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How Bitcoin Compares to History's Big Bubbles
- mtgx 9y agoThe FUD is strong with Bloomberg. Are we really going to see this type of posts every time there's a 50%-70% crash in prices? That chart is also extremely misleading.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago>Are we really going to see this type of posts every time there's a 50%-70% crash in prices? Lol. Yes, duh. A popular new asset which had gone to the moon and received all sorts of financial press buzz and was even receiving coverage inside financial companies, etc. falls back to earth and falls hard. Of course it's going to be covered this way by the press. Besides when you say "every time" how many more times are you expecting Bitcoin to crash? At a certain point doesn't it stop being an asset and start being a gamble?
- serg_chernata 9y agoThis "crashed" term must mean different things to different people. Stop looking at daily charts, zoom out.
- imtringued 9y agoBitcoin is 50% down from it's 20k peak a month ago. https://imgur.com/tCAXmKt https://imgur.com/tCAXmKt If that isn't a crash then what is?
- cm2187 9y agoThere is still a long way to go. I did not believe it when it first crossed $1,000. It is still above $10,000.
- Retric 9y agoFor now, however the 1929 stock market crash right before the Great Depression was only an 80% drop. Saying it's up from 4$ / coin is also true, but does not mean much to the people that bought at 20,000$.
- okket 9y agoThe Great Depression stock market crash was much less brutal than many think, but the consequences were severe. Initial drop about 10%, going to 20% with peak to peak at ~50%, but YoY it only was ~20% down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_Street_Crash_of_1929
- charlesdm 9y agoHowever, since many people were using excessive leverage, they got margin called and their positions were liquidated, leaving them royally screwed. If the market goes down 50% to recover to -25%, that’s fine. But if the market goes down 50% when you are using leverage 4:1 you will be liquidated quite fast.
- walshemj 9y agoThere is a great story in Harpo Marx's autobiography where one or more of the Marx brothers had a massive margin call and covered it by doing a command performance for some of the major mobsters.
- Retric 9y agoOver a few weeks the Dow fell ~50% from it's 1929 peak Sept. 3, 1929, 381.17. Longer term it as a ~90% drop by July 8, 1932 at 41 points. So, it depends on the timeframe your talking about. If you bought in 1910 or 1990 then the 1929 or 2000 crashs seems less important than if you bought at the Peak.
- charlesdm 9y agoIt's also up around a 1000% since the start of 2017. If that isn't a healthy correction, what is?
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y agoA 1000% up in a year is IMHO not a sign of health.
- StavrosK 9y agoThat's why the GP didn't say it was.
- chrisco255 9y agoFor a startup financial technology, not bad at all.
- mstade 9y agoZoom out even further – bitcoin was literally worthless in 2008 and it’s been growing ever since!
- SideburnsOfDoom 9y agoIndeed, it was worth zero, and now it's worth has multiplied 10 000s of times!
- dna_polymerase 9y agoCrashing implies an event that leads to serious damage. The U.S. housing market crashed in 2007/2008 resulting in people loosing their homes, companies going bankrupt, people loosing jobs... If Bitcoin goes down by 50% nothing like that happens. People just loose money, but Bitcoin/crypto is not yet linked to reality. It's all artificial and therefore: Bloomberg, who cares?
- tabeth 9y agoWhat? Bitcoin is linked to reality in that people paid money for them.
- matwood 9y agoI posted the link yesterday (and many other times), but a survey showed most people have spent ~3k on BTC. There is no comparison of a BTC crash and losing 3k to the housing crash and people being on the hook for 100s of k and losing their job.
- dna_polymerase 9y agoPlay money, but your mortgage won't burst because of this.
- Longwelwind 9y agoYou could argue that: * Bitcoin reached the price of 10k 2 months ago, at the end of November. The Bitcoin has only lost "one month" of its price, for the moment. * There has been a dip in the price of Bitcoin every January for the last 3 years. It fell from ~1200 to ~700 in January 2017, for example. I'm not saying that this is not the "final crash", just that what's happening for the moment isn't really surprising. I saw numerous people predicting that the price will fall at least back to ~8k.
- origami777 9y agoIsn’t it fair to report a massive drop, just as it’s fair to report a massive spike?
- tedunangst 9y agoBitcoin isn't crashing. It's just on sale. Buy now before it's too late!
- origami777 9y agoJudging by the graphs I think we have some more time to buy before the bottom of this Valley is reached.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Beltiras 9y agoYou find a 50-70% drop in prices not to be newsworthy?
- akrymski 9y agoMillions of people in developing nations bought into the “reliable store of value” philosophy and bought bitcoins, whilst the early adopters and whales have profited. At what point does this equate to what Madoff has done? When they’ve lost all their savings?
- cm2187 9y agoDoes anyone really believe it is a reliable store of value? Surely the violent price swings and numerous scandals related to dodgy exchanges are hard to not notice. I assume they either perceive the risk as the cost of taking money out of the country or ignore it out of pure greed. Madoff disguised himself as a wise asset manager. I don't think bitcoin is disguising itself into anything else than a speculative product.
- akrymski 9y agoInvesting with Madoff was also a speculative endeavour. He never guaranteed anything. People invested with Madoff hoping they'd make money. People invest in BTC hoping they'd make money. Some people may have even pulled their money from Madoff prior to collapse and made a killing. As some did with BTC. The difference is Madoff knew the people he stole from, and they knew Madoff. BTC sellers can't put a face to the wallets buying their coins.
- AVTizzle 9y agoThis is a ridiculously weak comparison.
- repomies691 9y ago> BTC sellers can't put a face to the wallets buying their coins. I have often bought and sold BTC to/from a friend I know. > People invested with Madoff hoping they'd make money. People invest in BTC hoping they'd make money. Madoff advertised a legal investing business, while he was actually running a ponzi scheme and didn't invest anything. Bitcoin is a transparent open-source system that anyone can inspect very thoroughly how it works. The two cases don't have much to do with each other.
- dimillian 9y agoYou're all talking in the past tense like it's done. It's already recovering right now, the US market will wake up, and it'll be back on track. Every January is the same story for 4 years now. This thing will hit far far far up before really crashing down. Bonus if some coin can be adopted as a reliable Digital currency for buying and selling stuff.
- rtkwe 9y agoWhat are you seeing as a recovery? It's had tiny upticks back up like what's happening this morning many many times during the slide since early December.
- infinity0 9y agoComparison my ass, the article name-drops 3 historical events and goes no further to do an actual comparison.
- mikkom 9y agoYou probably missed this picture so I'll just post a link https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iubORDgEzeoo/v5/-1x-1.png https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/iubORDgEzeo...
- chrisco255 9y agoYeah useless statistics overlaid on top of each other. You could just as easily overlay Amazon's stock price in 1998 from the perspective of 2001. Totally useless uncorrelated figures arbitrarily plucked out to make a correlation seem natural.
- matwood 9y agoThe conspiracy theory in me says the Goldman Sachs of the world are irked this missed BTC, and it is still out of their control to easily manipulate. Queue the daily bad press on Bloomberg in an effort to do just that. There are plenty of problems with BTC, but they are typically harder to explain to the laymen rather than 'hey...tulips'.
- squeeeeeeeeeee 9y agoSomeone please explain to me why is this kind of thing on HN? This place is becoming more Reddit-like by the day. The problem? You only have one subreddit, the main one. Could we please stop filling it with garbage like this? Is HN really a place for dumping random people's opinions on investment opportunities?
- mrarjen 9y agoI just hope Bitcoin gets phased out to make way for a more stable front runner of cryptocurrency.
- repomies691 9y agoOr maybe bitcoin becomes more stable after this crash?