9 ms·

Bitcoin price plunges $2,000 in 12 hours as year-end rally fizzles out

44 points by charlysl 9y ago

romanovcode 9y ago
Isn't that just a regular day for it? 2k up, 2k down. Doesn't matter much.
- test1235 9y ago
  Looking at https://www.coindesk.com/price/ https://www.coindesk.com/price/ it looks like it's at the same price as the start of the month. Still, looking at the graph for the year, recent months have seen a massive spike.
paulus_magnus2 9y ago
The shorting started. Let's see if there's anyone willing to protect BTC and at which level.
- bsaul 9y ago
  Let's also see how fast something with 0 utility value can fall when the hype stops.
  - romeo88 9y ago
    I wouldn't say 0 utility but for sure not anywhere near it is now. Tulips still have "utility" today but a single one does not buy you a house anymore ;)
    - egeozcan 9y ago
      I think a "single" bitcoin doesn't mean anything, especially compared to a physical good (it makes some sense when you are making a performance comparison to other CCs but not too much). You can buy a house with enough bitcoins as long as you have buyers. You can say the same thing for tulips as well.
  - mrwong 9y ago
    Ok im done with HN... its like the elders home of SV. "those damn kind with those stooopeed comyuters.... we had real rice boards back in ww1 that was a nice time.. interwebs hazh no walluey anywaysh We can argue about the correct price of bitcoin sure, but that it has 0 utility in a world full of athoritarian goverments, its like saying hideouts for jew in Nazi germany had 0 utility. Fucking ridicolous and stupid, dont want to even sugarcoat that level of stupidity. Sugercoating you stupid asses here on HN leads exactly to this Political correctness that got Trump into power. So fkc off, go suck Trumps Dck if you love his money so much.
- philfrasty 9y ago
  Why would you even consider shorting BTC in the last few days? There was no negative news at all. Might look smart in hindsight but complete speculation IMO for this short timeframe.
  - pavlov 9y ago
    On an asset with no fundamental value, shorting is appealing because it can create the negative news cycle. Short enough and you get headlines like the one in the OP: "Bitcoin plunges by X%". Suddenly you'll have longs looking to sell and more shorts hoping to get in.
  - prettygood 9y ago
    No negative news? One of the co-founders of bitcoin.com sold everything because he doesn't believe in it anymore http://www.businessinsider.com/one-of-the-co-founders-of-bitcoincom-has-sold-all-of-his-bitcoin-2017-12?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/one-of-the-co-founders-of-bit...
    - DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
      Bitcoin.com is unrelated to the Bitcoin Core project at Bitcoin.org.
      - prettygood 9y ago
        True, but that doesn't matter to people who don't know aything about it. They just read "Bitcoin guy sells everything". It's not like the media is going to properly explain it in the article, or tried writing a less click-baity title.
  - bsaul 9y ago
    Told a friend that was very much into bitcoin to sell everything two days ago. But my logic is the following : if an asset is overvalued because of hype, then the moment everybody knows about the existence of the asset is when the value reaches its peak. With the recent news about bitcoin reaching 20k and everybody in the general public wondering about investing, i thought we reached that moment.
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  That's the problem I think with the futures market; because BTC is / can be anonymized, there can be big mules that short BTC, then sell off their BTC. Because the BTC trade is susceptible for panic, other people will start panic selling, further lowering the price. And the bigger mules that shorted BTC earn money both from selling their assets at a high price and the shorting.
- hollander 9y ago
  This seems like the regular pattern. It goes up for a while, then you see a drop back of about 30% of the rise. Then after a short while it picks up again and in not time it has recovered from the drop, to gain more value. Then repeat. I have invested a small amount in bitcoins, and just wait until it hits $100k. If I lose all, bad luck. The amount invested is worth the risk.
