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Bitcoin is over $100k
- Chengdavid 2y ago[dead]
- artemkornilov 2y ago[dead]
- echelon 2y agoHere we go again... Hopefully this pulls competition away from the space I'm in and back into crypto. The last time crypto crashed, crypto folks flooded into generative media and we kind of became associated with them. I'm just trying to make tools.
- z2 2y agoIf crypto has this much staying power despite the crazy hype, any AI winter would appear to be a long ways off!
- equasar 2y agoNot surprised. They're minting Tether USD out of thin air to inflate the price, so it's no shock.
- echelon 2y agoHow? And why isn't that being shorted? Any prediction of when this will come crashing back down?
- wmf 2y agoTether appears to be too big to fail in the crypto world and now crypto is too big to fail in the White House so if you short you are the one who will lose.
- thinkingkong 2y agoOn the contrary. Your way better hedge was polymarket not hitting 100k prior to the election.
- lmm 2y ago> How? People say Bitcoin is worth $100k but what they actually mean is it's worth 100,000 "USDT", because that's the thing you can actually exchange for it. Are those 100,000 "USDT" worth $100k? Well, maybe. Tether claims every USDT is backed by a US dollar. It just can't tell you where they are or let you audit them. But they're there. Honest. > And why isn't that being shorted? How would you short it? Especially given that most crypto trading platforms are going to go bankrupt when it does crash.
- tofuahdude 2y agoIf I sell a bitcoin on Coinbase, Kraken, or any of the other highly regulated exchanges, I am sure as shit getting USD and not USDT, which does not exist on the bitcoin chain.
- wmf 2y agoTether is bad but these aren't correct arguments against it. 1. You can easily sell BTC for 100K actual USD and ACH it out on a regulated exchange like Gemini. 2. You can easily sell USDT for actual USD on (IIRC) Kraken. 3. Technically you can short USDT via various means but you won't be able to collect any profits.
- lmm 2y ago> 1. You can easily sell BTC for 100K actual USD and ACH it out on a regulated exchange like Gemini. 2. You can easily sell USDT for actual USD on (IIRC) Kraken. You can until you can't. As long as people think 1 "USDT" is worth $1, and as long as the amounts you're selling aren't too big, it stays afloat. > 3. Technically you can short USDT via various means but you won't be able to collect any profits. How? If my thesis is that USDT is going to collapse and bring down the whole cryptocurrency ecosystem, what can I buy to express that and profit on it?
- wmf 2y agoI'm going to be deliberately vague because I really really discourage shorting Tether but you can investigate perpetual swaps and defi lending.
- monero-xmr 2y agoThe Tether Truthers never fail to spread their conspiracy. HN should just admit it got crypto 100% wrong.
- testfrequency 2y agoBias much?
- wmf 2y agoTether admitted they loaned USDT against BTC collateral and they allowed the collateral to be delivered later (basically T+2 settlement). When the order book is shallow this is basically free market manipulation. It's not clear how much loaned USDT exists vs. regular USDT and what effect this has had on the price.
- wbl 2y agoNot in the crypto world. Failure to deliver is rare in the exchange world but someone out there would run the long con against Tether for that.
- aryan14 2y agoLove the username
- eric_cc 2y ago[flagged]
- DickingAround 2y agoTINA = There is no alternative... to stocks. Lot of people lost money on long term bonds. Short term bonds are at least better than cash. Stocks are supposed to be about investing in an asset. I guess there is kind of an alternative out there.
- Mistletoe 2y agoCongrats Bitcoin! You just can't overestimate the power of one really good idea. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
- paulryanrogers 2y agoWill people see it as good in hindsight? When coal plants have dumped more waste in the air and oceans, just to drive the value of these tulips?
- Mithriil 2y agoBTC is not sustainable, that's true. However, the world is now aware of decentralized ledgering tools, and other projects have worthwhile technologies and use cases. I just wish they would drop the energy consuming ones...
