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Bitcoin Fall Extends to 25% as Fears of Crackdown Linger

292 points by rayuela 9y ago

kinnth 9y ago
I always think there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins in existence ever. Ever. So what do you think is a fair price for that?
- acjohnson55 9y ago
  Why is that important? Many things in this world are limited in quantity.
- jhwang5 9y ago
  You know miners can just make one software update and change that right?
  - nickporter 9y ago
    They'd be mining an altcoin because those blocks would be rejected by the network.
    - jhwang5 9y ago
      Yeah of course but what makes you think the other branch survives? No guarantees there.
  - taternuts 9y ago
    And convince >51% of other miners to run that update
- bsaul 9y ago
  I'm not sure if you imply the price should therefore be high (because it's rare), or 0 (because it proves its inability to work as a currency).
- michaelchisari 9y ago
  https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-things-that-are-rare-yet-worthless https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-things-that-...
- GenericsMotors 9y ago
  > I always think there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins in existence ever. Ever. So what? If I launch a cryptocurrency that will only ever mine 21 coins, how does that make it magically orders of magnitude more valuable than bitcoin just because it's more scarce.
beached_whale 9y ago
I cannot wait for video cards to flood the market and become reasonably priced again
- Royalaid 9y ago
  That's because of ETH not BTC
  - mjhoyer 9y ago
    Or monero or hundreds of other currencies.
  - beached_whale 9y ago
    If it becomes fully enforced and illegal in China, I assumed that is a lot of hardware that won't be used for mining any longer
m3kw9 9y ago
It doesn’t help that every news organization in the world is talking about bitcoin and even worse, some of these people are predicting $100,000 price tags. Who wouldn’t want a 6x return from the peak?
- ngsayjoe 9y ago
  $100,000? No, James Altucher is predicting $1 million / Bitcoin!!! https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/james-altucher-predicts-bitcoin-will-reach-1-million-by-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/james-altucher-predicts-bitc...
matt_wulfeck 9y ago
Easy come.
panarky 9y ago
Animal spirits Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_spirits_(Keynes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_spirits_(Keynes)
- trhway 9y ago
  or in other words the "exploration" part of the "exploration vs. exploitation"
adamnemecek 9y ago
I've created a slack channel for discussing crypto besides "it will go to zero". https://join.slack.com/t/hncrypto/shared_invite/enQtMjk5MDg2MzAzMTIwLTEzNmU2NzVlNWFkMjNmZDI1ZGU1NzQ3MTZmNzM0NDU2OTc0Y2Y2NWMxZjBkZmI1MzMxMDllOGIzOTgwYWQ4MmU https://join.slack.com/t/hncrypto/shared_invite/enQtMjk5MDg2... Certain merits are undeniable.
paulpauper 9y ago
The last time South Korea hinted at banning it the price only fell to $13k . No one knows what is going to happen or when. Just happy I sold some around $18-19k
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  The backlash was enormous tho.
droopyEyelids 9y ago
I wonder if governments would take even more drastic measures if currency weakness was driving people into crypto. The US made owning gold illegal in the past.
- brucephillips 9y ago
  Really? When?
  - blang 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
    - joering2 9y ago
      This keeps coming back to HN. What the order ban is actually hoarding the gold. Since each dollar was backed by physical gold, people that hoard physical gold were limiting government with ability to move currency and relese it as soon as needed. Obviously taking us off gold standard fixed the problem (by making US an insolvent nation btw)
      - dragontamer 9y ago
        "Hoarding gold" was defined as having more than 6-ounces of gold (roughly $6500 in 2018 USD) Which basically means gold was dead as an exchange medium after EO 6102. It was illegal to have more than $6500 (today's money) worth of gold / 5-ounces or so, so transactions would have to be way smaller than that!! In 1930s money, 5-ounces of gold was just $100.
vthallam 9y ago
The last time China explicitly banned Bitcoin, it dropped by around 45% to around $6000. It went on to $20K from there. But what's different this time is that there are first time investors in millions who joined in the last 2 months. They didn't read the white paper, they didn't invest in technology, they invested for the monster returns. So I think there will be a more sell off this time before it rebounds back to $13K+ or may be the 1000th time is the charm and the bubble actually gets burst.
- joering2 9y ago
  Just like with dot com burst, it doesnt mean someone will turn the lights off forever. Just like the internet eventually got mainstream and websites are being bought and sold for billions these days, same way BitCoin will never be at 0,001 cent with nobody touch it with a long stick.
  - omegaworks 9y ago
    As the blockchain grows ever larger the thing gets more and more useless as a currency. Just look at how long it takes a transaction to confirm.* It's digital Beanie Babies. *https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time?timespan=180days# https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time?timespa...
    - bduerst 9y ago
      Yep, these comparisons between Bitcoin and other successful technologies are like a new type of fallacy (techno-fallacy?) where people assume that because it's technically-complex it is somehow destined to succeed like other technically-complex successes. It's a form of survivor bias because you never see or think about the technically-complex failures, or "not-successes", like the Tamagatchi, Laser disc, WebTV, Webvan, etc. I mean, how come none of it's proponents compare Bitcoin to the Segway? Sure, you can say we have hoverboards now but those are not Segway, the same way Eth and Monero are not Bitcoin.
      - 9y ago
suckmydang 9y ago
Honestly, I don't think it's due to a fear of a regulatory crackdown. I think this plunge is a long time coming, when people put down the memes and irrational exuberance and take an honest look at the valuations of these coins and ask themselves why. The reason we're seeing 25% plunges is because of the lack of people buying at this point. A speculative bubble such as Cryptocurrency follows the same patterns as any other bubble - a spectacular rise equaled only by its (inevitable) spectacular fall.
Firebrand 9y ago
The crypto market keeps going further down because every day there’s hundreds of articles of "news" reports going with some some doomsday promoting theme. Just today some scientific report claiming bots were responsible for bitcoin's rise from $150-$1000, and now the media is taking advantage of everyone’s fear of a rising China by claiming the PRC will start freezing bank accounts, etc. Everyone is being played. If you’ve been paying attention to the news for the past two years know how easy it is to put out fake news articles. You know that fake news has been used to alter perceptions and maybe mess with elections. This is no different. Dropping false news reports to mess with market prices to cause market swings for profit is straight out of the textbook. There is quite a lot money at play, and you'd be naive to think that all the random articles popping up on HN today are intended to do anything other than instill further panic and sell-offs. Do yourself and everyone a favor, start spreading awareness of the fake news about crypto! I kinda like this community and I would hate HN to lose to what is an egregious and coordinated effort to induce panic and destroy the crypto market.