  - BattyMilk 9y ago
    I'm in the same as you. I've been dumping a few hundred a month into BTC, ETC and LTC for a few months and at the time of writing (BTC is currently hovering around 14k) my investment is worth 3x what I've put in. While I'd love to see crypto disrupt the current financial system, it's just fun to be a part of the ride. I see this as play money. It's fun to track the price up and down. It will have to do a repeat of the 2012-today run up for me to make huge money - something I'm not expecting - and unless it does this, I'll not be cashing out. If it happens then awesome, if it crashes tomorrow then I've spent a bit of money for a bit of added excitement in my day.
    - hollander 9y ago
      > While I'd love to see crypto disrupt the current financial system Late reply. I don't agree. I think a disruption of the financial system will create only trouble. Taking back control from the banks is something else, and stopping split second speculation by algorithms would result in more stability. If you mean that by disruption, I agree of course, but for me this is not a disruption, as it fits in the current system.
  - emerged 9y ago
    This is accurate and you can easily see it through a cursory look at the full history of coin value. These articles have always served as a Buy signal. Whether or not one believes this time will be different is another question.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
Here we go again. I said earlier on HN to buy in at $3,800, roughly 3 months ago. Then I said to buy in at $5,900, when BTC bottomed out after China started regulating it. It was a good price. The time to buy is now, when it's been crashing. This is always true after a crash. So, let me go 3 for 3: Hocus, pocus, $14,000 is a pretty good buy-in price. Those who have been waiting should do so now.
- romeo88 9y ago
  Will remind you when the hype/bubble is gone and bitcoin is traded below 100 :)
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    Uh huh, and all of my "Buy in at $3,900; buy in at $5,800" comments were downvoted too. It's remarkable how influential groupthink is. Everyone is panic selling, so of course the logical action is to buy. It's never a good time to buy when everyone's been buying! This is the only correct time to do a long-term bet. This is all quite mistaken for day trading, but that's not this strategy.
    - CodingGuy 9y ago
      This is only a good strategy, when you think this pump and dump will continue forever - I doubt it!
      - sillysaurus3 9y ago
        BTC will be around literally forever, and speculation is one of the only reasons to adopt it. Those two reasons are enough to play the odds, for whoever's paying attention.
        shawabawa3 9y ago
        Actually a "death spiral" is basically built-in to bitcoin. If the value stays at this level for a while and the hashpower increases so that miners rely on this level of income, a drop of say 30% could mean that almost all miners are running in the red (except those with free electricity). The resulting long block times could cause the price to crash more, discouraging even more miners, until a block is just never produced again. The difficulty adjustment requires 2016 blocks to be mined. It will inevitably be forked to try and save it, but that might not take off...
thisisit 9y ago
I might get downvoted for this but what kind of value add articles tracking bitcoin price really do? There has been a lot articles about breaching 5k, 10k, 15k etc and now this.
- hateduser2 9y ago
  I like the discussion. Don't even read the articles.
- charlysl 9y ago
  15k, 10k, etc?
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  To hype bitcoin so that more people buy into it so that someone else can hold the bag.
- moneytide1 9y ago
  In the same way Facebook gatekeepers get paid because people want to interact with each other - Bitcoin rewards a similar kind of vulture that wants their "free lunch" because people want to exchange resources (trading medium). Everyone blindly jumps aboard because "get rich quick". I wonder if these Bitcoin "angel" investors actually produce things with their hands, or if they seek to reinvest their gains into building something useful to people.
