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Bitcoin $600
- oleganza 13y agoPrediction: it'll crash down to $450-$500 before reaching $700. But I bet we'll see $1000 before December 31. Also, we yet to see journalists screaming "insane bubble!" like in April, when it hit $100. So far media was quite positive and informative.
- StavrosK 13y agoPrediction: it'll rise up to $1000 before it crashes down to $400 before December 31.
- sheetjs 13y agoNote that this is only MtGox. Other places, like https://btc-e.com/ https://btc-e.com/, show a much lower price
- awad 13y agoI'm relatively ignorant on BitCoin but would this not be a huge arbitrage opportunity...?
- kalleboo 13y agoIt would be if it was easier to get money in and out of the exchanges. As it is now it can take days/weeks to move money between accounts, especially on Mt Gox.
- gibybo 13y agoEDIT: It seems I've got the details wrong, please excuse this comment. I'm just leaving my original text intact so the replies make sense. The MtGox USD price is not real. At least not for the purposes of arbitrage. Although it says $600 USD, no one (or almost no one) is actually buying or selling BTC on MtGox for $600 USD. They are buying/selling it for other currencies and MtGox is using an internal exchange rate to convert it to USD. Their internal exchange rate does not reflect the risk free rate you can actually get if you were to try to arbitrage it across borders (namely china/japan). MtGox does not allow you to withdraw USD.
- bencxr 13y agoPeople ARE buying/selling on Mtgox at 600. However, the price is not "real" because it is inflated by the inability to withdraw USD from Mtgox. What is happening is that people are buying BTC on Mtgox and then transferring it to other exchanges to withdraw their USD. For more accurate price information I suggest goign off coinbase or bitstamp.
- shocks 13y agoThis is not true. Look at the price on BTCChina and you'll see it's pretty much equivalent to the USD price on MtGox. Bitstamp and Coinbase are lagging behind because BTCChina and MtGox make up most of the volume.
- maximian 13y agoMtGox does allow you to withdraw in USD, it's just that you get put on a long processing queue. The problem is that their Japanese bank has restricted them to only 10 international wires per day. They've been having a really tough time with banks. Interestingly, if you have a Japanese bank account, you can withdraw Yen from MtGox within a few hours. Regarding price - MtGox's has been fairly in step with BTCChina's price. BTCChina and MtGox both represent the top exchanges by 30-day volume, so it would seem to me that MtGox's price is more accurate than BitStamp's price which lags miserably behind every rally.
- sliverstorm 13y agoThey've been having a really tough time with banks Although from what I was reading the last time this came up, these issues are largely caused in no small part by poor decisions on the part of MtGox.
- codexon 13y agoThat is not true. According to graph at the top of mtgox.com there are about 1000-3000 bitcoins being sold for USD every hour. This volume is huge compared to the volume for euros or any other currency on Mtgox. http://bitcoinity.org/markets/mtgox/EUR http://bitcoinity.org/markets/mtgox/EUR
- pmorici 13y agoNo, there is no way to get your US Dollars out of Mt.Gox, after you sell you BitCoin, in a reasonable timeframe. Supposedly they only process about 10 total USD wire transfer withdrawals per day. There is also a question of bankruptcy risk as it is common knowledge that the US Government seized several million dollars from MtGox earlier this year. Anyone that quotes MtGox as the reference bitcoin price almost certainly has little experience trading bitcoin. Bitstamp is a much better reference price or if you want to be US centric CoinBase. It's not that arbitrage opportunities don't exist in the Bitcoin world. There are some rare and fleeting ones. This just isn't a good one.
- peteretep 13y agoThis is silly. If you have the liquidity, who cares if you have to wait 6 weeks for free money? This is why other exchanges are dry. Not everyone is a broke college kid for whom six weeks waiting for money is a life-stopping crash
- ashray 13y agoMtGox withdrawal issues are huge. I wouldn't downplay their issues at all. Speaking from personal experience I had a $10,000 June/July withdrawal stuck for 8 weeks. Customer service wouldn't give any timeline. After a lot of back and forth they said I could pay a 5% fee and get my USD in 7 days. Basically a bribe for them to convert to JPY and send the transfer through.. At the time, they said withdrawals would take 2 weeks.. Now if they say 6 weeks you should pray :p I ended up buying back some BTC (at about 10% loss due to price) and then selling later on bitstamp due to the recent price rise. Worked out okay for me but please DO NOT USE GOX FOR USD.