- stanleydrew 9y ago
  > Everyone is being played. How do we know that you're not also playing us, just from the opposite side?
  - suckmydang 9y ago
    Classic paranoid delusions. No evidence arguments.
- croon 9y ago
  Which news specifically, are fake news? How is anyone being played? If cryptocurrencies indeed are underpriced right now you can get in right now and make 50%+ when it goes up again. Maybe, just maybe, enough people are starting to look down and see that they've run off a cliff and no longer have ground under their feet. These are assets built on the promise of potential future use. Blockchain will live, but ArbitraryCoin? Who knows.
Theodores 9y ago
I am amazed at the losses given the investment advice that I was given all of two days ago from a 'bitcoin bore'. I was told to invest all I could afford in various coins buying one coin so I could then buy the others. I would have lost 30% of my money in the last 24 hours on the coins needed for the other transactions, then in those hot coins I would have lost 45% in 24 hours on one and 44% in 24 hours on the other. https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/ https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/ So said 'bitcoin bore' spent $500 on these coins and shared the advice, there was no warning that these things could depreciate in value given, just put what you can on these coins. So simple! So from my point of anecdata, that is a wrap, we're toast here, this bubble is truly popping. Sure there will still be people playing musical chairs for a while but I think we are there in terms of the mania reaching the required level of craziness for some sanity to take over. Crypto is not the new cool when everyone knows someone that got scammed. My friend who gave me the advice has not told me of the losses, that is part of the deception.
- brucephillips 9y ago
  Huh? BTC is a bubble because your friend told you it would go up and it didn't?
- adamnemecek 9y ago
  Welcome to investing?
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Speculation. Investing is something different entirely, just like the lottery is different than owning a chunk of a business.
    - brucephillips 9y ago
      Eh, there's no hard line between the two.
      - jacquesm 9y ago
donquichotte 9y ago
In January 2017, Bitcoin dropped from 1176$ to 755$ (35%). Today, it's still 10 times higher than last year.
- dahdum 9y ago
  Fun chart from Reddit today: https://i.redd.it/dnlduddb5ha01.jpg https://i.redd.it/dnlduddb5ha01.jpg
  - pishpash 9y ago
    Yeah, nice use of log chart there.
    - bsaul 9y ago
      yes, i can't believe people still fall for that..
    - dfrey 9y ago
      It still looks volatile even on a log chart!
    - dahdum 9y ago
      It's difficult to graph that period of time and still capture the drawbacks without a log chart. If someone misreads the chart as linear the current drop would be terrifying though, with no previous precedence.
  - spookthesunset 9y ago
    I love that it is a classic bitcoin log chart designed to hide the massive volatility of bitcoin. The financial prowess of the average bitcoin "investor" never ceases to amaze. As they say, a sucker is born every minute and a fool and their money are soon parted...
    - colemannugent 9y ago
      >classic bitcoin log chart designed to hide the massive volatility of bitcoin No, it's not designed to hide volatility, it's designed to show a quick overview of the long term changes of Bitcoin. Logarithmic scales are incredibly useful when you have very fast rate of change. Look at a linear chart of Bitcoin over the same range, it's not very useful. You can quickly see from this chart that Bitcoin is still on a massive tear, though the annotations are a bit cheeky.
kondro 9y ago
And as the Asia market of retail investors cashes out to spend money on their families for Lunar New Year.
austenallred 9y ago
The suicide prevention hotline is pinned to the top of cryptocurrency subreddits because the price of bitcoin is where it was at the beginning of last month. Think about that for a minute. When we really have a bear market people are going to lose their minds.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- olivermarks 9y ago
  Naive speculators are buying cryptocurrencies on their credit cards without understanding the volatility https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/bitcoin-buyers-turn-to-credit-cards-as-fomo-breeds-risk-taking https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/bitcoin-b...
  - matwood 9y ago
    How much I think is key here. I'll try and find the article from late 2017 but it said that most crypto buyers invested ~3k or less. A large portion of BTC is concentrated in fewer than 1k people. What this means is that for most people when crypto crashes, it sucks but will simply be a cool story. This isn't .com or the housing bubble where many people's lives were ruined. Of course with the craze, the stats could have changed over the last few months.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - vertex-four 9y ago
      The question is whether people have invested a significant amount of their life savings in bitcoin, not whether they own a significant amount of bitcoin proportional to the total market. For people who have, they may be panicking about how they'll support themselves in their later years, they may have invested in a lifestyle with the expectation that they can pay for it with Bitcoin's growth, and so on and so forth. People's lives may be ruined by this - they've often essentially been scammed into investing in cryptocurrency because they cannot understand the risks. If a financial adviser were promoting bitcoin to most people, it'd be illegal. I don't think it's fair to say this is OK because it won't affect people you know.
KasianFranks 9y ago
Time to buy. Down from what price since January? Cryptocurrency is a long term play from a software and financial engineering vantage. It also continues to irritate the hell out of banks (bank accounts are being closed and restricted from exchange transfers, including coinbase) and general investors. It's not liquid enough yet, creates no need for middle men and Bitcoin itself is now being manipulated by futures contracts based on supply being increased artificially.
- semi-extrinsic 9y ago
  Yes, but what? Ripple's seen maybe the biggest loss, but it's not clear that part of its loss isn't due to decreasing confidence in the underlying, which is bad if you want to BTFD. Same can be said for many others. Though if you look at todays charts e.g. in ETH, it's clear someone's probably made good money intraday buying dips.
  - spdy 9y ago
