7 ms·

Bitcoin hits $17K as bubble fears mount

39 points by tooba 9y ago

chucknelson 9y ago
This is insane - is there any "expert" speculation out there on when this will all collapse? Before or after the new year...?
- lawlessone 9y ago
  if we all knew that everyone would pull out earlier and it would collapse sooner.
- aqsheehy 9y ago
  When information enters the market that would justify a decrease
- kungpoo 9y ago
  Rule #1 of cryptocurrencies, trust nobody.
  - lukasm 9y ago
    that's rule number 3. 1. HODL 2. BUY DIP
    - 659087 9y ago
      Reddit appears to be leaking.
  - askz 9y ago
    And this works with traditional currencies as well :)
- bufferoverflow 9y ago
  If someone gives you an exact date, how would you know if they are telling the truth? Nobody knows the future. It can all collapse to $1K in a month or keep going to $50K. And if someone actually knew, they would stand to make huge money and would keep their mouth shut.
- akerro 9y ago
  >on when this will all collapse? 2 hours ago
- tim333 9y ago
  You can sort of estimate it. It comes down to cash flow - if people are trying to invest more cash into bitcoin than they are taking out it'll go up. When people are trying to cash out more than is going in it will fall. At the moment there are a huge number of people seeing the headlines and thinking I should get in on this who have not yet so there's a while to go. The closet to this I can recall was the dot com bubble and I'd say this feels like 98 or 99 so I'd give it a year or two. BTC $100k here we come!
- Joeboy 9y ago
  Me, I'm an expert. It'll be around 2pm EST, January 9th 2018.
joebergeron 9y ago
To the moon, boys. To the moon.
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  To infinity... And beyond.
digitalengineer 9y ago
The modern day equivalent of The Tulip Mania where one specific type of tulip could be traded for a house? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  There never was a Tulip Mania https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-...
- mitchellberry 9y ago
  Can you grow a bitcoin in your garden?
  - dest 9y ago
    Some will say you can mine it…
arekkas 9y ago
It seems like the bitcoin craze also attracts significant traction for underwhelming journalism.
- opportune 9y ago
  Bitcoin journalism sucks because if a journalist knew enough about Bitcoin to write well about it, they'd be qualified for a better job than being a journalist writing about Bitcoin.
egze 9y ago
Same story every time. At 1$ it was a bubble, at 30$ it was a bubble, at 100$, at 1000$, etc. I wonder what needs to happen for the "bubble" people to say - alright, this is not a bubble anymore, I was wrong. Or it will always be a bubble for them?
- atupis 9y ago
  If you create deflationary currency you get bubles again and again.
- tutfbhuf 9y ago
  i guess if the value stabilize and people use it as a real currency, then people will stop saying bubble, but now even Steam has stopped accepting BTC
  - headmelted 9y ago
    Bitcoin isn't a currency, it's a commodity (akin to digital gold). It can't be naturally deflationary and used to facilitate day-to-day trade because, by design (and with all else being equal), you're better holding on to the bitcoin than spending it. Fiat currencies are the opposite - inflation encourages spending because the money slowly trends towards being worthless if you don't spend or invest.
- hobofan 9y ago
  It was a bubble at 1000$ and it did burst (to some degree).
  - ringaroundthetx 9y ago
    The pops before then ($30, $266) were much steeper in percent Fyi
tw1010 9y ago
Keep calling it a bubble and it becomes a bubble. This whole thing is entirely psychological. How can we be sure journalists aren't somehow shorting bitcoin on the side while writing these articles? They have a huge influence on the collective unconsciousness.
- RutZap 9y ago
  It really is entirely psychological. Based on the two main theories of stock investing: fundamental value and castles-in-the-air speculation, with Bitcoins, it's hard to gauge its real value as it may be argued that it doesn't actually have one. Being an asset that does not produce any profit, it's hard to put a number against it. So therefore the price is driven by demand and by what the mass wants it to be worth and by what it hopes to be worth in the future. Speculators coming in the Bitcoin ecosystem now are willing to spend a lot of money on it because they know that there will be someone else that is willing to spend even more money on it. It's all driven by mass psychology, exactly like many of the previous bubbles in the history of stock markets: tulip bulb craze, dotcom shares, Japanese land value and so on. The only thing is... it's very hard to predict the randomness of mass psychology. Everybody wants to get rich.. and everybody wants the price to go up and up... but when they start to sell in order to cash in, the price will drop and if a lot of people do it at the same time, panic will set in and then it will crash seriously. You may argue that the whole thing behaves a bit like a ponzi scheme (with the main difference that there is actually something happening underneath the whole speculation-investing-money aspect, which is, IMHO, the very elegant blockchain technology)
