8 ms·

I don't understand why news like this doesn't have that huge of an impact of bitcoin's price.. Bitcoin seems to be hovering around 11k~ as I'm writing this. I

by tn_ 9y ago

I don't understand why news like this doesn't have that huge of an impact of bitcoin's price.. Bitcoin seems to be hovering around 11k~ as I'm writing this. It's been at the same price it seems for the past couple of days...

empath75 9y ago
Because the price is driven by bitfinex printing tethers and pretty much nothing else.
- orthecreedence 9y ago
  I don't know why you're being downvoted. There is more and more evidence of this coming out. Bitcoiners' response is to censor. They should be selling instead.
- peoplewindow 9y ago
  Yep. Whenever the price falls more Tethers appear and the price goes back up again. The Bitcoin price hasn't reflected fundamentals for years. The fact that the Bitcoin Conference stopped accepting bitcoins because the system is so broken, yet it had no impact on price, should be a hint.
buttcoinslol 9y ago
'Money ain't got no owners, only spenders' -Omar Little This quote applies to unregulated markets: drugs or cryptocurrencies.
- ssijak 9y ago
  I just finished watching all The Wire seasons for the first time and freaked a little when I saw your comment. I often see something on Hacker News that I just recently had contact with and is not that popular.
  - blueline 9y ago
    the wire had something like 30M viewers at peak and was absurdly well received....
    - eternalcode 9y ago
      Apparently, Still not enough to get an Emmy. I lost my faith on Emmy's because of that.
    - skinnymuch 9y ago
      Do you have any links or citations for a number even close to that? It’s live viewership numbers are lower than current HBO shows like Westworld that don’t overall get 30M viewers per episode. Or did you have a different meaning for 30M than per episode? Usually that’s what people mean for tv so I am assuming that.
      - justinhj 9y ago
        According to wikipedia the peak viewing for individual episodes is about 4m. Although it's not a stretch to assume it reached a lot more people than that via legal streaming services and illegal downloads.
        Phlarp 9y ago
        It was not incredibly popular during it's time on the air. This is part of the reason for multi-year gaps between seasons. It has become somewhat of a post-airing success / cult classic.
        kgwgk 9y ago
        And DVDs (this is a 15-10 year old series). Plus the recent re-release on BluRay.
  - messick 9y ago
    I'd be surprised if you could find a "Best TV Show of all Time" list that doesn't include The Wire in the top 5. Most them of them have it #1 or #2 depending on how the ranker feels about The Sopranos.
- Theodores 9y ago
  I had to look that quote up to fully understand it, plus find the clip online, so here is the context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtoM9x-Bfu8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtoM9x-Bfu8 Omar robs drug kingpin Marlo who is at a card night, sat round the table, raking in winnings. Marlo claims the money is his, in response Omar says “Man, money ain’t got no owners, only spenders.” He then goes on to take Marlo's ring rather than just run off with the $$$. So, in the context of the show, Marlo thinks he has just raked in all of these chips and made himself rich, there is the stack of these bits of plastic chips in front of him. Meanwhile, the $$$ gets handed to Omar straight from where it is kept in the back of the room, the 'bank' off table. All the money for all the chips that are on the table is kept in this one area that Omar is able to head off with, leaving Marlo with his useless chips on the table. At the instant that Omar takes the money all the chips on the table are rendered useless for all players and no longer of value. It is apparent for all that the chips will not be exchanged for USD at the 'bank'. Marlo doesn't just lose the 'fiat' $$$ that he thought he was winning, he also loses the ring on his finger. Although the money may be just money and he may not have lost as much as the prize pot, the ring is an item that cannot be so easily replaced. It has value beyond nominal gold value, sentimental value. Before Omar rocks up the card game is being played in an unregulated way with the players having to trust but verify each other. Nobody cheats at the game. The card deck has its own blockchain technology. The Wire was a long time ago and now Omar has realised that it is more lucrative to move into crypto. So in the 2018 remake Omar does not need a gun to steal all the money from all of the gamblers using a set of chips. He uses chips he printed earlier and limits the available chips so new players wanting to win big in the unregulated card game have to pay more for their chips. Not all players play every game, most just hold on to their chips hoping others wanting to play will want to buy their chips. So they tell others to play the game. The value of their chips goes up so notionally the chips are now worth millions even though there is only a huge but nonetheless smaller pile of money in the 'bank'. Because any one player can cash out at any time they do not care if there is less than the sum total of all play money in the 'bank'. So long as there is a multiple of what their chips are worth they have no real concern, unless everyone else starts cashing out. Because the bank is quite slow and everyone has to queue, some players start to sell their own tokens. These can be placed as side bets on the major games. These coins are copies of the original coins but are super lightweight and have an alleged advantage of being totally anonymous, nobody can track them. Some of these players are making good business on this side betting and they tell their customers that their coins will one day be able to be useful for more things than side bets. One day they will be able to do every day things with the tokens like get a shopping trolley at a supermarket with one, thereby not needing a 'fiat currency coin'. So Omar rocks up and rather than use a gun he simply takes his position on the coin to run off with all the money. The people with the chips thought they were the lucky ones owning all the money but no, Omar goes and spends it for them.
monkmartinez 9y ago
Because the entire thing is a sham... and I, for one, am super duper over it.
gesman 9y ago
Crypto wallets changing hands is a non-event for prices. This however might have potentially positive impact on prices of truly anonymous cryptos - typical direction of thiefs to "lose tails"
- ajross 9y ago
  > Crypto wallets changing hands is a non-event for prices. Surely the point was more: "Why doesn't the obvious risk events like this represent affect the price of the commodity?" I mean, at this point I have to believe that the likelihood of a given dollar-equivalent of crypto currencies being stolen is much, much higher that it is for literal paper money. And paper is uniformly considered too risky to use as an asset. It's insanity. This is the way bubbles look before they pop. I can't tell you when it'll happen, but it'll happen.
