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A lot of emotion with LTC. People are downloading Coinbase and buying LTC simply because it is the cheapest on Coinbase. This is definitely a bubble, really can

A lot of emotion with LTC. People are downloading Coinbase and buying LTC simply because it is the cheapest on Coinbase. This is definitely a bubble, really cant deny that anymore. All emotional, non-rational behavior.

jjallen 9y ago
Do you have evidence for this or have an idea of how many people have/are doing this?
- leesalminen 9y ago
  I’ve owned BTC for years, ETH for a little over a year but never had LTC until last week...just a single datum but would not be surprised if this is quite common.
- lopatin 9y ago
  Anecdotally, this weekend I've seen 4 (non-technical) friends throw $500 - $5,000 into the three CoinBase coins this weekend, all individually. Before this weekend, they were merely familiar with Bitcoin but no interest in investment, and they did not know what alt coins were. All it takes is for someone to see the hockey-stick growth on the coins to want in. It's too exciting to pass up. The atmosphere is "If I lose a few grand, that's OK, if I miss out on 100,000, that is not."
  - csbrooks 9y ago
    I think the really difficult part might be figuring out when to take it off the table. For example, let's say bitcoin goes up 10x. Then do you decide to sell, because it might crash back down the next week? But what if you miss out on another huge increase by selling?
    - scurvy 9y ago
      Sell half after it doubles, then hold the rest until you need the money. Selling half returns your initial investment; what remains is pure profit and you can't lose money.
      - xocyabencl 9y ago
        Or sell 1/n after price increases by n, for whatever n fits your risk/reward preferences.
      - pm90 9y ago
        > what remains is pure profit and you can't lose money. Except to inflation ;). But adjust for inflation and selling enough to cover that gets you back the initial investment and also you don't lose money.
      - fenwick67 9y ago
        This is precisely what I did, so now I have a guaranteed net profit. Yes my potential earnings are lower but it feels good to be out of the group of potential "losers" in what looks to be a zero-sum game.
        panarky 9y ago
        Economics and innovation are two of the least zero-sum things I can think of.
      - AznHisoka 9y ago
        I think this is easier said than done. You most likely need to wait until it's close to 3 X the value you bought it because you'll need to pay short-term taxes after you sell it. And once that happens, why sell half of it, vs all of it? 3 times the current value is a LOT of money and that usually takes at least 8-10 years in the equity market. Now that it happens, you're cashing out just to recoup your costs? Cash out everything, or cash out nothing and let it all ride until it's an even larger amount.
        graedus 9y ago
    - taude 9y ago
      Exactly this. People should ask around for advice all the paper-millionaires from the 1999-2000 era. Lots of paper millionaires were made, most didn't materialize.
    - cookiecaper 9y ago
      Yeah, this is the dilemma, but can't beat yourself up too much over it. I mined my first bitcoin in February 2011 just out of interest in this cool experiment, not expecting it to go anywhere. I've always had a bit of btc in reserve but every time there's a big jump the impulse is "Better sell out of this silly bubble while I can". People who imagine that they'd have $50M today neglect that they'd most likely have had a similar reaction when it was $20, $100, $500, and so on, and it's unlikely they would've held a substantial portion until it hit $20k. I think the part that's hard is that there is a stickiness to hype. Hype starts as baseless hype, but the belief and interest of others is frequently enough to sustain a company or project that has nothing of actual benefit to offer. This makes it hard to dismiss hype-fueled bubbles entirely. There's a circular effect somewhere here that converts the initial baseline hype into value just by the sheer force of will of "true believers". This applies not only to bitcoin/litecoin, but also companies, software, and all sorts of other things. Generating hype, goodwill, and other mostly-positive forms of human attention is inarguably more valuable to a project or venture's long-term lifecycle than providing actual objective value. Get enough attention or interest on something and any objective value that may potentially exist is liable to materialize, at least in part.
      - sah2ed 9y ago