    Does it even matter? Everything went up LTC for example went from 3$ to 360$ Just wait till everything goes to the bottom and diversify between the top coins put them on an usb stick an forget about them until the next wave.
  - KasianFranks 9y ago
    Agreed. Crypto is experiencing manipulation like stocks, bonds, debentures, CDs and derivatives of all kinds. Sharks, snakes, wolves are part of the game now for all kinds of reasons but the development communities also have a real chance at creating a better balance with assets based on the blockchain.
  - cableshaft 9y ago
    Ripple will bounce back up (maybe not back up to $3 anytime soon, but I'm pretty sure it will go back up). A lot of people that got out are just trying to time the bottom as well as they can. I'm tempted to buy more myself. Part of me wants to wait to see if it drops more, part of me thinks I should just get in instead of trying to time the market and missing the opportunity.
jedberg 9y ago
If the threat of regulation drops it 25%, that's not a very good store of value or medium of exchange.
- paulpauper 9y ago
  Compared to some currencies, it is. Brazil Real has lost 80% of its value relative to the dollar since 2013. I think this is overdone considered the last time Korea threatened regulation it only fell 10%.
  - Matheus28 9y ago
    80%? Where did you pull that number from?
  - hikarudo 9y ago
    USD quoted in BRL achieved a minimum of around 1.96 BRL in 2013. Currently it is 3.23 BRL. So the Brazilian Real has lost 40% of its value relative to the dollar, not 80%.
  - MagnumOpus 9y ago
    First, BRLUSD went from 0.488 at the start of 2013 to 0.309 now, which is only a 37% depreciation. Second, and more important, unlike crypto, BRLUSD paid 10%ish interest rates every year since then, so the total return of a US investor who invested into BRL currency forwards at the start of 2013 is +2.67%, a far cry from an 80% loss.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  Non sequitur. That only means that it is not a good store of value from before being regulated to after being regulated. If however, governments figured out some standard harmonized regulations and consistently enforced them, then afterwards there would no longer be a threat of regulation. In fact, getting regulation applied might actually reduce volatility, because the uncertainty about the threat of regulation would be taken out of people's pricing estimates.
  - 9y ago
acomjean 9y ago
I see bitcoin ads all the time. Including a "Bitcoin IRA" (Individual Retirement Account) and "See what the experts say the next BitCoin is". Marketed at laypeople. They're definitely marketing the heck out it (they being brokers I guess), because its not really that easy to figure out.
- aarongolliver 9y ago
  I've been getting a lot of "This is the 'penny stock' of bitcoin!" ads.
seba_dos1 9y ago
Looks like a typical January in crypto.
- iamdave 9y ago
  I'm glad to see someone mentioning this. This has happened the last four years straight, the Ides of January, followed by a massive bullish run.
- shelune 9y ago
  You seem to be in this long enough :)
elmar 9y ago
Hope we don't see headlines like this one Atlanta massacre: Broker shoots 12 dead as stock market falls (1999) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/atlanta-massacre-broker-shoots-12-dead-as-stock-market-falls-1109415.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/atlanta-massacre-broker-s... Atlanta Day Trader shooting 10 years later (2009) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3l8BuFsVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3l8BuFsVk
- kolinko 9y ago
  So don't republish them, as it encourages copycats.
  - elmar 9y ago
    > So don't republish them, as it encourages copycats. I understand your point, but I think that remembering the past can serve as a warning. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I was trading in 1999 and remember very well this story and many other similar that happened on the 00's and it's been guideline ever-since for me, to always evaluate your limits and check your sanity.
- stcredzero 9y ago
  People keep trying to convince us that video games cause violence and sexism, while we have bona-fide historical evidence that equities trading is the real problem!
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
paulpauper 9y ago
This is what happens when you have high correlation and low exchange liquidity . All it takes is 150 coins sold ($1.5 million) to make it fall 1000 points, and then the other exchanges and coins mirror this. If the major exchanges were consolidated there would be much less volatility. http://https://greyenlightenment.com/why-bitcoin-is-so-volatile/ http://https://greyenlightenment.com/why-bitcoin-is-so-volat...
- dangero 9y ago
  Other exchanges will not mirror this--arbitrage will occur
  - matwood 9y ago
    > arbitrage will occur It already is occurring.
trumpeta 9y ago
I wonder if this is a reverse P&D by the Chinese gov
blondie9x 9y ago
All I can say is, finally.
vadansky 9y ago
I bought $200 worth of bitcoin years ago that I cashed out at 7k when it was around 19k$. Now I'm thinking I should cash back in incase it rebounds strongly again. I guess I should be happy with my free money and not get greedy.
- bargl 9y ago
  Buy $200 again and you haven't lost anything :-)
  - fredoliveira 9y ago
    Considering the profits he can buy $6,800 — not $200 — and be even.
    - ozim 9y ago
      Nope, because $6800 are actual money that he can lose now. Just like you go to casino with $5 play all night up to $2 million, then lose all go back home and tell your wife you only lost $5 so it was not that bad.
  - 21 9y ago
    I think you mean buy $6800 :)
    - bandrami 9y ago
      Casinos live on people committing that very fallacy
- aws_ls 9y ago
  Almost same story, but I didn't sell. Just moved around in ETH and BCH. Will never sell, unless it reaches like 100k USD worth or something. Its an experiment for me, out of interest/belief in technology. Personally not affected by this fall, but feel sad, on reading stories e.g. I'd heard of BitConnect, but never bothered about it until today. What an obvious scam. I think this thing is like dot-com crash. And obvious ones have fallen. But some should survive. I am glancing through all the sub reddits, and I like the behavior on /r/ethereum the best. Nonplussed (largely) and just focusing on the tech. /r/bitcoin is the worst, but bitcoin has the most solid people (cause early adopters etc).
ErikAugust 9y ago
The whole Tethers thing scares me the most: https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/953398351889944576 https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/953398351889944576 There's $5B worth.
- trhway 9y ago
  Tether performs public service of "quantitative easing" :)
  - matthewbauer 9y ago
    I hope people recognize how bad that is for holders.
  - cies 9y ago
    When the demand for USDT shrinks, will they also do quantative uneasing? As in buying back USDTs to the extend the value of one USDT cannot drop below $1? I do not think they will, because I do not think they can...
    - buildawesome 9y ago
      Essentially, this is what interest rates and the bond market is for.
      - cies 9y ago
        Please explain. I think you are not aware of what USDT (Tether) is, but that's just my quick judgement.
