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As Bitcoin nears $700, Coinbase out of coins to sell

• gphil 13y ago
  I just sold my pet Bitcoin that I bought for $80 a while back. This is getting crazy, I wonder who the buyers are?
  • smaug7 13y ago
    The Chinese
  • triptychs 13y ago
    Saw it at $600 today and sold mine too. Made enough to pay rent, not to mention the other odd things I've gotten with my BTC over the past 2 years... it was fun, but I think I'm done with it. I'd also like to know who is buying IN at this point. Anyone on HN have some insight?
    • davidw 13y ago
      Greater fools: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory
    • BlackDeath3 13y ago
      I bought about a week ago. Of course, it was at $315 then, not ~$600. I'd like to buy more, but I'm not made of money.
      • TrainedMonkey 13y ago
        If I were you I would be very carefully looking at who is buying those things. If there is no large institutional holder or significant amount of new users - current bubble is another speculative bubble (who could have guessed?). TL:DR bitcoin always went through successively larger bubbles. Without very hard evidence I would believe that current price is result of bubble as well. Also, is there a reliable way to short bitcoins?
        • mcdougle 13y ago
          yeah it's looking a lot like it did in April.....
        • BlackDeath3 13y ago
          I realize that it's all speculative and likely bubbling and all of that. The difference is, not only do I treat this as an investment/speculation (and it's not like I'm betting my life savings on BTC), but I also understand (to a certain extent) and believe in the technical merits of it. I'm not just in it for the rising value (although I'd be lying if I said that wasn't enticing), but I actually want to see this succeed.
        • wuliwong 13y ago
          What does "result of a bubble" mean?
          • TrainedMonkey 13y ago
            Means people are buying bitcoins not for their inherent value, but rather in order to sell them later at a higher price. When this happens everyone is waiting until value top's off. Sooner or later moment comes when some portion of holders decides to sell. Other people see price dropping and try to sell their bitcoins as well causing bubble to burst and price to drop significantly.
      • plainOldText 13y ago
        How about buying Litecoins? Less than 24h ago it was 1 LTC/$4, right now 1 LTC/$7. You could have almost doubled your money in less than 24h. People say the Chinese market is driving the LTC prices up. And LTC is not even on MtGox. Imagine how much the prices might go up when it will. :)
    • dan1234 13y ago
      I bought 0.1BTC last Wednesday for £25.85. I thought I might have overpaid for it but, at the time of writing, it's now worth around £40.
    • cbr 13y ago
      I'd also like to know who is buying IN at this point. People who think bitcoin has >2% chance of becoming a major world currency? http://www.jefftk.com/p/bitcoin-exchange-rate-as-a-prediction http://www.jefftk.com/p/bitcoin-exchange-rate-as-a-predictio...
  • aboodman 13y ago
    I read that as "sold my pet for bitcoin". that would have been funnier.
  • krelian 13y ago
    > I wonder who the buyers are? Cryptolocker victims?
    • bdamm 13y ago
      I've been wondering if a recent surge in cryptolocker efficacy has powered this storm of interest. But that would imply over a billion dollars has been sent to a single person or group. That just cannot last for very long. And surely people would have been making news reports about being forced to buy bitcoins to pay off cryptolocker.
      • pbhjpbhj 13y ago
        Maybe people aren't falling over themselves to report to the media that they did something foolish?
    • hughlomas 13y ago
      As far as I'm aware, CryptoLocker demands $300 or 2 bitcoins in the first 3 days. The average person isn't going to try to get bitcoins to pay, and right now no one would even want to, 2 bitcoins are far more expensive than the $300 option. Supposedly after the first three days your only option are bitcoins, but the price jumps to 10. Symantec estimates that 3% of people that are infected choose to pay [0]. So what fraction of that pay in bitcoins? [0] http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/oct/19/cryptolocker-attacks-computer-ransomeware http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/oct/19/cryptolocker-at...
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • mrb 13y ago
    The buyers are mostly China. 1 bitcoin is currently trading at $770 (¥4700) on https://btcchina.com https://btcchina.com PS: you already made your investment back. Keep 0.5 BTC for the long term. Those who sold at the first bubble at $30 regret it. Those who sold at the second bubble at $270 regret it too. Those who sell during this third bubble at ~$700 will regret it too.