        You have essentially described what economists call positive feedback. Positive feedback loops are self-fulfilling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback#In_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback#In_economics
phil248 9y ago
Having purchased several cryptocurrencies recently, I can attest that I am certainly not acting rationally. But at least I'm having fun!
- VVayneTracker 9y ago
  It's all fun and games until the switch is flipped and PetroBTC replaces the Petrodollar. /s?
- karmajunkie 9y ago
  Agreed, for someone with a relatively small amount invested in the crypto market (<1k) I find myself impersonating Gordon Gecko an awful lot. The only thing I can compare it to is my brief obsession with football stats when I used to play fantasy football.
  - MoD411 9y ago
    There's a crypto currency for fantasy sports as well: https://nolimitcoin.org/ https://nolimitcoin.org/ Why not combine both? xD
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  Yup, that's all cryptocurrencies investments are right now, a game. Have fun, but don't bet your life on it. Mabye in the future it can be more than a speculation, but right now it's a game.
- wott 9y ago
  I should start a business selling thin air. Thin air from France, thin air from Japan, thin air from Mexico, and so on, you can collect them all, it is super fun. Then I could introduce cold captured thin air, warm captured thin air, etc. Wet thin air, dry thin air for year 3. More fun every year. Even better, I should sell just a paper (well, an electronic one) stating you own some thin air. Hey, geeks, how cool can this get? I am sure I could find buyers in the same market as cryptocurrencies. PS: This is not directed at you, but you expressed the level of pointlessness and... void that reigns in this 'market', so I picked your message to place my joke/rant.
maxencecornet 9y ago
Nothing new, markets are never rational
- gk1 9y ago
  Some are more rational than others.
jnagro 9y ago
bubble or not, emotion plays a big part of the normal markets too
gxs 9y ago
I think a lot of us are aware that we're gambling, purely speculating. I have a high tolerance for risk, so I don't mind going in big (big for me) - if it works out great, if not, it's been a helluva ride.
kordlessagain 9y ago
Litecoin supports the Lightning Network, so some rationality is to be expected in Litecoin's future.
TaylorGood 9y ago
Trending in the App Store right now: "cryptocurrency" and "litecoin"
j-c-hewitt 9y ago
That's not emotional and non-rational. They were buying in a cheaper market looking to sell in a more expensive one. Unfortunately the cheap market often shuts down trading when volume gets too high so the people who got trapped are screwed.
nafizh 9y ago
I think you meant irrational. Non-rational is different.
volgo 9y ago
Sure is. But you can still make a lot of money :)
matte_black 9y ago
I disagree. Buying can be 100% rational as long as you believe some other fool down the line will buy it off you. As soon as the supply of irrational buyers dries up it’s game over. But that doesn’t look like it will happen anytime soon, just look around!
- brentm 9y ago
  It is as rational as playing roulette. Most of people buying at this point probably can't articulate what they are buying, just that it's probably going to be be worth more money soon. I had to sell my BTC on Sunday, I am waiting to get back in when the exuberance flips around and everyone says it's dead.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    As a rational actor, buying Bitcoin right now is basically buying a bet that people will continue to be irrational long enough for me to make a good profit and get out. I don’t know how much faith you have in the market, but I predict the irrationality will continue until at least the stock market crashes and causes people to take a cold hard look at just what exactly it is they are doing. By the time people wake up, every rational actor better hope they’ve made their exit by then.
    - brentm 9y ago
      Sure I understand that. For BTC at least I am not sure I agree the rally will last as long as the stock market rally. I think we'll probably see a decent amount of selling in January when the gains are moved forward to the new tax year. Litecoin is another animal. I think we'll continue to see a lot of what we're seeing now. People seeing a low price (compared to btc), sad they missed out on cheap BTC and dreaming this one is going to $15k.
      - matte_black 9y ago
        Seeing as how dreamers are basically the only reason Bitcoin rose to $20k, I see no reason why the trend wouldn't replay itself with Litecoin. Great time to buy IMO.
kombucha2 9y ago
Is this the reason why? I've been scratching my head all day as to why LTC would pop today beyond the fact that the BTC rally cooled and people saw LTC as cheaper and thought "hey, thats cheap, let pump it!".