- vinchuco 9y ago
  There are psychological barriers on market prices, expected target prices, and some people don't like watching the bitcoin price ticker every second
tabs_masterrace 9y ago
Buy now or regret it. Bitcoin is only going to get bigger, much much bigger. For those doubting the scaling potential, don't forget it's software and software is not static thing. There is now too much money in it, and the money directly translates into interest to keep Bitcoin running and succeeding. The protocol may change or even fork come time, but the chain will not, if you have coins now, your store of value is written in stone, and will be there in whatever form we have in the future. It's going to be the new gold.
- Ologn 9y ago
  > There is now too much money in it, and the money directly translates into interest to keep Bitcoin running and succeeding. Like tech stocks in 1999? 2007 subprime mortgages? > It's going to be the new gold You mean my dentist can fill my teeth with it, I can give it as a shiny necklace to my girlfriend, I can use it as a conductor for my stereo? You mean it's actually something I can use?
  - tabs_masterrace 9y ago
    Common now, gold isn't valuable because of its conductive properties, and nobody uses it to fill teeth anymore. Gold is valuable, because a) There's a fixed supply. b) The material itself is proof that you actually posses it. c) It's durable and easily quantifiable. It's a store of value, that cannot be overruled, either you have it or not, that simple. There is nothing quite like it, and that's why governments are hoarding gold reserve in underground basements. Bitcoin takes this concept even further and ensures that your coins cannot be forcefully taken from you (given you store them right ofc). They are essentially just a piece of information, and that is enough to universally validate your ownership, without a doubt. There is immense value in the technology, I'm sure its here to stay. Again, maybe not the current iteration, but whatever Bitcoin evolution we end up with, it will very likely come out of this blockchain. But we will see. Maybe it IS gonna die tomorrow after all.
    - simen 9y ago
      Even if bitcoin for some reason disappears (and I don't believe the doomsday scenario is anywhere in the near future), the blockchain technology on which it is built is revolutionary, and the financial sector is researching it and developing new applications at a furious pace. Whatever the future of bitcoin itself and whoever he is, "Satoshi Nakamoto" will go down in history as a great inventor.
jpatokal 9y ago
This marks the fifth time Bitcoin has "plunged" over 30%... during 2017: https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/944048619174457344?s=09& https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/944048619174457344... The only real difference is that because Bitcoin's value is now so high, even comparatively small dips are massive in USD terms.
- KasianFranks 9y ago
  Best comment for naysayers.
- frik 9y ago
  Why every insightful news gets hidden on HN? Has HN been run over by corporate guys? Only their news are left, and many other news stories per day that got many upvotes and/or comments get hidden from the frontpage very quickly.
chx 9y ago
Transaction fees skyrocketed to $55...
- Rexxar 9y ago
  Would be nice to know how many bitcoins will be locked in wallets whose value is inferior to transaction costs if the fees stay at this price or higher.
- makomk 9y ago
  I suspect a lot of the transaction fees and congestion have been from people transferring to exchanges to sell. Though it wouldn't surprise me if someone was doing market manipulation via spam transactions; that certainly seems like something that could potentially be profitable.
nepotism2018 9y ago
Not just bitcoin though is it. There is more red on gdax than santa outfit
Asdfbla 9y ago
I wonder if reporting on Bitcoin's random walk is really newsworthy these days.
monob 9y ago
A good predictor if the latest bubble has burst is if the suicide hotline number is a sticky on the bitcoin subreddit. Currently it isn't there so we have a while yet.