  - bandrami 9y ago
    It's like all the Goldbugs forget that this is what happened, over and over and over again, when countries were on the gold standard: entities would make allegedly convertible instruments that everybody knew weren't really convertible, but everybody acted like they were, until a run finally forced a suspension of convertibility. Like, once a decade or so. At the cost of great human suffering.
mdb333 9y ago
the real test comes when folks try to withdrawl their fiat...
- GenericsMotors 9y ago
  Just browse http://reddit.com/r/coinbase http://reddit.com/r/coinbase from the last few months, and you'll get a good idea of what's to come...
mtgx 9y ago
When the media is at peak FUD, you know it's time to buy, just like when it's at peak hype, you know it's time to sell.
- oelmekki 9y ago
  Wait for the "bitcoin is dead" articles ;) There's still room, anyway, it only retraced at 0.5 of 2017 rally.
Leader2light 9y ago
BTC is still above 10K. Think about that for a while. I remember 500 like it was yesterday. This drop is nothing. Except for those poor idiots who took at loans to buy at 19K
- tomjakubowski 9y ago
  honest question: do you believe there's a price point where it's /not/ stupid to go into debt to invest in cryptocurrencies?
  - ggm 9y ago
    how much capacity to service the debt? If you meant "...go into debt you cannot afford" then the answer is always no. If you have sufficient assets and liquidity you can service the debt, then isn't this just normal leverage? The risk equation on any speculative investment includes the risk to go into debt to achieve it.
  - seba_dos1 9y ago
    Going into dept to speculate doesn't really seem like the best idea regardless of the price.
    - jjkk0101 9y ago
      It surely does, depending on the interest rate and risk.
tyingq 9y ago
Interested in what someone with deep Bitcoin experience thinks the bottom is this time, before it starts to rebound...and why. Edit: Yes! Ggm's request below too.
- ggm 9y ago
  Yes. Also the comparison with somebody not Bitcoin, with experience of irrational exuberence, investment behaviour, risk and markets: same questions.
- jraines 9y ago
  this is a TA based idea, so please know I'm presenting it neutrally with full knowledge that TA is anathema to this crowd: volume profile at the various price points suggests somewhere in the 5k range. You can talk yourself into higher ones, lots of experienced people expect 8k, but to me the "clear" support is closer to 5k. Who knows, though; I don't claim to.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Appreciate it. Not betting on the situation, just morbidly curious.
- andirk 9y ago
  My mild bitcoin experience (also invested) says: I have seen this before, and I don't care that much. I also don't know what the value of 1 BTC should be even in a booming crypto economy. I believe bitcoin and blockchain technology are the future so I bet on all of the projects I think are viable.
sytelus 9y ago
I have been trying to figure out eventual equilibrium price of BitCoin and here is one approach: Due to wealth inequality, we assume that majority of the crypto investment would be from ultra-rich. It might become quite normal for them to invest 1% of their wealth in crypto for uncorrelated diversification. In a way this is very similar to buying art which probably doesn't have much utility except among other wealthy people as socially agreed upon store of value. These folks have estimated wealth of $10T so that puts market cap contribution from them to $1T. Let's assume same amount comes from non-ultra-rich investors. So we can estimate btc market cap to $2T. This puts reasonable eventual upper bound value of 1 btc to $95,000. This eventual value might never be reached however because all 21M coins never be mined, not all wealthy people might do this, and also other coins will fragment the market. May be 3/4 discount is reasonable at this point to accommodate these factors which might put the value to $25K at this point. This is obviously assuming no black swan events like countries making it illegal or some other virtual currency tech doesn't become popular.
- flick 9y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. Using this logic you could argue that basically anything should have an eventual market cap of ~$1 trillion.
  - dunkmaster 9y ago
    He's merely talking about upper bound. Which is probably true.
  - FabHK 9y ago
    Anything that the rich would want to put 1% of their wealth in.
- rootusrootus 9y ago
  Could you clarify something for me that has been bothering me every time I see someone make an argument along these lines? Why does BTC === crypto? I see it over and over that people make arguments about the potential value of the cryptocurrency 'market' and then immediately use that to put a value on bitcoin. Aren't there hundreds of other cryptocurrencies already?
m3kw9 9y ago
So let me get this straight. Gold can be compared to bitcoins in terms of scarcity and and store of value. But bitcoin itself is in practical term a proof of concept technology that is only useful when applied properly in another block chain. While gold actually has great uses. Can i say if you are investing in bitcoin, you are basically investing in equivalent a scarce physical paper with not a whole lot of use?
- nkkollaw 9y ago
  Comparing gold with Bitcoin is weird. People invest in gold because its values is very stable, obviously Bitcoin's isn't :-)
  - brucephillips 9y ago
    Gold is highly volatile.
    - cies 9y ago
      Volatility only exists in comparison. BTC and Gold in one graph: http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/59975b50f1a85079738b54e0/bitcoin-is-more-valuable-than-gold--but-nowhere-near-as-stable.jpg http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/59975b50f1a85079738... I'd say in this comparison gold is the stable option.
      - brucephillips 9y ago
        No, it doesn't. Volatility is defined in terms of an asset's past prices, not in terms of other assets.
        cies 9y ago
        Ok. I stand corrected. But what I meant to say is, that labeling something as "very volatile" only works in comparison.
- 9y ago
aussieguy1234 9y ago
Still waiting for tulips to recover back to the January 1637 price.
- averagewall 9y ago
  Why not gold? It's doing fine. When do you expect that bubble will burst?
sidhuko 9y ago
I wonder why Ripple isn't getting more coverage... I told my father to cash out last week. Ashamed he didn't as he would of made his win and could reinvest at $1.10 again.
matte_black 9y ago
I bought $15000 last year in Litecoin when it reached the 300s. Debating if I should sell off now and get out with at least half of my money. Looks like this crypto frenzy is coming to an end.
- otalp 9y ago
  Depends. If you desperately need the money, you probably should. If not, wait for a few years and hope for another frenzy.
- Mc_Big_G 9y ago
  Buy high, sell low is not a sound investment strategy. Just hold and cash out when it gets back to 300 if you can't stomach the crypto world.
  - matte_black 9y ago
    This was not investment, it was speculation. I doubt Litecoin will ever go back to the 300s at this point. The crypto bubble might be popping.