- deanmoriarty 2y agoI couldn’t care less about crypto, but just for fun I bought 1 BTC in 2016. Still own it, and likely will never sell, but boy I wish I bought a lot more instead of my index funds, skipping one monthly contribution in VTI back then would have mostly set me up for life instead of just having a nice but inconsequential $100k bonus in my portfolio :-) Congrats to the people who held through thick and thin, I speculate (my own opinion) that we will likely not see 80% drawdowns anymore due to all the institutional money that flew in, just “standard” 40-50% dips. Fantastic to witness, an asset class out of thin air. Cheers to the next 10X in 8 years, $1M in 2032!
- ganeshkrishnan 2y agoI had couple of bitcoin from 2013. Sold most at 10k and held on to one at 50k. I was absolutely super duper sure, 50k was the top.
- pacomerh 2y agoHa, this is my story, except I thought 20k was the top.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- calrain 2y ago[flagged]
- WatchDog 2y ago[flagged]
- huijzer 2y ago> inconsequential $100k bonus in my portfolio It seems we are truly ducking poor here in the EU. My parents have been running a farm for 40 years in the Netherlands and they’re doing well financially. Still, $100k is not inconsequential for them!
- xyzzy4747 2y agoI remember when people used to first talk about Bitcoin on HN back in early 2011 or so. The price was only $2 then. Congrats to anyone who had some and held onto it this long - personally I sold off mine in 2015 (big mistake in hindsight).
- bitcoinmoney 2y agoYep I was here when the whole HN mania was so against BTC. I was firmly bogleheads and was still a broke phd student. In hindsight if I just gambled with little money I have I might be set for life. But Don't know if I could have held till 100K.
- paulpauper 2y agofrom $5 in 2011 to $500 was a 100x return, and still 200x too early, crazy
- ArtTimeInvestor 2y agobig mistake in hindsight Will you repeat it?
- some-guy 2y agoIs there way to quantify how much of the economy these days is "bullshit" (purely speculative assets), and if we are at peak bullshit now as a percentage of total economic activity?
- xyzzy4747 2y agoThe entire economy outside of agriculture and real estate is basically "bullshit", if you really think about it. The ratio of bullshit to everything else seems to increase over time, though, as a general trend. It's probably correlated to technology.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoThis seems reductive. Things do get more abstract, yet there is a spectrum of naunce: oil, vehicles, clothing, etc.
- xyzzy4747 2y agoFor countless millennia, humans didn't need anything more except food, some very basic tools, a place to live, and other humans. You could argue that everything since then is layers and layers of bullshit. Bitcoin is just another one.
- paulryanrogers 2y agoI'm arguing the general point is shallow and not useful. IMO BitCoin is designed to fail as a currency with it's mining costs, and a bad idea as an investment since exchanging it is such a house of cards. Never mind that holding any significant quantity invites dangerous people with wrenches.
- Ekaros 2y agoHumans did also need fuel(wood mostly). Often this was reasonably easy to get. But still involved labour. As such storage of energy that can be released at will do have value think of coal, oil and gas. These as such are not "bullshit". Water might be other one. But now that is cheap enough, even with desalination.
- paxys 2y agoImportant to remember that while income and wealth inequality is at record highs, the trillions of dollars injected into the economy are still floating around among the top. People are getting more and more creative with investments (see luxury watches, sneakers, trading cards, collectibles, meme stocks all seeing a significant bump in value in recent years). Bitcoin's price is simply another symptom of this. What I find new about this recent bull run is that the usual "crypto will upend global financial systems/crypto will change the world" hype is conspicuously missing. All the "Blockchain startups" have basically disappeared. NFTs are worthless. There is little/no VC money going into the space. I think people are finally coming to terms with the fact that it is a speculative investment and nothing more.
- nadermx 2y agoI just struggle to see it's utility
- testfrequency 2y agoIt’s because there isn’t any
- paulryanrogers 2y agoSomewhere between tulips and gold.
- XCSme 2y agoBoth are pretty, though.
- xyzzy4747 2y agoIt definitely has utility but it is at the same time overhyped IMO. Some examples of utility: 1. Cross-border transfers without needing permission from banks or identification 2. A fungible digital asset you can hoard and nobody can physically take from you if you secure the keys. 3. If you are a business in a gray or black market industry, you can accept payments from customers online without needing permission from payment processors. Many types of businesses are effectively banned by the banking system. 4. It provides a way to obfuscate your wealth which can help protect against asset seizures. Similar to #2.
