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Here is a chart[0] of the daily changes showing BTC, AMZN, AAPL, NFLX, TSLA from January to November. Can you tell me which one is BTC (hint: the green one is T

Here is a chart[0] of the daily changes showing BTC, AMZN, AAPL, NFLX, TSLA from January to November. Can you tell me which one is BTC (hint: the green one is TSLA)? BTC has higher volatility than other assets on short timescales (e.g. < monthly and particularly, daily). But once you calculate over >3 months you get volatility comparable to stocks. And an investment in the size of $400M doesn't feel like they are worrying about daily volatility a lot. [0]: https://imgur.com/a/mE7bSI4 https://imgur.com/a/mE7bSI4

croes 6y ago
But didn't Bitcoin want to be a currency and not stocks?
- eloff 6y ago
  More like digital gold. Calling it a currency is really not an apt description.
  - minitoar 6y ago
    Unfortunate they called it a 'coin' then. Maybe it should've been Bitgold. Digimetal.
    - thinkmassive 6y ago
      The name Bit Gold was already recently used for a similar project by Nick Szabo when Bitcoin was announced: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bit-gold/ https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bit-gold/ Contrary to what many people who only recently discovered Bitcoin probably believe, it was not created in a vacuum as some Ponzi scheme. Instead it was a concept that had been iterated on for decades until Satoshi discovered the right combination of cryptographic technologies and economic incentives to make a so-far-unstoppable decentralized digital currency.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        Well, Satoshi was more than likely Paul Calder Le Roux who wanted a way to launder the proceeds of his crime network. > Instead it was a concept that had been iterated on for decades until Satoshi discovered the right combination of cryptographic technologies and economic incentives to make a so-far-unstoppable decentralized digital currency. You know how that sounds right? Like religion, not clear-headed thinking.
        thinkmassive 6y ago
        I expect Bitcoin to affect monetary systems in a way similar to how FOSS changed software. My opinion is neither of those is a religion. The development of Bitcoin in particular sounds more like following the scientific method to me, but you're entitled to your own interpretation.
  - kylebenzle 6y ago
    It says in the title of the paper, Digital CASH. But, ever since Blockstream (Adam Back and Greg Maxwell) hijacked the GitHub repo years ago Bitcoin (BTC) has purposefully failed at this central use case. However, the project and White Paper live on in projects like Monero, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum.
  - cubano 6y ago
    BTC has already been legally ruled as property, not currency, I believe if I read the ruling correctly. Not digital gold, but pharmaceutical grade gold as Saylor put it in a recent Odd Lots pod, and it's hard to argue that...also quoted from the same pod..[not a perfect transcript] "...so that took us to cryptos and we looked at 6500 cryptos and we found that BTC is the dominant network. its 25x bigger than the next closest thing that looks like it, and has more than $200bil monetary energy in it. it is basically Facebook or Google for money. and this is the nuance that most people haven't realized yet..what you have is a dominant digital network that has been engineered to host a safe haven treasury reserve asset superior to gold in all respects. it's pharmaceutical grade gold [love this line]. if God [blurb] gold as a treasury reserve asset to hold for 100 years, he would create 21mil gold coins, he'd make it impossible to make any more, he would make it possible to audit it from anywhere on earth from any node every 10 minutes, make it unhackable and make it an open architecture where you could build it into an iphone or into Square or paypal or any other exchange without permission, and he would distribute it everywhere on earth with these crypto SHA256 miners so hat no company controls it, no CEO controls it, no country controls it, and no regulators control it..."[0] [0] https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/6b8b72d0-455c-11eb-b9ed-377604512ee6 https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/6b8b72d0-455c-11eb-b9ed-377...
    - ordinaryradical 6y ago
      But given the dynamics of PoW mining, isn't bitcoin defacto controlled by a handful of Chinese mining cartels, which are themselves controlled by the CCP? I feel like this whole pitch makes sense until you get to that part.
      - cubano 6y ago
        So in a way...who cares who mines it? Do you care who owns your real estate before you buy it? Or who mines your gold before you wear it? Probably not. Yes I suppose there is some political aspect to that side of it, but the crypto itself...it's about as apolitical as it gets.
        qw3rty01 6y ago
  - squeaky-clean 6y ago
    The first sentence of the bitcoin whitepaper is literally "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
