32 ms·

If Bitcoin Looks Like It Isn’t Trading, It’s Because It Isn’t

89 points by dpflan 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
KingMachiavelli 7y ago
http://archive.is/pjKoB http://archive.is/pjKoB
- mr_woozy 7y ago
  thanks for this!
rwmj 7y ago
Many reasons to be dubious about bitcoin and its liquidity and how much wash trading goes on, but it seems a bit odd to judge it by the amount of outstanding coin being traded. How much gold that exists is actively traded? Or even the same question for a typical company stock?
- aidenn0 7y ago
  100s of billions of dollars of gold is traded each day.
  - Findeton 7y ago
    On options maybe.
  - rwmj 7y ago
    That could be the same gold being traded multiple times per day. What % of all gold extracted from the ground is traded annually?
    - JamesBarney 7y ago
      Why does it matter if it's the same gold? Say a 100 people each own a 100 gold pieces. And they all buy and sell 100 gold pieces worth of goods and services per day.(10,000 gold pieces are traded) Why would it matter if this is physically the same gold coin traded 10,000 times or 10,000 gold coins being traded once?
      - rwmj 7y ago
        Because the WSJ article specifically talks about the number of bitcoins traded as a percentage of the whole number of coins mined. This is why I keep asking for this percentage for other assets like gold and stocks.
  - tachion 7y ago
    Is it actually gold that's being traded, or papers/promises/options/whatever-else-but-physical-gold saying 'x amount of gold' is actually traded?
    - paulddraper 7y ago
      Well, physical Bitcoins aren't being traded either. Because there aren't physical Bitcoins.
      - hndamien 7y ago
        Actual custody is being traded though.
        paulddraper 7y ago
        Same for gold (again legally, not physically).
        hndamien 7y ago
        For gold, typically ownership is traded, not custody.
- scrooched_moose 7y ago
  Because Bitcoin is (at least theoretically) a currency. You're comparing it to a commodity or store of value. The power of a currency is the ability to trade it for goods and services. If that is no longer happening with Bitcoin it has morphed into something else entirely.
  - rwmj 7y ago
    I've never owned or traded bitcoin, but as I understand it the main attraction is that it's like the gold standard (of course for people who don't understand why the gold standard was a bad idea).
    - JamesBarney 7y ago
      Exactly, like a currency on the gold standard. But not an asset like gold.
    - ur-whale 7y ago
      It's nothing like the gold standard. What made the gold standard a bad idea does not apply to Bitcoin.
      - this_user 7y ago
        You mean that there is a cap on the supply that cannot keep pace with the growth of the real economy?
        noxer 7y ago
        The cap is irrelevant. Instead of printing more the value per unit goes up in the end it does the same it adjust for growth just fine. It's just not practical for a fiat currency to change it's value depending on the economy situation. If for example the USD would have a fix cap and its value would swing with the economy, people would speculate with it. At peaks everyone would want to buy and at the lows everyone would pay salaries and debs etc. the growth isn't the problem the swings and uncertainty about the value makes it unusable for a currency. Bitcoin doesn't have this problem is kinda like gold no one really want to pay with it (beside the bitcoin maxis).
- axlee 7y ago
  That's one of the standard metrics to judge any currency. Bitcoin is not advertised as an asset but as a digital currency. But it has clearly become primarily an asset, given the minimal uses of it as a currency.
  - paulddraper 7y ago
    Once transaction fees exceeded $20 back in 2017, it was pretty clear Bitcoin was an asset not a currency. Horrible properties for a currency. Usual properties for a collectible asset.
    - cwkoss 7y ago
      I'd argue that IRS tax treatment of Bitcoin as an asset (and thus making every currency-like purchase - even when exchanging for good or services - a taxable event) is another significant factor. Fees may have made this inevitable, but having to deal with taxes has definitely made me much more wary of using it for small purchases. Bitcoin tax accounting is tedious, and I think once a company solves non-custodial record keeping for the purposes of automated tax accounting, it will increase velocity of spending.
      - paulddraper 7y ago
        The IRS treats essentially everything ownable as an asset: gold, paper currency, bitcoin, art, postage stamps. You obviously never pay capital gains tax on USD, because it never changes value relative to USD. AFAIK a Bitcoin is no different than a Euro tax-wise.
        cwkoss 7y ago
        I am not an accountant and may be wrong, but if a US citizen exchanges $1000 USD to euro, and then euro appreciates 10%, and then they spend that euro to make a purchase, I was under the impression that that purchase is not subject to capital gains. Exchanging back to USD would be, but I thought currency classification exempted cap gains on purchases of goods and services. Am I wrong? Have never held any significant amount of foreign currency, so have never dealt with this personally.
- nonanonymous 7y ago
  You can google any ticker symbol and find the volume relative to the outstanding shares.
- ur-whale 7y ago
  > How much gold that exists is actively traded? A better analogy would be: how much gold is actually being physically moved from one vault to another.
kristianp 7y ago
So most bitcoin isn't moving. That's not new.
RandomTisk 7y ago
Where is the lightning network, so people can buy common, small dollar amounts of goods and services with BTC? IMO that's going to be the next catalyst, it's slowly fading out until it's at least technologically possible to go mainstream.
- Laforet 7y ago
  LN has some fundamental issues with regards to security that I don't have time to go into there. However any L2 protocol based on BTC is going to have a hard time getting bootstrapped for the simple reason that there isn't enough throughout in the mainnet to transfer a sufficient amount of balance to a second layer. With the UTXO pool fragmented as is I don't think there is much hope of improvement.
  - RandomTisk 7y ago
    What is the alternative, wait until 500MB blocks are feasible for both blockchain storage and PoS bandwidth?
    - imtringued 7y ago
      They pretty much are.
- Huycfhct 7y ago
  Ln a solid technology that is gaining in adoption