- fullshark 9y ago
  Anecdotally yes FWIW.
- whoisjuan 9y ago
  Until a week or two ago the correlation between LTC and BTC was very loose, but it seems that now that BTC is cooling off other coins are warming up... But LTC has been doing pretty good for a year, so who knows... Definitely seems that people are buying more LTC because is cheaper. Maybe in the hopes that one day is going to be as valuable as BTC (of course that's not happening).
- thudrs 9y ago
  People were getting annoyed with the high fees and slow transaction times of Bitcoin. LTC is much faster, has cheaper fees, and has a higher cap on currency that can be mined. A few days ago Redditors on r/bitcoin (or maybe r/btc I cant remember) suggested people with these complaints switch to LTC. More and more posts started popping up to rally LTC. Some even mentioned that most coins had a tight correlation with Bitcoin, which LTC did not seem to have. If this were true, and Bitcoin were to crash, LTC would have the greatest chance of overtaking it. The next day LTC started to rise. Im not 100% sure of correlation, but I believe these reasons to be a part of the cause. It could also have to do with big name investors starting to research cryptocurrencies after CBOE went live, or something else entirely.
  - ikiris 9y ago
    Because people are rediscovering why SEC rules exist one at a time.
- zik 9y ago
  The cryptocurrency bubble is still attracting a lot of attention and people want to buy into something. Bitcoin's pretty broken right now so people are being told to buy litecoin instead.
qeternity 9y ago
Sorry to break it to you, this is not "new" money pouring in. This is a very well orchestrated and calibrated pump.
- twayamznacct 9y ago
  I'd be curious to see any sort of proof (or, for lack of direct proof, something pointing the finger in this direction) in this. I say that without sarcasm. A legitimate request.
- JonnyNova 9y ago
  There has to be some new coming in. Coinbase is rocking #1 spot in the app store for a reason.
panarky 9y ago
> definitely a bubble, really cant deny that anymore You could be right. But I don't understand everyone's certainty that cryptocurrencies are a fraud-bubble-scam-Ponzi-mania. The growth curve fits both exponential and logistic (S-curve) functions. Exponential growth is unsustainable, while logistic growth describes most technology adoption. Halfway through the cycle they're indistinguishable. When there's 98% agreement this is a bubble about to burst, my instinct is that the conventional wisdom is wrong.
- johnwheeler 9y ago
  > But I don't understand everyone's certainty that cryptocurrencies are a fraud-bubble-scam-Ponzi-mania. When it blows up, you won't understand why the SEC didn't protect you. By then, you'll realize it was a mirage all along, and you'll want someone to blame for letting it get so out of hand. Every piece of news you interpret will tell you that losing money was not your fault, because that's what you'll want to believe. On the flip side, the current price action is causing the same sort of confirmation bias--just in the opposite direction.
  - etr-strike 9y ago
    Unlike people who invest in the stock market, no one buying cryptocurrencies in under the delusion they'll be bailed out.
    - narrator 9y ago
      That there are still so many haters shows that this cryptocurrency thing has a way to go.
    - bushido 9y ago
      True. Only if they have zero leverage at play. No borrowed money, no loan to default on. If not then there is most definitely going to be some element of a bailout. Anecdotal: but in the last month I have come across 6-8 people who have taken or know someone who has taken 2nd mortgages, maxed out their lines of credits, and credit cards to "invest" in crypto. I'm generally a-ok with investment loans (not from credit cards), they are a good resource to reduce portfolio risk - if the loan remain tax deductible. But what is currently transpiring is insanity. Someone will definitely get bailed out (hint: it will likely be the banks that's unknowingly provided the leverage).
Helloworldboy 9y ago
LTC has many advantages over BTC. Namely faster transaction times and waaaaaay lower fees.
romulus10 9y ago
Especially in light of today's massive price jump for LTC. I was initially happy to see that, but thinking further on it makes me nervous.
grrowl 9y ago
It's also the best crypto to transfer value between exchanges, if you don't want to use Tether.
nunez 9y ago
Just wait until XRP gets into Coinbase, if it makes it into Coinbase. Many people will make bank! Of course, that's assuming that don't end 2017 (or 2018) with a massive crypto bubble burst!

