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Bitcoin $500
- snitko 13y agoWell now it must definitely be too late to invest. Don't even think about it guys. It's a ponzi scheme slash not real money slash libertarian wet dream. I'd rather trust helicopter Ben with my savings than some obscure open source software that eats 10Gb of my disk space.
- eudox 13y agoHonestly can't tell if that's satire. Might be a symptom of approaching senility.
- mike_esspe 13y agoIt's just a Poe's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
- notdrunkatall 13y ago> now it must definitely be too late to invest So said people at $3, $30, $100, etc.
- sturmeh 13y agoI came across this in my chat log history today, on a friend who I rarely message. http://i.imgur.com/EaAVLYZ.png http://i.imgur.com/EaAVLYZ.png
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- frostmatthew 13y agoThat works the other way too...people who invest during a bubble are quick to say "it's not a bubble!" - I'm not saying this is a bubble (I won't pretend to know enough or have clairvoyance), but it's not a valid defense to say something isn't overvalued just because people had said that at prices it has since eclipsed.
- notdrunkatall 13y agoIndeed. Saying that it's too late or that it's just a bubble means nothing, because the truth is that it could be either of those things, and no one will know which until everyone knows.
- sturmeh 13y agoIt's not a ponzi scheme by definition, and you don't need to have a copy of the block chain on your harddrive.
- davidgerard 13y agoNot at all! Technically, it's a pump-and-dump.
- dwaltrip 13y agoCare to elaborate?
- bushido 13y agoIf you are looking for how this works: A classic pump-and-dump(PnD) is when a large amount of an instrument (security/commodity/shares/etc.) are bought by a few entities (people/institutions/early investors/etc). Thus creating a scarcity of the instrument which when executed well will be followed by enough hype, as the common people usually see the "meteoric growth" as proof of a good investment and "a large number" of people believing in its future, rather than the reality of a handful. This creates a situation where a lot of these novice/late investors start buying the security, usually using market orders (i.e. accepting the sellers offered price). Now since a handful of entities own a large number of the instrument and they offer few shares incrementally at higher levels, and keep selling more and more as the hype/momentum/# of small investors increases. Eventually taking it to a point where a large amount(still not the majority) of the instrument is now owned by a large number of small investors hoping to make 10x-1000x like the early investors did. At which point they have a few choices/combination of choices(all : 1) Offer a large amount at a price point where the gen. public will not find it valuable, thus leaving only one direction for prices to go 2) Create a small sell-off by selling large quantities through a market order, thus making smaller investors panic 3) Wait it out to let the news, govts or some other external source to present a good opportunity for people to panic, and do one of the above 4) If they are big enough they can actually create #3 A well executed would further buy back the instrument while it crashes for a round of rinse-and-repeat. There are a lot of examples of pump-and-dumps, a lot of them are legitimate, most are well established and usually don't intend losses for the later investors. The "dump" can just be profit taking, reducing risk, being satisfied with the earning etc. All companies that have raised financing can technically be classified as PnD ex 1(legitimate): (i) 2 individuals + 2 computers + 1 idea (100% share) [$10,000 valuation/opportunity cost.] => (ii) YC give 3-8% of share for $20k [25x to 67x profit on equity given] => ... so on .. ex 2(classic PnD - There are plenty worth mentioning): Crude oil futures rally from mid '08 - to its subsequent crash in early '09. I can write a thesis on this one. It was great fun, good times. ex 3(currently playing out): Bitcoin : This does not undermine the quality of the idea or its execution. Just the fact that a small number of early miners control a large quantity of the instrument. Prices are being driven up by mostly small order-sizes being executed on the sell side (not to be confused with [0]). There is a higher probability that these bitcoin's are being sold by early adopters. It may be a few weeks early to say if it is a classic pump-and-dump. If it is I would expect to see <$250 possibly even <$100 prices in the next 3-12 weeks. The rational for this is too lengthy for this reply, might just be cognitive dissonance on my part. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sell_side http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sell_side [1] http://raszl.com/blog/bitcoin-benefits-and-risks http://raszl.com/blog/bitcoin-benefits-and-risks
- Aqueous 13y agoThe market capitalization of US dollars is (correct if I'm wrong) $3 trillion. The current market capitalization of BitCoin is above $5 billion. There will only be around 21 million BitCoins. If the market capitlization of BitCoin even gets close to a national currency like the US dollar, each BitCoin will be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are about to be at $500. Unless governments crack down on BitCoin(possible) I don't foresee this stopping anytime soon. To me government intervention to the point of banning BitCoin seems like it would be, at this point, somewhat pointless. The Federal Government has known about BitCoin for some time and has yet to take any major regulatory action against it. I think if they wanted to shut it down they would have long before millions of people started using it, and long before major backers like Peter Thiel and the Winklevi had time to establish BitCoin-based companies and lobbying groups. You want to nip something like this in the bud before it becomes an entrenched interest - and they haven't done that yet. I'd say it's not too late to invest.
