actions. They were just led by incentivized memes—the more convincing the justification for high valuations, the better the ideas spread. Now, people don't pitch Bitcoin's value as a digital cash. They tell people it's digital gold and the transaction fees don't matter. The beliefs of the community will continue to evolve as needed to support the value of their claims on our society's productive capacity.
      - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
        > "Bitcoin was advertised as digital cash. Tons of nerds envisioned a future of the whole world buying coffee with Bitcoin. As it became clear that the current network could never fulfill that vision..." There is an interesting historical tidbit: Initially Satoshi didn't have a fixed block size limit. That limit was only added after a DDoS attack where absurdly large blocks flooded the network. But that was a temporary fix, and satoshi had said that limit could easily be changed, maybe using some algorithm that increased size based on demand or that gradually increases with time. He had said large blocks is not a concern because network bandwidth increases exponentially. Unfortunately, the early developers did not proactively address the scaling problem, such as by allowing for increasing block sizes, so we are stuck where we are at today. [1] Point being, bitcoin could have been a micro-transaction-capable digital cash, and it (or another crypto-currency) still could fix this scaling problem. Not everyone in the community has "evolved their beliefs" about bitcoin (or cryptocurrency in general). I personally feel that bitcoin was and still is experimental, but has simply been a victim of its own success, but that the scaling problems are not insurmountable. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1391350.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1391350.0
paulpauper 9y ago
looks $ flowing out of alts and into bitcoin, which is somewhat surprising given the concerns over high transaction fees
- randywaterhouse 9y ago
  Might be an indicator of the old FOMO maneuvers. Whether the underlying realities are solid (fast, cheap transactions) or not is less relevant if people were, say, profit taking on their alts and pouring it into BTC since they feel BTC is rallying more/consistently with the spotlight on it. Interesting observation, in any case.
  - gruez 9y ago
    >Whether the underlying realities are solid (fast, cheap transactions) but that's only the case if the coin isn't popular. more popularity = more transactions = more competition for block space = higher fees.
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  I don't think anyone knows WTF is going on with it. I also sincerely hope people have only invested what they can afford to lose -- and that they've realized the gains that they'd be happy with. Of course, it could just as likely be $20k tomorrow.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    Ha, I know a crypto nerd who was investing all his savings into bitcoin, several years ago. Today? He’s a rich man, but he still holds the vast majority of assets in Bitcoin and has not attempted to sell them all at once. So he’s Bitcoin rich right now. I wonder what his ultimate destiny will be.
    - Fnoord 9y ago
      He's trying to figure out when and how to dump. The when is right before the bubble bursts (look up Nina Brink for example in dotcom burst). The how is by spending the money on businesses who accept Bitcoin. Problem is when a "Bitcoin run" (akin to bank run) starts you'll have slow, expensive transactions going down in worth compared to EUR or USD. Plus businesses can decide to stop accept BTC as currency like Steam did today. And it will burst when Bitfinex bursts due to tether being an exposed fraud. Question is when, not if.
jurajmasar 9y ago
Seems like a significant portion of the capital is coming from Asia, mainly South Korea, with just Bithumb BTC/KRW trades making almost 11% of today's volume. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets
- lossolo 9y ago
  Probably from China going through Korea. And most volume in last weeks is coming from Korea.
- csomar 9y ago
  They are buying bitcoin to buy other altcoins.
  - prawn 9y ago
    Alt-coins almost all dropping. BTC rising.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Yes, I've been reading about the South Korean frenzy for a day or two. This morning, a Bloomberg article[0] pointed to fear of war with North Korea, and fear of financial chaos around ongoing corruption scandals. But there's little doubt that immanent trade in Bitcoin futures is the major driver. From a recent Coindesk article[1], I get that sellers of futures contracts are hedging in case the price falls. There's no requirement to own Bitcoin for selling futures contracts. But there is the expectation that they will hold Bitcoin at settlement. So maybe some are buying now, and expect to win big in the futures crash. 0) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/bitcoin-frenzy-like-no-other-has-koreans-paying-a-16-premium https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/bitcoin-f... 1) https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-futures-make-way-new-kind-whale/ https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-futures-make-way-new-kind-w...