jjallen 9y ago

Do you have evidence for this or have an idea of how many people have/are doing this?

leesalminen 9y ago
I’ve owned BTC for years, ETH for a little over a year but never had LTC until last week...just a single datum but would not be surprised if this is quite common.
lopatin 9y ago
Anecdotally, this weekend I've seen 4 (non-technical) friends throw $500 - $5,000 into the three CoinBase coins this weekend, all individually. Before this weekend, they were merely familiar with Bitcoin but no interest in investment, and they did not know what alt coins were. All it takes is for someone to see the hockey-stick growth on the coins to want in. It's too exciting to pass up. The atmosphere is "If I lose a few grand, that's OK, if I miss out on 100,000, that is not."
- csbrooks 9y ago
  I think the really difficult part might be figuring out when to take it off the table. For example, let's say bitcoin goes up 10x. Then do you decide to sell, because it might crash back down the next week? But what if you miss out on another huge increase by selling?
  - scurvy 9y ago
    Sell half after it doubles, then hold the rest until you need the money. Selling half returns your initial investment; what remains is pure profit and you can't lose money.
    - xocyabencl 9y ago
      Or sell 1/n after price increases by n, for whatever n fits your risk/reward preferences.
    - pm90 9y ago
      > what remains is pure profit and you can't lose money. Except to inflation ;). But adjust for inflation and selling enough to cover that gets you back the initial investment and also you don't lose money.
    - fenwick67 9y ago
      This is precisely what I did, so now I have a guaranteed net profit. Yes my potential earnings are lower but it feels good to be out of the group of potential "losers" in what looks to be a zero-sum game.
      - panarky 9y ago
        Economics and innovation are two of the least zero-sum things I can think of.
    - AznHisoka 9y ago
      I think this is easier said than done. You most likely need to wait until it's close to 3 X the value you bought it because you'll need to pay short-term taxes after you sell it. And once that happens, why sell half of it, vs all of it? 3 times the current value is a LOT of money and that usually takes at least 8-10 years in the equity market. Now that it happens, you're cashing out just to recoup your costs? Cash out everything, or cash out nothing and let it all ride until it's an even larger amount.
      - graedus 9y ago
  - taude 9y ago
    Exactly this. People should ask around for advice all the paper-millionaires from the 1999-2000 era. Lots of paper millionaires were made, most didn't materialize.
  - cookiecaper 9y ago
    Yeah, this is the dilemma, but can't beat yourself up too much over it. I mined my first bitcoin in February 2011 just out of interest in this cool experiment, not expecting it to go anywhere. I've always had a bit of btc in reserve but every time there's a big jump the impulse is "Better sell out of this silly bubble while I can". People who imagine that they'd have $50M today neglect that they'd most likely have had a similar reaction when it was $20, $100, $500, and so on, and it's unlikely they would've held a substantial portion until it hit $20k. I think the part that's hard is that there is a stickiness to hype. Hype starts as baseless hype, but the belief and interest of others is frequently enough to sustain a company or project that has nothing of actual benefit to offer. This makes it hard to dismiss hype-fueled bubbles entirely. There's a circular effect somewhere here that converts the initial baseline hype into value just by the sheer force of will of "true believers". This applies not only to bitcoin/litecoin, but also companies, software, and all sorts of other things. Generating hype, goodwill, and other mostly-positive forms of human attention is inarguably more valuable to a project or venture's long-term lifecycle than providing actual objective value. Get enough attention or interest on something and any objective value that may potentially exist is liable to materialize, at least in part.
    - sah2ed 9y ago
      You have essentially described what economists call positive feedback. Positive feedback loops are self-fulfilling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback#In_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_feedback#In_economics

phil248 9y ago

Having purchased several cryptocurrencies recently, I can attest that I am certainly not acting rationally. But at least I'm having fun!