- Element_ 13y agoThe US gov waited until eGold was doing ~2 billion in transactions annually before it moved to shut it down. Given the growth rate of btc it just recently became big enough to get the attention of the federal gov. I think it is certain the US government will attempt to shut it down more a question of when and how elaborate their attempt is (e.g. Will they try to: arrest a few btc users, dump large sums of money into the btc markets to destabilize it, or build a cluster larger than the entire btc network).
- BrokenPipe 13y agoAnd if they had already built the largest cluster of asics in the btc network we wouldn't even know as long as they distribute it enough and even join most pools for good measure.
- snitko 13y agoI think it's time for <irony></irony> tags on HN.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dwaltrip 13y agoSounds like you've done your research and thoughtfully considered the different angles.
- BrokenPipe 13y agoS curve. I think this is just the starters.
- dcc1 13y agoIts 470$ on bitstamp, please ignore mtgox rate, that site is unusable
- joosters 13y agoSo who's using it then?
- shocks 13y agoIt's very easy to withdraw from MtGox with Japanese and Chinese currencies. BTCChina is very close to GoxUSD in terms of price. The MtGox price is actually pretty accurate, bitstamp is the one that is lagging behind.
- gokhan 13y ago$485 in Coinbase. Quite close to MTGox.
- wmf 13y agoTechnically this is true, but given the trajectory we can expect that BitStamp will get there in a few days.
- pseudonym 13y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but isn't it impossible to withdraw USD from MtGox at this point? How can this be a viable source of BTC->USD comparison when the only thing you can do with a USD balance on MtG is buy?
- shocks 13y agoIt's not impossible, but it is difficult. However - it's much easier to withdraw in Japanese and Chinese currencies. BTCChina is pretty close to GoxUSD.
- wozniacki 13y agoIs localbitcoins dot com dead ? Does anyone use it anymore?
- jeffasinger 13y agoI sold most of my bitcoins last week. I'd guess it's pretty easy to do that if you live in a larger city.
- shocks 13y agoLocalbitcoin also does bank transfer over here in the UK. :)
- swalsh 13y agoStupid question maybe, I believe I still have a few bitcoins laying around (I got them when we were speculating how crazy it would be if Mt Gox ever reached $1) I'd like to buy a pro copy of google sketch-up, and buy some lumber at this lumberyard that is cash only. How do I do it if i can't withdraw usd?
- fsniper 13y agouse coin2pal.info. I have used their service a few times and it is working. Slow but reliable process.
- Mad_Dud 13y agoCould the recent peak be related with the Cryptolocker campaign?
- ck2 13y agoWhat happens to the price when only people with 500Ghash/sec+ can make coins next month? Early adopters are rightfully getting a nice reward now, but how do you get "fresh blood" when the difficulty is off the chart unless you have several thousand dollars in hardware?
- 3pt14159 13y agoYou tell people they can buy things on the internet with bitcoins that they can't otherwise buy on the internet.
- ye 13y ago> What happens to the price when only people with 500Ghash/sec+ can make coins next month? What do you even mean? That's what pools are for. You can make bitcoins even with a shitty CPU (but will probably spend more on electricity).
- grimgrin 13y agoYou cannot make bitcoins with a shitty CPU, or a shitty GPU. You can try, but the difficulty is too high, and is always increasing. If this is a new concept to you, imagine: When I first received my BFL Jalapeno (ASIC 5G mining rig) and started mining, to the time I sold it, the difficulty had increased enough that I was seeing a .05 BTC gain in twice the time. So now you can imagine how eventually only people above a certain mining speed will be profitable.
- ye 13y ago> You cannot make bitcoins with a shitty CPU, or a shitty GPU. You can try, but the difficulty is too high, and is always increasing Yes you can. It's called pooled mining. http://mining.bitcoin.cz/ http://mining.bitcoin.cz/
- Jach 13y agoYou really can't. http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ http://www.bitcoinx.com/profit/ At the next difficulty estimate, an i7 with free electricity mining all the time at 8 MH/s would make about 9 US cents in a month. Since the difficulty will probably go up again in less than two weeks, make that less than 2 US cents per week. Since very few people actually have free electricity it's not worth it. http://eviltechmonkey.com/btc.html http://eviltechmonkey.com/btc.html
- rdl 13y agoI'm really glad I wasn't able to figure out how to short bitcoin right after the Silk Road takedown; I would have gone broke.