- headmelted 9y ago
  My understanding - and I could be utterly wrong about this - is that the reverse is true. Bubbles generally don't have non-stop headlines stating that they are in a bubble, which is what contributes to the run-up. If anything, headlines declaring Bitcoin a bubble should have a negative affect on valuations as it puts man-on-the-street buyers off withdrawing savings or equity to buy it.
speedplane 9y ago
"as bubble fears mount"... seriously? I'm pretty sure bitcoin always felt like a bubble even when it was trading at less than a dollar.
leaf_mc 9y ago
Who cares? In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter that this bubble pops? I know there are some people out there who'll have invested everything they have in BTC, which will suck for them. However, I'd wager for most people it's still just a fun way to make some spare cash, given that it's actually really difficult to use cryptos on much IRL. We've got a bit more work to do before cryptos start being useful mainstream money, rather than just a volatile investment opportunity. The underlying ideas in blockchain are brilliant, genius even. Journalists should focus more on the interesting potential of this technology, and less on how much 1BTC costs today.
- cheschire 9y ago
  They're fueling the speculation because they are probably invested as well. And now that options contracts are taking off for bitcoin, the folks with put contracts are banking on a crash.
  - brucen 9y ago
    Do you mean futures? Where are options being offered?
- Fnoord 9y ago
  > Who cares? In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter that this bubble pops? Well, I, for one, am not touching it until it crashed because I believe (!) it is currently overvalued. (Tho not sure I'd go with BTC as it stands.) What I also don't like is the impact of cryptocurrency on Co2. What use is a currency when you can't use it? The most stable currencies in the world are able to be used world-wide. Betting everything you got on one horse is inherently ignorant btw. Spreading makes sense unless you're sure you're making the right bet (which you can't be). Heck, spreading is the m.i. for VC, including YC. If you burn yourself because you don't spread enough then I don't feel sorry for you. > The underlying ideas in blockchain are brilliant, genius even. Yeah, totally genius. All these people using only hot wallets, exchanges getting hacked, 101 ICOs being ponzi schemes, all these people using Bitcoin wallet on their desktop machine which also runs Mirai and what, or un(der)patched Android phone. Its a recipe for disaster. There's a reason why the general population runs their router behind a firewall or NAT, there's a reason why the general population uses experts such as banks to protect their money. Its because they lack the expertise to do it themselves. My argument is that Joe Sixpack doesn't have the expertise to run his own Bitcoin wallet. Even though it might seem very "American way" that he would, does that mean he should?
hyperpallium 9y ago
OK, Now it's a bubble.
jasode 9y ago
A recent September 2017 blog[1] estimated electricity mining costs to be ~$19k. (I don't know if bitcoin community has adjusted the hashing difficulty since September 2017 to maintain the 10-minute block rate.) Are there realistic scenarios where the sustained value of bitcoin exceeds the mining costs? What was the mining cost of 1 BTC in May 2010 when the famous request for 2 pizzas[2] for 10000 bitcoins was made? [1] https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/28/electricity-cost-of-1-bitcoin/ https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/28/electricity-cost-of-1-bit... [2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0
- spdionis 9y ago
  The difficulty of mining adjusts every 2 weeks so that data is certainly outdated.
holydude 9y ago
Oh yeah but it sharply dropped right ? 14,927.78 -11.45%
headmelted 9y ago