  - gph 9y ago
    There will be so many small time investors losing money when the bubble pops it's starting to make me wonder if it won't lead to some serious global destablization. This isn't just some investment play-thing of otherwise well-off individuals in developed countries. A lot of dumb money has flowed in, and it's from people who probably can't really afford to lose it without taking a serious hit to their net worth. Interesting times, maybe 50 years from now historians will be talking about the crypto-bubble and rising nationalism as the precursors to the next big war.
    - gomox 9y ago
      Based on some surveys I did within the general US population, a significant number of people (around 30%) haven't even heard of Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies and most (60%+) have heard of it but haven't put money in it. Keep in mind that statistically speaking, you and I live in an echo chamber. Hacker News is a bubble of engineers with a penchant for business and finance (startups, the main thing here, are where geeks who also like money gravitate towards). My subjective experience in meatspace is similar to yours: a lot of people around me are involved somehow with cryptos, but I think that is likely caused by me fitting the aforementioned demographic. I think (and surveys validate) that the general penetration in the general population is still low. Total market cap for cryptocurrencies is 500B as we speak. Actual capital involved is much less. This is peanuts when compared to any measure of the global financial system. Most people have heard and operate by the mantra "this is crazy, don't put anything in that you are not willing to lose". 500B is a little over half what Apple alone is worth on NASDAQ. The difference being most people don't invest in Apple directly. A lot of people are probably exposed to Apple stock, but I don't think any mutual/hedge funds have significant positions in cryptocurrencies where a crash would affect the common folk. That is very different from a subprime mortgage used to buy a house you live in. No one that I know sells during dips or crashes, because cryptos are to some extent "play money". This, I think, explains the resiliency of the market to its wild fluctuations: no one expects anything else but crazy volatility. That being said, I am certain that cryptos will take a page in the history books. I have personally witnessed people doing and saying things that immediately make me think I should probably be working on the script for the cryptocurrency edition of The Big Short. Source: I have a bit of skin in the game.
simias 9y ago
Assuming that the hacked coins are not immediately sold I'm not sure that it should.
user9182031 9y ago
Could you share why you think it would impact the price of Bitcoin? With a market cap of 186 billion dollars, and a daily volume of 10 billion I couldn't see how it'd have that much of an impact.
- dumbfounder 9y ago
  Because it makes it seem like exchanges are not trustworthy places to keep your crypto, and for basic users a lot of people just keep their crypto there. Fear, no matter how how misplaced, can cause markets to sway heavily.
  - trey-jones 9y ago
    Exchanges are not a trustworthy place to keep your crypt. I think that is accepted. What does it have to do with the value of the thing?
    - tn_ 9y ago
      Bruh if it's accepted then why did people just lose over a half a billion $ storing their cryptocurrency in one.
      - ht85 9y ago
        Why do people drink and drive?
      - sincerely 9y ago
        I don't hold a lot of crypto or anything but one of the most repeated sentiments in communities, guides etc is "don't store money in an exchange". People do it, just like people sometimes buy drugs on DNMs without using PGP encryption, and /usually/ it doesn't end badly for them, but the worst-case scenario (exchange hacked or exit scams and arrest respectively) is pretty bad.
        vkou 9y ago
rhapsodic 9y ago
> I don't understand why news like this doesn't have that huge of an impact of bitcoin's price.. Bitcoin seems to be hovering around 11k~ as I'm writing this. It's been at the same price it seems for the past couple of days... Personally, I would like to understand what it really means to say "the current price of BTC is ___." It's not like stocks where you can see actual bid/ask and daily volume numbers. And since transaction costs and times make arbitrage impractical, the price is not even the same across exchanges.
- dsacco 9y ago
  > It's not like stocks where you can see actual bid/ask and daily volume numbers. Yes it is. Cryptocurrency exchanges have orderbooks like regular exchanges do.
  - rhapsodic 9y ago
    >Yes it is. Cryptocurrency exchanges have orderbooks like regular exchanges do. Can you show me a current bid on bitcoin? IOW, where someone has obligated themselves to purchase N BTC at a price of $P, if someone is willing to sell that many at that price? Is that information posted publicly as it is with stocks?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - hellbanner 9y ago
      https://api.gdax.com/products/BTC-USD/candles?granularity=60 https://api.gdax.com/products/BTC-USD/candles?granularity=60
      - rhapsodic 9y ago
        Thanks. Is there a page that explains how to read that data?
        9y ago
sova 9y ago
This sort of news does not affect global percentage points of participation. Now, requiring Proof of Identity for every exchange in South Korea -- that is news that effectively changes Global Participation and therefore Supply and Demand are commensurately affected. Day to day news has little do with the super tall stack of limit buys and limit sells.
ReverseCold 9y ago
That's because bitcoin wasn't stolen, XEM was. See my other comment for more details.
notyourday 9y ago
Because BTC/ETH/ICO eco system of today largely attract scammers, gamblers, pump and dump peddlers and "investors" - the same kind that used to send faxes about this wonderful company that could be had for pennies on pink sheets. Eventually they will get wiped out, become completely largely non-liquid and end up in jail which would cause a cool off. But not yet. We have not yet reached critical mass.
cal5k 9y ago
As far as I can tell the news hasn't hit the mainstream news yet. Might be a further dip when it does.
mtgx 9y ago
Because Coincheck isn't even a top 10 exchange and $500 million isn't that much money in today's cryptomarket anymore. Plus, I think there's some "fatigue" with negative crypto news from the past few weeks, and most people expect cryptocurrencies to start a bull-run soon. So they just shrug this off. If this would have happened after a month of two of a bull run, then yeah, I could see some panic selling and a significant price correction then.

