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$78,000(US) worth of bitcoins couldn't fetch $50 16 months ago
- sequoia 15y agoI really posted this just to get someone who understands bitcoin to tell me that I am (not?) mistaken here. I don't understand bitcoin, but it seems absolutely unbelievable to me that people would have faith in a currency that shows such outrageous volatility as this example seems to suggest. As for "volatility," I don't know all the numbers, I just mean that if it can increase that much in such a short time, it can clearly drop as much in the same amount of time or less. Is the title correct here or am I mistaken? If correct, what the hell is going on?
- polyfractal 15y agoYou are correct, it's "value" has increased as quickly as it seems. Do people have faith in bitcoins as a currency? Sure, some people do. A larger number of people see it as a way to make a quick profit by speculating. Whether bitcoins are legitimate currency or not is irrelevant - as long as people are willing to pay "real" money for them (and there exists a way to get "real" money back out) there will be speculators manipulating the market and inflating prices. If, or how long, this will last is really anyone's guess. It could all collapse tomorrow, or (unlikely) turn into a legit "real" currency.
- wmf 15y agoYes, the value has risen that much; see http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#lztgSzm1g10zm2g25 http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#lztgSzm1g10zm2g25 or http://bitcoinx.com/charts/ http://bitcoinx.com/charts/ Much of the increase can be attributed to a speculative bubble, but Bitcoin's fundamentals have improved since mid 2010. AFAIK, at that time the wallet software was still pretty buggy, there were no automated exchanges, GPU mining and pooled mining hadn't been invented, etc. I wouldn't really call that volatility.