Bitcoin is a massive ponzi-scheme and it will crash imminently. Or, you know, it isn't and it won't. It's really interesting to me to follow on the side-lines of crypto as the price it's exchanging at moves up. In the last week I've had non-techies mention how they were buying Bitcoin (ostensibly to make fast, easy money). What intrigues me most is that amid the hysteria, a lot of posters on reddit and elsewhere seem to be of the belief that everyone can get rich on Bitcoin - and that if everyone buys in the price won't crash. Moreso, most of the people I'm seeing discuss it don't seem to have any knowledge of similar financial events from the past (e.g. the dotcom bubble, tulip mania). I'm not going to begrudge anyone that's made money from Bitcoin, nor am I going to judge anyone else for putting money in at this stage (anecdotally, the chatter I'm hearing in work from non-techies points to an ample supply of greater fools), but I think it should raise alarm bells that financial literacy is so low in the general populace that in most cases people are making these decisions with so little information to hand of what they're buying (I think it's fair to believe at this point that most of the buyers at this level aren't familiar with what the blockchain is as a concept - they just see rising valuations).
- dingaling 9y ago
  > massive ponzi-scheme Existing investors are making profit through financial transactions, so it's not a Ponzi. A Ponzi requires newcomers to contribute funds to the scheme without any exchange of assets.
  - headmelted 9y ago
    > Existing investors are making profit through financial transactions Is this true? Are people exchanging bitcoin for anything other than fiat currency? (Outside of a few marginal use cases, are people actually bartering with bitcoin in real trade?)
    - nlperguiy 9y ago
      Why would bitcoin mempool be oversaturated year after year at Christmas time if not for the people buying stuff?
asenna 9y ago
For those unaware of the recent news (briefly mentioned in this article) which is driving the prices crazy the past couple of weeks, it's because the two biggest derivate exchanges form Chicago are launching Bitcoin Futures soon. CBOE launching this Sunday on Dec 10th 6pm EST. CME launching on the 18th [1]. 10th would be a very interesting day for traders. I am no expert at all but from what I can tell, this will make it easier for big institutions to short the Bitcoin (all transactions happening off the blockchain though). There are specualtions that prices are going up just before the launch and might take a dive with the shorting after. BUT if there's anything that've learned trading BTC on the side: anything can happen, it's got a mind of its own :) Either way, I think this is good news for the long run as it legitimizes BTC (There are rumors of Nasdaq and other exchanges globally getting in soon as well next year). If you thought 2017 was fun, wait till you see what 2018 has in store for cryptos. [1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/04/cboe-announces-it-will-launch-bitcoin-futures-on-dec-10.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/04/cboe-announces-it-will-launc...
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  > "wait till you see what 2018 has in store for cryptos." The ability to short might actually bring some stablity to the price (as shorters will produce sell orders when they think others are mistakenly buying too much, and will likewise produce buy orders on the falls).
  - asenna 9y ago
    I agree. More stability for Bitcoin but a general uptrend as the adoption increases. As for the other top cryptos, Bitcoin being legitimized and going mainstream would translate to way more money moving into the space. I'm quite bullish on a few good projects like Ethereum, Litecoin, Neo, etc.
flashman 9y ago
Is there any data on the average transaction size when converting between BTC and USD? The price might be $17k per coin, but if people are transacting in $100 amounts for fractions of coins, that's kind of sustainable whether the BTC price is $1 or $100,000.
neals 9y ago
All these threads and articles are the same, there's no new information just a new price. I like to follow a long with the Cryptocurrency, I've got a couple million in Bitcoin right now, and I'm hoping for a big 'crash' to weed out the Wallstreet types and focus again ons some good old-fashioned development. It's hard to experiment when there's billions riding on it and I feel that we're not done experimenting yet. Anybody else remember the good old 2011 days of a small community and enthousiasts? I miss those days.
- headmelted 9y ago
  > I've got a couple million in Bitcoin right now Something about this makes me intrinsically dislike you, and I can't for the life of me figure out what the reason is. (kidding! "Health to enjoy it!" as my father-in-law would say.)
- nimchimpsky 9y ago
  > I've got a couple million in Bitcoin right now Jesus, I started mining back in 2011 - got bored. Did it again in 2013 and nearly bought a few. Got everything set up, then just never did it. But I'd have probably sold up way before now. Congrats!
- berkes 9y ago