- solotronics 7y ago
  Its awesome, I have been using Bluewallet app to send and receive Bitcoin/Lightning between friends for about a year now. There was a "lightning torch relay" where hundreds of people added some lightning and sent it on as a proof of how the network performs. The money was then donated. https://cointelegraph.com/news/lightning-torch-reaches-final-destination-over-04-btc-donated-to-humanitarian-aid https://cointelegraph.com/news/lightning-torch-reaches-final...
Findeton 7y ago
Wall Street Journal hinting not to trade bitcoin. What did they say about it in 2010?
- bdcravens 7y ago
  The same thing your typical Bitcoin advocate in 2019 was saying: "What's Bitcoin?"
Gusen 7y ago
The President, Sect'y of State & Defense, FBI Director, US Atty General, Supreme Court Justice, House Speaker, Senators, Governors, Mayors, and local police have all been bribed to protect and or be child rapists. WTF do we do now? Here is all the proof to put them all away. \\Who arrests high profile and ranking criminals, such as the President, when the FBI Deputy Director, Attorney General, all the way down from Senator to Governor, to Mayor, to local police, who have all been bribed to not act? Download the video/audio file, put on headphones and turn up the volume. You will hear these people committing these crimes. Audio was broadcast into my apartment by outdated surveillance equipment illegally embedded witihin my walls. This very same technology was being used to broadcast me to the internet for five years without my consent. I own this footage. Please use this to prosecute all found within. Note: I am obliviously speaking throughout the video, and it can be quite loud at times relative to the desired content. The are dozens more links, including these, that can be found in this PDF last updated 7Dec2019 132 pages: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJc9cGk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJ... Members of the "Illuminati"; "...an underground organization of homosexuals and child rapists..." (page 26 - Obama, Dorsey). President Donald Trump: Accepts a four billion dollar bribe here at 10:18am 4Jan2019: 3JanCh3_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77YG0Vr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77... 3JanCh2_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LUmVygl_q0XVs8h2cWr8jZl-24fY0vBB/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LUmVygl_q0XVs8h2cWr8jZl-24f... 3JanCh4_1000-1100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZpP1pJbJakBgg-y-MWNozTxp3wJojHge/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZpP1pJbJakBgg-y-MWNozTxp3wJ... Rapes and kills a dozen boys, including five in a who can rape 5 boys to death the fastest' game: 14JanCh3_600.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ufPmglde9Mep0m6xYMJ9c4TWTjj258zB/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ufPmglde9Mep0m6xYMJ9c4TWTjj... 14JanCh2_600-700.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/136qLJdEn8eCs9tI4QtIxl4opW_Lw_gCF/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/136qLJdEn8eCs9tI4QtIxl4opW_L... Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: Accepts a $3 billion dollar bribe at 10:33am 17Jan2019 to ensure Asian boys can get through the border undocumented to be raped: 17JanCh3_949-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1CZUvmE/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1C... 17JanCh4_1017-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y-nWEQbempkVZSz230j9wTyduZNjDmnk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y-nWEQbempkVZSz230j9wTyduZN... Also "preps" boys with First Lady Melania Trump, as in she performs oral sex on the boys’ penis and anus, as a child rapist like Henry Porter would, while trying to remove fecal matter from the boy prior to handing them over to be raped and subsequently murdered, for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who decides he would rather just have ten billion dollars instead. US Attorney for Western New York James Kennedy rapes these boys instead: 12JanCh3_1533-1638.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AgFkDsbPbI4b5Xd3Wbz2EVNNx25kW2Oz/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AgFkDsbPbI4b5Xd3Wbz2EVNNx25... Attorney General William Barr & FBI Deputy Director Christopher Wray rape and kill boys for billions in bribes in Buffalo, NY on 17Jan2019 7:50am: 18JanCh4_700.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UIdZkS5ZVksZdHYsnHk2t5losi0N0Bp7/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UIdZkS5ZVksZdHYsnHk2t5losi0... 18JanCh2_700.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DFK8IAxm5pQVqZv9L518nfgP7_odB2Um/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DFK8IAxm5pQVqZv9L518nfgP7_o... 18JanCh3_725-.Mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DG5ej59Ic8RT9UhbyMdwT0BDcKIifGGm/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DG5ej59Ic8RT9UhbyMdwT0BDcKI... Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan rape and kill boys 5Jan2019 17:39 for billions in bribes: 5JanCh3_1600-1800.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ghgmNrQvJ8WfJ2TsDVx1ruDU36hrhx6S/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ghgmNrQvJ8WfJ2TsDVx1ruDU36h... 5JanCh2_1721-1818.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eSlD4otX4KZqWXboQM92Mu-6J02Mjwrg/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eSlD4otX4KZqWXboQM92Mu-6J02... 17Jan - 5:30am - Pompeo returns for more rape and an additional $5 billion dollars. 18JanCh3_529-.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1beDDNVl0EuU-a9UNi_GwwFhpC8IQIZuZ/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1beDDNVl0EuU-a9UNi_GwwFhpC8I... 18JanCh2_529-.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1irgCdGoCfinlDfKrIP1vaGVWnzLEULkk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1irgCdGoCfinlDfKrIP1vaGVWnzL... New York Governor Andrew Cuomo rapes and kills boys at a "rape party" in Buffalo on 14Jan2019 starting at 22:09: 14JanCh3_2100-2300.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yolCgVtY5b8d8YDcshwb-Yd3kS0Jg-Bk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yolCgVtY5b8d8YDcshwb-Yd3kS0... Leaders of the "impeachment" effort Jerrold Nadler, Robert Mueller, and Adam Schiff all rape boys between 11:20pm and 1:10am: 14JanCh4_2300-0000.mp3 - Nadler starts at about 20 minutes in. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kuvv2Zmbw5Jw7onbRI2hCZ0M8FU66GuU/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kuvv2Zmbw5Jw7onbRI2hCZ0M8FU... 14JanCh2_2304-2359.