8 ms·

Show HN: See the Price of Stocks in BTC

67 points by dannyaziz97 6y ago

pwlb 6y ago
comparing all the stocks, seeing that only tesla is in a stable curve near the end, leads me to the following conclusion: Both Tesla and Bitcoin are heavily overpriced!
OJFord 6y ago
Edit: No it's not! ~This is~ using a fixed USD/BTC conversion though, not translating each data point with BTC value at the time. So ~this is~ like viewing historical charts of US stocks in GBP with today's FX; nobody does that, because it doesn't really tell you anything.
- oefrha 6y ago
  It’s poorly explained, but given that TSLA trends downward for the past month on this site while it was in fact trending upwards in USD terms, I’m pretty sure this site isn’t using a fixed conversion. More precisely, looking at a single point, 12/14/20 (earliest point in the 1m chart): - Site says TSLA = 0.03324 BTC; - TSLA in USD, according to Yahoo Finance: opening $619.00, high $642.75, low $610.20, close $639.83; - BTC in USD, according to Google: $19272.30; - $19272.30 * 0.3324 = $640.61, so roughly checks out. Edit: Of course it's way more obvious if you look at other stocks... People would have been jumping off buildings left and right if the big tech stocks were taking plunges like that.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    Ah yes I think you're right - easiest way to see it is to zoom out to 'all', and they all have roughly the same shape, i.e. of BTC not of the stock, since they're all relatively stable (!). Could definitely be clearer though on landing IMO.
hehehaha 6y ago
Why? Because BTC is such a stable currency that’s widely circulated and used in real economy?
- jason0597 6y ago
  Because BTC can't be created out of thin air limitlessly, I'd say it's much more "stable" in that regard. The chart below shows how out of control the money supply has gotten in 2020. It's inevitable before this mass printing of money translates to big inflation in the economy. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1
  - netrus 6y ago
    The amount of products I can buy for 1 USD was far more stable over the last year then the amount of products I get for one BTC. That's the kind of stability I am looking for in a currency as a consumer.
  - hehehaha 6y ago
    That’s not a good reason. BTC is deflationary which is to say it’s exactly the opposite of what you want in a currency.
    - solarkraft 6y ago
      It's the opposite of what a government wants in a currency. It's something a lot of people want for a secure store of wealth.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- solarkraft 6y ago
  No, basically to get a sense for the possible inflation of the dollar.
larrysalibra 6y ago
I was just looking for something like this the other day when talking with someone about how they should be thinking of their investment returns in terms of BTC and not USD (which has increased in supply > 25%) in the past year. This website, though a bit barren, nicely illustrates the point. Another related one is: https://www.fiatmarketcap.com/ https://www.fiatmarketcap.com/
- larrysalibra 6y ago
  And the ever classic: https://hodlroi.com/ https://hodlroi.com/
- arcticbull 6y ago
  > ...in terms of BTC and not USD (which has increased in supply > 25%) in the past year. It's just shocking to me how people here don't understand inflation. There's such a disconnect between economics education in school and where people end up in reality. Remember folks, supply is only half the picture. Velocity of money matters. They both matter. [1] Supply went up, velocity went down, net 2% inflation. The fed nailed their target. Once velocity goes up printing will slow, or reverse, to maintain the - wait for it - 2% target. 2%. Not 25%. I mean are you telling me you paid $4 for a loaf of bread last year and now it's 5 - and nobody noticed? Compare the performance of both BTC and other speculative assets, and stocks, in USD. That's the only one that matters, because taxes. > Another related one is: https://www.fiatmarketcap.com/ https://www.fiatmarketcap.com/ Holy moly is this one off base. This is not how you compare currencies. China has 4X as many people as America does. There's local and regional differences in the cost of goods in the area. You can compare currencies in a lot of reasonable ways but this sure ain't one of them. A good way is something like the way DXY (the Dollar Index) is calculated - it's based on the relative strength of the dollar compared to a basket of other foreign currencies. But this in and of itself is also not a meaningful number in the sense that the relative strength of a currency is a knob - turn it one way, and you favor exports over imports, and the other way, imports over exports. You can also convert to a neutral currency like USD then compare the PPP factor - which shows you how far a neutral dollar goes in one country vs another, and this varies based on market conditions, regional conditions and local conditions. In some island nations, the dollar won't go as far as goods are expensive. In Canada, it goes much longer. [2] Currencies. Do. Not. Have. Market. Caps. Equities have market caps. You measure market caps of companies in terms of currencies. Why? Because if you have a $1B market cap in equities and you start selling, you'll be left with way less than $1B in hand - selling increases supply. If you sell $1B in currency you get exactly $1B dollars. Comparing money supplies between different countries based on number of units issued, are you serious? It's an utterly and totally meaningless number. It means nothing. You've given me a headache. It's not often you see stuff just so plain wrong on HN. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/velocity.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/velocity.asp [2] https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/PA.NUS.PPPC.RF/rankings https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/PA.NUS.PPPC.RF/r...
rickdangerous1 6y ago
I'm going to put this down for myself as a historical marker. A marker for what, i don't know exactly... but it seems noteworthy.
- esja 6y ago
  It reminds me a lot of the "New Economy" discussions my programmer colleagues were having in mid-to-late 1999 about CSCO and the rest. One guy persuaded his grandmother to sell out of bonds and buy tech stocks. That ended badly.
  - rickdangerous1 6y ago
    It could be that. Or it could be the start of something brand new and very big/exciting. Afterall, the hype of the tech stocks did come to fruition...but 5-15 years later. I don't know.
fabianfabian 6y ago
Thanks for creating this! Over time BTC will become a better measuring tool for stocks than the inflated dollar
studius 6y ago
Fun! But why only TSLA, FB, AAPL, NFLX, AMZN, GOOG, and SPY?
animex 6y ago
While flawed in execution, the general idea is sound. How can we measure the true value of stocks when inflation isn't properly calculated. BTC doesn't have depth. Gold? https://www.macrotrends.net/1378/dow-to-gold-ratio-100-year-historical-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/1378/dow-to-gold-ratio-100-year-...
- wcoenen 6y ago
  On the FRED website, you can easily experiment with dividing one time series by another. Just search for the first time series, then add another from the settings, then plot "a/b". https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=zTmu https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=zTmu
dgrin91 6y ago
This is fun, but it needs to also show another line for normal USD values so I can get the side-by-side comparison to see how crazy it is (or isnt)