  > Anybody else remember the good old 2011 days of a small community and enthousiasts? I do. It was fun. There was a real sense of community. Where you'd ask advice on IRC on some mining setup, and people would gladly help you tune some settings on your build-in GPU. When, after a full day of mining, I was like "meh, this'll make at most one BTC per day, no way that I'm going to let my computer blast the whole night just for one Bitcoin. Where you knew nicknames and trusted people (and their advice, software, scripts based on "knowing them from IRC") One thing I've noticed when moving more into the Eth community (I'm developing solidity stuff now) is that Eth is both a friendlier, more helpful community, and feels like a more closed set. Btc feels all about in-fighting these days. No matter what reddit you visit, there is fighting, not heated debates, but actual, real hate. Eth feels more as a whole group. We -vs- them kinda thing. As opposed to the Bitcoin us-vs-us.
qubex 9y ago
Macro-economist here. I can’t wait for this bubble to burst so some non-noxious (inflationistic, fractional-reserve-banking enabling) second- or third-generation cryptocurrency to supplant it and harness the blockchain in a less naive manner. • Something I wrote about the macroeconomic flaws of bitcoin (posted previously, zero comments): https://medium.com/@jamesjunghanns/my-0-00000173120-btc-a-practicing-orthodox-macroeconomists-unsolicited-views-on-bitcoin-543da352fc49?source=linkShare-229012a5fba0-1512731487 https://medium.com/@jamesjunghanns/my-0-00000173120-btc-a-pr... • An analysis of the rising amplitude and quickening frequency of oscillations in valuation, leading to a projection of peak value and crash time: https://mynabla.com/2017/11/30/bubble-trouble-exploring-an-lppl-model-for-bitcoin/ https://mynabla.com/2017/11/30/bubble-trouble-exploring-an-l... • A financially dignified and macroeconomically sophisticated proposed cryptocurrency (not affiliated): http://www.getbasecoin.com/ http://www.getbasecoin.com/
- headmelted 9y ago
  Not to dump on the libertarian dreams of Bitcoin - but isn't a massive popping bubble the expected response to a naturally deflationary, non-government-controlled currency? I have to assume that for any cryptocurrency to become practically useable for trade it would need to be government-backed for price stability (and to keep the proceeds from heroin and arms sales from running it up to $17k USD).
- patrickaljord 9y ago
  > Macro-economist here. Oh gosh thanks for the input, now we finally know what is going to happen with bitcoin. /s
  - qubex 9y ago
    What is about to happen seems pretty blatantly obvious at this point. Why it is desirable that it occurs might (or might not) require a bit of domain-specific knowledge. Of course aI’m aware of my professions pretty shitty track record (”predicted nine of the last seven market crashes, missed the big one” yada yada yada so I take no offence at your sarcasm).
walkingolof 9y ago
I do not claim to understand the value creating mechanisms of a cryptocurrency vs. a "traditional" currency. But without a central trust, the thing that guarantee the value of bitcoin is the network effect, right ? In that case the usage may show the characteristics of a MMO or a social network.
659087 9y ago
Do we really need to hear about Bitcoin's price changing multiple times every day?
albertgoeswoof 9y ago
The market price is pointless to look at, it's driven by people/groups with no understanding or interest in the technology, who are just looking for easy money. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero and others are absolutely incredible pieces of tech. E.g. the EVM is essentially a new paradigm in computing which has never been seen before. To draw a parallel in history, would you rather have been an investor in Apple when the iPod was launched, or on the engineering team that built the iPod itself? We can spend all our time discussing the price and gambling on the perception of value OR we can actually get our heads down and build something completely new and cutting edge. I know what I prefer to do.
nucatus 9y ago
I guess it is fair to assume that the bitcoin has become a extra-money sponge that absorbs the extra money floating in the market right now. When there will be less and less "free or cheap money floating" people want to get their money back from the investments they made and this is the exact point where the burst occurs. It would be no problem if the decrease is happening at the same speed as the one of the initial increase, but due to human emotion, the decrease is happening orders of magnitude faster than the increase. At that point, the money will magically disappear. It's a natural process that balances the value of the money available in the market. One interesting point to note here is that the value of the entire bitcoin monetary mass is about 0.25 trillion dollars. That's something like 1% of the whole US national debt.