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nofp5xF-aXXcCSgQVwj30KlzE9WLr1x1/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nofp5xF-aXXcCSgQVwj30KlzE9W... Mueller around 12:25am, Schiff 12:55ish: 15JanCh2_000-100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EsmHfguwBuo2PbavJ1WYyhiML62tgCkj/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EsmHfguwBuo2PbavJ1WYyhiML62... 15JanCh2_100-200.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZnWRnBryalNQu2yJmfJUdS2pA_rGSFH/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZnWRnBryalNQu2yJmfJUdS2pA_... 15JanCh4_000-100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEDJR6jb6ARpcNnWJTokBUKb2J2OQnwZ/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEDJR6jb6ARpcNnWJTokBUKb2J2... 15JanCh4_100-200.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/173aYWvWHH4VGht1h_2nM0IMdw746LeCL/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/173aYWvWHH4VGht1h_2nM0IMdw74... A big reason this has not been reported by the major news networks is right here. Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News, apparently a member of the Illuminati since the 1980's, along with ABC Nightly News lead anchor David Muir, stop over to the Porter studio in Buffalo on January 14th, 2019 at 5:00am. They both rape and kill about two dozen boys by 6:00am. Muir starts around 5:15am, then Holt about 5:38am. Multi-billionaire Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp & Fox Corporation, takes his turn after Holt. Video links below: 14JanCh3_500-601.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i7NKepeyG_FfdQRrM7KsnFOZOOX3o7UL/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i7NKepeyG_FfdQRrM7KsnFOZOOX... 14JanCh2_530-600.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZzgN5ilI7ToroU5cfqMaL4o2u1RwidV/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZzgN5ilI7ToroU5cfqMaL4o2u1... Adding to the media protection, CBS & Viacom owner Sumner Redstone and Leslie Moonves rape boys following the President. 14JanCh3_700.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/10XDw6x3ldnnQiq7oIjpdYVENyXaB4aI0/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/10XDw6x3ldnnQiq7oIjpdYVENyXa... 14JanCh2_700-800.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NS_e6AzEZ05wnfljkGMETGU5CWYKfRDp/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NS_e6AzEZ05wnfljkGMETGU5CWY... Buffalo Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood rapes and kills boys starting 3:25am. US Attorney for Western New York James Kennedy starts right after at about 3:31am. Both rape multiple boys to death on January 17, 2019. Erie County Social Services Special Invesigator Keith Pelky rapes four boys to death starting about 2:45am. FBI supervisory special agent Andrew Abromowitz rapes and kills seven boys at 2:53am onward. WGRZ Channel 2 News in Buffalo lead anchor Scott Levin begins about 3:00am. 17Jan - 3:38am+ - Buffalo FBI Special Agent in Charge Gary Loeffert - does not rape or prep boys but requests $100 million dollar bribe to let it go. FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jeremy Bell present as well. WGRZ Channel 2 News anchor Kate Welshofer is apparently raped. 17JanCh3_200-300.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uzXPvnyDz_tm25MbeW5oKseH-jrckFsS/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uzXPvnyDz_tm25MbeW5oKseH-jr... 17JanCh3_300-445.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gTDU4Eris8a3QO1llI3gCRmr11zrSdjk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gTDU4Eris8a3QO1llI3gCRmr11z... 17JanCh4_230-430.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZoJNJwlTRlDf2PD-IV5jTAqnYPEWjFnC/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZoJNJwlTRlDf2PD-IV5jTAqnYPE... Erie County Commissioner of Social Services Marie Cannon, “preps” boys for rape by these men u/2:53am. This means she performs oral sex on the boys’ penis and anus, as a child rapist like Henry Porter would, while trying to remove fecal matter from the boy prior to handing them over to be raped and subsequently murdered. These acts expected of female (full) members of the Illuminati. See update from 22 November(pages 121-124) for further info on the significance. I have been broke & homeless for 7 months, no bed, no shower, no welfare, in an effort to silence this. I was illegally removed from my apartment on 18Jan2019 by the Buffalo Police. Cam4_18Jan2019_KnockToEnd.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N2mozGdPD7HMWELjRhvIZ94eBLjXEAVX/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N2mozGdPD7HMWELjRhvIZ94eBLj... NVR@ch3@main.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JNMZn6JxYTCBULkC58AQtXa75hzjPVlr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JNMZn6JxYTCBULkC58AQtXa75hz... Transcript of the event: https://drive.google.com/file/d/192B7tZa3b23Ab0UkSLGqNuLBUrDqOaAr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/192B7tZa3b23Ab0UkSLGqNuLBUrD... Bribed and or involved from top to bottom. This looks more and more like a soft takeover of the US government, many more wealthy and high ranking/profile individuals are involved. The governing body of the "Illuminati" boasts $7 trillion in assests, led by Charles Koch, George Soros, Henry Porter, Donald Reeves, among others. Are you going to do anything about it?
aazaa 7y ago
> About 9.1 million bitcoins, representing about 51% of those outstanding, haven’t changed hands in at least six months, according to Flipside. About two million of those bitcoin haven’t moved in more than two years. Transaction volume has always been a difficult metric. For one thing, most transactions are likely to happen off-chain. That can occur in a centralized system like Coinbase. This has always been a possibility dating back to the first exchanges like Mt. Gox. More recently, Lightning Network means that decentralized off-chain transactions can play a bigger role in Bitcoin's total transaction volume. Lightning involves two parties setting up a contract (Bitcoin has supported them from day one). This contract defines rules that allow the parties to update a private transaction (without counterparty risk) until settlement on the block chain is required. At that point a transaction is published. That transaction may represent one, a handful, or hundreds of thousands of intermediate transactions. There aren't very good ways to determine how many, and this will tend to make Bitcoin's transaction volume ever more opaque over time. Exchanges are starting to support Lightning as a method