    - chillacy 6y ago
      I think it's safe to say that the BTC community has pivoted to a more fitting use case for their technology. The Bitcoin Cash fork and Litecoin made scaling choices that make it better for payments.
    - EpicEng 6y ago
      And if they said it were a unicorn, would that make it true? It's not a currency because you can't use it as a currency.
    - eloff 6y ago
      It doesn't matter what it was marketed as. It matters what it is. But they made it deflationary and a good currency needs to be inflationary otherwise you just hold onto it instead of spending it. Which had made it more like a digital gold. It has totally failed as a system for payments for this and other reasons. It is also too slow and too expensive per transaction.
- kylebenzle 6y ago
  Bitcoin (capital B) still is! The Bitcoin Core project (BTC) was hijacked years ago by corporate interests (Adam Back's Blockstream) and crippled to push their "second layer" solutions to the problem they themselves created. The Bitcoin project lives on and most real users and developers moved to other projects like Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Monero the same time Blockstream wrestled control of the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  Bitcoin is Schrödinger’s program. Whenever it’s deficiencies are pointed out, it suddenly becomes something else. Bad transaction rate? It’s not a currency, it’s a store of value! Why does it have value? Because it’s more stable than fiat! What about the volatility? Ignore daily volatility, it’s going to the moon! But why is it worth more? Because you can buy stuff with it, like a currency! Round and round it goes.
  - Closi 6y ago
    10/10 best explanation of Bitcoin I have heard yet. The argument for bitcoins price from even bitcoins advocates usually seems to ultimately boil down to “It’s valuable because the price of it is going up”. If you ask why the price is what it is, the answer is basically that it’s high because it’s going to be even higher in the future! It might be even higher in the future, but this has no economic fundamentals behind it.
    - tekkk 6y ago
      It's psychological anchoring and a mixture of greed combined with a technical innovation which isn't terrible per se, but which does not in fact solve the problem it was originally designed to do. Made artificially inefficient to compute to stop the evil governments and organizations which were apparently making life impossible before the existence of cryptocurrencies. Now it has become inevitability because its price is going up and therefore by induction it has become more valuable and necessary for the whole society. With all the free money that is currently floating around bitcoin is again slowly moving towards its saturation point where the pool of potential buyers is exhausted and the prices have become unsustainably high. The psychology of the market will reverse causing a "run on the bank" (which apparently is a good thing by some gold standard advocates in this thread) and it will again sink like a stone without anything to stop its fall. A good thing to remember is that bitcoin has yet to face a real depression akin to dotcom bubble. If and when it falls to levels so unfathomably low that it would incur losses so heavy that would shake the whole industry to its core, then it might forever lose its status as a digital store of value which price increases forever to infinity. One thing I must say and what most people forget is that bitcoin is also a form of gambling and which actually explains some of its success. It has the characteristics of a sport which is fun to discuss, interesting to research and easy to bet on with a lot of volatility that can be as addicting as gambling in a casino (which again shares a lot of similarities to traditional stock investing or the collection of art pieces). Can we explain why gambling or sports are so addicting or necessary to the whole society? We humans are emotional creatures that believe in the most silliest of things that defy normal logic yet which we can not unravel like the people living in a cave in Plato's allegory. What in the end is real? God is dead said Nietzsche and therefore we are constantly seeking something "valuable" to cling onto.
kylebenzle 6y ago
These HN anit-coiners have no time for your FACTS. They hate Bitcoin because (1) they missed the boat (2) they don't understand it. As the years go on the HN hatred of Bitcoin went from funny to sad as they try harder and harder to justify their ignorance and this article getting to the front page is a perfect example. The article (for example) says that Bitcoin is not a good medium of exchange because, why, it is hard to use. When I pay in Bitcoin (Bitcoin Cash) I open my wallet (enter password), copy paste and address and send. Compared to typing out a CC number, exp. date, secret code AND my home address and real name. Bitcoin is FAR easier to use in comparison. Starting from zero it is STILL way better. These insincere people will usually already have a bank and credit card, then try to compare using that card to