39 points by tooba 9y ago

This is insane - is there any "expert" speculation out there on when this will all collapse? Before or after the new year...?

lawlessone 9y ago
if we all knew that everyone would pull out earlier and it would collapse sooner.
aqsheehy 9y ago
When information enters the market that would justify a decrease
kungpoo 9y ago
Rule #1 of cryptocurrencies, trust nobody.
- lukasm 9y ago
  that's rule number 3. 1. HODL 2. BUY DIP
  - 659087 9y ago
    Reddit appears to be leaking.
- askz 9y ago
  And this works with traditional currencies as well :)
bufferoverflow 9y ago
If someone gives you an exact date, how would you know if they are telling the truth? Nobody knows the future. It can all collapse to $1K in a month or keep going to $50K. And if someone actually knew, they would stand to make huge money and would keep their mouth shut.
akerro 9y ago
>on when this will all collapse? 2 hours ago
tim333 9y ago
You can sort of estimate it. It comes down to cash flow - if people are trying to invest more cash into bitcoin than they are taking out it'll go up. When people are trying to cash out more than is going in it will fall. At the moment there are a huge number of people seeing the headlines and thinking I should get in on this who have not yet so there's a while to go. The closet to this I can recall was the dot com bubble and I'd say this feels like 98 or 99 so I'd give it a year or two. BTC $100k here we come!
Joeboy 9y ago
Me, I'm an expert. It'll be around 2pm EST, January 9th 2018.

joebergeron 9y ago

To the moon, boys. To the moon.

nkkollaw 9y ago
To infinity... And beyond.

digitalengineer 9y ago

The modern day equivalent of The Tulip Mania where one specific type of tulip could be traded for a house? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

patrickaljord 9y ago
There never was a Tulip Mania https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-tulip-fever-180964915/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/there-never-was-real-...
mitchellberry 9y ago
Can you grow a bitcoin in your garden?
- dest 9y ago
  Some will say you can mine it…

arekkas 9y ago

It seems like the bitcoin craze also attracts significant traction for underwhelming journalism.

opportune 9y ago
Bitcoin journalism sucks because if a journalist knew enough about Bitcoin to write well about it, they'd be qualified for a better job than being a journalist writing about Bitcoin.

egze 9y ago

Same story every time. At 1$ it was a bubble, at 30$ it was a bubble, at 100$, at 1000$, etc. I wonder what needs to happen for the "bubble" people to say - alright, this is not a bubble anymore, I was wrong. Or it will always be a bubble for them?

atupis 9y ago
If you create deflationary currency you get bubles again and again.
tutfbhuf 9y ago
i guess if the value stabilize and people use it as a real currency, then people will stop saying bubble, but now even Steam has stopped accepting BTC
- headmelted 9y ago
  Bitcoin isn't a currency, it's a commodity (akin to digital gold). It can't be naturally deflationary and used to facilitate day-to-day trade because, by design (and with all else being equal), you're better holding on to the bitcoin than spending it. Fiat currencies are the opposite - inflation encourages spending because the money slowly trends towards being worthless if you don't spend or invest.
hobofan 9y ago
It was a bubble at 1000$ and it did burst (to some degree).
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  The pops before then ($30, $266) were much steeper in percent Fyi

tw1010 9y ago

Keep calling it a bubble and it becomes a bubble. This whole thing is entirely psychological. How can we be sure journalists aren't somehow shorting bitcoin on the side while writing these articles? They have a huge influence on the collective unconsciousness.