- mtgx 13y agoShorting bitcoin sounds like very bad idea. If you're going to "invest" in Bitcoin, then going long term is definitely the way to go. Even if you invest say right now, but then Bitcoin drops to $300, it's best to keep it a year longer, and then watch it pass $1000 or whatever.
- Tycho 13y agoI wouldn't want to short the one asset that's been on an exponential growth curve. It can only go down 100% but who knows how high it could climb. At least put a ceiling on it.
- iamjustin 13y ago>It can only go down 100% Isn't this true of all stocks/commodities? You can only lose 100% of your money.
- idProQuo 13y agoShort selling is a different game. In essence you're betting that the price will go down. Right now the price could go down $500, and you'd make $500. However if the price rose $10,000 you'd lose $10,000.
- wslh 13y ago"Bitcoin will have to change the mining hashing function (SHA-256) in 7 years" https://twitter.com/SDLerner/status/401467511784235008 https://twitter.com/SDLerner/status/401467511784235008
- oleganza 13y agoFor the purposes of hashing, double SHA256 is very far from being "broken" or drastically accelerated. If there's some ultra-fast chip that increases hashing by a factor of million, there are still enough of non-zero bits to have unique block hashes. And if, by chance, two blocks have the same hash, it does not break anything at all: each block has a unique serial number ("height") anyway. Hash is only used as a proof of work for a given height.
- kmfrk 13y agoI remember trying to buy some BTC on MtGox for fun, the last time the price crashed. What an unspeakably horrible service. I thought I was in for hundreds of dollars over budget, but it turns out that not a single BTC was purchased at all. I only intended to buy ~$50 worth, so I would only have earnt something like $200, but for the love of everything, stay the hell away from MtGox. It's insane how unprofessional they are. healthcare.gov may be bad, but this is five circles of hell down from that.
- VexXtreme 13y agoI find that many companies related to Bitcoin are extremely unprofessional and they still run their businesses like 3 years ago when Bitcoin was just an internet novelty and not a real currency the way it is today. Just look at the latest Blockchain fiasco where the guy who runs the company got butthurt over some Reddit comments and got involved in a flame war. MtGox's lack of professionalism is just the tip of the iceberg. I love BTC and I wish it would take off in a major way, but in order for that to happen people with shitty attitude need to stop running the community. I guess this is why regulation exists in the real world... oh well...
- kmfrk 13y agoDefinitely, which is why I tried to just buy a few (fractions of) bitcoins just for the historical fun of it, but as intensely skeptical I am of all the bitcoin craze, I was still shocked at just how awful MtGox is. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if I could code something better. Just to tell people that as amateurish as they may think these exchanges are, it's actually much worse. Makes you wonder how a company like CoinBase even got funded by YC, come to think of it.
- jnbiche 13y agoProbably because CoinBase is bringing some professionalism to the game. I admit I had some bad experiences with CoinBase in the beginning, as they were getting scaled up, but they always handled it with professionalism.
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- singular 13y agoFor those who are interested, pleasingly it's considerably easier to buy/sell btc in the UK these days, [32] and [33] are very functional - I used [32] to buy coins and then [33] to sell some just today. [33] looks much better value both ways but [32] is about as easy as it gets. * Using comedy numbering scheme in reference to [1337]. [32]:https://bittylicious.com/ https://bittylicious.com/ [33]:https://localbitcoins.com/ https://localbitcoins.com/ [1337]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373
- fabiofederici 13y agoIs it possible to predict Bitcoin? https://www.facebook.com/coinalytics https://www.facebook.com/coinalytics
- Mahn 13y agoNo.
- dugmartin 13y agoI went to this talk in 2011 where Gavin Andresen tried giving bitcoin away to anyone that emailed him: http://blip.tv/amherstmedia/making-money-gavin-andresen-ignite-amherst-4789326 http://blip.tv/amherstmedia/making-money-gavin-andresen-igni...
- pearjuice 13y agoHere we go again. A thread full of financial experts, conspiracists and excessive naysayers. Let's keep Bitcoin off the frontpage until it crashes, okay? With this trend it will reach an all-time-high every week or so which every tech blog will wrap in a bag-full-of-fluff-blogpost, there will be new analysis et cetera. Let it go. Just enjoy the ride.
- drewblaisdell 13y ago> Let's keep Bitcoin off the frontpage until it crashes, okay? Because you say so, right?
- pearjuice 13y agoIt was a proposal and my current opinion on the Bitcoin spam every few days on Hacker News. I wasn't expecting anyone to agree with me, but for one am free to state my opinion.
- tux 13y agoNow is the time to convert your bitcoins to cash, because this wont last for much longer :-)
- DennisP 13y agoDepends on your investment goal. Personally my main reason for holding bitcoins is so I don't feel like punching myself every time it goes up another $100.