- deadbabe 2y agoWhy hell does this keep going up? Can you pretty much just buy at any point in time and be guaranteed a 10x return?
- csomar 2y agoIf you hold long enough and the chain keeps working, then probably yes. However, this 10x return is guaranteed against the dollar and not real value. The gov. is committed to devaluing currency over a long period of time.
- cconroy 2y agoThis is definitely true but btc buys you more of almost anything else too (btc/X): X is one of s&p500, housing, gold, etc. except maybe $nvda or $tsla. For example the btc chart in dollars looks the same as in gold.
- npoc 2y agoNo - it's quite reasonable to project bitcoin increasing in value (not price) 100x from here.
- xenospn 2y agoWe haven’t run out of greater fools just yet
- eric_cc 2y ago[flagged]
- efficax 2y agobubbles go up and up and up… until they don’t
- jdenning 2y agoBut it has been a bubble and popped/crashed/recovered 4(?) times now - it seem fair to start considering it as a cycle rather than a bubble. I don’t know much about crypto or finance, so maybe I’m completely wrong
- genghisjahn 2y agoIt’s way higher than I ever thought it’d be. I sold mine at $800 so maybe I’ve got some sour grapes here, but all this reminds me of the book “Devil Take The Hindmost.”
- TacticalCoder 2y agoYou're talking about mania that lasted, at the very most, three years. Is it really that intellectually honest to compare tulips, which can be grown everywhere, by anyone, with "something" that has been designed, on purpose, to have a diminishing issuance rate? Satoshi made it very clear, in the very first Bitcoin block, that Bitcoin was a middle finger to politicians ever printing more money to bail out the banks. I see Bitcoin has the "anti tulip".
- genghisjahn 2y agoHousing went up for a long time and then what happened in 2008? That wasn’t a 2-3 year mania. Everyone thought houses were “safe as houses.” The stock market rally in the 90s went up until it didn’t in the .com crash. I’m not comparing btc to tulips, I’m comparing it to things that went up a lot and then went down fast. And if you come back with “btc is different” I’ll respond with “that’s what everyone says about everything else before it crashes.”
- Ekaros 2y agoI got something like 30k XRP for free. Then I traded that for one BTC and got 300. I could now have 100k, but oh well I never was true believer. And I am still too sceptical even with stock market...
- rvz 2y agoThe problem with the anti-crypto absolutists is that they just watched Bitcoin and the entire crypto industry go up once again and they did nothing but complain. They are real quiet today. No where to be seen this time and probably sulking that they ended up on the wrong side of the trade. (again) Well done to those who did not listen to their cope.
- pm2222 2y agoSounds like btc is good for large amount of transfer as relatively low cost but not really ready for day to day expenses like gas/grocery. Yes?
- Trasmatta 2y agoPeople gave up on using BTC as an actual currency long ago. It's solely an investment vehicle now.
- stackingsaunter 2y agoYeah, so how can you explain I use it for daily payments here in El Salvador, buying groceries, coffee and pupusas? I need to use fiat maybe once a week, otherwise I pay with bitcoin for everything
- tim333 2y agoI used it as actual currency not long ago to buy phone credit on Silent Link via the lightning network. So it is possible if quite a niche use case. Silent Link is quite cool by the way - they have an esim that works with almost every network on the planet and the credit doesn't expire.
- aryan14 2y agoYou’re right, but that’s not what BTC was designed for. You could use something like Litecoin, Solana, maybe even Ethereum if you’re willing to pay the fee.
- ajkdhcb2 2y agoThe whitepaper shows it was intended to be "peer to peer electronic cash". It did clearly fail at that goal since it has none of the privacy of cash and so on.
- aryan14 2y agoHow did it fail at being P2P e-cash? You can use bitcoin completely/as anonymously as cash if you wanted to, the same way you’d have to put in a bit of effort to have a completely anonymous cash transaction. Monero (XMR) which is a fork of bitcoin, is much closer to actual cash
- ericra 2y agoHonestly, this is just repulsive. Crypto has brought nearly zero benefits to society and has made income inequality even worse. Not to mention the environmental impact. I don't see how any reasonable person can celebrate this. Ask yourself who is benefiting most from this.