RutZap 9y ago
It really is entirely psychological. Based on the two main theories of stock investing: fundamental value and castles-in-the-air speculation, with Bitcoins, it's hard to gauge its real value as it may be argued that it doesn't actually have one. Being an asset that does not produce any profit, it's hard to put a number against it. So therefore the price is driven by demand and by what the mass wants it to be worth and by what it hopes to be worth in the future. Speculators coming in the Bitcoin ecosystem now are willing to spend a lot of money on it because they know that there will be someone else that is willing to spend even more money on it. It's all driven by mass psychology, exactly like many of the previous bubbles in the history of stock markets: tulip bulb craze, dotcom shares, Japanese land value and so on. The only thing is... it's very hard to predict the randomness of mass psychology. Everybody wants to get rich.. and everybody wants the price to go up and up... but when they start to sell in order to cash in, the price will drop and if a lot of people do it at the same time, panic will set in and then it will crash seriously. You may argue that the whole thing behaves a bit like a ponzi scheme (with the main difference that there is actually something happening underneath the whole speculation-investing-money aspect, which is, IMHO, the very elegant blockchain technology)
headmelted 9y ago
My understanding - and I could be utterly wrong about this - is that the reverse is true. Bubbles generally don't have non-stop headlines stating that they are in a bubble, which is what contributes to the run-up. If anything, headlines declaring Bitcoin a bubble should have a negative affect on valuations as it puts man-on-the-street buyers off withdrawing savings or equity to buy it.

speedplane 9y ago

"as bubble fears mount"... seriously? I'm pretty sure bitcoin always felt like a bubble even when it was trading at less than a dollar.

leaf_mc 9y ago

Who cares? In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter that this bubble pops? I know there are some people out there who'll have invested everything they have in BTC, which will suck for them. However, I'd wager for most people it's still just a fun way to make some spare cash, given that it's actually really difficult to use cryptos on much IRL. We've got a bit more work to do before cryptos start being useful mainstream money, rather than just a volatile investment opportunity. The underlying ideas in blockchain are brilliant, genius even. Journalists should focus more on the interesting potential of this technology, and less on how much 1BTC costs today.

cheschire 9y ago
They're fueling the speculation because they are probably invested as well. And now that options contracts are taking off for bitcoin, the folks with put contracts are banking on a crash.
- brucen 9y ago
  Do you mean futures? Where are options being offered?
Fnoord 9y ago
> Who cares? In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter that this bubble pops? Well, I, for one, am not touching it until it crashed because I believe (!) it is currently overvalued. (Tho not sure I'd go with BTC as it stands.) What I also don't like is the impact of cryptocurrency on Co2. What use is a currency when you can't use it? The most stable currencies in the world are able to be used world-wide. Betting everything you got on one horse is inherently ignorant btw. Spreading makes sense unless you're sure you're making the right bet (which you can't be). Heck, spreading is the m.i. for VC, including YC. If you burn yourself because you don't spread enough then I don't feel sorry for you. > The underlying ideas in blockchain are brilliant, genius even. Yeah, totally genius. All these people using only hot wallets, exchanges getting hacked, 101 ICOs being ponzi schemes, all these people using Bitcoin wallet on their desktop machine which also runs Mirai and what, or un(der)patched Android phone. Its a recipe for disaster. There's a reason why the general population runs their router behind a firewall or NAT, there's a reason why the general population uses experts such as banks to protect their money. Its because they lack the expertise to do it themselves. My argument is that Joe Sixpack doesn't have the expertise to run his own Bitcoin wallet. Even though it might seem very "American way" that he would, does that mean he should?

hyperpallium 9y ago

OK, Now it's a bubble.

jasode 9y ago

A recent September 2017 blog[1] estimated electricity mining costs to be ~$19k. (I don't know if bitcoin community has adjusted the hashing difficulty since September 2017 to maintain the 10-minute block rate.) Are there realistic scenarios where the sustained value of bitcoin exceeds the mining costs? What was the mining cost of 1 BTC in May 2010 when the famous request for 2 pizzas[2] for 10000 bitcoins was made? [1] https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/28/electricity-cost-of-1-bitcoin/ https://grisha.org/blog/2017/09/28/electricity-cost-of-1-bit... [2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=137.0

spdionis 9y ago
The difficulty of mining adjusts every 2 weeks so that data is certainly outdated.