starting from scratch with Bitcoin. OF COURSE that is harder, but starting from scratch with both OR starting with an account, Bitcoin is better every time. It is bizarre to see the same non-sense narratives pushed in this forum over and over. Volatility is another one. Yes, for a few days every couple years Bitcoin seems to spike upward then come down to half its high value. Until literally this morning EVERYONE that had EVER bought Bitcoin was better off then when they bought it. Hows that for stability! What other asset can say anything close to that. But they will STILL scream about price swings. When I do talk to otherwise sensible people in day-to-day life about Bitcoin it comes down to people not understanding it. That's harder to judge on-line when people make short comments that superficially seem like legitimate concerns. I bet if you could talk to most of these guys it would come out they really don't understand what Bitcoin is or how it works, so they get scared and angry when they see it doing well.
- washedup 6y ago
  While I am very bullish on Bitcoin, this just isn't fair. Both anti-coiners and pro-coiners spend a lot of time on research to find out the truth, and the truth is that either group could be proven wrong long term. These are uncharted waters. Lastly, they did not miss the boat, there is still plenty of time to buy in and use bitcoin the way it was meant to be: a savings account.
  - kylebenzle 6y ago
    1) Bitcoin is Digital Cash. 2) I am saying, they think they missed the boat. Bitcoin (capital B) is here to stay. 3) The Bitcoin Core chain was long ago hijacked by corporate interests and failed to live up to the White Paper. Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Monero have been around a long time and have real use cases.
kryogen1c 6y ago
Disclaimer: im finance uninitiated What is this a chart of? bitcoin nearly tripled from jan to nov, and has had daily volatility, both pos and neg, that doesnt seem representable by a flat line.
EpicEng 6y ago
And if you don't cherry pick a time period which contains a market crash? I'd also point out that stocks represent a real stake in a real company which may generate real cash. Crypto is thin air and trades on the greater fool theory alone.
- frankenst1 6y ago
  > And if you don't cherry pick a time period which contains a market crash? This chart covers January - November and includes an almost 50% drop in march. And it is still not as volatile as e.g. TSLA. >stocks represent a real stake in a real company which may generate real cash. Crypto is thin air and trades on the greater fool theory alone. There is no such thing as "real cash" - you can exchange Bitcoin for dollars like you would with stocks. The reason Bitcoin is worth as much as it is, is precisely that many Bitcoin "hodlers" are not selling, because they understand that Bitcoin has a fixed supply while the USD continues to inflate, which increases wealth inequalities and enables government to spend money with less democratic oversight. The rich get bailouts they use to buy up stocks and real estate in order to protect themselves. Poor people who can't afford this and who are sick of this are the ones buying Bitcoin.
  - EpicEng 6y ago
    >This chart covers January - November and includes an almost 50% drop in march. And it is still not as volatile as e.g. TSLA. ...and if you don't cherry pick one of the most volatile, well known stocks in the market? We can keep doing this, but TSLA is not "the market", it's a single company and trades completely on hopes and dreams. It's not a good surrogate for every other company. >There is no such thing as "real cash" - you can exchange Bitcoin for dollars like you would with stocks Yes, you can trade fake currency for real currency so that you can actually use it. And companies represent real assets; BTC is thin air. This is not a difficult concept to understand. BTC has _zero_ intrinsic value as an asset. >The reason Bitcoin is worth as much as it is, is precisely that many Bitcoin "hodlers" are not selling, because they understand that Bitcoin has a fixed supply while the USD continues to inflate, which increases wealth inequalities and enables government to spend money with less democratic oversight. Stocks hedge against inflation as well, so do many other asset classes. BTC trades like it does because a whole lot of people want to get rich quick. Of course some people share your opinion, but we're talking about something that provides no actual value. If you have to trade it in for a currency you can actually use and it goes up with inflation then... it's no different than stock in a good company from that perspective. It goes up more because it trades 100% on speculation and the greater fool theory.
mbesto 6y ago
So, your statement of "it has higher volatility" is based on observing the colors of the graph (i.e. not a calculation of the underlying data)? Jeesh...I don't know where to start... I know this is against HN guidelines to say this, but your top level comment needs to get downvoted into oblivion. This is not grounded in any evidence worth of value.