- eric_cc 2y ago[flagged]
- throwme_123 2y agoYou can't be more wrong. If anything, from my personal experience, "crypto" brought financial resources to minorities, especially PoC in the US. Some of them would never had that chance in the traditional world if you identify to that cause.
- aryan14 2y agoDecentralization helps a lot of people who may be under government pressure/being monitored, for example if you’re an anti-government russian journalist, you’d ideally use crypto as they would be able to freeze your assets. Lots of citizens of sanctioned countries aren’t able to use their credit/debit cards to shop online outside of their country, paying with crypto or even using something like a SolCard fixes that. It’s also generally convenient, there’s no other realistic and accessible way to transfer any sum of money, whether $10 or $10M, for a $2 fee nearly instantly.
- WheelsAtLarge 2y agoIf you are feeling regret, don't. Very few people anticipated such a significant increase. Any profit is a good profit. Even investments that seem highly promising can end up in bankruptcy. This is one of the few that managed to succeed.
- eric_cc 2y ago[flagged]
- evantbyrne 2y agoNaw man not everything is luck. People have been talking about $100k Bitcoin for what feels like forever now. When the stock market rolled back two years of gains and Bitcoin moved similarly, those who understood what they were looking at made big plays. What happens long-term now that it has hit that mythical price point is less clear.
- Gigachad 2y ago“People have been talking about” a lot of things that never happened. If this price was truely guaranteed, then investors would have bought in as soon as the information became available.
- cypherpunks01 2y agoBitcoin's not had to file for bankruptcy so far. And CEO never assassinated. But you never know, crazier things have happened.
- TheBruceHimself 2y agoI just don't understand why you'd choose Bitcoin over gold. Gold, like Bitcoin, was criticized for just being a stupid store of value, but that wasn't completely true as it undoubtedly had some utility in the economy. Worst case comes and the market crashes, you know there's at least someone somewhere buying. What does Bitcoin get you over gold? The same "it's scarce and therefore valuable" narrative so you can store your wealth there, but it's not got the intrinsic value of gold. If the market crashes, you can't sell Bitcoin to someone to make jewelry or false teeth. If you want to argue that people could theoretically discover a lot more gold or bring in an asteroid one day full of it, okay, but then why not just by land then? Even better than gold, there's a potential for some income too. Or why not just go with something that's equally as scarce like vintage wine? You literally can't make anymore wine of a particular year; it's inherently scarce.
- ipaddr 2y agoBitcoin offers portability by not having to store gold. Rapid price changes. One is more stable and the other more lucrative.
- from-nibly 2y agoThe last two things are descriptions of the markets of those things not the things themselves.
- ipaddr 2y agoAgreed. Bitcoin is worthless unless you dig random characters. You can't eat it or wear it and it isn't used in industry. The same can be said about money or cash.
- Mithriil 2y agoTo follow up on the idea. It HAS a physical tie: it is the energy spent to run the chain, which is, however, backward to gold being a material. And it's not to the advantage of the owners, but of the miners. I can easily see a catastrophic scenario out of this: a downward spiral of value happens for XY reason, and then a halving happens. That makes the mining of it suddenly highly costly, which makes it uninteresting, or less and less profitable to mine, which renders the chain slower and less popular, etc. However, I think that the popularity of Bitcoin is still on the rise, and we won't see such a downward spiral before many halvings (20 years? That's a lot of GWh lost to useless computing...)
- max_likelihood 2y agoI wonder how much of the price action is due to debt funded purchases through MSTR and other leveraged ETFs (e.g. BITU, BITX)?
- throw101010 2y agoHave a look at the daily volume of trading for Bitcoin, these financial tools are a very small part of this... we are talking $50-100 billions daily. It does contribute, but in terms of scale way less than what you seem to suggest... arguably I would guess that these days the announcements of big purchases move the market more than the actual purchase itself.