    • unclebucknasty 13y ago
      >Those who sold at the first bubble at $30 regret it. Those who sold at the second bubble at $270 regret it too. Those who sell during this third bubble at ~$700 will regret it too. Is that to say that its price is infinite? I mean, at some point, someone will not regret it right? BTW, I am one who regrets selling at $297 just last week (even though I saw a 3x return), so I don't quibble with that. And, had I held on to it, I likely wouldn't sell now, given its trajectory. My idea was to take profits, let it plummet (as it has before), then get back in. Problem was, it just kept running after I sold it! So, the challenge is we just don't know where it's going. To say someone who sells now will regret it is dicey at best. As much as I think I agree with you, it's anybody's guess.
      • Jtsummers 13y ago
        So my view may not be the consensus, but it is based on one of the major criticisms of BTC. It's a deflationary currency, and it (presently) has a strict upperbound on the number of available coins. As evidenced in this thread, there are also many "missing" bitcoins (lost wallets), which further increase the scarcity of whole bitcoins. Assuming BTC gains traction. As it does, the limited resource will be spread over a larger and larger group of people. Each person will have a smaller amount than what would have been possible were it still limited to just thousands of people in the economy. If only 21 million people participate in the economy, 1 BTC would be the average per participant, 10x increase and 0.1 BTC would be the average. The median will be much lower as bitcoin itself does nothing to address wealth distribution issues, so if you retained 1 BTC from the early days, only considering the number of participants, its value is directly proportional to the number of participants (individuals, businesses and states). TL;DR - 1BTC is not quite infinite, but assuming the bitcoin economy becomes established and grows to a reasonable size, 1BTC today will be a small fortune in just a few more years (possibly sooner, but that'd be due to hype, IMO, rather than real value as a currency).
  • deftnerd 13y ago
    I bought 35 at about $100 each and sold 9 a few days ago when it was $450 so I got my initial investment back out plus a few bucks. From this point on, I'm just going to hold it to see what happens or use it for the occasional online service that accepts BTC and provides a discount for it. Everyone keeps on talking about how it's impossible for a currency to keep rising like this and have it be useful for commerce, and to some extent I agree. I, however, have started to see the Bitcoin price as the cost of a share into a new world-wide equivalent of the Federal Reserve. There will only ever be 21 million shares of ownership issued, and I purchased some just to see what happens. It's kind of exciting to me
    • mcdougle 13y ago
      I'm kind of in the same place. Bought 1 bitcoin for the novelty a while back, sold a chunk of it yesterday to get my money back, and now I'm waiting to see how high it'll go. If it breaks $1k I'll probably sell a bit more to get a profit and then hold on to a tiny fraction to wait and see if the bubble bursts. That's kind of how BTC has been since I've been sort of paying attention to it -- it acts a lot like a stock.
  • simias 13y ago
    People who see the price rise and don't want to miss out I think. Most of that is just speculation, I speculate. Now will it be sustainable and the price will keep increasing at a slower pace and make bitcoin a "solid" currency that people will want to use for other purposes than speculation or will it crash and burn like it already did in the past... Investing in bitcoin right now is nothing more than gambling. You may win big but you may also lose everything. I don't like to play with money so I chose to remain a curious bystander.
• emrikol 13y ago
  I've splurged on tiny things and donations over the years with my old CPU-mined bitcoins. I'd completely forgotten about my wallet until things started getting crazy at $300 a week or so ago (was it that short?). I was lucky enough to find 1.02BTC still sitting there, and now I can only hope that I can get Coinbase to verify my bank account before anything pops.
  • wuliwong 13y ago
    I too have the feeling that this is the peak but when I think about why, I don't have any reason other than this is the highest price to date. With a relatively small total valuation you're susceptible high volatility. Bitcoin has had lots of peaks and valleys but over its brief history. But, the peaks have always been higher than the valleys. Is there any reason to suspect this trend to stop? I think the underlying driving force for the overall increae in valuation is the adoption of bitcoin as currency. As far as I can tell, this is increasing pretty rapidly and will most likely continue increaseing.
• jscheel 13y ago
  I'm pretty sure I have a wallet that I dumped a couple of bucks into when bitcoin was first starting out. Problem is, I have no clue where it might be, or even what computer it might be on. Laaaame.