292 points by rayuela 9y ago

I always think there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins in existence ever. Ever. So what do you think is a fair price for that?

acjohnson55 9y ago
Why is that important? Many things in this world are limited in quantity.
jhwang5 9y ago
You know miners can just make one software update and change that right?
- nickporter 9y ago
  They'd be mining an altcoin because those blocks would be rejected by the network.
  - jhwang5 9y ago
    Yeah of course but what makes you think the other branch survives? No guarantees there.
- taternuts 9y ago
  And convince >51% of other miners to run that update
bsaul 9y ago
I'm not sure if you imply the price should therefore be high (because it's rare), or 0 (because it proves its inability to work as a currency).
michaelchisari 9y ago
https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-things-that-are-rare-yet-worthless https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-examples-of-things-that-...
GenericsMotors 9y ago
> I always think there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins in existence ever. Ever. So what? If I launch a cryptocurrency that will only ever mine 21 coins, how does that make it magically orders of magnitude more valuable than bitcoin just because it's more scarce.

beached_whale 9y ago

I cannot wait for video cards to flood the market and become reasonably priced again

Royalaid 9y ago
That's because of ETH not BTC
- mjhoyer 9y ago
  Or monero or hundreds of other currencies.
- beached_whale 9y ago
  If it becomes fully enforced and illegal in China, I assumed that is a lot of hardware that won't be used for mining any longer

m3kw9 9y ago

It doesn’t help that every news organization in the world is talking about bitcoin and even worse, some of these people are predicting $100,000 price tags. Who wouldn’t want a 6x return from the peak?

ngsayjoe 9y ago
$100,000? No, James Altucher is predicting $1 million / Bitcoin!!! https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/james-altucher-predicts-bitcoin-will-reach-1-million-by-2020.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/29/james-altucher-predicts-bitc...

matt_wulfeck 9y ago

Easy come.

panarky 9y ago

Animal spirits Even apart from the instability due to speculation, there is the instability due to the characteristic of human nature that a large proportion of our positive activities depend on spontaneous optimism rather than mathematical expectations, whether moral or hedonistic or economic. Most, probably, of our decisions to do something positive, the full consequences of which will be drawn out over many days to come, can only be taken as the result of animal spirits—a spontaneous urge to action rather than inaction, and not as the outcome of a weighted average of quantitative benefits multiplied by quantitative probabilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_spirits_(Keynes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_spirits_(Keynes)

trhway 9y ago
or in other words the "exploration" part of the "exploration vs. exploitation"

adamnemecek 9y ago

I've created a slack channel for discussing crypto besides "it will go to zero". https://join.slack.com/t/hncrypto/shared_invite/enQtMjk5MDg2MzAzMTIwLTEzNmU2NzVlNWFkMjNmZDI1ZGU1NzQ3MTZmNzM0NDU2OTc0Y2Y2NWMxZjBkZmI1MzMxMDllOGIzOTgwYWQ4MmU https://join.slack.com/t/hncrypto/shared_invite/enQtMjk5MDg2... Certain merits are undeniable.

paulpauper 9y ago

The last time South Korea hinted at banning it the price only fell to $13k . No one knows what is going to happen or when. Just happy I sold some around $18-19k

adamnemecek 9y ago
The backlash was enormous tho.

droopyEyelids 9y ago

I wonder if governments would take even more drastic measures if currency weakness was driving people into crypto. The US made owning gold illegal in the past.

brucephillips 9y ago
Really? When?
- blang 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
  - joering2 9y ago
    This keeps coming back to HN. What the order ban is actually hoarding the gold. Since each dollar was backed by physical gold, people that hoard physical gold were limiting government with ability to move currency and relese it as soon as needed. Obviously taking us off gold standard fixed the problem (by making US an insolvent nation btw)
    - dragontamer 9y ago
      "Hoarding gold" was defined as having more than 6-ounces of gold (roughly $6500 in 2018 USD) Which basically means gold was dead as an exchange medium after EO 6102. It was illegal to have more than $6500 (today's money) worth of gold / 5-ounces or so, so transactions would have to be way smaller than that!! In 1930s money, 5-ounces of gold was just $100.

vthallam 9y ago

The last time China explicitly banned Bitcoin, it dropped by around 45% to around $6000. It went on to $20K from there. But what's different this time is that there are first time investors in millions who joined in the last 2 months. They didn't read the white paper, they didn't invest in technology, they invested for the monster returns. So I think there will be a more sell off this time before it rebounds back to $13K+ or may be the 1000th time is the charm and the bubble actually gets burst.

joering2 9y ago
Just like with dot com burst, it doesnt mean someone will turn the lights off forever. Just like the internet eventually got mainstream and websites are being bought and sold for billions these days, same way BitCoin will never be at 0,001 cent with nobody touch it with a long stick.
- omegaworks 9y ago
  As the blockchain grows ever larger the thing gets more and more useless as a currency. Just look at how long it takes a transaction to confirm.* It's digital Beanie Babies. *https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time?timespan=180days# https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time?timespa...
  - bduerst 9y ago
    Yep, these comparisons between Bitcoin and other successful technologies are like a new type of fallacy (techno-fallacy?) where people assume that because it's technically-complex it is somehow destined to succeed like other technically-complex successes. It's a form of survivor bias because you never see or think about the technically-complex failures, or "not-successes", like the Tamagatchi, Laser disc, WebTV, Webvan, etc. I mean, how come none of it's proponents compare Bitcoin to the Segway? Sure, you can say we have hoverboards now but those are not Segway, the same way Eth and Monero are not Bitcoin.
    - 9y ago

suckmydang 9y ago

Honestly, I don't think it's due to a fear of a regulatory crackdown. I think this plunge is a long time coming, when people put down the memes and irrational exuberance and take an honest look at the valuations of these coins and ask themselves why. The reason we're seeing 25% plunges is because of the lack of people buying at this point. A speculative bubble such as Cryptocurrency follows the same patterns as any other bubble - a spectacular rise equaled only by its (inevitable) spectacular fall.