by tn_ 9y ago

empath75 9y ago

Because the price is driven by bitfinex printing tethers and pretty much nothing else.

orthecreedence 9y ago
I don't know why you're being downvoted. There is more and more evidence of this coming out. Bitcoiners' response is to censor. They should be selling instead.
peoplewindow 9y ago
Yep. Whenever the price falls more Tethers appear and the price goes back up again. The Bitcoin price hasn't reflected fundamentals for years. The fact that the Bitcoin Conference stopped accepting bitcoins because the system is so broken, yet it had no impact on price, should be a hint.

buttcoinslol 9y ago

'Money ain't got no owners, only spenders' -Omar Little This quote applies to unregulated markets: drugs or cryptocurrencies.

ssijak 9y ago
I just finished watching all The Wire seasons for the first time and freaked a little when I saw your comment. I often see something on Hacker News that I just recently had contact with and is not that popular.
- blueline 9y ago
  the wire had something like 30M viewers at peak and was absurdly well received....
  - eternalcode 9y ago
    Apparently, Still not enough to get an Emmy. I lost my faith on Emmy's because of that.
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    Do you have any links or citations for a number even close to that? It’s live viewership numbers are lower than current HBO shows like Westworld that don’t overall get 30M viewers per episode. Or did you have a different meaning for 30M than per episode? Usually that’s what people mean for tv so I am assuming that.
    - justinhj 9y ago
      According to wikipedia the peak viewing for individual episodes is about 4m. Although it's not a stretch to assume it reached a lot more people than that via legal streaming services and illegal downloads.
      - Phlarp 9y ago
        It was not incredibly popular during it's time on the air. This is part of the reason for multi-year gaps between seasons. It has become somewhat of a post-airing success / cult classic.
      - kgwgk 9y ago
        And DVDs (this is a 15-10 year old series). Plus the recent re-release on BluRay.
- messick 9y ago
  I'd be surprised if you could find a "Best TV Show of all Time" list that doesn't include The Wire in the top 5. Most them of them have it #1 or #2 depending on how the ranker feels about The Sopranos.
Theodores 9y ago
I had to look that quote up to fully understand it, plus find the clip online, so here is the context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtoM9x-Bfu8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtoM9x-Bfu8 Omar robs drug kingpin Marlo who is at a card night, sat round the table, raking in winnings. Marlo claims the money is his, in response Omar says “Man, money ain’t got no owners, only spenders.” He then goes on to take Marlo's ring rather than just run off with the $$$. So, in the context of the show, Marlo thinks he has just raked in all of these chips and made himself rich, there is the stack of these bits of plastic chips in front of him. Meanwhile, the $$$ gets handed to Omar straight from where it is kept in the back of the room, the 'bank' off table. All the money for all the chips that are on the table is kept in this one area that Omar is able to head off with, leaving Marlo with his useless chips on the table. At the instant that Omar takes the money all the chips on the table are rendered useless for all players and no longer of value. It is apparent for all that the chips will not be exchanged for USD at the 'bank'. Marlo doesn't just lose the 'fiat' $$$ that he thought he was winning, he also loses the ring on his finger. Although the money may be just money and he may not have lost as much as the prize pot, the ring is an item that cannot be so easily replaced. It has value beyond nominal gold value, sentimental value. Before Omar rocks up the card game is being played in an unregulated way with the players having to trust but verify each other. Nobody cheats at the game. The card deck has its own blockchain technology. The Wire was a long time ago and now Omar has realised that it is more lucrative to move into crypto. So in the 2018 remake Omar does not need a gun to steal all the money from all of the gamblers using a set of chips. He uses chips he printed earlier and limits the available chips so new players wanting to win big in the unregulated card game have to pay more for their chips. Not all players play every game, most just hold on to their chips hoping others wanting to play will want to buy their chips. So they tell others to play the game. The value of their chips goes up so notionally the chips are now worth millions even though there