- Uptrenda 2y agoI was there, anon... I was there 11 years ago when the $100k Bitcoin was proposed... One had only to outstretch their hand and all the Bitcoins would be yours. But the coins, it seemed, had a will of their own. The fearful and the weak were the first to fall to its power. I watched grown men cry out as their fortunes vanished in an instant, lost to the abyss of forgotten passwords and the fiery maw of exchange hacks. “It is but numbers on a ledger,” they said at first, dismissive of its allure. Yet the numbers grew, and their hearts darkened with greed. I remember the great split—the Hard Fork Wars. Brothers turned against brothers, chains rent asunder, each claiming to be the true heir of Nakamoto's vision. But it was a war without banners, fought not with swords, but with hash rates and cryptographic fire. Many were the tokens that fell, discarded like the leaves of autumn, their worth reduced to naught. I saw the rise of the altcoins, a thousand pretenders clamoring for a place in the sun. "To the moon!" they cried, their banners bright and hopeful. But most found only ruin, their holders wandering the barren wastes of forgotten wallets, muttering of rug pulls and false prophets. Then came the age of DeFi, and the people rejoiced, for they thought they had found a new power—a magic to rival the centralized lords of old. But it was a perilous path, anon, filled with cunning contracts and exploits that devoured the unwary. I saw kingdoms built on leverage crumble in a single night, their rulers cast out into the dark. And the NFTs! Ah, the NFTs… Each token a promise, a glimpse of eternity, they said. Men and elves alike paid dearly for these fragments of art and culture, yet many were cursed to hold only shadows, their treasures mocked by the uncaring markets. Through it all, the Bitcoin endured, its ledger immutable, its purpose unyielding. But even it was not free from the grasping hands of fate. I remember the fall of Mt. Gox, the poisoned chalice of FTX, and the whispers of whales who moved the tides unseen. Each event a lesson, each loss a tale of hubris and folly. Now, anon, as we stand upon the precipice of a new cycle, the wise and the weary tread cautiously. For the Bitcoin, though a gift, is also a burden. Those who seek it must be strong of will and sharp of mind, lest they too fall prey to its power. I have seen the rise and fall of many. I have borne witness to fortunes made and lost, dreams forged and shattered. And still, the blockchain spins, unending, unyielding, like the great Eye ever watching. Beware, anon. For the world of crypto is not for the faint of heart. It is a realm of shadow and light, where one must navigate with care, or be consumed by the fire of their own greed.
- prng2021 2y ago$1k, $10k, $100k. Watching this nonsensical hype at every stage left me in disbelief. Funny thing is after all these years I’m finally realizing there’s no reason whatsoever why it couldn’t hit $1M, $1B, or go back to $1. Anytime we see a dollar symbol we assume something has value like a traditional asset, tied to tangible or measurable things like material costs, a company’s quarterly earnings, etc. But cryptocurrencies are totally different. This thing’s dollar value per unit wildly fluctuates literally hourly, because it’s based purely on human emotion and speculation.
- Empact 2y agoThere is an upper limit on the aggregate value of money - somehow related to the amount of stored value in the economy. On the other hand, there is no lower limit on the value of a dollar. If bitcoin reaches $1B it will be through some combination of dollar depreciation and bitcoin appreciation. https://www.fiatmarketcap.com https://www.fiatmarketcap.com https://assetmarketcap.com https://assetmarketcap.com
- JeremyNT 2y agoThe amount of money flowing into it has been a real shock. I too played with bitcoin many years ago, mining on my CPU. Like a sucker I got rid of it because it clearly was not useful at its stated purpose. Why have we created an economy where this kind of speculation is rewarded so highly, while it contributes nothing back to society? It's nonsensical. But once you accept that finance is kind of ridiculous (and completely decoupled from any meaningful work in the real world), you can see that there is no limit to how high it can go.
- jhrmnn 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania - this one lasted only 3 years though
- tim333 2y ago>no reason whatsoever why it couldn’t hit $1M, $1B, or go back to $1 Not entirely true. The value is driven by number of people invested x average amount they have invested. Most of the historic increase has been as the number of people involved increased. Currently that's probably in the 100 - 200 million people range. It could 10x from here to $1M per bitcoin but is unlikely to go to $1B or $1.
- colesantiago 2y agoIt is still a pyramid / ponzi scheme. Sell while it is still high.