  • bru 13y ago
    I did the same at the time. I know in which computer mine is. But I know I trashed that computer not long after...
    • Ascendency 13y ago
      There should be a bitcoin recovery service, those coins could be worth serious amounts of money, now.
  • Andrenid 13y ago
    Yeah I have 3 bitcoins that were given to me at the very start by a friend who was into it. I shrugged it off as something that'd never take off. Now I've been digging around through my box of old HDDs and USB sticks!
  • buro9 13y ago
    Same here. The result of early mining, but now effectively lost as they're on none of the USB sticks I have and I suspect one of these Linux installers was the culprit.
  • sliverstorm 13y ago
    It will be interesting to see how these "lost" bitcoins are handled long-term when quoting things like market capitalization. Perhaps we can start flagging wallets with no activity since [date when BTC value exploded] as "probably lost". A crude heuristic, to be sure, but perhaps useful.
• lupinglade 13y ago
  Anyone want to sell me 1 BTC over PayPal? Its really hard for us Canadians to purchase bitcoin here :( The hoops are ridiculous.
  • aroch 13y ago
    The answer will always be "No!" because you can easily reverse a paypal transaction
    • lupinglade 13y ago
      I can prove my reputation no problem.
      • aroch 13y ago
        That's not the point. Even if you have good rep, there's nothing stopping you from doing a reversal and then whoever sold you it out the money and the BTC. Unless you personally know the person, never sell BTC by paypal (Or really anything you wouldn't want to lose money on)
  • narcissus 13y ago
    Where exactly in Canada are you? Also, have you tried cavirtex.com?
    • lupinglade 13y ago
      Ontario. I am currently trying to sign up with cavirtex, but its a slow process and they need a photo ID with an address, which I don't seem to have?? I've contacted them, but no reply so far.
    • jamie_ca 13y ago
      +1 for cavirtex, I've only been cashing out, but trading is easy, and cash withdrawals via direct deposit to my bank account have Just Worked. I assume about the same going the other way.
    • 13y ago
• sliverstorm 13y ago
  Where has it been nearing $700? https://btc-e.com/ https://btc-e.com/ reports a high of $595
  • mrb 13y ago
    btcchina.com - high of $801 (¥4879)! See http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ Also coinbase.com - high of $660 a few hours ago
    • pbhjpbhj 13y ago
      This kinda suggests there is a huge arbitrage potential, no?
      • mrb 13y ago
        Yes. And there are people who make a living off arbitraging Bitcoin exchanges. The usual arbitrage risks apply here: the Bitcoin exchange rate might vary during the time it takes to wire money in and out of various exchanges.
• andreipop 13y ago
  Is anyone operating a reliable bitcoin options market?
  • simplemath 13y ago
    bitfinex
• BlackDeath3 13y ago
  You can cancel on Coinbase? Why was I never able to find this option?
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
• makomk 13y ago
  It's not that they've run out of coins to sell, it's that by the time the transaction completes they'll potentially be selling the Bitcoins for far less than they're worth - it's an artifact of Coinbase's business model. (Part of the problem IIRC is that people can back out of transactions after Coinbase have quoted them a price, meaning they can make a profit from a rising market at Coinbase's expense.) Same happened last time a bubble blew up in the Bitcoin price.
• altero 13y ago
  Perhaps it is time to roll out alternative crypto-currency. Bitcoin has way too much attention and speculation.
  • d0ugie 13y ago
    so.. you think much less liquidity and turnover in a currency will help solidify its value (and keep the bid/ask spread tight)?
• DonGateley 13y ago
  The 30 day delay in effect at the time I bought at $125 to test my first use of the system is the only reason I have three Bitcoin instead of 20. By the time I was approved for quicker purchase the booster rocket had kicked in and I simply couldn't believe the price increase to $200 could last. Ah, well. Story of my life.
• doggy 13y ago
  Based on the huge discrepancy between the supply of bitcoin (which is algorithmically regulated) and the demand (China, institutional investors, etc), some have predicted that the price of Bitcoin will increase to between $500,000 and $5,000,000 per unit within a three-year time frame. Whether this will happen or not, only time will tell. But what its telling us now is that Bitcoin has already increased 50x over the last 12 month.