holydude 9y ago

Oh yeah but it sharply dropped right ? 14,927.78 -11.45%

headmelted 9y ago

Bitcoin is a massive ponzi-scheme and it will crash imminently. Or, you know, it isn't and it won't. It's really interesting to me to follow on the side-lines of crypto as the price it's exchanging at moves up. In the last week I've had non-techies mention how they were buying Bitcoin (ostensibly to make fast, easy money). What intrigues me most is that amid the hysteria, a lot of posters on reddit and elsewhere seem to be of the belief that everyone can get rich on Bitcoin - and that if everyone buys in the price won't crash. Moreso, most of the people I'm seeing discuss it don't seem to have any knowledge of similar financial events from the past (e.g. the dotcom bubble, tulip mania). I'm not going to begrudge anyone that's made money from Bitcoin, nor am I going to judge anyone else for putting money in at this stage (anecdotally, the chatter I'm hearing in work from non-techies points to an ample supply of greater fools), but I think it should raise alarm bells that financial literacy is so low in the general populace that in most cases people are making these decisions with so little information to hand of what they're buying (I think it's fair to believe at this point that most of the buyers at this level aren't familiar with what the blockchain is as a concept - they just see rising valuations).

dingaling 9y ago
> massive ponzi-scheme Existing investors are making profit through financial transactions, so it's not a Ponzi. A Ponzi requires newcomers to contribute funds to the scheme without any exchange of assets.
- headmelted 9y ago
  > Existing investors are making profit through financial transactions Is this true? Are people exchanging bitcoin for anything other than fiat currency? (Outside of a few marginal use cases, are people actually bartering with bitcoin in real trade?)
  - nlperguiy 9y ago
    Why would bitcoin mempool be oversaturated year after year at Christmas time if not for the people buying stuff?

asenna 9y ago

For those unaware of the recent news (briefly mentioned in this article) which is driving the prices crazy the past couple of weeks, it's because the two biggest derivate exchanges form Chicago are launching Bitcoin Futures soon. CBOE launching this Sunday on Dec 10th 6pm EST. CME launching on the 18th [1]. 10th would be a very interesting day for traders. I am no expert at all but from what I can tell, this will make it easier for big institutions to short the Bitcoin (all transactions happening off the blockchain though). There are specualtions that prices are going up just before the launch and might take a dive with the shorting after. BUT if there's anything that've learned trading BTC on the side: anything can happen, it's got a mind of its own :) Either way, I think this is good news for the long run as it legitimizes BTC (There are rumors of Nasdaq and other exchanges globally getting in soon as well next year). If you thought 2017 was fun, wait till you see what 2018 has in store for cryptos. [1] - https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/04/cboe-announces-it-will-launch-bitcoin-futures-on-dec-10.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/04/cboe-announces-it-will-launc...

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
> "wait till you see what 2018 has in store for cryptos." The ability to short might actually bring some stablity to the price (as shorters will produce sell orders when they think others are mistakenly buying too much, and will likewise produce buy orders on the falls).
- asenna 9y ago
  I agree. More stability for Bitcoin but a general uptrend as the adoption increases. As for the other top cryptos, Bitcoin being legitimized and going mainstream would translate to way more money moving into the space. I'm quite bullish on a few good projects like Ethereum, Litecoin, Neo, etc.

flashman 9y ago

Is there any data on the average transaction size when converting between BTC and USD? The price might be $17k per coin, but if people are transacting in $100 amounts for fractions of coins, that's kind of sustainable whether the BTC price is $1 or $100,000.

neals 9y ago

All these threads and articles are the same, there's no new information just a new price. I like to follow a long with the Cryptocurrency, I've got a couple million in Bitcoin right now, and I'm hoping for a big 'crash' to weed out the Wallstreet types and focus again ons some good old-fashioned development. It's hard to experiment when there's billions riding on it and I feel that we're not done experimenting yet. Anybody else remember the good old 2011 days of a small community and enthousiasts? I miss those days.