- malloryerik 9y ago
  I'm in Seoul as we speak, and it's an insane mania here. It has absolutely nothing to do with North Korea. If Koreans want to keep money safe, they can, for example, buy US stocks and bonds. They can buy US Treasuries. Bitcoin they buy out of greed and fear of missing out. Korea is the land of the trend, of bangdwagonning. I feel bad for all of the people who are going to be burned. I saw an ad on YouTube, in Korean: VOICE: How easy is it to make money in Bitcoin? [Shot of a finger pressing a button. The price goes skyward. Finger presses again to sell, showing screen of juicy profit.] VOICE: That's how easy it is. I literally hear random people in coffeeshops and the subway talking about their BTC schemes. I met someone at a coffeeshop and a group of four well-dressed guys at the next table were talking about their bitcoin scheme. I went back about a week later. A different group at the very same table were chatting about their bitcoin thing. "We know it's not very original, but we're thinking of making a new bitcoin exchange... with a twist... so we're thinking about what the twist should be!" Go to the unrelated programming meetup, it's half about bitcoin. A few guys are working together. Their project? Something bitcoin. They weren't sure what. But gotta be bitcoin. "I'm gonna make a new cryptocurrency business based on Bitcoin! We're gonna be big boys on the blockchain! Oh, what's Ethereum? I've never heard of it." When I go online my browser windows are festooned with various bitcoin ads in Korean. Although quite different, this has a very similar smell to the real estate boom in Los Angeles, when every waiter and wannabe actor and person between jobs was talking about buying their million dollar shack. That's to say, it smells like doom.
frakr 9y ago
Meanwhile "An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15851824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15851824
bllguo 9y ago
This is a farce. There's only been negative news today and yet prices jump higher than ever. There's no conceivable way this doesn't end badly. I guess people are gambling on being lucky enough to exit before then. Edit: removed unnecessary hostility. If you have money to spare on a high risk gamble like this then by all means. But in general there's just no way everyone jumping in is fully aware of the risks.
- aerovistae 9y ago
  Indeed we are.
  - cstrat 9y ago
    You definitly are not speaking on behalf of everyone... I've got friends and colleagues who don't even know how to setup their mobile phone wanting to buy in to BTC. They are actually managing to do it because of the proliferation of new, simple, exchanges. What makes matters worse is they have no idea what a wallet is - leaving everything in the exchange.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- paulpauper 9y ago
  I suspect some of the money that chased dotcom stocks in the 90's is chasing bitcoin and alt coins. There hasn't been a stock bubble since the 90's, so I guess bitcoin fills that need to speculate, that the stock market is not providing.
  - amorphid 9y ago
    I wonder if my stock market portfolio has any real exposure to Bitcoin tanking.
    - charlesdm 9y ago
Veratyr 9y ago
Could we stop turning HN into a Bitcoin ticker? It feels like every day we get a "Bitcoin reaches $X" post and it's getting old. It's certainly not newsworthy. If there's something concrete that _causes_ Bitcoin to move majorly, I'd be happy to see that but if I just want to watch the price, I'll look at an actual Bitcoin ticker.
- scotty79 9y ago
  ... Or maybe they should just pin this news to the top od HN because price of bitcoin is sort of developing story.
lossolo 9y ago
I anticipate that a lot of comments about "bad bubble" and "bad bitcoin" will emerge like on every thread about bitcoin on HN. I think people just don't understand that most participants in "Bitcon boom" knows this is a bubble. Every major news outlet says it's a bubble every couple of weeks. This is a common knowledge, everyone are saying it's a bubble. I know it's a bubble too and I have bitcoins but I don't care that it's a bubble. I am holding BTC from the time it was worth couple of times less when everyone was saying it's a bubble also. Even if it goes down a lot below 10k now I will still make money. I think a lot of people yelling "you morons don't buy bitcoin!!!1111" need to understand that people are aware of the risk, like they are aware when going to casino that they can lose money and there will be people that will lose their money for sure. The last one in the game takes the highest risk, that's all.
- bllguo 9y ago