croes 6y ago

But didn't Bitcoin want to be a currency and not stocks?

eloff 6y ago
More like digital gold. Calling it a currency is really not an apt description.
- minitoar 6y ago
  Unfortunate they called it a 'coin' then. Maybe it should've been Bitgold. Digimetal.
  - thinkmassive 6y ago
    The name Bit Gold was already recently used for a similar project by Nick Szabo when Bitcoin was announced: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bit-gold/ https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bit-gold/ Contrary to what many people who only recently discovered Bitcoin probably believe, it was not created in a vacuum as some Ponzi scheme. Instead it was a concept that had been iterated on for decades until Satoshi discovered the right combination of cryptographic technologies and economic incentives to make a so-far-unstoppable decentralized digital currency.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Well, Satoshi was more than likely Paul Calder Le Roux who wanted a way to launder the proceeds of his crime network. > Instead it was a concept that had been iterated on for decades until Satoshi discovered the right combination of cryptographic technologies and economic incentives to make a so-far-unstoppable decentralized digital currency. You know how that sounds right? Like religion, not clear-headed thinking.
      - thinkmassive 6y ago
        I expect Bitcoin to affect monetary systems in a way similar to how FOSS changed software. My opinion is neither of those is a religion. The development of Bitcoin in particular sounds more like following the scientific method to me, but you're entitled to your own interpretation.
- kylebenzle 6y ago
  It says in the title of the paper, Digital CASH. But, ever since Blockstream (Adam Back and Greg Maxwell) hijacked the GitHub repo years ago Bitcoin (BTC) has purposefully failed at this central use case. However, the project and White Paper live on in projects like Monero, Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum.
- cubano 6y ago
  BTC has already been legally ruled as property, not currency, I believe if I read the ruling correctly. Not digital gold, but pharmaceutical grade gold as Saylor put it in a recent Odd Lots pod, and it's hard to argue that...also quoted from the same pod..[not a perfect transcript] "...so that took us to cryptos and we looked at 6500 cryptos and we found that BTC is the dominant network. its 25x bigger than the next closest thing that looks like it, and has more than $200bil monetary energy in it. it is basically Facebook or Google for money. and this is the nuance that most people haven't realized yet..what you have is a dominant digital network that has been engineered to host a safe haven treasury reserve asset superior to gold in all respects. it's pharmaceutical grade gold [love this line]. if God [blurb] gold as a treasury reserve asset to hold for 100 years, he would create 21mil gold coins, he'd make it impossible to make any more, he would make it possible to audit it from anywhere on earth from any node every 10 minutes, make it unhackable and make it an open architecture where you could build it into an iphone or into Square or paypal or any other exchange without permission, and he would distribute it everywhere on earth with these crypto SHA256 miners so hat no company controls it, no CEO controls it, no country controls it, and no regulators control it..."[0] [0] https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/6b8b72d0-455c-11eb-b9ed-377604512ee6 https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/6b8b72d0-455c-11eb-b9ed-377...
  - ordinaryradical 6y ago
    But given the dynamics of PoW mining, isn't bitcoin defacto controlled by a handful of Chinese mining cartels, which are themselves controlled by the CCP? I feel like this whole pitch makes sense until you get to that part.
    - cubano 6y ago
      So in a way...who cares who mines it? Do you care who owns your real estate before you buy it? Or who mines your gold before you wear it? Probably not. Yes I suppose there is some political aspect to that side of it, but the crypto itself...it's about as apolitical as it gets.
      - qw3rty01 6y ago
- squeaky-clean 6y ago
  The first sentence of the bitcoin whitepaper is literally "A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."
  - chillacy 6y ago
    I think it's safe to say that the BTC community has pivoted to a more fitting use case for their technology. The Bitcoin Cash fork and Litecoin made scaling choices that make it better for payments.
  - EpicEng 6y ago
    And if they said it were a unicorn, would that make it true? It's not a currency because you can't use it as a currency.
  - eloff 6y ago
    It doesn't matter what it was marketed as. It matters what it is. But they made it deflationary and a good currency needs to be inflationary otherwise you just hold onto it instead of spending it. Which had made it more like a digital gold. It has totally failed as a system for payments for this and other reasons. It is also too slow and too expensive per transaction.
kylebenzle 6y ago
Bitcoin (capital B) still is! The Bitcoin Core project (BTC) was hijacked years ago by corporate interests (Adam Back's Blockstream) and crippled to push their "second layer" solutions to the problem they themselves created. The Bitcoin project lives on and most real users and developers moved to other projects like Ethereum, Bitcoin Cash and Monero the same time Blockstream wrestled control of the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo.
ashtonkem 6y ago
Bitcoin is Schrödinger’s program. Whenever it’s deficiencies are pointed out, it suddenly becomes something else. Bad transaction rate? It’s not a currency, it’s a store of value! Why does it have value? Because it’s more stable than fiat! What about the volatility? Ignore daily volatility, it’s going to the moon! But why is it worth more? Because you can buy stuff with it, like a currency! Round and round it goes.
- Closi 6y ago
  10/10 best explanation of Bitcoin I have heard yet. The argument for bitcoins price from even bitcoins advocates usually seems to ultimately boil down to “It’s valuable because the price of it is going up”. If you ask why the price is what it is, the answer is basically that it’s high because it’s going to be even higher in the future! It might be even higher in the future, but this has no economic fundamentals behind it.
  - tekkk 6y ago
    It's psychological anchoring and a mixture of greed combined with a technical innovation which isn't terrible per se, but which does not in fact solve the problem it was originally designed to do. Made artificially inefficient to compute to stop the evil governments and organizations which were apparently making life impossible before the existence of cryptocurrencies. Now it has become inevitability because its price is going up and therefore by induction it has become more valuable and necessary for the whole society. With all the free money that is currently floating around bitcoin is again slowly moving towards its saturation point where the pool of potential buyers is exhausted and the prices have become unsustainably high. The psychology of the market will reverse causing a "run on the bank" (which apparently is a good thing by some gold standard advocates in this thread) and it will again sink like a stone without anything to stop its fall. A good thing to remember is that bitcoin has yet to face a real depression akin to dotcom bubble. If and when it falls to levels so unfathomably low that it would incur losses so heavy that would shake the whole industry to its core, then it might forever lose its status as a digital store of value which price increases forever to infinity. One thing I must say and what most people forget is that bitcoin is also a form of gambling and which actually explains some of its success. It has the characteristics of a sport which is fun to discuss, interesting to research and easy to bet on with a lot of volatility that can be as addicting as gambling in a casino (which again shares a lot of similarities to traditional stock investing or the collection of art pieces). Can we explain why gambling or sports are so addicting or necessary to the whole society? We humans are emotional creatures that believe in the most silliest of things that defy normal logic yet which we can not unravel like the people living in a cave in Plato's allegory. What in the end is real? God is dead said Nietzsche and therefore we are constantly seeking something "valuable" to cling onto.