- riffraff 13y agoarguably, you could still punch yourself for not having bought more :)
- SG- 13y agothat doesn't make any sense. it will be $1000/btc in less than a year.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoAnd it draws into question whether bitcoins can be a useful currency. Can you trade fractional bitcoins? I'm ignorant on the subject, but if not, well carrying around $500 bills is pretty limiting.
- SG- 13y agoyes, you can trade or buy the tiniest amount (fraction) of bitcoin. -0.01 BTC = 1 cBTC = 1 centibitcoin (also referred to as bitcent) -0.001 BTC = 1 mBTC = 1 millibitcoin (also referred to as mbit (pronounced em-bit) or millibit or even bit mill) -0.000 001 BTC = 1 μBTC = 1 microbitcoin (also referred to as ubit (pronounced yu-bit) or microbit) -0.000 000 01 BTC = 1 satoshi (pronounced sa-toh-shee)
- ceejayoz 13y agoYou think it will be, unless you're The Doctor.
- notdrunkatall 13y agoNo matter your take on bitcoin's long-term viability (or lack thereof), it can hardly be argued that this isn't damn interesting to watch unfold. A cryptocurrency with zero backing that exists only in digital form is now worth many billions of dollars. Is it a bubble? Will this foment a currency revolution of sorts? If it doesn't crash, how will governments react? If it does crash, what will replace it? Obviously there is a demand for a decentralized currency, and as more people realize that something like this is possible, I can only see demand for it going one way: up. Most people have never even heard of bitcoin; I've only talked to a few people in my own life who are even familiar with the word, and fewer still who know what it actually is. Yet with even such a small awareness, bitcoin's value has grown from zero to billions in a few years. Unless governments step in and find some way to put the kibosh on decentralized currencies in general, it seems unlikely that demand is going to shrink as awareness continues to increase. We're so used to governments essentially owning currencies that it is very difficult to imagine a world where they don't, but obviously, if cryptocurrencies take off in a big way, the implications for the future are profound.
- oleganza 13y ago1. Any money is a bubble in a sense. It's a feedback loop of speculation that the commodity at hand will be widely accepted by other speculators in the future. The only basis for this speculation is that people need some money to trade. The money bubble pops only if there's some other, better commodity on the horizon that speculators may bet on. http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2013/04/bitcoin-is-money-bitcoin-is-bubble.html http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2013/04/bitcoin-... 2. Some governments are very supportive (at least, not intrusive): Germany, China, Hong Kong, Canada. In United States Bitcoin is effectively 90% forbidden already. Banks close accounts for Bitcoin businesses with no reason, regulatory approval is very slow and very-very expensive (need to get it from all states), past history of very aggressive raids on financial experiments.
- enraged_camel 13y ago>>1. Any money is a bubble in a sense. Not really, no. Peter Thiel's explanation of bubbles is great. He says that bubbles arise when there is (1) widespread, intense belief that’s (2) not true. During the dotcom bubble, people were pouring money into companies simply for having a domain name; the intense belief was that the companies were worth a ton of money, and that simply was not true. A similar reasoning led to the housing bubble: the intense belief in that case was that houses are great investment vehicles and they always appreciate in value. Turns out that also was not true. Currently, the main thing that is driving Bitcoin's price is speculation. There is widespread, intense belief that it will become a major currency. Is that belief true? The simple answer is we don't know. But that's not true with just any money. The dollar for example is not a bubble: people believe it to be a reliable medium of exchange, and the fact that it is backed by the US government makes that belief true. Therefore it is not a bubble.
- Egregore 13y agoWhat will happen with the price of bitcoin if quantum computer with enough q-bits will be invented?
- oleganza 13y agoMost probably, quantum computer will not be invented overnight. Hash functions are not seriously vulnerable, but ECDSA signatures are. Fortunately, most funds are sitting on never-used addresses which are basically the hashes of the public keys, which are not instantly crackable by a quantum computer. People will probably have time to switch to a new signature method which is resistant to QC. Like Lamport Signatures, for instance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport_signature http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport_signature The price will dip, but may recover pretty quickly, like when the famous v0.7/v0.8 fork that happened this March. If the Bitcoin can't be fixed and becomes unusable, its value will instantly become zero and everyone's savings in it will become permanently lost.
- knodi 13y agoI hope there is a crash coming.
- dwaltrip 13y agoOne of the most interesting things about discussions regarding bitcoin is you can always count on a few people getting quite angry and spiteful, as if they are personally offended by its existence. Remember friends, keep your identity small ;) -- http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
- prawn 13y agoOptions for purchasing for someone in Australia? Coinbase appears to be US only. Their support docs suggest international support in early 2013, but no sign of that being realised.