Firebrand 9y ago

The crypto market keeps going further down because every day there’s hundreds of articles of "news" reports going with some some doomsday promoting theme. Just today some scientific report claiming bots were responsible for bitcoin's rise from $150-$1000, and now the media is taking advantage of everyone’s fear of a rising China by claiming the PRC will start freezing bank accounts, etc. Everyone is being played. If you’ve been paying attention to the news for the past two years know how easy it is to put out fake news articles. You know that fake news has been used to alter perceptions and maybe mess with elections. This is no different. Dropping false news reports to mess with market prices to cause market swings for profit is straight out of the textbook. There is quite a lot money at play, and you'd be naive to think that all the random articles popping up on HN today are intended to do anything other than instill further panic and sell-offs. Do yourself and everyone a favor, start spreading awareness of the fake news about crypto! I kinda like this community and I would hate HN to lose to what is an egregious and coordinated effort to induce panic and destroy the crypto market.

stanleydrew 9y ago
> Everyone is being played. How do we know that you're not also playing us, just from the opposite side?
- suckmydang 9y ago
  Classic paranoid delusions. No evidence arguments.
croon 9y ago
Which news specifically, are fake news? How is anyone being played? If cryptocurrencies indeed are underpriced right now you can get in right now and make 50%+ when it goes up again. Maybe, just maybe, enough people are starting to look down and see that they've run off a cliff and no longer have ground under their feet. These are assets built on the promise of potential future use. Blockchain will live, but ArbitraryCoin? Who knows.

Theodores 9y ago

I am amazed at the losses given the investment advice that I was given all of two days ago from a 'bitcoin bore'. I was told to invest all I could afford in various coins buying one coin so I could then buy the others. I would have lost 30% of my money in the last 24 hours on the coins needed for the other transactions, then in those hot coins I would have lost 45% in 24 hours on one and 44% in 24 hours on the other. https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/ https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all/ So said 'bitcoin bore' spent $500 on these coins and shared the advice, there was no warning that these things could depreciate in value given, just put what you can on these coins. So simple! So from my point of anecdata, that is a wrap, we're toast here, this bubble is truly popping. Sure there will still be people playing musical chairs for a while but I think we are there in terms of the mania reaching the required level of craziness for some sanity to take over. Crypto is not the new cool when everyone knows someone that got scammed. My friend who gave me the advice has not told me of the losses, that is part of the deception.

brucephillips 9y ago
Huh? BTC is a bubble because your friend told you it would go up and it didn't?
adamnemecek 9y ago
Welcome to investing?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Speculation. Investing is something different entirely, just like the lottery is different than owning a chunk of a business.
  - brucephillips 9y ago
    Eh, there's no hard line between the two.
    - jacquesm 9y ago

donquichotte 9y ago

In January 2017, Bitcoin dropped from 1176$ to 755$ (35%). Today, it's still 10 times higher than last year.

dahdum 9y ago
Fun chart from Reddit today: https://i.redd.it/dnlduddb5ha01.jpg https://i.redd.it/dnlduddb5ha01.jpg
- pishpash 9y ago
  Yeah, nice use of log chart there.
  - bsaul 9y ago
    yes, i can't believe people still fall for that..
  - dfrey 9y ago
    It still looks volatile even on a log chart!
  - dahdum 9y ago
    It's difficult to graph that period of time and still capture the drawbacks without a log chart. If someone misreads the chart as linear the current drop would be terrifying though, with no previous precedence.
- spookthesunset 9y ago
  I love that it is a classic bitcoin log chart designed to hide the massive volatility of bitcoin. The financial prowess of the average bitcoin "investor" never ceases to amaze. As they say, a sucker is born every minute and a fool and their money are soon parted...
  - colemannugent 9y ago
    >classic bitcoin log chart designed to hide the massive volatility of bitcoin No, it's not designed to hide volatility, it's designed to show a quick overview of the long term changes of Bitcoin. Logarithmic scales are incredibly useful when you have very fast rate of change. Look at a linear chart of Bitcoin over the same range, it's not very useful. You can quickly see from this chart that Bitcoin is still on a massive tear, though the annotations are a bit cheeky.

kondro 9y ago

And as the Asia market of retail investors cashes out to spend money on their families for Lunar New Year.

austenallred 9y ago

The suicide prevention hotline is pinned to the top of cryptocurrency subreddits because the price of bitcoin is where it was at the beginning of last month. Think about that for a minute. When we really have a bear market people are going to lose their minds.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
olivermarks 9y ago
Naive speculators are buying cryptocurrencies on their credit cards without understanding the volatility https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/bitcoin-buyers-turn-to-credit-cards-as-fomo-breeds-risk-taking https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/bitcoin-b...
- matwood 9y ago
  How much I think is key here. I'll try and find the article from late 2017 but it said that most crypto buyers invested ~3k or less. A large portion of BTC is concentrated in fewer than 1k people. What this means is that for most people when crypto crashes, it sucks but will simply be a cool story. This isn't .com or the housing bubble where many people's lives were ruined. Of course with the craze, the stats could have changed over the last few months.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    The question is whether people have invested a significant amount of their life savings in bitcoin, not whether they own a significant amount of bitcoin proportional to the total market. For people who have, they may be panicking about how they'll support themselves in their later years, they may have invested in a lifestyle with the expectation that they can pay for it with Bitcoin's growth, and so on and so forth. People's lives may be ruined by this - they've often essentially been scammed into investing in cryptocurrency because they cannot understand the risks. If a financial adviser were promoting bitcoin to most people, it'd be illegal. I don't think it's fair to say this is OK because it won't affect people you know.

KasianFranks 9y ago

Time to buy. Down from what price since January? Cryptocurrency is a long term play from a software and financial engineering vantage. It also continues to irritate the hell out of banks (bank accounts are being closed and restricted from exchange transfers, including coinbase) and general investors. It's not liquid enough yet, creates no need for middle men and Bitcoin itself is now being manipulated by futures contracts based on supply being increased artificially.