kylebenzle 6y ago

These HN anit-coiners have no time for your FACTS. They hate Bitcoin because (1) they missed the boat (2) they don't understand it. As the years go on the HN hatred of Bitcoin went from funny to sad as they try harder and harder to justify their ignorance and this article getting to the front page is a perfect example. The article (for example) says that Bitcoin is not a good medium of exchange because, why, it is hard to use. When I pay in Bitcoin (Bitcoin Cash) I open my wallet (enter password), copy paste and address and send. Compared to typing out a CC number, exp. date, secret code AND my home address and real name. Bitcoin is FAR easier to use in comparison. Starting from zero it is STILL way better. These insincere people will usually already have a bank and credit card, then try to compare using that card to starting from scratch with Bitcoin. OF COURSE that is harder, but starting from scratch with both OR starting with an account, Bitcoin is better every time. It is bizarre to see the same non-sense narratives pushed in this forum over and over. Volatility is another one. Yes, for a few days every couple years Bitcoin seems to spike upward then come down to half its high value. Until literally this morning EVERYONE that had EVER bought Bitcoin was better off then when they bought it. Hows that for stability! What other asset can say anything close to that. But they will STILL scream about price swings. When I do talk to otherwise sensible people in day-to-day life about Bitcoin it comes down to people not understanding it. That's harder to judge on-line when people make short comments that superficially seem like legitimate concerns. I bet if you could talk to most of these guys it would come out they really don't understand what Bitcoin is or how it works, so they get scared and angry when they see it doing well.