VVayneTracker 9y ago
It's all fun and games until the switch is flipped and PetroBTC replaces the Petrodollar. /s?
karmajunkie 9y ago
Agreed, for someone with a relatively small amount invested in the crypto market (<1k) I find myself impersonating Gordon Gecko an awful lot. The only thing I can compare it to is my brief obsession with football stats when I used to play fantasy football.
- MoD411 9y ago
  There's a crypto currency for fantasy sports as well: https://nolimitcoin.org/ https://nolimitcoin.org/ Why not combine both? xD
ReverseCold 9y ago
Yup, that's all cryptocurrencies investments are right now, a game. Have fun, but don't bet your life on it. Mabye in the future it can be more than a speculation, but right now it's a game.
wott 9y ago
I should start a business selling thin air. Thin air from France, thin air from Japan, thin air from Mexico, and so on, you can collect them all, it is super fun. Then I could introduce cold captured thin air, warm captured thin air, etc. Wet thin air, dry thin air for year 3. More fun every year. Even better, I should sell just a paper (well, an electronic one) stating you own some thin air. Hey, geeks, how cool can this get? I am sure I could find buyers in the same market as cryptocurrencies. PS: This is not directed at you, but you expressed the level of pointlessness and... void that reigns in this 'market', so I picked your message to place my joke/rant.

maxencecornet 9y ago

Nothing new, markets are never rational

gk1 9y ago
Some are more rational than others.

jnagro 9y ago

bubble or not, emotion plays a big part of the normal markets too

gxs 9y ago

I think a lot of us are aware that we're gambling, purely speculating. I have a high tolerance for risk, so I don't mind going in big (big for me) - if it works out great, if not, it's been a helluva ride.

kordlessagain 9y ago

Litecoin supports the Lightning Network, so some rationality is to be expected in Litecoin's future.

TaylorGood 9y ago

Trending in the App Store right now: "cryptocurrency" and "litecoin"

j-c-hewitt 9y ago

That's not emotional and non-rational. They were buying in a cheaper market looking to sell in a more expensive one. Unfortunately the cheap market often shuts down trading when volume gets too high so the people who got trapped are screwed.

nafizh 9y ago

I think you meant irrational. Non-rational is different.

volgo 9y ago

Sure is. But you can still make a lot of money :)

matte_black 9y ago

I disagree. Buying can be 100% rational as long as you believe some other fool down the line will buy it off you. As soon as the supply of irrational buyers dries up it’s game over. But that doesn’t look like it will happen anytime soon, just look around!

brentm 9y ago
It is as rational as playing roulette. Most of people buying at this point probably can't articulate what they are buying, just that it's probably going to be be worth more money soon. I had to sell my BTC on Sunday, I am waiting to get back in when the exuberance flips around and everyone says it's dead.
- matte_black 9y ago
  As a rational actor, buying Bitcoin right now is basically buying a bet that people will continue to be irrational long enough for me to make a good profit and get out. I don’t know how much faith you have in the market, but I predict the irrationality will continue until at least the stock market crashes and causes people to take a cold hard look at just what exactly it is they are doing. By the time people wake up, every rational actor better hope they’ve made their exit by then.
  - brentm 9y ago
    Sure I understand that. For BTC at least I am not sure I agree the rally will last as long as the stock market rally. I think we'll probably see a decent amount of selling in January when the gains are moved forward to the new tax year. Litecoin is another animal. I think we'll continue to see a lot of what we're seeing now. People seeing a low price (compared to btc), sad they missed out on cheap BTC and dreaming this one is going to $15k.
    - matte_black 9y ago
      Seeing as how dreamers are basically the only reason Bitcoin rose to $20k, I see no reason why the trend wouldn't replay itself with Litecoin. Great time to buy IMO.

kombucha2 9y ago

Is this the reason why? I've been scratching my head all day as to why LTC would pop today beyond the fact that the BTC rally cooled and people saw LTC as cheaper and thought "hey, thats cheap, let pump it!".