headmelted 9y ago
> I've got a couple million in Bitcoin right now Something about this makes me intrinsically dislike you, and I can't for the life of me figure out what the reason is. (kidding! "Health to enjoy it!" as my father-in-law would say.)
nimchimpsky 9y ago
> I've got a couple million in Bitcoin right now Jesus, I started mining back in 2011 - got bored. Did it again in 2013 and nearly bought a few. Got everything set up, then just never did it. But I'd have probably sold up way before now. Congrats!
berkes 9y ago
> Anybody else remember the good old 2011 days of a small community and enthousiasts? I do. It was fun. There was a real sense of community. Where you'd ask advice on IRC on some mining setup, and people would gladly help you tune some settings on your build-in GPU. When, after a full day of mining, I was like "meh, this'll make at most one BTC per day, no way that I'm going to let my computer blast the whole night just for one Bitcoin. Where you knew nicknames and trusted people (and their advice, software, scripts based on "knowing them from IRC") One thing I've noticed when moving more into the Eth community (I'm developing solidity stuff now) is that Eth is both a friendlier, more helpful community, and feels like a more closed set. Btc feels all about in-fighting these days. No matter what reddit you visit, there is fighting, not heated debates, but actual, real hate. Eth feels more as a whole group. We -vs- them kinda thing. As opposed to the Bitcoin us-vs-us.

qubex 9y ago

Macro-economist here. I can’t wait for this bubble to burst so some non-noxious (inflationistic, fractional-reserve-banking enabling) second- or third-generation cryptocurrency to supplant it and harness the blockchain in a less naive manner. • Something I wrote about the macroeconomic flaws of bitcoin (posted previously, zero comments): https://medium.com/@jamesjunghanns/my-0-00000173120-btc-a-practicing-orthodox-macroeconomists-unsolicited-views-on-bitcoin-543da352fc49?source=linkShare-229012a5fba0-1512731487 https://medium.com/@jamesjunghanns/my-0-00000173120-btc-a-pr... • An analysis of the rising amplitude and quickening frequency of oscillations in valuation, leading to a projection of peak value and crash time: https://mynabla.com/2017/11/30/bubble-trouble-exploring-an-lppl-model-for-bitcoin/ https://mynabla.com/2017/11/30/bubble-trouble-exploring-an-l... • A financially dignified and macroeconomically sophisticated proposed cryptocurrency (not affiliated): http://www.getbasecoin.com/ http://www.getbasecoin.com/

headmelted 9y ago
Not to dump on the libertarian dreams of Bitcoin - but isn't a massive popping bubble the expected response to a naturally deflationary, non-government-controlled currency? I have to assume that for any cryptocurrency to become practically useable for trade it would need to be government-backed for price stability (and to keep the proceeds from heroin and arms sales from running it up to $17k USD).
patrickaljord 9y ago
> Macro-economist here. Oh gosh thanks for the input, now we finally know what is going to happen with bitcoin. /s
- qubex 9y ago
  What is about to happen seems pretty blatantly obvious at this point. Why it is desirable that it occurs might (or might not) require a bit of domain-specific knowledge. Of course aI’m aware of my professions pretty shitty track record (”predicted nine of the last seven market crashes, missed the big one” yada yada yada so I take no offence at your sarcasm).

walkingolof 9y ago

I do not claim to understand the value creating mechanisms of a cryptocurrency vs. a "traditional" currency. But without a central trust, the thing that guarantee the value of bitcoin is the network effect, right ? In that case the usage may show the characteristics of a MMO or a social network.

659087 9y ago

Do we really need to hear about Bitcoin's price changing multiple times every day?

albertgoeswoof 9y ago

The market price is pointless to look at, it's driven by people/groups with no understanding or interest in the technology, who are just looking for easy money. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Monero and others are absolutely incredible pieces of tech. E.g. the EVM is essentially a new paradigm in computing which has never been seen before. To draw a parallel in history, would you rather have been an investor in Apple when the iPod was launched, or on the engineering team that built the iPod itself? We can spend all our time discussing the price and gambling on the perception of value OR we can actually get our heads down and build something completely new and cutting edge. I know what I prefer to do.

nucatus 9y ago

I guess it is fair to assume that the bitcoin has become a extra-money sponge that absorbs the extra money floating in the market right now. When there will be less and less "free or cheap money floating" people want to get their money back from the investments they made and this is the exact point where the burst occurs. It would be no problem if the decrease is happening at the same speed as the one of the initial increase, but due to human emotion, the decrease is happening orders of magnitude faster than the increase. At that point, the money will magically disappear. It's a natural process that balances the value of the money available in the market. One interesting point to note here is that the value of the entire bitcoin monetary mass is about 0.25 trillion dollars. That's something like 1% of the whole US national debt.