semi-extrinsic 9y ago
Yes, but what? Ripple's seen maybe the biggest loss, but it's not clear that part of its loss isn't due to decreasing confidence in the underlying, which is bad if you want to BTFD. Same can be said for many others. Though if you look at todays charts e.g. in ETH, it's clear someone's probably made good money intraday buying dips.
- spdy 9y ago
  Does it even matter? Everything went up LTC for example went from 3$ to 360$ Just wait till everything goes to the bottom and diversify between the top coins put them on an usb stick an forget about them until the next wave.
- KasianFranks 9y ago
  Agreed. Crypto is experiencing manipulation like stocks, bonds, debentures, CDs and derivatives of all kinds. Sharks, snakes, wolves are part of the game now for all kinds of reasons but the development communities also have a real chance at creating a better balance with assets based on the blockchain.
- cableshaft 9y ago
  Ripple will bounce back up (maybe not back up to $3 anytime soon, but I'm pretty sure it will go back up). A lot of people that got out are just trying to time the bottom as well as they can. I'm tempted to buy more myself. Part of me wants to wait to see if it drops more, part of me thinks I should just get in instead of trying to time the market and missing the opportunity.

jedberg 9y ago

If the threat of regulation drops it 25%, that's not a very good store of value or medium of exchange.

paulpauper 9y ago
Compared to some currencies, it is. Brazil Real has lost 80% of its value relative to the dollar since 2013. I think this is overdone considered the last time Korea threatened regulation it only fell 10%.
- Matheus28 9y ago
  80%? Where did you pull that number from?
- hikarudo 9y ago
  USD quoted in BRL achieved a minimum of around 1.96 BRL in 2013. Currently it is 3.23 BRL. So the Brazilian Real has lost 40% of its value relative to the dollar, not 80%.
- MagnumOpus 9y ago
  First, BRLUSD went from 0.488 at the start of 2013 to 0.309 now, which is only a 37% depreciation. Second, and more important, unlike crypto, BRLUSD paid 10%ish interest rates every year since then, so the total return of a US investor who invested into BRL currency forwards at the start of 2013 is +2.67%, a far cry from an 80% loss.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
Non sequitur. That only means that it is not a good store of value from before being regulated to after being regulated. If however, governments figured out some standard harmonized regulations and consistently enforced them, then afterwards there would no longer be a threat of regulation. In fact, getting regulation applied might actually reduce volatility, because the uncertainty about the threat of regulation would be taken out of people's pricing estimates.
- 9y ago

acomjean 9y ago

I see bitcoin ads all the time. Including a "Bitcoin IRA" (Individual Retirement Account) and "See what the experts say the next BitCoin is". Marketed at laypeople. They're definitely marketing the heck out it (they being brokers I guess), because its not really that easy to figure out.

aarongolliver 9y ago
I've been getting a lot of "This is the 'penny stock' of bitcoin!" ads.

seba_dos1 9y ago

Looks like a typical January in crypto.

iamdave 9y ago
I'm glad to see someone mentioning this. This has happened the last four years straight, the Ides of January, followed by a massive bullish run.
shelune 9y ago
You seem to be in this long enough :)

elmar 9y ago

Hope we don't see headlines like this one Atlanta massacre: Broker shoots 12 dead as stock market falls (1999) https://www.independent.co.uk/news/atlanta-massacre-broker-shoots-12-dead-as-stock-market-falls-1109415.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/atlanta-massacre-broker-s... Atlanta Day Trader shooting 10 years later (2009) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3l8BuFsVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko3l8BuFsVk

kolinko 9y ago
So don't republish them, as it encourages copycats.
- elmar 9y ago
  > So don't republish them, as it encourages copycats. I understand your point, but I think that remembering the past can serve as a warning. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." I was trading in 1999 and remember very well this story and many other similar that happened on the 00's and it's been guideline ever-since for me, to always evaluate your limits and check your sanity.
stcredzero 9y ago
People keep trying to convince us that video games cause violence and sexism, while we have bona-fide historical evidence that equities trading is the real problem!

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

paulpauper 9y ago

This is what happens when you have high correlation and low exchange liquidity . All it takes is 150 coins sold ($1.5 million) to make it fall 1000 points, and then the other exchanges and coins mirror this. If the major exchanges were consolidated there would be much less volatility. http://https://greyenlightenment.com/why-bitcoin-is-so-volatile/ http://https://greyenlightenment.com/why-bitcoin-is-so-volat...

dangero 9y ago
Other exchanges will not mirror this--arbitrage will occur
- matwood 9y ago
  > arbitrage will occur It already is occurring.

trumpeta 9y ago

I wonder if this is a reverse P&D by the Chinese gov

blondie9x 9y ago

All I can say is, finally.

vadansky 9y ago

I bought $200 worth of bitcoin years ago that I cashed out at 7k when it was around 19k$. Now I'm thinking I should cash back in incase it rebounds strongly again. I guess I should be happy with my free money and not get greedy.

bargl 9y ago
Buy $200 again and you haven't lost anything :-)
- fredoliveira 9y ago
  Considering the profits he can buy $6,800 — not $200 — and be even.
  - ozim 9y ago
    Nope, because $6800 are actual money that he can lose now. Just like you go to casino with $5 play all night up to $2 million, then lose all go back home and tell your wife you only lost $5 so it was not that bad.
- 21 9y ago
  I think you mean buy $6800 :)
  - bandrami 9y ago
    Casinos live on people committing that very fallacy
aws_ls 9y ago
Almost same story, but I didn't sell. Just moved around in ETH and BCH. Will never sell, unless it reaches like 100k USD worth or something. Its an experiment for me, out of interest/belief in technology. Personally not affected by this fall, but feel sad, on reading stories e.g. I'd heard of BitConnect, but never bothered about it until today. What an obvious scam. I think this thing is like dot-com crash. And obvious ones have fallen. But some should survive. I am glancing through all the sub reddits, and I like the behavior on /r/ethereum the best. Nonplussed (largely) and just focusing on the tech. /r/bitcoin is the worst, but bitcoin has the most solid people (cause early adopters etc).

ErikAugust 9y ago

The whole Tethers thing scares me the most: https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/953398351889944576 https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/953398351889944576 There's $5B worth.

trhway 9y ago
Tether performs public service of "quantitative easing" :)
- matthewbauer 9y ago
  I hope people recognize how bad that is for holders.
- cies 9y ago
  When the demand for USDT shrinks, will they also do quantative uneasing? As in buying back USDTs to the extend the value of one USDT cannot drop below $1? I do not think they will, because I do not think they can...
  - buildawesome 9y ago
    Essentially, this is what interest rates and the bond market is for.
    - cies 9y ago
      Please explain. I think you are not aware of what USDT (Tether) is, but that's just my quick judgement.
- bandrami 9y ago
  It's like all the Goldbugs forget that this is what happened, over and over and over again, when countries were on the gold standard: entities would make allegedly convertible instruments that everybody knew weren't really convertible, but everybody acted like they were, until a run finally forced a suspension of convertibility. Like, once a decade or so. At the cost of great human suffering.

mdb333 9y ago

the real test comes when folks try to withdrawl their fiat...