  How is that relevant, the price spiking isn't because of people like you. It's because of people buying in now. People are obviously not capable of understanding risk. Are you serious? You bring up casinos when they are perhaps the best example of how ill-equipped the majority of people are to understand risk and probability.
  - lossolo 9y ago
    > How is that relevant, the price spiking isn't because of people like you. It's because of people buying in now. I wrote in my last sentence that they take the highest risk. > how ill-equipped the majority of people are to understand risk and probability. If that's true then conclusion would be that democracy/any liberal system is the worst system of them all, because if majority of people do not understand risk and probability they shouldn't be allowed to even vote. As I already wrote, all the data is there, just turn on the TV and you will hear "it's a bubble". No one is deceiving anyone in saying it's not a bubble in mainstream media.
  - prawn 9y ago
    I think people buying in now know the risk too. I don't think the general, general population is buying yet. Anyone I know coming in during the last few months has been reasonably savvy. Taking a risk, but they're aware of it. Two people asked me the other week, "Are we too late?" I said that I didn't think so, but to only risk what they could afford to lose. They bought in around $8k. It's now approaching $15k, two weeks later.
659087 9y ago
Yet another hack resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars, transactions taking forever, retailers announcing that they no longer accept Bitcoin, massive questions surrounding one of the largest exchanges: 22% surge in a single day. This is going to end well.
panarky 9y ago
It's obvious to nearly everyone that this is the world's biggest pump-and-dump scam. Sentiment on HN, Twitter and the financial press is nearly unanimously negative. Co-workers and family members are convinced this will end in tears for the foolish speculators. But one thing bugs me about all this. Historically, bubbles burst after long-time critics finally capitulate. Pyramids and Ponzis collapse when most people have bought in and there's nobody left to sell to. Are there any examples of bubbles bursting when 98% of the population knew it was a bubble in advance?
- xiphias 9y ago
  Isn't the thing that really bugs you that you didn't buy Bitcoin a few years ago? And maybe you're thinking that it's worth the risk-reward ratio (even if I agree, that it's a risky investment)
- zazpowered 9y ago
  If 98% of the population think it's in a bubble then it's probably not in a bubble
- thisisit 9y ago
  People are also seeing their co-workers and families asking about how to "invest" in Bitcoins. So the old story about Joe Kennedy and the shoe shine boy applies too? The saying " You know it's time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips. This bull market is over."
  - koonsolo 9y ago
    Stocks are for the elite, Bitcoin is for the masses.
- zzxxddere333 9y ago
  Should someone tell him?
- sergiotapia 9y ago
  I will archive this comment, and ping you back if you're still on hackernews in 2020. We'll see the value of bitcoin then, and how far along adoption has gone in marketplaces such as Amazon. :)
watoc 9y ago
Futures on Bitcoins will be introduced next week on CBOE and the week after on CME. I wonder if we will still see this kind of crazy rallies as it will be easier to short it.
- thisisit 9y ago
  Given the futures will be cash settled there is going to be a disconnect. So it will be interesting to see if the crazy rallies do end.
- zzxxddere333 9y ago
  The run up is a result of the futures. It legitimizes bitcoin. No one in their right mind is going to short bitcoin unless they want to risk losing their shirts.
- tudorconstantin 9y ago
  If one wants to short the CBOE/CME futures and also be hedged, he'd need to go long on spot price. That will only increase its price.
davidw 9y ago
This piece seems relevant: https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2017/11/bitcoin-and-bubbles.html https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2017/11/bitcoin-and-bubbl...
zzxxddere333 9y ago
A lot of salt in this thread. So let me take the opposite side and say congrats to everyone who's hodling bitcoin!
bemmu 9y ago
For those who want to sell but not cash out in fiat (because on exchanges such paperwork can take over a week), what's the easiest stable thing to exchange your BTC for?
- sireat 9y ago
  You can easily cash out on localbitcoins at least in Europe using SEPA.
gestirn 9y ago
What is too high and what is too low in Bitcoin world and how do people come up with those values? If people were keeping track of Satoshis (0.00014 USD/Satoshi) would they also think it is expensive?
- koonsolo 9y ago
  The only way to tell is look at the market capitalization (see https://coinmarketcap.com/ https://coinmarketcap.com/) To compare, if Bitcoin reaches $400.000 per bitcoin, the total value of all Bicoins will be the same as the total value of all gold.