fullshark 9y ago
Anecdotally yes FWIW.
whoisjuan 9y ago
Until a week or two ago the correlation between LTC and BTC was very loose, but it seems that now that BTC is cooling off other coins are warming up... But LTC has been doing pretty good for a year, so who knows... Definitely seems that people are buying more LTC because is cheaper. Maybe in the hopes that one day is going to be as valuable as BTC (of course that's not happening).
thudrs 9y ago
People were getting annoyed with the high fees and slow transaction times of Bitcoin. LTC is much faster, has cheaper fees, and has a higher cap on currency that can be mined. A few days ago Redditors on r/bitcoin (or maybe r/btc I cant remember) suggested people with these complaints switch to LTC. More and more posts started popping up to rally LTC. Some even mentioned that most coins had a tight correlation with Bitcoin, which LTC did not seem to have. If this were true, and Bitcoin were to crash, LTC would have the greatest chance of overtaking it. The next day LTC started to rise. Im not 100% sure of correlation, but I believe these reasons to be a part of the cause. It could also have to do with big name investors starting to research cryptocurrencies after CBOE went live, or something else entirely.
- ikiris 9y ago
  Because people are rediscovering why SEC rules exist one at a time.
zik 9y ago
The cryptocurrency bubble is still attracting a lot of attention and people want to buy into something. Bitcoin's pretty broken right now so people are being told to buy litecoin instead.

qeternity 9y ago

Sorry to break it to you, this is not "new" money pouring in. This is a very well orchestrated and calibrated pump.

twayamznacct 9y ago
I'd be curious to see any sort of proof (or, for lack of direct proof, something pointing the finger in this direction) in this. I say that without sarcasm. A legitimate request.
JonnyNova 9y ago
There has to be some new coming in. Coinbase is rocking #1 spot in the app store for a reason.

panarky 9y ago

> definitely a bubble, really cant deny that anymore You could be right. But I don't understand everyone's certainty that cryptocurrencies are a fraud-bubble-scam-Ponzi-mania. The growth curve fits both exponential and logistic (S-curve) functions. Exponential growth is unsustainable, while logistic growth describes most technology adoption. Halfway through the cycle they're indistinguishable. When there's 98% agreement this is a bubble about to burst, my instinct is that the conventional wisdom is wrong.

johnwheeler 9y ago
> But I don't understand everyone's certainty that cryptocurrencies are a fraud-bubble-scam-Ponzi-mania. When it blows up, you won't understand why the SEC didn't protect you. By then, you'll realize it was a mirage all along, and you'll want someone to blame for letting it get so out of hand. Every piece of news you interpret will tell you that losing money was not your fault, because that's what you'll want to believe. On the flip side, the current price action is causing the same sort of confirmation bias--just in the opposite direction.
- etr-strike 9y ago
  Unlike people who invest in the stock market, no one buying cryptocurrencies in under the delusion they'll be bailed out.
  - narrator 9y ago
    That there are still so many haters shows that this cryptocurrency thing has a way to go.
  - bushido 9y ago
    True. Only if they have zero leverage at play. No borrowed money, no loan to default on. If not then there is most definitely going to be some element of a bailout. Anecdotal: but in the last month I have come across 6-8 people who have taken or know someone who has taken 2nd mortgages, maxed out their lines of credits, and credit cards to "invest" in crypto. I'm generally a-ok with investment loans (not from credit cards), they are a good resource to reduce portfolio risk - if the loan remain tax deductible. But what is currently transpiring is insanity. Someone will definitely get bailed out (hint: it will likely be the banks that's unknowingly provided the leverage).

Helloworldboy 9y ago

LTC has many advantages over BTC. Namely faster transaction times and waaaaaay lower fees.

romulus10 9y ago

Especially in light of today's massive price jump for LTC. I was initially happy to see that, but thinking further on it makes me nervous.

grrowl 9y ago

It's also the best crypto to transfer value between exchanges, if you don't want to use Tether.

nunez 9y ago

Just wait until XRP gets into Coinbase, if it makes it into Coinbase. Many people will make bank! Of course, that's assuming that don't end 2017 (or 2018) with a massive crypto bubble burst!