to move bitcoin in and out. Second, absolute transaction count doesn't take coin value or age into account. For example, I can just flip the same 0.001 BTC back and forth to myself rapidly. That would add many transactions but wouldn't reveal much of value. An alternative metric is "bitcoin days destroyed" (BDD). BDD equals the value of the coin being spent multiplied by its age in days, summed over all transactions in a given period: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/845/what-are-bitcoin-days-destroyed/847#847 https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/845/what-are-bit... When BDD spikes you know that either old coins are being spent or that lots value in younger coins is being spent. That metric might be more economically valuable. There's a realtime chart here: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/charts/coindays-destroyed?interval=full https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/charts/coindays-destroyed?int...
- globuous 7y ago
  Nice ! Its been a while ive been out of the game, handnt heard of lightning in a while ! I tried googling some stats, but its always hard to get grasp at them. I dont have the knowledge to understand how much shares each participant represents. Could you hand me some refs i you have to better understand How lightning is used currently please ? If you have any ? Cheers :)
- deleted 7y ago
ur-whale 7y ago
This article is severely misguided if it uses actual transactions on the blockchain to measure Bitcoin trading volumes.
account73466 7y ago
Bitcoin has about $133 bil marketcap. NYSE symbols with the twice (2X) this marketcaps according to Yahoo Finance: UNH (UnitedHealth Group) mcap: $262 bil, trading volume: $1.2 bil KO (COCA-COLA) mcap: $231 bil, trading volume: $0.6 bil MRK (MERCK) mcap: $225 bil trading volume: $0.7 bil Therefore, for Bitcoin to be tradeable as similar stocks it has to show $0.25-0.5 bil for $133 bil mcap or $0.5-1.0 bil for $250 bil mcap. Binance alone showed $0.3 bil today but the volume is usually $0.5-1 bil. I don't think that Binance is wash-trading, so all this FUD is mostly due to a lack of understanding.
- mikeyouse 7y ago
  There's no such thing as a "market cap" for Bitcoin - seriously, give me a definition of "market cap" for Bitcoin that makes any sense at all compared to something like the future value of cash flows from UNH equity.
  - account73466 7y ago
    Not my definition but the accepted one is price times number of bitcoins mined so far. Of course by selling 1% of all bitcoins you would clean all order books. However, George Soros used only a few billions to bet against the British pound.
    - mikeyouse 7y ago
      Which is nonsense since so many bitcoins have been lost and there is no underlying asset that owning a bitcoin grants you access to.
      - darawk 7y ago
        Sure, but that just makes Bitcoin's market cap smaller, and therefore its expected trading volume relative to similar assets even smaller, and therefore the original commenter's point even more accurate.
    - kelnos 7y ago
alcio 7y ago
How many AAPL shares have not been traded for the past 2 years? And how many BRK.A? Bitcoin gives the opportunity to answer those questions contrarily to the complex and somewhat opaque equities ownership rules.
quantumfoam 7y ago
Hahahahaha a WSJ article. Fuck you.
glofish 7y ago
Any time WSJ or Forbes writes about the bitcoin I get the feeling that their actual frustration is that they (the Wall Stree speculators) cannot control it the way they are used to. Always feels like sour grapes to me - for some reason that pleases me. Bitcoin is an equalizer in that respect.
sbussard 7y ago
A lot of illegal business is done with bitcoin. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if some lost their capacity to trade, in one way or another.
sevencolors 7y ago
Tried to buy some on Coinbase the other day, said it would take 5 days to show up in my account. Doesn't inspire confidence in me.
- SRTP 7y ago
  That has nothing to do with the Bitcoin protocol, rather it's a "security" measure by Coinbase. A typical Bitcoin transaction, even with minimum fees, confirms in under an hour.
  - BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
    I know a Dutch bitcoin payment provider [0] whose transactions typically confirm within less than a second. In short: That's because the risk of a 51% attack on the network to steal my restaurant payment is in all practicality zero. So you don't even have to wait for a confirmation from the network, just the transaction showing up on the network is enough, given the transaction fee is reasonable. [0] https://www.bitkassa.nl/ https://www.bitkassa.nl/
- neighbour 7y ago
  That's a Coinbase problem, not Bitcoin.
kp98 7y ago
While I was working at a crypto fund I did an experiment with the ceo of one of the largest liquidity providers at the time in crypto, we analyzed how many trades were printing compared to the depth of market at this one particular exchange (I forget which now because it was a while ago). We noticed there was significant fake volume on the exchange, for example an order of 50 bitcoin would print at some level, and the depth of market and pricee would not change at all, even at the level of interest. This went on pretty much all day. That being said I don’t think bitcoin’s trading volume is a majorly faked. I think there are a few bad actors in the exchange industry, especially during the bubble, who were trying to give the illusion of volume and popularity to drive more clients so they could extract their fees + raise money. If people are truly worried about this issue then just trade on a regulated exchange like CME.
seventytwo 7y ago
And a million crypto Libertarians just learned why deflation is bad for an economy.
- Proven 7y ago
  Wut? As an aside, Bitcoin's best (and still the only major) use case is crypto trading. It even isn't good for that (fiat-denominated crypto currencies are much more useful). That has nothing to do with libertarians.
granaldo 7y ago
trading escalates when it is volatile, bitcoin has been relatively well less volatile in past days
alexnewman 7y ago
Bitcoin is clearly Art. Not gold, not money, not cash, art.
faraday2211 7y ago
Bitcoin is a scam inflated by cryptography and currency illiteracy. Same category as flat earthers and Anti vaxxers.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
vorotato 7y ago
This is the way bitcoin ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.
omani 7y ago
why do you post a paywalled article?