65 points by jurajmasar 9y ago

juanmirocks 9y ago

This is becoming a joke. Meanwhile, transactions times in both BTC and ETH are getting ridiculously slow.

zeep 9y ago
I just bought some and I will sell when it reaches 5x if it ever does.
- Nuzzerino 9y ago
  If you're buying in order to speculate, why not sell gradually into the gains? Your strategy seems like it is taking what is already a high-risk, and artificially making the risk higher than needed... Also, the time to buy is almost never after/during a large boom, heh.
  - mjfl 9y ago
    buy high, sell low!
    - zeep 9y ago
      I tried to do that on coinbase and it won't let me
  - zeep 9y ago
    because if you sell gradually, it doesn't move as fast... since this is getting downvoted, I will give a simple example... if you have $2 and it goes up 100% (two-fold incease), than you have $4... but if you cash half your money, then you have only $1 invested, and you are stuck with $3 instead of $4 ... and lost 25%. Not sure if my math is 100% right, but if you are betting on value going up, you lost money.
    - sidlls 9y ago
      The "if" parts of your comment need more thought that you've given them.
      - zeep 9y ago
        It depends on your goals, but maybe... we'll see if I was too late in the game to make a quick profit.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    That's the only way to win long-term in gambling. Cash out winnings over your stake.
- tossaway1 9y ago
  I'm gonna do the same but sell when it gets to 10x. Have fun being half as rich as me!
  - Nuzzerino 9y ago
    Amateur! True bitcoin maestros never sell for less than a 100x profit :P
  - zeep 9y ago
    that's fine, I just like to set a goal and stick to it... enjoy the extra cash (maybe).
  - zeep 9y ago
    we are already at 100% profits... let's wait a bit longer
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
arcticfox 9y ago
As someone that has been in since 2013, I don't even recognize the current scene. The only reason the vast majority of people are getting into it is to get rich. It seems totally unsustainable, but the only incentives for people on the inside are to loudly convince others to join them.
- juanmirocks 9y ago
  Last day I saw a magazine on cryptocurrencies in a kiosk in Germany (in German language). As Warrent Buffett used to say, "When everybody and your taxi driver talks about your stocks... it's time to sell". It's impossible to predict. Anyway, I'm investing with a buy & hold philosophy.
  - tudorconstantin 9y ago
    Crypto currencies are the first investment where everybody and your taxi driver gets to buy before the institutional investors.
- Gargoyle 9y ago
  I agreed with your first sentence, but then was confused by sentences 2 and 3. That's exactly the scene I recognize from 2011 until now.
sergiotapia 9y ago
This looks promising to improve transaction speeds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3k
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  Looks very promising! For those that don't want to click on the video (uploaded today), I've copied the description below: "In this video Laolu (co-founder of Lightning Labs) demonstrates a multi-hop payment on Bitcoin's mainnet which travels across the 3 major Lightning implementations. In the demo Laolu (a.k.a roasbeef) sends a payment from our Lightning desktop app (https://github.com/lightninglabs/ligh... https://github.com/lightninglabs/ligh...) to Starblocks, a coffee payment demo." "This payment marks the first multi-hop, cross-implementation payment on Bitcoin's mainnet. All transaction performed in the video were performed completely off-chain, instantly, and with virtually zero fees. Lightning allows instant, low-fee payments on Bitcoin, enabling the system to scale further for the next wave of adoption. Additionally, Lightning unlocks a new class of use cases for Bitcoin enabled by the ability to instantly send low-fee payments on the system."
darawk 9y ago
Transaction times are slow because there are so many of them. What you're saying is sort of equivalent to "look at how much traffic there is at that mall, it's going to fail".
- juanmirocks 9y ago
  The number of transactions is close to nothing compared to credit card transactions. The current blockchain networks have to improve a lot.
  - zzxxddere333 9y ago
    There are several projects on track to improve blockchain speeds by several orders of magnitude. So, in other words, it's a solved problem. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Network
  - natrius 9y ago
    To understand what's happening, you have to observe how things have evolved. Bitcoin was advertised as digital cash. Tons of nerds envisioned a future of the whole world buying coffee with Bitcoin. As it became clear that the current network could never fulfill that vision, the whole community evolved its belief system to support the value of the currency, and they did so without any leader to coordinate their actions. They were just led by incentivized memes—the more convincing the justification for high valuations, the better the ideas spread. Now, people don't pitch Bitcoin's value as a digital cash. They tell people it's digital gold and the transaction fees don't matter. The beliefs of the community will continue to evolve as needed to support the value of their claims on our society's productive capacity.
    - em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
      > "Bitcoin was advertised as digital cash. Tons of nerds envisioned a future of the whole world buying coffee with Bitcoin. As it became clear that the current network could never fulfill that vision..." There is an interesting historical tidbit: Initially Satoshi didn't have a fixed block size limit. That limit was only added after a DDoS attack where absurdly large blocks flooded the network. But that was a temporary fix, and satoshi had said that limit could easily be changed, maybe using some algorithm that increased size based on demand or that gradually increases with time. He had said large blocks is not a concern because network bandwidth increases exponentially. Unfortunately, the early developers did not proactively address the scaling problem, such as by allowing for increasing block sizes, so we are stuck where we are at today. [1] Point being, bitcoin could have been a micro-transaction-capable digital cash, and it (or another crypto-currency) still could fix this scaling problem. Not everyone in the community has "evolved their beliefs" about bitcoin (or cryptocurrency in general). I personally feel that bitcoin was and still is experimental, but has simply been a victim of its own success, but that the scaling problems are not insurmountable. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1391350.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1391350.0