- xnx 2y agoWhatever your theory of Bitcoin is, it has to incorporate that its 50% price increase is directly tied to the US election outcome.
- eric_cc 2y ago[flagged]
- tofuahdude 2y agoI'm curious what you'll "blame" the next 50% price increase on.
- zahlman 2y agoNothing ever seems to come of discussing this topic on HN - just the usual cycle of people arguing with each other over whether BTC "ought to" (by what ontological principles?) be worth what it is (or, for that matter, anything at all), or what social impacts it has, etc. None of that has anything at all to do with the current spot price. That's just an excuse to "debate" the topic again by pulling out the same old arguments. Several other submissions intended to report the same simple fact were flagged and killed. Why not this one?
- Mistletoe 2y ago[flagged]
- jaredklewis 2y agoWell I mean, is there anything to discuss about the spot price itself? Stocks, bonds, and other assets also regularly reach round, base 10 values, and I can't think of any substance in these events generally worth discussing. Bringing out the usual flame wars seems as good a move as any.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- owens99 2y agoCongrats to the everyone who had the conviction to hold Bitcoin all these years.
- owens99 2y agoWhy is this post flagged?
- cypherpunks01 2y agoBecause people on the site don't like the topic
- TacticalCoder 2y agoYup why is flagged? The discussion seems civilized. It looks like there aren't too many people comparing something that was designed, on purpose, with a fixed supply curve using a diminishing issuance rate and which exists since 16 years with "tulips", a mania that lasted 3 years (and everybody could grow tulips anywhere they want). I stand my case: Satoshi made it very clear with his message in Bitcoin's genesis block that his invention was a gigantic middle finger to politicians bailing out banks by ever printing more money. Bitcoin is the antithesis of tulips. Bitcoin is the "fuck you" to QE / fractional reserve banking / helicopter money / physical bills printing / bonds issuance / etc. And, so far, it's working.
- jerb 2y ago[flagged]
- animex 2y agoTo think I had 17 BTC at one point :-)
- tobyhinloopen 2y ago[flagged]
- skwee357 2y agoI'm failing to understand the proposition behind bitcoin. From what I remember, the amount of BTC is finite, so eventually we will run out of new BTCs, and by then, most will be held by big institutions and some individuals who didn't want to sell, and it will become yet another luxury commodity like diamonds or gold. Hence, the entire premise of "Bitcoin is the future of money" is kind of stupid, unless it's money for the ultrarich/lucky, because it's not available to the common folks. And even if it was available to the common folks, how do you expect to live in a world where your currency changes value drastically from day to day? Isn't that a characteristic of a defaulted state/currency? But let's say it's not the money of the future, but rather a speculative investment that is "not tied to greedy institutions". How does one sell 10 BTC and cash it out, bypassing the "greedy banks"? Last time I checked, most reputable exchanges are somewhat regulated, and in any way, getting a sudden $1M won't go unnoticed by the government. So yes, I am failing to understand the premise of bitcoin. It seems to fail on both as the currency of the future, as well as unregulated investment instrument.
- tmikaeld 2y agoThat's the irony of it all isn't it - since it's bound to traditional currencies for it's valuation, it's essentially the same thing as a traditional currency except you can't inflate it by printing more of it. It is "digital gold" at this point.
- omnimus 2y agoIts a tradable financial asset. You are indeed right that it cannot be money. As finance people were saying from the very start. The whole point of money is that its possible to influence its price.
- ArtTimeInvestor 2y agoit's money for the ultrarich/lucky Ok, so let's say you buy 1 Bitcoin today and then we end up in that future. Now 21 million minus one ultrarich lucky guys hold one Bitcoin and one stupid poor guy (you) holds one bitcoin? Or would it make you part of the ultrarich lucky club?
- 2y ago
- asenna 2y agoWhy is this post flagged?
- jpatters 2y agoMakes me really wish I could find that wallet I mined 50 bitcoin into from my laptop back in 2009 and then got bored of because they were essentially worthless.
- ArenaSource 2y agoWhy all this negativity against Bitcoin? It is one of the best instruments for speculating on the extent of human idiocy.