89 points by dpflan 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

KingMachiavelli 7y ago

http://archive.is/pjKoB http://archive.is/pjKoB

mr_woozy 7y ago
thanks for this!

rwmj 7y ago

Many reasons to be dubious about bitcoin and its liquidity and how much wash trading goes on, but it seems a bit odd to judge it by the amount of outstanding coin being traded. How much gold that exists is actively traded? Or even the same question for a typical company stock?

aidenn0 7y ago
100s of billions of dollars of gold is traded each day.
- Findeton 7y ago
  On options maybe.
- rwmj 7y ago
  That could be the same gold being traded multiple times per day. What % of all gold extracted from the ground is traded annually?
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    Why does it matter if it's the same gold? Say a 100 people each own a 100 gold pieces. And they all buy and sell 100 gold pieces worth of goods and services per day.(10,000 gold pieces are traded) Why would it matter if this is physically the same gold coin traded 10,000 times or 10,000 gold coins being traded once?
    - rwmj 7y ago
      Because the WSJ article specifically talks about the number of bitcoins traded as a percentage of the whole number of coins mined. This is why I keep asking for this percentage for other assets like gold and stocks.
- tachion 7y ago
  Is it actually gold that's being traded, or papers/promises/options/whatever-else-but-physical-gold saying 'x amount of gold' is actually traded?
  - paulddraper 7y ago
    Well, physical Bitcoins aren't being traded either. Because there aren't physical Bitcoins.
    - hndamien 7y ago
      Actual custody is being traded though.
      - paulddraper 7y ago
        Same for gold (again legally, not physically).
        hndamien 7y ago
        For gold, typically ownership is traded, not custody.
scrooched_moose 7y ago
Because Bitcoin is (at least theoretically) a currency. You're comparing it to a commodity or store of value. The power of a currency is the ability to trade it for goods and services. If that is no longer happening with Bitcoin it has morphed into something else entirely.
- rwmj 7y ago
  I've never owned or traded bitcoin, but as I understand it the main attraction is that it's like the gold standard (of course for people who don't understand why the gold standard was a bad idea).
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    Exactly, like a currency on the gold standard. But not an asset like gold.
  - ur-whale 7y ago
    It's nothing like the gold standard. What made the gold standard a bad idea does not apply to Bitcoin.
    - this_user 7y ago
      You mean that there is a cap on the supply that cannot keep pace with the growth of the real economy?
      - noxer 7y ago
        The cap is irrelevant. Instead of printing more the value per unit goes up in the end it does the same it adjust for growth just fine. It's just not practical for a fiat currency to change it's value depending on the economy situation. If for example the USD would have a fix cap and its value would swing with the economy, people would speculate with it. At peaks everyone would want to buy and at the lows everyone would pay salaries and debs etc. the growth isn't the problem the swings and uncertainty about the value makes it unusable for a currency. Bitcoin doesn't have this problem is kinda like gold no one really want to pay with it (beside the bitcoin maxis).
axlee 7y ago
That's one of the standard metrics to judge any currency. Bitcoin is not advertised as an asset but as a digital currency. But it has clearly become primarily an asset, given the minimal uses of it as a currency.
- paulddraper 7y ago
  Once transaction fees exceeded $20 back in 2017, it was pretty clear Bitcoin was an asset not a currency. Horrible properties for a currency. Usual properties for a collectible asset.
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    I'd argue that IRS tax treatment of Bitcoin as an asset (and thus making every currency-like purchase - even when exchanging for good or services - a taxable event) is another significant factor. Fees may have made this inevitable, but having to deal with taxes has definitely made me much more wary of using it for small purchases. Bitcoin tax accounting is tedious, and I think once a company solves non-custodial record keeping for the purposes of automated tax accounting, it will increase velocity of spending.
    - paulddraper 7y ago
      The IRS treats essentially everything ownable as an asset: gold, paper currency, bitcoin, art, postage stamps. You obviously never pay capital gains tax on USD, because it never changes value relative to USD. AFAIK a Bitcoin is no different than a Euro tax-wise.
      - cwkoss 7y ago
        I am not an accountant and may be wrong, but if a US citizen exchanges $1000 USD to euro, and then euro appreciates 10%, and then they spend that euro to make a purchase, I was under the impression that that purchase is not subject to capital gains. Exchanging back to USD would be, but I thought currency classification exempted cap gains on purchases of goods and services. Am I wrong? Have never held any significant amount of foreign currency, so have never dealt with this personally.
nonanonymous 7y ago
You can google any ticker symbol and find the volume relative to the outstanding shares.
ur-whale 7y ago
> How much gold that exists is actively traded? A better analogy would be: how much gold is actually being physically moved from one vault to another.

kristianp 7y ago

So most bitcoin isn't moving. That's not new.

RandomTisk 7y ago

Where is the lightning network, so people can buy common, small dollar amounts of goods and services with BTC? IMO that's going to be the next catalyst, it's slowly fading out until it's at least technologically possible to go mainstream.

Laforet 7y ago
LN has some fundamental issues with regards to security that I don't have time to go into there. However any L2 protocol based on BTC is going to have a hard time getting bootstrapped for the simple reason that there isn't enough throughout in the mainnet to transfer a sufficient amount of balance to a second layer. With the UTXO pool fragmented as is I don't think there is much hope of improvement.
- RandomTisk 7y ago
  What is the alternative, wait until 500MB blocks are feasible for both blockchain storage and PoS bandwidth?
  - imtringued 7y ago
    They pretty much are.
Huycfhct 7y ago
Ln a solid technology that is gaining in adoption
solotronics 7y ago
Its awesome, I have been using Bluewallet app to send and receive Bitcoin/Lightning between friends for about a year now. There was a "lightning torch relay" where hundreds of people added some lightning and sent it on as a proof of how the network performs. The money was then donated. https://cointelegraph.com/news/lightning-torch-reaches-final-destination-over-04-btc-donated-to-humanitarian-aid https://cointelegraph.com/news/lightning-torch-reaches-final...