44 points by charlysl 9y ago

romanovcode 9y ago

Isn't that just a regular day for it? 2k up, 2k down. Doesn't matter much.

test1235 9y ago
Looking at https://www.coindesk.com/price/ https://www.coindesk.com/price/ it looks like it's at the same price as the start of the month. Still, looking at the graph for the year, recent months have seen a massive spike.

paulus_magnus2 9y ago

The shorting started. Let's see if there's anyone willing to protect BTC and at which level.

bsaul 9y ago
Let's also see how fast something with 0 utility value can fall when the hype stops.
- romeo88 9y ago
  I wouldn't say 0 utility but for sure not anywhere near it is now. Tulips still have "utility" today but a single one does not buy you a house anymore ;)
  - egeozcan 9y ago
    I think a "single" bitcoin doesn't mean anything, especially compared to a physical good (it makes some sense when you are making a performance comparison to other CCs but not too much). You can buy a house with enough bitcoins as long as you have buyers. You can say the same thing for tulips as well.
- mrwong 9y ago
  Ok im done with HN... its like the elders home of SV. "those damn kind with those stooopeed comyuters.... we had real rice boards back in ww1 that was a nice time.. interwebs hazh no walluey anywaysh We can argue about the correct price of bitcoin sure, but that it has 0 utility in a world full of athoritarian goverments, its like saying hideouts for jew in Nazi germany had 0 utility. Fucking ridicolous and stupid, dont want to even sugarcoat that level of stupidity. Sugercoating you stupid asses here on HN leads exactly to this Political correctness that got Trump into power. So fkc off, go suck Trumps Dck if you love his money so much.
philfrasty 9y ago
Why would you even consider shorting BTC in the last few days? There was no negative news at all. Might look smart in hindsight but complete speculation IMO for this short timeframe.
- pavlov 9y ago
  On an asset with no fundamental value, shorting is appealing because it can create the negative news cycle. Short enough and you get headlines like the one in the OP: "Bitcoin plunges by X%". Suddenly you'll have longs looking to sell and more shorts hoping to get in.
- prettygood 9y ago
  No negative news? One of the co-founders of bitcoin.com sold everything because he doesn't believe in it anymore http://www.businessinsider.com/one-of-the-co-founders-of-bitcoincom-has-sold-all-of-his-bitcoin-2017-12?r=UK&IR=T http://www.businessinsider.com/one-of-the-co-founders-of-bit...
  - DaiPlusPlus 9y ago
    Bitcoin.com is unrelated to the Bitcoin Core project at Bitcoin.org.
    - prettygood 9y ago
      True, but that doesn't matter to people who don't know aything about it. They just read "Bitcoin guy sells everything". It's not like the media is going to properly explain it in the article, or tried writing a less click-baity title.
- bsaul 9y ago
  Told a friend that was very much into bitcoin to sell everything two days ago. But my logic is the following : if an asset is overvalued because of hype, then the moment everybody knows about the existence of the asset is when the value reaches its peak. With the recent news about bitcoin reaching 20k and everybody in the general public wondering about investing, i thought we reached that moment.
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
That's the problem I think with the futures market; because BTC is / can be anonymized, there can be big mules that short BTC, then sell off their BTC. Because the BTC trade is susceptible for panic, other people will start panic selling, further lowering the price. And the bigger mules that shorted BTC earn money both from selling their assets at a high price and the shorting.
hollander 9y ago
This seems like the regular pattern. It goes up for a while, then you see a drop back of about 30% of the rise. Then after a short while it picks up again and in not time it has recovered from the drop, to gain more value. Then repeat. I have invested a small amount in bitcoins, and just wait until it hits $100k. If I lose all, bad luck. The amount invested is worth the risk.
- BattyMilk 9y ago
  I'm in the same as you. I've been dumping a few hundred a month into BTC, ETC and LTC for a few months and at the time of writing (BTC is currently hovering around 14k) my investment is worth 3x what I've put in. While I'd love to see crypto disrupt the current financial system, it's just fun to be a part of the ride. I see this as play money. It's fun to track the price up and down. It will have to do a repeat of the 2012-today run up for me to make huge money - something I'm not expecting - and unless it does this, I'll not be cashing out. If it happens then awesome, if it crashes tomorrow then I've spent a bit of money for a bit of added excitement in my day.
  - hollander 9y ago
    > While I'd love to see crypto disrupt the current financial system Late reply. I don't agree. I think a disruption of the financial system will create only trouble. Taking back control from the banks is something else, and stopping split second speculation by algorithms would result in more stability. If you mean that by disruption, I agree of course, but for me this is not a disruption, as it fits in the current system.
- emerged 9y ago
  This is accurate and you can easily see it through a cursory look at the full history of coin value. These articles have always served as a Buy signal. Whether or not one believes this time will be different is another question.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Here we go again. I said earlier on HN to buy in at $3,800, roughly 3 months ago. Then I said to buy in at $5,900, when BTC bottomed out after China started regulating it. It was a good price. The time to buy is now, when it's been crashing. This is always true after a crash. So, let me go 3 for 3: Hocus, pocus, $14,000 is a pretty good buy-in price. Those who have been waiting should do so now.

romeo88 9y ago
Will remind you when the hype/bubble is gone and bitcoin is traded below 100 :)
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  Uh huh, and all of my "Buy in at $3,900; buy in at $5,800" comments were downvoted too. It's remarkable how influential groupthink is. Everyone is panic selling, so of course the logical action is to buy. It's never a good time to buy when everyone's been buying! This is the only correct time to do a long-term bet. This is all quite mistaken for day trading, but that's not this strategy.
  - CodingGuy 9y ago
    This is only a good strategy, when you think this pump and dump will continue forever - I doubt it!
    - sillysaurus3 9y ago
      BTC will be around literally forever, and speculation is one of the only reasons to adopt it. Those two reasons are enough to play the odds, for whoever's paying attention.
      - shawabawa3 9y ago
        Actually a "death spiral" is basically built-in to bitcoin. If the value stays at this level for a while and the hashpower increases so that miners rely on this level of income, a drop of say 30% could mean that almost all miners are running in the red (except those with free electricity). The resulting long block times could cause the price to crash more, discouraging even more miners, until a block is just never produced again. The difficulty adjustment requires 2016 blocks to be mined. It will inevitably be forked to try and save it, but that might not take off...

