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Bitcoin price hits $100K for first time in history
- brtkdotse 2y agoAh, the main application of Bitcoin - ransomware - is now more lucrative then ever.
- nurumaik 2y agoWell, bitcoin has many legitimate uses like buying drugs or evading taxation
- can16358p 2y ago...just like, fiat money. At least, Bitcoin can't be printed and not centralized like a government-controlled money. Bitcoin is not perfect, also not fully decentralized either, but still much better than more-centralized fiat which are government-controlled and are still used for all the harmful purposes already.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- agilob 2y agobut still the most popular currency for tax evasion, buying drugs and international terrorism funding is USD using citibank and deutche bank infrastructure.
- xigoi 2y agoDon’t forget money laundering.
- mattfrommars 2y agoThere are plenty of better ways to money launder right now than to use BTC. The classic buying of art work and shell companies are fantastic to evade taxes and clean black money
- stuckkeys 2y agoBannanas taped to a wall.
- diegoholiveira 2y agoWell, USD is used too. For decades. Even with too many regulations and security controls implemented by financial institutions around the world.
- tigrezno 2y agohow? bitcoin is not anonymous
- nurumaik 2y agoIt's anonymous as long as you manage to sell it without connection to your real identity
- vasco 2y agoJust the latest one: https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/news/operation-destabilise-nca-disrupts-multi-billion-russian-money-laundering-networks-with-links-to-drugs-ransomware-and-espionage-resulting-in-84-arrests https://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/news/operation-destab...
- Adam121 2y ago[flagged]
- gbnwl 2y agoSure but predicting Bitcoin will crash again is like predicting the sun will rise tomorrow, obvious and not a novel or useful prediction. What is your long term prediction of whether/when it will die off and never recover? So far the "HODL" people keep getting vindicated every cycle with higher and higher peaks. Unless you can point to a specific strategy of when to short, what's the utility of this view? Even "just avoid it like the plague" has been a increasingly losing strategy.
- devjab 2y agoI’m not sure I agree that avoiding crypto has been an inherently losing strategy. If your plan is to gradually grow your fortune in a non-volatile environment then crypto seems like a bad place to put your funds. There are a lot of places you can sit your money and get a safe 5-10% return, which is great for a lot of people. Sometimes the options come with the advantage of actually making you a lot more if the projects truly succeed. We’ve done it with the construction/restoration and the sale of solar plants for a decade now. You are also correct in that buying it after a major crash has historically been a very good business. It’s still something which has no value, however, and I’d consider that a somewhat risky (and a losing for many) strategy compared to putting your money into energy, medicine and water.
- gbnwl 2y agobuying it after a major crash has historically been a very good business Even buying it after a major peak (literally every single prior peak) and just holding throughout the crash has been very good business. Agreed that almost no one can stomach the volatility though if they truly hold Bitcoin as their main asset. I've always held it with full knowledge that it's a speculative asset and holding it is in fact speculation and should not represent the majority of my portfolio. The issue I have is my speculative asset keeps multiplying and dwarfing my safe 5-10% investments and I have to maintain extreme discipline to keep rebalancing during peaks like this.
- gjs278 2y ago[dead]
- olalonde 2y agoI'm starting to think Inverse HN would perhaps rival Inverse Cramer.
- sigmoid10 2y agoThe inverse Cramer ETF lost 15% after a year and got shut down. Being wrong on the stock market does not mean that someone doing the opposite is right. Just like in software dev, there are infintely many ways to be wrong and by comparison only very few to be right.
- vasco 2y agoThere's no "opposite" when the decision space is very wide and with time as a factor. There's many "opposites" to choose from when you want to do "not what the guy did", so in the end it was just a "we promise to do anything except what Cramer says" rather than opposite.
- echoangle 2y agoThere’s still a clear opposite for many predictions. If someone says he’s betting on stock X, the opposite would be to go short. And if someone says the stock is overpriced, you buy it.
- vasco 2y agoNo, that is literally the fallacy. If someone says he's betting on stock X, the opposite is not to go short. That's one way of doing "not what he did". Another way of doing "not what he did" is to for example sell a PUT, because maybe you think it's just going to stay flat. Another way is to not do anything, and instead wait, because going short costs money (you're borrowing a stock and borrowing fees on it), and so the act of shorting itself can lose you money if he isn't "wrong fast enough". So is the opposite to short it on the day he says he's buying, or is the opposite to short it the next week? Even "pure opposite" situations would require exact entrypoints and exit points which you wouldn't have. You literally fell for the exact thing I was describing.