GenericsMotors 9y ago
Just browse http://reddit.com/r/coinbase http://reddit.com/r/coinbase from the last few months, and you'll get a good idea of what's to come...

mtgx 9y ago

When the media is at peak FUD, you know it's time to buy, just like when it's at peak hype, you know it's time to sell.

oelmekki 9y ago
Wait for the "bitcoin is dead" articles ;) There's still room, anyway, it only retraced at 0.5 of 2017 rally.

Leader2light 9y ago

BTC is still above 10K. Think about that for a while. I remember 500 like it was yesterday. This drop is nothing. Except for those poor idiots who took at loans to buy at 19K

tomjakubowski 9y ago
honest question: do you believe there's a price point where it's /not/ stupid to go into debt to invest in cryptocurrencies?
- ggm 9y ago
  how much capacity to service the debt? If you meant "...go into debt you cannot afford" then the answer is always no. If you have sufficient assets and liquidity you can service the debt, then isn't this just normal leverage? The risk equation on any speculative investment includes the risk to go into debt to achieve it.
- seba_dos1 9y ago
  Going into dept to speculate doesn't really seem like the best idea regardless of the price.
  - jjkk0101 9y ago
    It surely does, depending on the interest rate and risk.

tyingq 9y ago

Interested in what someone with deep Bitcoin experience thinks the bottom is this time, before it starts to rebound...and why. Edit: Yes! Ggm's request below too.

ggm 9y ago
Yes. Also the comparison with somebody not Bitcoin, with experience of irrational exuberence, investment behaviour, risk and markets: same questions.
jraines 9y ago
this is a TA based idea, so please know I'm presenting it neutrally with full knowledge that TA is anathema to this crowd: volume profile at the various price points suggests somewhere in the 5k range. You can talk yourself into higher ones, lots of experienced people expect 8k, but to me the "clear" support is closer to 5k. Who knows, though; I don't claim to.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Appreciate it. Not betting on the situation, just morbidly curious.
andirk 9y ago
My mild bitcoin experience (also invested) says: I have seen this before, and I don't care that much. I also don't know what the value of 1 BTC should be even in a booming crypto economy. I believe bitcoin and blockchain technology are the future so I bet on all of the projects I think are viable.

sytelus 9y ago

I have been trying to figure out eventual equilibrium price of BitCoin and here is one approach: Due to wealth inequality, we assume that majority of the crypto investment would be from ultra-rich. It might become quite normal for them to invest 1% of their wealth in crypto for uncorrelated diversification. In a way this is very similar to buying art which probably doesn't have much utility except among other wealthy people as socially agreed upon store of value. These folks have estimated wealth of $10T so that puts market cap contribution from them to $1T. Let's assume same amount comes from non-ultra-rich investors. So we can estimate btc market cap to $2T. This puts reasonable eventual upper bound value of 1 btc to $95,000. This eventual value might never be reached however because all 21M coins never be mined, not all wealthy people might do this, and also other coins will fragment the market. May be 3/4 discount is reasonable at this point to accommodate these factors which might put the value to $25K at this point. This is obviously assuming no black swan events like countries making it illegal or some other virtual currency tech doesn't become popular.

flick 9y ago
That doesn't make any sense. Using this logic you could argue that basically anything should have an eventual market cap of ~$1 trillion.
- dunkmaster 9y ago
  He's merely talking about upper bound. Which is probably true.
- FabHK 9y ago
  Anything that the rich would want to put 1% of their wealth in.
rootusrootus 9y ago
Could you clarify something for me that has been bothering me every time I see someone make an argument along these lines? Why does BTC === crypto? I see it over and over that people make arguments about the potential value of the cryptocurrency 'market' and then immediately use that to put a value on bitcoin. Aren't there hundreds of other cryptocurrencies already?

m3kw9 9y ago

So let me get this straight. Gold can be compared to bitcoins in terms of scarcity and and store of value. But bitcoin itself is in practical term a proof of concept technology that is only useful when applied properly in another block chain. While gold actually has great uses. Can i say if you are investing in bitcoin, you are basically investing in equivalent a scarce physical paper with not a whole lot of use?

nkkollaw 9y ago
Comparing gold with Bitcoin is weird. People invest in gold because its values is very stable, obviously Bitcoin's isn't :-)
- brucephillips 9y ago
  Gold is highly volatile.
  - cies 9y ago
    Volatility only exists in comparison. BTC and Gold in one graph: http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/59975b50f1a85079738b54e0/bitcoin-is-more-valuable-than-gold--but-nowhere-near-as-stable.jpg http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/59975b50f1a85079738... I'd say in this comparison gold is the stable option.
    - brucephillips 9y ago
      No, it doesn't. Volatility is defined in terms of an asset's past prices, not in terms of other assets.
      - cies 9y ago
        Ok. I stand corrected. But what I meant to say is, that labeling something as "very volatile" only works in comparison.
9y ago

aussieguy1234 9y ago

Still waiting for tulips to recover back to the January 1637 price.

averagewall 9y ago
Why not gold? It's doing fine. When do you expect that bubble will burst?

sidhuko 9y ago

I wonder why Ripple isn't getting more coverage... I told my father to cash out last week. Ashamed he didn't as he would of made his win and could reinvest at $1.10 again.

matte_black 9y ago

I bought $15000 last year in Litecoin when it reached the 300s. Debating if I should sell off now and get out with at least half of my money. Looks like this crypto frenzy is coming to an end.

otalp 9y ago
Depends. If you desperately need the money, you probably should. If not, wait for a few years and hope for another frenzy.
Mc_Big_G 9y ago
Buy high, sell low is not a sound investment strategy. Just hold and cash out when it gets back to 300 if you can't stomach the crypto world.
- matte_black 9y ago
  This was not investment, it was speculation. I doubt Litecoin will ever go back to the 300s at this point. The crypto bubble might be popping.