paulpauper 9y ago

looks $ flowing out of alts and into bitcoin, which is somewhat surprising given the concerns over high transaction fees

randywaterhouse 9y ago
Might be an indicator of the old FOMO maneuvers. Whether the underlying realities are solid (fast, cheap transactions) or not is less relevant if people were, say, profit taking on their alts and pouring it into BTC since they feel BTC is rallying more/consistently with the spotlight on it. Interesting observation, in any case.
- gruez 9y ago
  >Whether the underlying realities are solid (fast, cheap transactions) but that's only the case if the coin isn't popular. more popularity = more transactions = more competition for block space = higher fees.
FLUX-YOU 9y ago
I don't think anyone knows WTF is going on with it. I also sincerely hope people have only invested what they can afford to lose -- and that they've realized the gains that they'd be happy with. Of course, it could just as likely be $20k tomorrow.
- matte_black 9y ago
  Ha, I know a crypto nerd who was investing all his savings into bitcoin, several years ago. Today? He’s a rich man, but he still holds the vast majority of assets in Bitcoin and has not attempted to sell them all at once. So he’s Bitcoin rich right now. I wonder what his ultimate destiny will be.
  - Fnoord 9y ago
    He's trying to figure out when and how to dump. The when is right before the bubble bursts (look up Nina Brink for example in dotcom burst). The how is by spending the money on businesses who accept Bitcoin. Problem is when a "Bitcoin run" (akin to bank run) starts you'll have slow, expensive transactions going down in worth compared to EUR or USD. Plus businesses can decide to stop accept BTC as currency like Steam did today. And it will burst when Bitfinex bursts due to tether being an exposed fraud. Question is when, not if.

jurajmasar 9y ago

Seems like a significant portion of the capital is coming from Asia, mainly South Korea, with just Bithumb BTC/KRW trades making almost 11% of today's volume. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets

lossolo 9y ago
Probably from China going through Korea. And most volume in last weeks is coming from Korea.
csomar 9y ago
They are buying bitcoin to buy other altcoins.
- prawn 9y ago
  Alt-coins almost all dropping. BTC rising.
mirimir 9y ago
Yes, I've been reading about the South Korean frenzy for a day or two. This morning, a Bloomberg article[0] pointed to fear of war with North Korea, and fear of financial chaos around ongoing corruption scandals. But there's little doubt that immanent trade in Bitcoin futures is the major driver. From a recent Coindesk article[1], I get that sellers of futures contracts are hedging in case the price falls. There's no requirement to own Bitcoin for selling futures contracts. But there is the expectation that they will hold Bitcoin at settlement. So maybe some are buying now, and expect to win big in the futures crash. 0) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/bitcoin-frenzy-like-no-other-has-koreans-paying-a-16-premium https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/bitcoin-f... 1) https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-futures-make-way-new-kind-whale/ https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-futures-make-way-new-kind-w...
malloryerik 9y ago
I'm in Seoul as we speak, and it's an insane mania here. It has absolutely nothing to do with North Korea. If Koreans want to keep money safe, they can, for example, buy US stocks and bonds. They can buy US Treasuries. Bitcoin they buy out of greed and fear of missing out. Korea is the land of the trend, of bangdwagonning. I feel bad for all of the people who are going to be burned. I saw an ad on YouTube, in Korean: VOICE: How easy is it to make money in Bitcoin? [Shot of a finger pressing a button. The price goes skyward. Finger presses again to sell, showing screen of juicy profit.] VOICE: That's how easy it is. I literally hear random people in coffeeshops and the subway talking about their BTC schemes. I met someone at a coffeeshop and a group of four well-dressed guys at the next table were talking about their bitcoin scheme. I went back about a week later. A different group at the very same table were chatting about their bitcoin thing. "We know it's not very original, but we're thinking of making a new bitcoin exchange... with a twist... so we're thinking about what the twist should be!" Go to the unrelated programming meetup, it's half about bitcoin. A few guys are working together. Their project? Something bitcoin. They weren't sure what. But gotta be bitcoin. "I'm gonna make a new cryptocurrency business based on Bitcoin! We're gonna be big boys on the blockchain! Oh, what's Ethereum? I've never heard of it." When I go online my browser windows are festooned with various bitcoin ads in Korean. Although quite different, this has a very similar smell to the real estate boom in Los Angeles, when every waiter and wannabe actor and person between jobs was talking about buying their million dollar shack. That's to say, it smells like doom.

frakr 9y ago

Meanwhile "An $814M Mystery Near the Heart of the Biggest Bitcoin Exchange" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15851824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15851824

bllguo 9y ago

This is a farce. There's only been negative news today and yet prices jump higher than ever. There's no conceivable way this doesn't end badly. I guess people are gambling on being lucky enough to exit before then. Edit: removed unnecessary hostility. If you have money to spare on a high risk gamble like this then by all means. But in general there's just no way everyone jumping in is fully aware of the risks.

aerovistae 9y ago
Indeed we are.
- cstrat 9y ago
  You definitly are not speaking on behalf of everyone... I've got friends and colleagues who don't even know how to setup their mobile phone wanting to buy in to BTC. They are actually managing to do it because of the proliferation of new, simple, exchanges. What makes matters worse is they have no idea what a wallet is - leaving everything in the exchange.
  - deleted 9y ago
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paulpauper 9y ago
I suspect some of the money that chased dotcom stocks in the 90's is chasing bitcoin and alt coins. There hasn't been a stock bubble since the 90's, so I guess bitcoin fills that need to speculate, that the stock market is not providing.
- amorphid 9y ago
  I wonder if my stock market portfolio has any real exposure to Bitcoin tanking.
  - charlesdm 9y ago

Veratyr 9y ago

Could we stop turning HN into a Bitcoin ticker? It feels like every day we get a "Bitcoin reaches $X" post and it's getting old. It's certainly not newsworthy. If there's something concrete that _causes_ Bitcoin to move majorly, I'd be happy to see that but if I just want to watch the price, I'll look at an actual Bitcoin ticker.

scotty79 9y ago
... Or maybe they should just pin this news to the top od HN because price of bitcoin is sort of developing story.

lossolo 9y ago

I anticipate that a lot of comments about "bad bubble" and "bad bitcoin" will emerge like on every thread about bitcoin on HN. I think people just don't understand that most participants in "Bitcon boom" knows this is a bubble. Every major news outlet says it's a bubble every couple of weeks. This is a common knowledge, everyone are saying it's a bubble. I know it's a bubble too and I have bitcoins but I don't care that it's a bubble. I am holding BTC from the time it was worth couple of times less when everyone was saying it's a bubble also. Even if it goes down a lot below 10k now I will still make money. I think a lot of people yelling "you morons don't buy bitcoin!!!1111" need to understand that people are aware of the risk, like they are aware when going to casino that they can lose money and there will be people that will lose their money for sure. The last one in the game takes the highest risk, that's all.