- TrackerFF 2y agoDuplicate comment from the other thread: 11 years ago I sold 100 BTC, and made pretty good money. With that said, the more I think about BTC, the less sense it makes to me. Exceedingly few people actually use it for anything practical. The “store of value” functionality has completely eclipsed the practical use that Bitcoin maxis were preaching back then. Since 2016-2017, it seems like people have bought it for the sole purpose of seeing someone else pay more for it. It will never become some “universal” currency that overtakes national fiats. Right now it seems like people are only hoping for governments to hoard up BTC, to moon the price and provide exit liquidity for early holders - which IMO would be reckless spending. It is the ultimate make-believe asset. Also, when I ran the numbers some time ago, I figured a realistic max value for 1 BTC would be 500k-1M. So the big money has been made, imo. Betting on a good stock could make you just as rich, as waiting BTC to reach its max. Most money will be made buying and selling between the boom cycles.
- cft 2y ago>Also, when I ran the numbers some time ago, I figured a realistic max value for 1 BTC would be 500k-1M In what units? What makes you think there won't be Argentina-style inflation of the USD?
- unyttigfjelltol 2y agoWhat makes you think BTC is an inflation hedge? BTC did not hedge the inflation event in 2022.
- zadler 2y agoThere’s still room for it to become an inflation hedge, we still havnt really seen much in terms of USD inflation and people scrambling for the exit. OTOH, government crackdowns might be able to tank the price.
- fragmede 2y agothe bet is that the incoming regime won't crackdown and may go do the opposite
- the_duke 2y agoAre there theories why Trump getting elected caused such a spike? Expected sanctions devaluing other currencies, higher risk of conflict (eg Iran -Israel/US war) causing economic instability, ... ?
- kgwgk 2y agohttps://time.com/7173421/what-donald-trump-election-win-means-for-crypto/ https://time.com/7173421/what-donald-trump-election-win-mean... ---- Trump spoke glowingly about crypto this year on the campaign trail, despite casting skepticism upon it for years. At the Bitcoin conference in Nashville in July, Trump floated the idea of establishing a federal Bitcoin reserve, and stressed the importance of bringing more Bitcoin mining operations to the U.S. Perhaps most importantly, Trump vowed to oust Gary Gensler, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who has brought many lawsuits against crypto projects for allegedly violating securities laws. Gensler is a widely-reviled figure in the crypto industry, with many accusing him of stifling innovation. Gensler, conversely, argued that it was his job to protect consumers from the massive crypto collapses that unfolded in 2022, including Terra Luna and FTX. Gensler’s term isn’t up until 2026, but some analysts expect him to resign once Trump takes office, as previous SEC chairs have done after the President that appointed them lost their elections. A change to SEC leadership could allow many more crypto products to enter mainstream financial markets. For the past few years, the SEC had been hesitant to approve crypto ETFs: investment vehicles that allow people to bet on crypto without actually holding it. But a judge forced Gensler’s hand, bringing Bitcoin ETFs onto the market in January. Now, under a friendlier SEC, ETFs based on smaller cryptocurrencies like Solana and XRP may be next. Many crypto enthusiasts are also excited by Trump’s alliance with Elon Musk, who has long championed cryptocurrencies on social media. On election night, Dogecoin, Musk’s preferred meme coin, spiked 25% to 21 cents.
- smeej 2y agoGensler has confirmed his intention is to resign on January 20.
- fer 2y agoHe's been crypto-friendly during the campaign, but last spike is probably related to this[0], which solidifies state support for what was born as a state-independent asset. [0] https://apnews.com/article/sec-chair-atkins-gensler-investors-financial-markets-d1c544f1846071b33c75b9f2dd0c1ba4 https://apnews.com/article/sec-chair-atkins-gensler-investor...
- 5350-uiop-1130 2y agoas someone who follows crypto its crazy how much US dominates the prices during euro/asian hours price will go sideways or go down, then during US hours you get the huge moves up or down i'm guessing all financial markets are like that. it's like US is a behemoth
- smeej 2y agoThe big move above $100k happened after 9pm Eastern time.
- 5350-uiop-1130 2y agothat would be 6pm pacific time. still falls under reasonable US time. i think US accounts for 25% or over of global wealth, so it makes sense the big moves come from there.
- zadler 2y agoIf you are sure of this then congrats, you’ve spotted a pattern in the market that you can exploit and get rich off. Seems unlikely tho for this reason.