- pmorici 13y agoProblem is, it isn't just 6 weeks. Not to mention restricting withdrawals is the same strategy you would take to prevent a run on the bank if you were insolvent. You should give it a try though and let us know how long it takes.
- vinchuco 13y agoOne could argue that the prices posted at MtGox have always been reached :)
- dsl 13y agobtc-e is having market issues right now. There are literally no coins for sale. Everything has been bought up by arbitrage bots to push to mtgox.
- lpolovets 13y agoI don't have a strong opinion on Bitcoin, but seeing the price double repeatedly over the course of 12 months gives me a physiological feeling that I can only describe as FOMO. I know it's irrational, and I'm not going to buy any Bitcoins just based on my gut feeling, but it's still disturbing that seeing a chart go up and to the right makes my brain think that I ought to be buying a piece before it's too late. I bet this is what it felt like to be in the middle of the Tulip Bubble.
- oleganza 13y ago1. You will never miss out. Even if you never by bitcoins and it becomes world money, you'll benefit from it indirectly (and taking no risk in the process). 2. It's never too late. The bet is that Bitcoin becomes world money. If so, all the wealth stored in cash, gold, silver, bonds and other low-risk less liquid assets will go into Bitcoin. This will make it worth more than 10 million of today's USD per BTC.
- sillysaurus2 13y ago2. The bet is that Bitcoin becomes world money. It's also worth noting that the US government now owns 0.686% of all bitcoins that will ever be created. (They seized 144k coins in the Silk Road raid, and eventually there will be 21 million total coins.)
- oleganza 13y agoThey must be motivated to preserve that wealth now.
- mcv 13y agoI think they intend to sell it. Now seems like a good time for that.
- greenlander 13y agoIt seems likely that they'll be required to AUCTION them off through an approved process rather than sell them themselves on an exchange. And they probably won't do that until they've convicted "Dread Pirate Roberts"
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- newbrict 13y agovires in numeris
- huhtenberg 13y agoThat's just pure speculation now.
- VMG 13y agoAs is your analysis.
- fat0wl 13y agoThis is a doubled thread... I asked a bunch of questions on the old one (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6753033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6753033). Now I found this article that seems to address a lot of my reservations about Bitcoin so I thought I'd post. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2013/04/bitcoin_is_a_ponzi_scheme_the_internet_currency_will_collapse.html http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_ch...
- fat0wl 13y agoThis is interesting as well -- http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-bubble-2013-11 http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-bubble-2013-11
- abiekatz 13y agoSatoshi Nakamoto in February 2009: "In this sense, [Bitcoin]'s more typical of a precious metal. Instead of the supply changing to keep the value the same, the supply is predetermined and the value changes. As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases. It has the potential for a positive feedback loop; as users increase, the value goes up, which could attract more users to take advantage of the increasing value." http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-sour...
- johnyzee 13y agoAll buyers, no sellers, price will continue up. There is a steady stream of new people hearing about Bitcoin, believing in the idea, and wanting a piece of it for when it becomes a dominant world currency. Everybody is holding, nobody's selling. This will continue for a good long while - there are still very few people outside tech circles who own bitcoins.
- user24 13y agomy (nontechy) mother in law mentioned them to me yesterday, I (techy) bought 2 kebabs last night with bitcoin (through takeaway.com). I think you're right that mainly techy people have them at the moment, but I also think that with the right friendly UX exchange we could soon be approaching a tipping point. Another thing; I didn't buy from my usual takeaway because they didn't accept bitcoin. So bitcoin acceptance was the primary factor in making me choose a new takeaway.
- alfiejohn_ 13y agoWhen someone without knowledge in the markets tells you to buy something, it's time to get out. They either heard that golden advice either on TV, the radio or read it in a newspaper but the common denominator was that it was probably a paid ad by someone who wants to offload as much as possible to the next sucker^Winvestor. So remember, when your bus drivers or barista tells you to buy Microsoft shares, it's probably best to consider Put options.
- user24 13y ago> When someone without knowledge in the markets tells you to buy something You're probably right, but she wasn't saying "buy it" just mentioning its existence. And the buy/sell mentality only really applies if you're planning on "cashing out" at some point.