Findeton 7y ago

Wall Street Journal hinting not to trade bitcoin. What did they say about it in 2010?

bdcravens 7y ago
The same thing your typical Bitcoin advocate in 2019 was saying: "What's Bitcoin?"

Gusen 7y ago

The President, Sect'y of State & Defense, FBI Director, US Atty General, Supreme Court Justice, House Speaker, Senators, Governors, Mayors, and local police have all been bribed to protect and or be child rapists. WTF do we do now? Here is all the proof to put them all away. \\Who arrests high profile and ranking criminals, such as the President, when the FBI Deputy Director, Attorney General, all the way down from Senator to Governor, to Mayor, to local police, who have all been bribed to not act? Download the video/audio file, put on headphones and turn up the volume. You will hear these people committing these crimes. Audio was broadcast into my apartment by outdated surveillance equipment illegally embedded witihin my walls. This very same technology was being used to broadcast me to the internet for five years without my consent. I own this footage. Please use this to prosecute all found within. Note: I am obliviously speaking throughout the video, and it can be quite loud at times relative to the desired content. The are dozens more links, including these, that can be found in this PDF last updated 7Dec2019 132 pages: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJc9cGk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sj9EN_pHmicKS6rFQlmk67knMdJ... Members of the "Illuminati"; "...an underground organization of homosexuals and child rapists..." (page 26 - Obama, Dorsey). President Donald Trump: Accepts a four billion dollar bribe here at 10:18am 4Jan2019: 3JanCh3_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77YG0Vr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Grdr8xF2psKNsuYlEnl9dIRV-77... 3JanCh2_900-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LUmVygl_q0XVs8h2cWr8jZl-24fY0vBB/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LUmVygl_q0XVs8h2cWr8jZl-24f... 3JanCh4_1000-1100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZpP1pJbJakBgg-y-MWNozTxp3wJojHge/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZpP1pJbJakBgg-y-MWNozTxp3wJ... Rapes and kills a dozen boys, including five in a who can rape 5 boys to death the fastest' game: 14JanCh3_600.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ufPmglde9Mep0m6xYMJ9c4TWTjj258zB/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ufPmglde9Mep0m6xYMJ9c4TWTjj... 14JanCh2_600-700.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/136qLJdEn8eCs9tI4QtIxl4opW_Lw_gCF/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/136qLJdEn8eCs9tI4QtIxl4opW_L... Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: Accepts a $3 billion dollar bribe at 10:33am 17Jan2019 to ensure Asian boys can get through the border undocumented to be raped: 17JanCh3_949-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1CZUvmE/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eodHu4o5Cm3xEWhDqipSuTj-M1C... 17JanCh4_1017-1100.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y-nWEQbempkVZSz230j9wTyduZNjDmnk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1y-nWEQbempkVZSz230j9wTyduZN... Also "preps" boys with First Lady Melania Trump, as in she performs oral sex on the boys’ penis and anus, as a child rapist like Henry Porter would, while trying to remove fecal matter from the boy prior to handing them over to be raped and subsequently murdered, for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who decides he would rather just have ten billion dollars instead. US Attorney for Western New York James Kennedy rapes these boys instead: 12JanCh3_1533-1638.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AgFkDsbPbI4b5Xd3Wbz2EVNNx25kW2Oz/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AgFkDsbPbI4b5Xd3Wbz2EVNNx25... Attorney General William Barr & FBI Deputy Director Christopher Wray rape and kill boys for billions in bribes in Buffalo, NY on 17Jan2019 7:50am: 18JanCh4_700.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UIdZkS5ZVksZdHYsnHk2t5losi0N0Bp7/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UIdZkS5ZVksZdHYsnHk2t5losi0... 18JanCh2_700.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DFK8IAxm5pQVqZv9L518nfgP7_odB2Um/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DFK8IAxm5pQVqZv9L518nfgP7_o... 18JanCh3_725-.Mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DG5ej59Ic8RT9UhbyMdwT0BDcKIifGGm/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DG5ej59Ic8RT9UhbyMdwT0BDcKI... Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan rape and kill boys 5Jan2019 17:39 for billions in bribes: 5JanCh3_1600-1800.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ghgmNrQvJ8WfJ2TsDVx1ruDU36hrhx6S/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ghgmNrQvJ8WfJ2TsDVx1ruDU36h... 5JanCh2_1721-1818.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eSlD4otX4KZqWXboQM92Mu-6J02Mjwrg/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eSlD4otX4KZqWXboQM92Mu-6J02... 17Jan - 5:30am - Pompeo returns for more rape and an additional $5 billion dollars. 18JanCh3_529-.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1beDDNVl0EuU-a9UNi_GwwFhpC8IQIZuZ/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1beDDNVl0EuU-a9UNi_GwwFhpC8I... 18JanCh2_529-.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1irgCdGoCfinlDfKrIP1vaGVWnzLEULkk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1irgCdGoCfinlDfKrIP1vaGVWnzL... New York Governor Andrew Cuomo rapes and kills boys at a "rape party" in Buffalo on 14Jan2019 starting at 22:09: 14JanCh3_2100-2300.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yolCgVtY5b8d8YDcshwb-Yd3kS0Jg-Bk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yolCgVtY5b8d8YDcshwb-Yd3kS0... Leaders of the "impeachment" effort Jerrold Nadler, Robert Mueller, and Adam Schiff all rape boys between 11:20pm and 1:10am: 14JanCh4_2300-0000.mp3 - Nadler starts at about 20 minutes in. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kuvv2Zmbw5Jw7onbRI2hCZ0M8FU66GuU/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kuvv2Zmbw5Jw7onbRI2hCZ0M8FU... 14JanCh2_2304-2359.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nofp5xF-aXXcCSgQVwj30KlzE9WLr1x1/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nofp5xF-aXXcCSgQVwj30KlzE9W... Mueller around 12:25am, Schiff 12:55ish: 15JanCh2_000-100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EsmHfguwBuo2PbavJ1WYyhiML62tgCkj/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EsmHfguwBuo2PbavJ1WYyhiML62... 15JanCh2_100-200.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZnWRnBryalNQu2yJmfJUdS2pA_rGSFH/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZnWRnBryalNQu2yJmfJUdS2pA_... 15JanCh4_000-100.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEDJR6jb6ARpcNnWJTokBUKb2J2OQnwZ/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEDJR6jb6ARpcNnWJTokBUKb2J2... 15JanCh4_100-200.mp3 https://drive.google.com/file/d/173aYWvWHH4VGht1h_2nM0IMdw746LeCL/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/173aYWvWHH4VGht1h_2nM0IMdw74... A big reason this has not been reported by the major news networks is right here. Lester Holt of NBC Nightly News, apparently a member of the Illuminati since the 1980's, along with ABC Nightly News lead anchor David Muir, stop over to the Porter studio in Buffalo on January 14th, 2019 at 5:00am. They both rape and kill about two dozen boys by 6:00am. Muir starts around 5:15am, then Holt about 5:38am. Multi-billionaire Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp & Fox Corporation, takes his turn after Holt. Video links below: 14JanCh3_500-601.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i7NKepeyG_FfdQRrM7KsnFOZOOX3o7UL/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i7NKepeyG_FfdQRrM7KsnFOZOOX... 14JanCh2_530-600.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZzgN5ilI7ToroU5cfqMaL4o2u1RwidV/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NZzgN5ilI7ToroU5cfqMaL4o2u1... Adding to the media protection, CBS & Viacom owner Sumner Redstone and Leslie Moonves rape boys following the President. 14JanCh3_700.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/10XDw6x3ldnnQiq7oIjpdYVENyXaB4aI0/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/10XDw6x3ldnnQiq7oIjpdYVENyXa... 14JanCh2_700-800.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NS_e6AzEZ05wnfljkGMETGU5CWYKfRDp/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NS_e6AzEZ05wnfljkGMETGU5CWY... Buffalo Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood rapes and kills boys starting 3:25am. US Attorney for Western New York James Kennedy starts right after at about 3:31am. Both rape multiple boys to death on January 17, 2019. Erie County Social Services Special Invesigator Keith Pelky rapes four boys to death starting about 2:45am. FBI supervisory special agent Andrew Abromowitz rapes and kills seven boys at 2:53am onward. WGRZ Channel 2 News in Buffalo lead anchor Scott Levin begins about 3:00am. 17Jan - 3:38am+ - Buffalo FBI Special Agent in Charge Gary Loeffert - does not rape or prep boys but requests $100 million dollar bribe to let it go. FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jeremy Bell present as well. WGRZ Channel 2 News anchor Kate Welshofer is apparently raped. 17JanCh3_200-300.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uzXPvnyDz_tm25MbeW5oKseH-jrckFsS/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uzXPvnyDz_tm25MbeW5oKseH-jr... 17JanCh3_300-445.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gTDU4Eris8a3QO1llI3gCRmr11zrSdjk/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gTDU4Eris8a3QO1llI3gCRmr11z... 17JanCh4_230-430.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZoJNJwlTRlDf2PD-IV5jTAqnYPEWjFnC/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZoJNJwlTRlDf2PD-IV5jTAqnYPE... Erie County Commissioner of Social Services Marie Cannon, “preps” boys for rape by these men u/2:53am. This means she performs oral sex on the boys’ penis and anus, as a child rapist like Henry Porter would, while trying to remove fecal matter from the boy prior to handing them over to be raped and subsequently murdered. These acts expected of female (full) members of the Illuminati. See update from 22 November(pages 121-124) for further info on the significance. I have been broke & homeless for 7 months, no bed, no shower, no welfare, in an effort to silence this. I was illegally removed from my apartment on 18Jan2019 by the Buffalo Police. Cam4_18Jan2019_KnockToEnd.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N2mozGdPD7HMWELjRhvIZ94eBLjXEAVX/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N2mozGdPD7HMWELjRhvIZ94eBLj... NVR@ch3@main.avi https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JNMZn6JxYTCBULkC58AQtXa75hzjPVlr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JNMZn6JxYTCBULkC58AQtXa75hz... Transcript of the event: https://drive.google.com/file/d/192B7tZa3b23Ab0UkSLGqNuLBUrDqOaAr/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/192B7tZa3b23Ab0UkSLGqNuLBUrD... Bribed and or involved from top to bottom. This looks more and more like a soft takeover of the US government, many more wealthy and high ranking/profile individuals are involved. The governing body of the "Illuminati" boasts $7 trillion in assests, led by Charles Koch, George Soros, Henry Porter, Donald Reeves, among others. Are you going to do anything about it?