is only a huge but nonetheless smaller pile of money in the 'bank'. Because any one player can cash out at any time they do not care if there is less than the sum total of all play money in the 'bank'. So long as there is a multiple of what their chips are worth they have no real concern, unless everyone else starts cashing out. Because the bank is quite slow and everyone has to queue, some players start to sell their own tokens. These can be placed as side bets on the major games. These coins are copies of the original coins but are super lightweight and have an alleged advantage of being totally anonymous, nobody can track them. Some of these players are making good business on this side betting and they tell their customers that their coins will one day be able to be useful for more things than side bets. One day they will be able to do every day things with the tokens like get a shopping trolley at a supermarket with one, thereby not needing a 'fiat currency coin'. So Omar rocks up and rather than use a gun he simply takes his position on the coin to run off with all the money. The people with the chips thought they were the lucky ones owning all the money but no, Omar goes and spends it for them.

monkmartinez 9y ago

Because the entire thing is a sham... and I, for one, am super duper over it.

gesman 9y ago

Crypto wallets changing hands is a non-event for prices. This however might have potentially positive impact on prices of truly anonymous cryptos - typical direction of thiefs to "lose tails"

ajross 9y ago
> Crypto wallets changing hands is a non-event for prices. Surely the point was more: "Why doesn't the obvious risk events like this represent affect the price of the commodity?" I mean, at this point I have to believe that the likelihood of a given dollar-equivalent of crypto currencies being stolen is much, much higher that it is for literal paper money. And paper is uniformly considered too risky to use as an asset. It's insanity. This is the way bubbles look before they pop. I can't tell you when it'll happen, but it'll happen.
- gph 9y ago
  There will be so many small time investors losing money when the bubble pops it's starting to make me wonder if it won't lead to some serious global destablization. This isn't just some investment play-thing of otherwise well-off individuals in developed countries. A lot of dumb money has flowed in, and it's from people who probably can't really afford to lose it without taking a serious hit to their net worth. Interesting times, maybe 50 years from now historians will be talking about the crypto-bubble and rising nationalism as the precursors to the next big war.
  - gomox 9y ago
    Based on some surveys I did within the general US population, a significant number of people (around 30%) haven't even heard of Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies and most (60%+) have heard of it but haven't put money in it. Keep in mind that statistically speaking, you and I live in an echo chamber. Hacker News is a bubble of engineers with a penchant for business and finance (startups, the main thing here, are where geeks who also like money gravitate towards). My subjective experience in meatspace is similar to yours: a lot of people around me are involved somehow with cryptos, but I think that is likely caused by me fitting the aforementioned demographic. I think (and surveys validate) that the general penetration in the general population is still low. Total market cap for cryptocurrencies is 500B as we speak. Actual capital involved is much less. This is peanuts when compared to any measure of the global financial system. Most people have heard and operate by the mantra "this is crazy, don't put anything in that you are not willing to lose". 500B is a little over half what Apple alone is worth on NASDAQ. The difference being most people don't invest in Apple directly. A lot of people are probably exposed to Apple stock, but I don't think any mutual/hedge funds have significant positions in cryptocurrencies where a crash would affect the common folk. That is very different from a subprime mortgage used to buy a house you live in. No one that I know sells during dips or crashes, because cryptos are to some extent "play money". This, I think, explains the resiliency of the market to its wild fluctuations: no one expects anything else but crazy volatility. That being said, I am certain that cryptos will take a page in the history books. I have personally witnessed people doing and saying things that immediately make me think I should probably be working on the script for the cryptocurrency edition of The Big Short. Source: I have a bit of skin in the game.