67 points by dannyaziz97 6y ago

pwlb 6y ago

comparing all the stocks, seeing that only tesla is in a stable curve near the end, leads me to the following conclusion: Both Tesla and Bitcoin are heavily overpriced!

OJFord 6y ago

Edit: No it's not! ~This is~ using a fixed USD/BTC conversion though, not translating each data point with BTC value at the time. So ~this is~ like viewing historical charts of US stocks in GBP with today's FX; nobody does that, because it doesn't really tell you anything.

oefrha 6y ago
It’s poorly explained, but given that TSLA trends downward for the past month on this site while it was in fact trending upwards in USD terms, I’m pretty sure this site isn’t using a fixed conversion. More precisely, looking at a single point, 12/14/20 (earliest point in the 1m chart): - Site says TSLA = 0.03324 BTC; - TSLA in USD, according to Yahoo Finance: opening $619.00, high $642.75, low $610.20, close $639.83; - BTC in USD, according to Google: $19272.30; - $19272.30 * 0.3324 = $640.61, so roughly checks out. Edit: Of course it's way more obvious if you look at other stocks... People would have been jumping off buildings left and right if the big tech stocks were taking plunges like that.
- OJFord 6y ago
  Ah yes I think you're right - easiest way to see it is to zoom out to 'all', and they all have roughly the same shape, i.e. of BTC not of the stock, since they're all relatively stable (!). Could definitely be clearer though on landing IMO.

hehehaha 6y ago

Why? Because BTC is such a stable currency that’s widely circulated and used in real economy?

jason0597 6y ago
Because BTC can't be created out of thin air limitlessly, I'd say it's much more "stable" in that regard. The chart below shows how out of control the money supply has gotten in 2020. It's inevitable before this mass printing of money translates to big inflation in the economy. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1
- netrus 6y ago
  The amount of products I can buy for 1 USD was far more stable over the last year then the amount of products I get for one BTC. That's the kind of stability I am looking for in a currency as a consumer.
- hehehaha 6y ago
  That’s not a good reason. BTC is deflationary which is to say it’s exactly the opposite of what you want in a currency.
  - solarkraft 6y ago
    It's the opposite of what a government wants in a currency. It's something a lot of people want for a secure store of wealth.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
solarkraft 6y ago
No, basically to get a sense for the possible inflation of the dollar.