aazaa 7y ago

> About 9.1 million bitcoins, representing about 51% of those outstanding, haven’t changed hands in at least six months, according to Flipside. About two million of those bitcoin haven’t moved in more than two years. Transaction volume has always been a difficult metric. For one thing, most transactions are likely to happen off-chain. That can occur in a centralized system like Coinbase. This has always been a possibility dating back to the first exchanges like Mt. Gox. More recently, Lightning Network means that decentralized off-chain transactions can play a bigger role in Bitcoin's total transaction volume. Lightning involves two parties setting up a contract (Bitcoin has supported them from day one). This contract defines rules that allow the parties to update a private transaction (without counterparty risk) until settlement on the block chain is required. At that point a transaction is published. That transaction may represent one, a handful, or hundreds of thousands of intermediate transactions. There aren't very good ways to determine how many, and this will tend to make Bitcoin's transaction volume ever more opaque over time. Exchanges are starting to support Lightning as a method to move bitcoin in and out. Second, absolute transaction count doesn't take coin value or age into account. For example, I can just flip the same 0.001 BTC back and forth to myself rapidly. That would add many transactions but wouldn't reveal much of value. An alternative metric is "bitcoin days destroyed" (BDD). BDD equals the value of the coin being spent multiplied by its age in days, summed over all transactions in a given period: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/845/what-are-bitcoin-days-destroyed/847#847 https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/845/what-are-bit... When BDD spikes you know that either old coins are being spent or that lots value in younger coins is being spent. That metric might be more economically valuable. There's a realtime chart here: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/charts/coindays-destroyed?interval=full https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/charts/coindays-destroyed?int...