- rmc 13y agoWhich is how the bubble burst. Lots of people who are holding might think "Oh I'll just sell a bit".
- joelrunyon 13y agoCoinbase is trailing this (currently $510) quite a bit. https://coinbase.com/charts https://coinbase.com/charts I don't understand why people keep price quoting mtgox as it seems it's not very reflective of the other indicies.
- prawn 13y agoCould this be partly because Coinbase is US only?
- heliodor 13y agoThey still think MtGox is the measuring stick of bitcoin. They're late to the news that MtGox is having problems and is best to be avoided. MtGox is trading higher because people can't reliably and easily withdraw USD. In order to take on this risk, the sell price is higher.
- twentysix 13y agoIt will be interesting to read about these reactions in the future. http://talkingbitcoin.com/ http://talkingbitcoin.com/
- Tycho 13y agoYou could say that fundamentals have not changed, so it's a bubble. But the end-game is bitcoin becoming a major currency (although, if it does that, it will inevitably become the reserve currency), so the price should be subject to intense political risk and also a long way from it's potential peak. So it's not really like the tulip bubble.
- randartie 13y agoIt has changed, US Government is talking about it. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-18/u-s-agencies-to-say-bitcoins-offer-legitimate-benefits.html http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-18/u-s-agencies-to-say...
- kristianp 13y agoHere's my little PSA, I wouldn't use mtgox to trade bitcoins, the price is inflated on there for a reason: http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/#jump-btc-usd http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/#jump-btc-usd http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1mi4h7/mtgox_withdrawal_delays/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1mi4h7/mtgox_withdr...
- jimmcslim 13y agoA few thoughts: 1. I'm probably too lazy to look this up, but given mining Bitcoins essentially boils down to solving hard math problems and there is no centralisation, what prevents collisions from two miners mining the same bitcoin at the same time? Is there a GUID element involved? (if so, then perhaps collisions are possibly, just extremely unlikely as to be practically zero). 2. If the bitcoin mining difficulty increases on a known path, would it be possible to tie the current BTC price (probably would have to try estimate a forward price) vs the current cost of GPU processing on EC2 (ie. via Amazon's spot market mechanism). Has anyone done this?
- vertex-four 13y ago> what prevents collisions from two miners mining the same bitcoin at the same time? Absolutely nothing. There can, in fact, be two blocks at the same height. This is a temporary fork. What happens is that miners mine the next block on top of one or the other at random, and the chain which gets the next block "wins", and everyone then mines on top of that. To make it clearer, at any time, the longest chain of blocks wins. There can be two chains of the same length at any point, but that doesn't last for long, as it's statistically incredibly unlikely that this will continue for more than a block or so. There's a page full of times that it's happened, here: https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks https://blockchain.info/orphaned-blocks
- teraflop 13y agoRegarding #1: it's not really coins that are mined, it's blocks (which happen to include a reward paid to the miner). Blocks are numbered and include a hash of their parent, so you can get a tree-like structure of blocks. But only the longest branch "counts", so miners have an incentive to spread information about the current highest block as quickly as possible. In cases there two blocks happen to be mined simultaneously there's a brief period of uncertainty regarding which transactions were committed and who earned the mining reward. But as blocks are generated on both branches at random intervals, eventually one will become longer and snowball from there. The key is that the average time between blocks is about 10 minutes, muck longer than the communication delay between miners. As to #2: first of all, the Bitcoin protocol knows nothing about exchange rates. And secondly, in a market-based exchange, you can't just "tie" a price to anything. You could set up a fixed-price exchange, but if the market price was different from the one you picked, either buyers or sellers would look elsewhere to get a better deal. (That is, unless you provided some additional benefit over the existing exchanges that was considered valuable enough to make up for the price difference.)
- aj700 13y agoAll bitcoin has done so far is make the people with as little as $50 to spare (in 2011, 2012) into rich people. The rest of us in recession hit Europe have merely been screwed by it. I'm not saying it will crash or won't, but it's promoted more inequality than most other instruments. and saying "the value of the bitcoin economy is $5bn" or whatever is disingenuous. Economies are measured by the FLOW of money - the gdp, not the STOCK - the total value of the money supply in a different currency. The amount of money changing hands is what matters - and afaik, that's miniscule in comparison.
