6 ms·

I just sold my pet Bitcoin that I bought for $80 a while back. This is getting crazy, I wonder who the buyers are?

by gphil 13y ago

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. :)
    - BlackDeath3 13y ago
      Really? Damn! I was thinking about buying a couple of days ago. I think I actually will do that. Assuming you've bought some yourself, where would you recommend buying?
      - plainOldText 13y ago
        Deposit btc to btc-e.com. Buy litecoins using bitcoins. Then store them offline in a wallet. :)
        BlackDeath3 13y ago
        Any advantages that Litecoins offer over Bitcoins? As long as I pride myself on being somebody who bought into Bitcoin for more than its fiat value potential, I may as well be consistent and understand Litecoin as well.
        plainOldText 13y ago
        From a technical perspective see here: https://litecoin.info/Comparison_between_Litecoin_and_Bitcoin https://litecoin.info/Comparison_between_Litecoin_and_Bitcoi...
        BlackDeath3 13y ago
        Thanks for the link! Coin mining is really the only application that has ever made me regret not owning an AMD GPU.
- 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.

I just sold my pet Bitcoin that I bought for $80 a while back. This is getting crazy, I wonder who the buyers are?

by 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. :)
  - BlackDeath3 13y ago
    Really? Damn! I was thinking about buying a couple of days ago. I think I actually will do that. Assuming you've bought some yourself, where would you recommend buying?
    - plainOldText 13y ago
      Deposit btc to btc-e.com. Buy litecoins using bitcoins. Then store them offline in a wallet. :)
      - BlackDeath3 13y ago
        Any advantages that Litecoins offer over Bitcoins? As long as I pride myself on being somebody who bought into Bitcoin for more than its fiat value potential, I may as well be consistent and understand Litecoin as well.
        plainOldText 13y ago
        From a technical perspective see here: https://litecoin.info/Comparison_between_Litecoin_and_Bitcoin https://litecoin.info/Comparison_between_Litecoin_and_Bitcoi...
        BlackDeath3 13y ago
        Thanks for the link! Coin mining is really the only application that has ever made me regret not owning an AMD GPU.
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.