larrysalibra 6y ago

I was just looking for something like this the other day when talking with someone about how they should be thinking of their investment returns in terms of BTC and not USD (which has increased in supply > 25%) in the past year. This website, though a bit barren, nicely illustrates the point. Another related one is: https://www.fiatmarketcap.com/ https://www.fiatmarketcap.com/

larrysalibra 6y ago
And the ever classic: https://hodlroi.com/ https://hodlroi.com/
arcticbull 6y ago
> ...in terms of BTC and not USD (which has increased in supply > 25%) in the past year. It's just shocking to me how people here don't understand inflation. There's such a disconnect between economics education in school and where people end up in reality. Remember folks, supply is only half the picture. Velocity of money matters. They both matter. [1] Supply went up, velocity went down, net 2% inflation. The fed nailed their target. Once velocity goes up printing will slow, or reverse, to maintain the - wait for it - 2% target. 2%. Not 25%. I mean are you telling me you paid $4 for a loaf of bread last year and now it's 5 - and nobody noticed? Compare the performance of both BTC and other speculative assets, and stocks, in USD. That's the only one that matters, because taxes. > Another related one is: https://www.fiatmarketcap.com/ https://www.fiatmarketcap.com/ Holy moly is this one off base. This is not how you compare currencies. China has 4X as many people as America does. There's local and regional differences in the cost of goods in the area. You can compare currencies in a lot of reasonable ways but this sure ain't one of them. A good way is something like the way DXY (the Dollar Index) is calculated - it's based on the relative strength of the dollar compared to a basket of other foreign currencies. But this in and of itself is also not a meaningful number in the sense that the relative strength of a currency is a knob - turn it one way, and you favor exports over imports, and the other way, imports over exports. You can also convert to a neutral currency like USD then compare the PPP factor - which shows you how far a neutral dollar goes in one country vs another, and this varies based on market conditions, regional conditions and local conditions. In some island nations, the dollar won't go as far as goods are expensive. In Canada, it goes much longer. [2] Currencies. Do. Not. Have. Market. Caps. Equities have market caps. You measure market caps of companies in terms of currencies. Why? Because if you have a $1B market cap in equities and you start selling, you'll be left with way less than $1B in hand - selling increases supply. If you sell $1B in currency you get exactly $1B dollars. Comparing money supplies between different countries based on number of units issued, are you serious? It's an utterly and totally meaningless number. It means nothing. You've given me a headache. It's not often you see stuff just so plain wrong on HN. [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/velocity.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/velocity.asp [2] https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/PA.NUS.PPPC.RF/rankings https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/PA.NUS.PPPC.RF/r...

rickdangerous1 6y ago

I'm going to put this down for myself as a historical marker. A marker for what, i don't know exactly... but it seems noteworthy.

esja 6y ago
It reminds me a lot of the "New Economy" discussions my programmer colleagues were having in mid-to-late 1999 about CSCO and the rest. One guy persuaded his grandmother to sell out of bonds and buy tech stocks. That ended badly.
- rickdangerous1 6y ago
  It could be that. Or it could be the start of something brand new and very big/exciting. Afterall, the hype of the tech stocks did come to fruition...but 5-15 years later. I don't know.

fabianfabian 6y ago

Thanks for creating this! Over time BTC will become a better measuring tool for stocks than the inflated dollar

studius 6y ago

Fun! But why only TSLA, FB, AAPL, NFLX, AMZN, GOOG, and SPY?

animex 6y ago

While flawed in execution, the general idea is sound. How can we measure the true value of stocks when inflation isn't properly calculated. BTC doesn't have depth. Gold? https://www.macrotrends.net/1378/dow-to-gold-ratio-100-year-historical-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/1378/dow-to-gold-ratio-100-year-...

wcoenen 6y ago
On the FRED website, you can easily experiment with dividing one time series by another. Just search for the first time series, then add another from the settings, then plot "a/b". https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=zTmu https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=zTmu

dgrin91 6y ago

This is fun, but it needs to also show another line for normal USD values so I can get the side-by-side comparison to see how crazy it is (or isnt)