- olalonde 13y ago> All bitcoin has done so far is make the people with as little as $50 to spare (in 2011, 2012) into rich people. The rest of us in recession hit Europe have merely been screwed by it. I'm not saying it will crash or won't, but it's promoted more inequality than most other instruments. Distributing a brand new decentralized currency is a hard problem. I think Bitcoin did a pretty good job with its mining reward mechanism. Also, it's not "all" Bitcoin has done. Would you say "all" Paypal has done is make Peter Thiel and co rich? > and saying "the value of the bitcoin economy is $5bn" or whatever is disingenuous. Economies are measured by the FLOW of money - the gdp, not the STOCK - the total value of the money supply in a different currency. The amount of money changing hands is what matters - and afaik, that's miniscule in comparison. When people quote Bitcoin's market cap they generally do so to illustrate how tiny Bitcoin is compared to USD or other currencies. The fact that it is still so small is an argument people use to justify its rising price. If anything, using a lower figure is what would be disingenuous.
- tinco 13y ago"Daddy, why aren't we rich?" "Well you see, when Bitcoin was only worth $8, Daddy tried to buy some, but to buy them he had to scan his passport and send it to MtGox, Daddy thought that was a bother, so he shrugged and moved on." "I am hungry daddy." :(
- QuasiAlon 13y agoYou have to send your passport to MtGox?! I thought the whole point was anonymity
- tinco 13y agoIt's very much not so. Bitcoin is the least anonymous way of value transactions ever, there's a public ledger of every single transaction.
- QuasiAlon 13y agoHuh. If it's so not anonymous, why do so many people claim it's great for black market buying, money laundering, etc. ?
- tinco 13y agoThat's a good question. The reason is that it's perceived as anonymous is that there is no ceremony involved with making a bitcoin 'bank account', that means that you can do it without identifying yourself. You can make a Bitcoin address even without connecting to the internet, you can make a private key that fits to an address, and not let anyone know that you have it. Now you have an anonymous account, that you can send money to, but everything that happens to that money is public. Order a Pizza delivered to your door, paid with bitcoin? Gone anonymity. Are you the one person that buys 3 apples every tuesday at a particular food stand paid with bitcoin? Gone anonymity. Relevant to this example: Every entity that exchanges Bitcoin for Dollars or Euros is legally required (anti-money laundering laws) to identify you. In Canada they apparently even need your palm print.
- blackdogie 13y agoThis chart might be of use, http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Anatomy-of-a-typical-bubble.jpg http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Ana... http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2013/11/18/the-view-from-germany http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/2013/11/18/the-view-from-germa... via here. As to where we are in the 'bubble' that's anyone's guess. You just need to be ready when it does crash.
- brazzy 13y agoI give it less than 10 days until the crash.
- user24 13y agoyou realise that people said that when it reached the dizzy heights of $10/BTC, $100/BTC, $200/BTC, etc. The April 2013 crash looked like a massive spike until a few weeks ago, now it's a tiny blip. Who's to say whether the November 2013 spike will look like a tiny blip in 6 months?
- brazzy 13y agoYou realise that nothing you wrote casts any doubt on my prediction? And that I didn't say the soon-to-come crash would be the end of Bitcoin? The leadup to the April crash looked exactly like what we see now: rapid and accelerating price increases within a few days. BTW, I correctly predicted the April crash 2 days in advance.
- user24 13y ago> The leadup to the April crash looked exactly like what we see now Past performance is not an indicator of future results > I didn't say the soon-to-come crash would be the end of Bitcoin You said "I give it less than 10 days until the crash" which sounds rather dismissive. I think you should work on your communication.
- 13y ago
- jimmcslim 13y agoDebatably, a big issue with Bitcoin is that there is no reliable/trustworthy way to short sell it (I could be misunderstood). I think academic study has suggested that markets that can be shorted are less susceptible to bubbles than those that aren't. If there was a ready pool of people ready to trade a view that the Bitcoin price should be lower than it is, perhaps there would be less volatility/exuberance?
- vinchuco 13y agoExperiment: Buy X amount of USD into BTC wait for the price to rise to X+ε Sell for your original X amount in USD Watch the other ε amount in BTC ride the waves
- Osiris 13y agoThis was posted 14 hours ago. It's since jumped to $750.