thisisit 9y ago

I might get downvoted for this but what kind of value add articles tracking bitcoin price really do? There has been a lot articles about breaching 5k, 10k, 15k etc and now this.

hateduser2 9y ago
I like the discussion. Don't even read the articles.
charlysl 9y ago
15k, 10k, etc?
zitterbewegung 9y ago
To hype bitcoin so that more people buy into it so that someone else can hold the bag.
moneytide1 9y ago
In the same way Facebook gatekeepers get paid because people want to interact with each other - Bitcoin rewards a similar kind of vulture that wants their "free lunch" because people want to exchange resources (trading medium). Everyone blindly jumps aboard because "get rich quick". I wonder if these Bitcoin "angel" investors actually produce things with their hands, or if they seek to reinvest their gains into building something useful to people.
vinchuco 9y ago
There are psychological barriers on market prices, expected target prices, and some people don't like watching the bitcoin price ticker every second

tabs_masterrace 9y ago

Buy now or regret it. Bitcoin is only going to get bigger, much much bigger. For those doubting the scaling potential, don't forget it's software and software is not static thing. There is now too much money in it, and the money directly translates into interest to keep Bitcoin running and succeeding. The protocol may change or even fork come time, but the chain will not, if you have coins now, your store of value is written in stone, and will be there in whatever form we have in the future. It's going to be the new gold.

Ologn 9y ago
> There is now too much money in it, and the money directly translates into interest to keep Bitcoin running and succeeding. Like tech stocks in 1999? 2007 subprime mortgages? > It's going to be the new gold You mean my dentist can fill my teeth with it, I can give it as a shiny necklace to my girlfriend, I can use it as a conductor for my stereo? You mean it's actually something I can use?
- tabs_masterrace 9y ago
  Common now, gold isn't valuable because of its conductive properties, and nobody uses it to fill teeth anymore. Gold is valuable, because a) There's a fixed supply. b) The material itself is proof that you actually posses it. c) It's durable and easily quantifiable. It's a store of value, that cannot be overruled, either you have it or not, that simple. There is nothing quite like it, and that's why governments are hoarding gold reserve in underground basements. Bitcoin takes this concept even further and ensures that your coins cannot be forcefully taken from you (given you store them right ofc). They are essentially just a piece of information, and that is enough to universally validate your ownership, without a doubt. There is immense value in the technology, I'm sure its here to stay. Again, maybe not the current iteration, but whatever Bitcoin evolution we end up with, it will very likely come out of this blockchain. But we will see. Maybe it IS gonna die tomorrow after all.
  - simen 9y ago
    Even if bitcoin for some reason disappears (and I don't believe the doomsday scenario is anywhere in the near future), the blockchain technology on which it is built is revolutionary, and the financial sector is researching it and developing new applications at a furious pace. Whatever the future of bitcoin itself and whoever he is, "Satoshi Nakamoto" will go down in history as a great inventor.

jpatokal 9y ago

This marks the fifth time Bitcoin has "plunged" over 30%... during 2017: https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/944048619174457344?s=09& https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/944048619174457344... The only real difference is that because Bitcoin's value is now so high, even comparatively small dips are massive in USD terms.

KasianFranks 9y ago
Best comment for naysayers.
frik 9y ago
Why every insightful news gets hidden on HN? Has HN been run over by corporate guys? Only their news are left, and many other news stories per day that got many upvotes and/or comments get hidden from the frontpage very quickly.

chx 9y ago

Transaction fees skyrocketed to $55...

Rexxar 9y ago
Would be nice to know how many bitcoins will be locked in wallets whose value is inferior to transaction costs if the fees stay at this price or higher.
makomk 9y ago
I suspect a lot of the transaction fees and congestion have been from people transferring to exchanges to sell. Though it wouldn't surprise me if someone was doing market manipulation via spam transactions; that certainly seems like something that could potentially be profitable.

nepotism2018 9y ago

Not just bitcoin though is it. There is more red on gdax than santa outfit

Asdfbla 9y ago

I wonder if reporting on Bitcoin's random walk is really newsworthy these days.

monob 9y ago

A good predictor if the latest bubble has burst is if the suicide hotline number is a sticky on the bitcoin subreddit. Currently it isn't there so we have a while yet.