simias 9y ago

Assuming that the hacked coins are not immediately sold I'm not sure that it should.

user9182031 9y ago

Could you share why you think it would impact the price of Bitcoin? With a market cap of 186 billion dollars, and a daily volume of 10 billion I couldn't see how it'd have that much of an impact.

dumbfounder 9y ago
Because it makes it seem like exchanges are not trustworthy places to keep your crypto, and for basic users a lot of people just keep their crypto there. Fear, no matter how how misplaced, can cause markets to sway heavily.
- trey-jones 9y ago
  Exchanges are not a trustworthy place to keep your crypt. I think that is accepted. What does it have to do with the value of the thing?
  - tn_ 9y ago
    Bruh if it's accepted then why did people just lose over a half a billion $ storing their cryptocurrency in one.
    - ht85 9y ago
      Why do people drink and drive?
    - sincerely 9y ago
      I don't hold a lot of crypto or anything but one of the most repeated sentiments in communities, guides etc is "don't store money in an exchange". People do it, just like people sometimes buy drugs on DNMs without using PGP encryption, and /usually/ it doesn't end badly for them, but the worst-case scenario (exchange hacked or exit scams and arrest respectively) is pretty bad.
      - vkou 9y ago

rhapsodic 9y ago

> I don't understand why news like this doesn't have that huge of an impact of bitcoin's price.. Bitcoin seems to be hovering around 11k~ as I'm writing this. It's been at the same price it seems for the past couple of days... Personally, I would like to understand what it really means to say "the current price of BTC is ___." It's not like stocks where you can see actual bid/ask and daily volume numbers. And since transaction costs and times make arbitrage impractical, the price is not even the same across exchanges.

dsacco 9y ago
> It's not like stocks where you can see actual bid/ask and daily volume numbers. Yes it is. Cryptocurrency exchanges have orderbooks like regular exchanges do.
- rhapsodic 9y ago
  >Yes it is. Cryptocurrency exchanges have orderbooks like regular exchanges do. Can you show me a current bid on bitcoin? IOW, where someone has obligated themselves to purchase N BTC at a price of $P, if someone is willing to sell that many at that price? Is that information posted publicly as it is with stocks?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - hellbanner 9y ago
    https://api.gdax.com/products/BTC-USD/candles?granularity=60 https://api.gdax.com/products/BTC-USD/candles?granularity=60
    - rhapsodic 9y ago
      Thanks. Is there a page that explains how to read that data?
      - 9y ago

sova 9y ago

This sort of news does not affect global percentage points of participation. Now, requiring Proof of Identity for every exchange in South Korea -- that is news that effectively changes Global Participation and therefore Supply and Demand are commensurately affected. Day to day news has little do with the super tall stack of limit buys and limit sells.

ReverseCold 9y ago

That's because bitcoin wasn't stolen, XEM was. See my other comment for more details.

notyourday 9y ago

Because BTC/ETH/ICO eco system of today largely attract scammers, gamblers, pump and dump peddlers and "investors" - the same kind that used to send faxes about this wonderful company that could be had for pennies on pink sheets. Eventually they will get wiped out, become completely largely non-liquid and end up in jail which would cause a cool off. But not yet. We have not yet reached critical mass.

cal5k 9y ago

As far as I can tell the news hasn't hit the mainstream news yet. Might be a further dip when it does.

mtgx 9y ago

Because Coincheck isn't even a top 10 exchange and $500 million isn't that much money in today's cryptomarket anymore. Plus, I think there's some "fatigue" with negative crypto news from the past few weeks, and most people expect cryptocurrencies to start a bull-run soon. So they just shrug this off. If this would have happened after a month of two of a bull run, then yeah, I could see some panic selling and a significant price correction then.