- 5350-uiop-1130 2y agowell the money comes from predicting the direction. this doesnt tell you the direction just that when US trading hours start the probability of a large move up or down increases
- IWeldMelons 2y agoNever understood this kind of sensational statements without inflation adjustment. Although does not make difference in this case, but all these claims "X has never been this expensive" often ignore inflation adjustment; render them meaningless.
- Invictus0 2y agoSurely you're not serious. The price of 1 bitcoin was less than a dollar in 2010.
- IWeldMelons 2y agoAs I emphasized, very clearly, that it does not make difference in this very particularly case, I want to stress, nontheless, that the phrasing of the title is misleading; from what you've said yourself, we need to measure bitcoin price in 2010 dollars then, as the title suggests "first time in history", presumingly Bitcoin history. Guess what it is not there yet. It is 80K in 2010 dollars.
- legulere 2y agoThis increases the market for bitcoin mining and subsequently energy waste. For me personally this enough reason to ban bitcoin
- zadler 2y agoI feel this way about AI. Oh wait, AI is actually an existential risk to humanity, also.
- Retric 2y agoGenerative AI is hardly an existential risk. There’s huge fears around AGI, but that’s not what people are building.
- gbnwl 2y agoThere’s huge fears around AGI, but that’s not what people are building. Everyone is trying to build this.
- Retric 2y ago“Trying” is an overly generous interpretation of what’s going on. Training an LLM is not actually working on AGI just as people building skyscrapers aren’t getting to the moon. It’s an inherent limitation on the approach.
- gbnwl 2y agoTraining LLMs is not the only thing people are trying. They dominate the public attention right now but there are people everywhere trying all kinds of approaches. Here's one from IBM: https://research.ibm.com/topics/neuro-symbolic-ai https://research.ibm.com/topics/neuro-symbolic-ai First sentence: "We see Neuro-symbolic AI as a pathway to achieve artificial general intelligence"
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- amitrip 2y ago[dead]
- tomhoward 2y agoFirst HN submission: Feb 3 2009 (0 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=463793
- tim333 2y agoFirst HN submission I could find mentioning the price: 30 Apr 2011 "Bitcoin hits US$ 4, after being mentioned on CNN yesterday" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2501006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2501006 One of the comments "I've been watching the price of BTC rise pretty steadily in the last few days but I can't bring myself to believe that this price range is in any way sustainable. $4 per bitcoin? ..."
- kromokromo 2y agoBitcoin as a digital store of value is fine. It makes sense to store money in something digital and secure to hedge against local instabilities in currencies, governments etc. People store money in it because it currently secure and it been battle tested, nobody has been able to hack it. However, I am concerned about the security model on a 5-10+ year perspective. Miners secure the blockchain and get paid for it in bitcoins. We have seen that the mining has become more and more sentralized as the mining gets progressively harder (as by design). Progressively harder mining means that the price of bitcoin must rise in pararell to cover the expenses of the miners securing the network. Here are my concerns: - Increasingly centralized mining means a higher risk of a 51% attack (controlling 51% means you control the entire network). - Bitcoin not able to maintain a constant price growth that will lower the incentive to keep mining as the difficulity increases. - Quantum Computing actually cracking the encryptions which will kill the entire network instantly. - Instability in the world might lead to spikes in electricity prices, which will affect the incentive to secure the network with mining. I also think spending so much energy on security, when there are other viable options available is insane in our current age. Transitioning to a Proof of Stake model like Ethereum instead of a Proof of Work model would be much more robust with a fraction of the power consumption, but thats just my opinion.
- cykros 2y agoEverything you've just brought up as a concern is addressed, and more, over at https://endthefud.org https://endthefud.org The energy use is a big one people who don't think it through keep coming back to (thanks to the WEF planting this bogeyman back in 2017 or so). Miners do not operate when the cost of electricity is high, for economic reasons. What they do, however, is look for stranded power. This has led many to operate where gas is otherwise being flared, as well as on wind turbine and other green power sources, making it economical to build them out as it creates demand. That demand in turn falls off if other use for the power materializes, but is there to pick up the slack if the surplus re-emerges. These are a few examples, of which you'll find many if you bother to look. Bitcoin in many ways serves as a battery to balance demand for energy, and may well be one of the greener initiatives out there. Which certainly can't be said for traditional banking infrastructure.
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- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- AnonC 2y agoOne worse outcome is that Bitcoin is the bellwether in the cryptocurrency space. A big rise in it has a tendency to push others (called Altcoins) to rise with a much higher amount of speculation, rug pulling, scams, etc. When there is a crash, many of these altcoins could eat up gullible or greedy people’s life savings.
- gnabgib 2y agoDiscussion (134 points, 15 hours ago, 314 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42324263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42324263