globuous 7y ago
Nice ! Its been a while ive been out of the game, handnt heard of lightning in a while ! I tried googling some stats, but its always hard to get grasp at them. I dont have the knowledge to understand how much shares each participant represents. Could you hand me some refs i you have to better understand How lightning is used currently please ? If you have any ? Cheers :)
deleted 7y ago

ur-whale 7y ago

This article is severely misguided if it uses actual transactions on the blockchain to measure Bitcoin trading volumes.

account73466 7y ago

Bitcoin has about $133 bil marketcap. NYSE symbols with the twice (2X) this marketcaps according to Yahoo Finance: UNH (UnitedHealth Group) mcap: $262 bil, trading volume: $1.2 bil KO (COCA-COLA) mcap: $231 bil, trading volume: $0.6 bil MRK (MERCK) mcap: $225 bil trading volume: $0.7 bil Therefore, for Bitcoin to be tradeable as similar stocks it has to show $0.25-0.5 bil for $133 bil mcap or $0.5-1.0 bil for $250 bil mcap. Binance alone showed $0.3 bil today but the volume is usually $0.5-1 bil. I don't think that Binance is wash-trading, so all this FUD is mostly due to a lack of understanding.

mikeyouse 7y ago
There's no such thing as a "market cap" for Bitcoin - seriously, give me a definition of "market cap" for Bitcoin that makes any sense at all compared to something like the future value of cash flows from UNH equity.
- account73466 7y ago
  Not my definition but the accepted one is price times number of bitcoins mined so far. Of course by selling 1% of all bitcoins you would clean all order books. However, George Soros used only a few billions to bet against the British pound.
  - mikeyouse 7y ago
    Which is nonsense since so many bitcoins have been lost and there is no underlying asset that owning a bitcoin grants you access to.
    - darawk 7y ago
      Sure, but that just makes Bitcoin's market cap smaller, and therefore its expected trading volume relative to similar assets even smaller, and therefore the original commenter's point even more accurate.
  - kelnos 7y ago

alcio 7y ago

How many AAPL shares have not been traded for the past 2 years? And how many BRK.A? Bitcoin gives the opportunity to answer those questions contrarily to the complex and somewhat opaque equities ownership rules.

quantumfoam 7y ago

Hahahahaha a WSJ article. Fuck you.

glofish 7y ago

Any time WSJ or Forbes writes about the bitcoin I get the feeling that their actual frustration is that they (the Wall Stree speculators) cannot control it the way they are used to. Always feels like sour grapes to me - for some reason that pleases me. Bitcoin is an equalizer in that respect.

sbussard 7y ago

A lot of illegal business is done with bitcoin. It wouldn't be a huge surprise if some lost their capacity to trade, in one way or another.

sevencolors 7y ago

Tried to buy some on Coinbase the other day, said it would take 5 days to show up in my account. Doesn't inspire confidence in me.

SRTP 7y ago
That has nothing to do with the Bitcoin protocol, rather it's a "security" measure by Coinbase. A typical Bitcoin transaction, even with minimum fees, confirms in under an hour.
- BurnGpuBurn 7y ago
  I know a Dutch bitcoin payment provider [0] whose transactions typically confirm within less than a second. In short: That's because the risk of a 51% attack on the network to steal my restaurant payment is in all practicality zero. So you don't even have to wait for a confirmation from the network, just the transaction showing up on the network is enough, given the transaction fee is reasonable. [0] https://www.bitkassa.nl/ https://www.bitkassa.nl/
neighbour 7y ago
That's a Coinbase problem, not Bitcoin.

kp98 7y ago

While I was working at a crypto fund I did an experiment with the ceo of one of the largest liquidity providers at the time in crypto, we analyzed how many trades were printing compared to the depth of market at this one particular exchange (I forget which now because it was a while ago). We noticed there was significant fake volume on the exchange, for example an order of 50 bitcoin would print at some level, and the depth of market and pricee would not change at all, even at the level of interest. This went on pretty much all day. That being said I don’t think bitcoin’s trading volume is a majorly faked. I think there are a few bad actors in the exchange industry, especially during the bubble, who were trying to give the illusion of volume and popularity to drive more clients so they could extract their fees + raise money. If people are truly worried about this issue then just trade on a regulated exchange like CME.

seventytwo 7y ago

And a million crypto Libertarians just learned why deflation is bad for an economy.

Proven 7y ago
Wut? As an aside, Bitcoin's best (and still the only major) use case is crypto trading. It even isn't good for that (fiat-denominated crypto currencies are much more useful). That has nothing to do with libertarians.

granaldo 7y ago

trading escalates when it is volatile, bitcoin has been relatively well less volatile in past days

alexnewman 7y ago

Bitcoin is clearly Art. Not gold, not money, not cash, art.

faraday2211 7y ago

Bitcoin is a scam inflated by cryptography and currency illiteracy. Same category as flat earthers and Anti vaxxers.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

vorotato 7y ago

This is the way bitcoin ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.

omani 7y ago

why do you post a paywalled article?