bllguo 9y ago
How is that relevant, the price spiking isn't because of people like you. It's because of people buying in now. People are obviously not capable of understanding risk. Are you serious? You bring up casinos when they are perhaps the best example of how ill-equipped the majority of people are to understand risk and probability.
- lossolo 9y ago
  > How is that relevant, the price spiking isn't because of people like you. It's because of people buying in now. I wrote in my last sentence that they take the highest risk. > how ill-equipped the majority of people are to understand risk and probability. If that's true then conclusion would be that democracy/any liberal system is the worst system of them all, because if majority of people do not understand risk and probability they shouldn't be allowed to even vote. As I already wrote, all the data is there, just turn on the TV and you will hear "it's a bubble". No one is deceiving anyone in saying it's not a bubble in mainstream media.
- prawn 9y ago
  I think people buying in now know the risk too. I don't think the general, general population is buying yet. Anyone I know coming in during the last few months has been reasonably savvy. Taking a risk, but they're aware of it. Two people asked me the other week, "Are we too late?" I said that I didn't think so, but to only risk what they could afford to lose. They bought in around $8k. It's now approaching $15k, two weeks later.

659087 9y ago

Yet another hack resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars, transactions taking forever, retailers announcing that they no longer accept Bitcoin, massive questions surrounding one of the largest exchanges: 22% surge in a single day. This is going to end well.

panarky 9y ago

It's obvious to nearly everyone that this is the world's biggest pump-and-dump scam. Sentiment on HN, Twitter and the financial press is nearly unanimously negative. Co-workers and family members are convinced this will end in tears for the foolish speculators. But one thing bugs me about all this. Historically, bubbles burst after long-time critics finally capitulate. Pyramids and Ponzis collapse when most people have bought in and there's nobody left to sell to. Are there any examples of bubbles bursting when 98% of the population knew it was a bubble in advance?

xiphias 9y ago
Isn't the thing that really bugs you that you didn't buy Bitcoin a few years ago? And maybe you're thinking that it's worth the risk-reward ratio (even if I agree, that it's a risky investment)
zazpowered 9y ago
If 98% of the population think it's in a bubble then it's probably not in a bubble
thisisit 9y ago
People are also seeing their co-workers and families asking about how to "invest" in Bitcoins. So the old story about Joe Kennedy and the shoe shine boy applies too? The saying " You know it's time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips. This bull market is over."
- koonsolo 9y ago
  Stocks are for the elite, Bitcoin is for the masses.
zzxxddere333 9y ago
Should someone tell him?
sergiotapia 9y ago
I will archive this comment, and ping you back if you're still on hackernews in 2020. We'll see the value of bitcoin then, and how far along adoption has gone in marketplaces such as Amazon. :)

watoc 9y ago

Futures on Bitcoins will be introduced next week on CBOE and the week after on CME. I wonder if we will still see this kind of crazy rallies as it will be easier to short it.

thisisit 9y ago
Given the futures will be cash settled there is going to be a disconnect. So it will be interesting to see if the crazy rallies do end.
zzxxddere333 9y ago
The run up is a result of the futures. It legitimizes bitcoin. No one in their right mind is going to short bitcoin unless they want to risk losing their shirts.
tudorconstantin 9y ago
If one wants to short the CBOE/CME futures and also be hedged, he'd need to go long on spot price. That will only increase its price.

davidw 9y ago

This piece seems relevant: https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2017/11/bitcoin-and-bubbles.html https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2017/11/bitcoin-and-bubbl...

zzxxddere333 9y ago

A lot of salt in this thread. So let me take the opposite side and say congrats to everyone who's hodling bitcoin!

bemmu 9y ago

For those who want to sell but not cash out in fiat (because on exchanges such paperwork can take over a week), what's the easiest stable thing to exchange your BTC for?

sireat 9y ago
You can easily cash out on localbitcoins at least in Europe using SEPA.

gestirn 9y ago

What is too high and what is too low in Bitcoin world and how do people come up with those values? If people were keeping track of Satoshis (0.00014 USD/Satoshi) would they also think it is expensive?

koonsolo 9y ago
The only way to tell is look at the market capitalization (see https://coinmarketcap.com/ https://coinmarketcap.com/) To compare, if Bitcoin reaches $400.000 per bitcoin, the total value of all Bicoins will be the same as the total value of all gold.