washedup 6y ago
While I am very bullish on Bitcoin, this just isn't fair. Both anti-coiners and pro-coiners spend a lot of time on research to find out the truth, and the truth is that either group could be proven wrong long term. These are uncharted waters. Lastly, they did not miss the boat, there is still plenty of time to buy in and use bitcoin the way it was meant to be: a savings account.
- kylebenzle 6y ago
  1) Bitcoin is Digital Cash. 2) I am saying, they think they missed the boat. Bitcoin (capital B) is here to stay. 3) The Bitcoin Core chain was long ago hijacked by corporate interests and failed to live up to the White Paper. Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum and Monero have been around a long time and have real use cases.

kryogen1c 6y ago

Disclaimer: im finance uninitiated What is this a chart of? bitcoin nearly tripled from jan to nov, and has had daily volatility, both pos and neg, that doesnt seem representable by a flat line.

EpicEng 6y ago

And if you don't cherry pick a time period which contains a market crash? I'd also point out that stocks represent a real stake in a real company which may generate real cash. Crypto is thin air and trades on the greater fool theory alone.

frankenst1 6y ago
> And if you don't cherry pick a time period which contains a market crash? This chart covers January - November and includes an almost 50% drop in march. And it is still not as volatile as e.g. TSLA. >stocks represent a real stake in a real company which may generate real cash. Crypto is thin air and trades on the greater fool theory alone. There is no such thing as "real cash" - you can exchange Bitcoin for dollars like you would with stocks. The reason Bitcoin is worth as much as it is, is precisely that many Bitcoin "hodlers" are not selling, because they understand that Bitcoin has a fixed supply while the USD continues to inflate, which increases wealth inequalities and enables government to spend money with less democratic oversight. The rich get bailouts they use to buy up stocks and real estate in order to protect themselves. Poor people who can't afford this and who are sick of this are the ones buying Bitcoin.
- EpicEng 6y ago
  >This chart covers January - November and includes an almost 50% drop in march. And it is still not as volatile as e.g. TSLA. ...and if you don't cherry pick one of the most volatile, well known stocks in the market? We can keep doing this, but TSLA is not "the market", it's a single company and trades completely on hopes and dreams. It's not a good surrogate for every other company. >There is no such thing as "real cash" - you can exchange Bitcoin for dollars like you would with stocks Yes, you can trade fake currency for real currency so that you can actually use it. And companies represent real assets; BTC is thin air. This is not a difficult concept to understand. BTC has _zero_ intrinsic value as an asset. >The reason Bitcoin is worth as much as it is, is precisely that many Bitcoin "hodlers" are not selling, because they understand that Bitcoin has a fixed supply while the USD continues to inflate, which increases wealth inequalities and enables government to spend money with less democratic oversight. Stocks hedge against inflation as well, so do many other asset classes. BTC trades like it does because a whole lot of people want to get rich quick. Of course some people share your opinion, but we're talking about something that provides no actual value. If you have to trade it in for a currency you can actually use and it goes up with inflation then... it's no different than stock in a good company from that perspective. It goes up more because it trades 100% on speculation and the greater fool theory.

mbesto 6y ago

So, your statement of "it has higher volatility" is based on observing the colors of the graph (i.e. not a calculation of the underlying data)? Jeesh...I don't know where to start... I know this is against HN guidelines to say this, but your top level comment needs to get downvoted into oblivion. This is not grounded in any evidence worth of value.