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The only surprising thing is how much faster BTC goes through different market phases than other financial instruments. A blow-off, reversal and sell-off like t

The only surprising thing is how much faster BTC goes through different market phases than other financial instruments. A blow-off, reversal and sell-off like this would take at least days in equities or commodities while this merely took hours. It also appears as if the frequency and amplitude of BTC tops is increasing. This trend actually makes BTC less and less useful as a currency to do business in since you have to hedge your exposure by the hour.

genericacct 13y ago
this is what people who do real finance call an illiquid market. Just to give you an idea, all the BTC in the world today were worth more or less as much as FIAT, which is probably the smallest car company out there. An illiquid market is fantastically easy to move.. and rig.
SwellJoe 13y ago
It's still such a small market. A single whale can cause a price to fall or rise...a group of whales could "crash" the damned thing for a time. It's also a nerd market. There is algorithmic trading happening at a level that only can happen with firms that have access to the direct feed on the exchanges...BTC allows everyone with enough knowledge to do high frequency trading. But, every day the size of fluctuations that are possible will become smaller. More people holding BTC, more people buying and selling BTC, leads to less ability of a few buyers or sellers to cause a major change. Someone in another recent BTC thread joked (in a "ha ha, only serious" kind of way) that the current speculative nature of the market might get enough people buying into BTC as a lottery ticket kind of purchase to cause the tipping point for it being a viable currency to happen without anyone noticing. If 20 million people in the US held Bitcoins...that's a big market for vendors to want to tap into. It's worth a little risk to get those buyers, as well.
- betterunix 13y ago
  "Someone in another recent BTC thread joked (in a "ha ha, only serious" kind of way) that the current speculative nature of the market might get enough people buying into BTC as a lottery ticket kind of purchase to cause the tipping point for it being a viable currency to happen without anyone noticing" How is that? It sounds like you will have lots of people with Bitcoin holdings. I do not see a currency, because I do not see where anyone is using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange.
  - lectrick 13y ago
    Check this idea out: http://www.cointagion.com/ http://www.cointagion.com/ Scan QR code with your wallet, hit Send, instadownload. You don't even have to touch the computer. At all. No account creation or anything else necessary. Now imagine this with... let's say, pornography or poker. Instant gratification. Amazon "one click" ordering could become Amazon "no click" ordering :)
  - SwellJoe 13y ago
    "It sounds like you will have lots of people with Bitcoin holdings." Which is all it takes to have lots of people who want to buy things with Bitcoins. Since there's almost zero barrier to doing so, once you have enough vendors accepting Bitcoin, there's little reason not to buy things with Bitcoin. What I'm getting at is: The influx of millions of new Bitcoin holders will lead to an influx of new vendors accepting Bitcoin. Sure, people are still clinging to bitcoins like gold...wanting to hoard it rather than use it. But, that desire will fade when the market settles down and becomes more predictable.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      You are hand-waving away this step: "...once you have enough vendors accepting Bitcoin..." There is also some irony in this statement: "people are still clinging to bitcoins like gold" Lots of people have gold but you would be hard-pressed to find any shop that accepts payments in gold.
      - SwellJoe 13y ago
        I'm not really intending to hand-wave it away. I just assumed it would come to pass, based on past evidence (there's more vendors every day, with the pace accelerating). I may be making an incorrect assumption. There are, in fact, a lot of assumptions being made by those who are bullish on Bitcoin, and some or all of them may be wrong. In some cases, if the assumptions are wrong, it will mean the end of Bitcoin. In others, if the assumptions are wrong, it'll just mean Bitcoin is more limited as a currency than we might like. But, it can't be anything other than a hypothesis until it is tested; neither you, or I, can know how this is gonna play out. Bitcoin isn't quite like anything else that has existed before, including gold or other currencies, so we're all guessing. I've laid out what I think will happen, and a bit about why I think it will happen. One last point: Gold, precisely unlike Bitcoin, is not easily or cheaply transferable over the Internet. That's a big distinction and, I think, enough to make it clear we're dealing with a different thing entirely. I left it unstated before as I kinda felt it would be obvious to HN readers. But, any time anyone compares Bitcoin to gold or another traditional currency or store of value in a general way (without being specific about how Bitcoin seems to be behaving like that other subject in one way or another), I question the validity of the analogy straight away. I genuinely believe Bitcoin is something new, and new human behaviors will develop around it.

genericacct 13y ago

this is what people who do real finance call an illiquid market. Just to give you an idea, all the BTC in the world today were worth more or less as much as FIAT, which is probably the smallest car company out there. An illiquid market is fantastically easy to move.. and rig.

SwellJoe 13y ago

It's still such a small market. A single whale can cause a price to fall or rise...a group of whales could "crash" the damned thing for a time. It's also a nerd market. There is algorithmic trading happening at a level that only can happen with firms that have access to the direct feed on the exchanges...BTC allows everyone with enough knowledge to do high frequency trading. But, every day the size of fluctuations that are possible will become smaller. More people holding BTC, more people buying and selling BTC, leads to less ability of a few buyers or sellers to cause a major change. Someone in another recent BTC thread joked (in a "ha ha, only serious" kind of way) that the current speculative nature of the market might get enough people buying into BTC as a lottery ticket kind of purchase to cause the tipping point for it being a viable currency to happen without anyone noticing. If 20 million people in the US held Bitcoins...that's a big market for vendors to want to tap into. It's worth a little risk to get those buyers, as well.

betterunix 13y ago
"Someone in another recent BTC thread joked (in a "ha ha, only serious" kind of way) that the current speculative nature of the market might get enough people buying into BTC as a lottery ticket kind of purchase to cause the tipping point for it being a viable currency to happen without anyone noticing" How is that? It sounds like you will have lots of people with Bitcoin holdings. I do not see a currency, because I do not see where anyone is using Bitcoin as a medium of exchange.
- lectrick 13y ago
  Check this idea out: http://www.cointagion.com/ http://www.cointagion.com/ Scan QR code with your wallet, hit Send, instadownload. You don't even have to touch the computer. At all. No account creation or anything else necessary. Now imagine this with... let's say, pornography or poker. Instant gratification. Amazon "one click" ordering could become Amazon "no click" ordering :)
- SwellJoe 13y ago
  "It sounds like you will have lots of people with Bitcoin holdings." Which is all it takes to have lots of people who want to buy things with Bitcoins. Since there's almost zero barrier to doing so, once you have enough vendors accepting Bitcoin, there's little reason not to buy things with Bitcoin. What I'm getting at is: The influx of millions of new Bitcoin holders will lead to an influx of new vendors accepting Bitcoin. Sure, people are still clinging to bitcoins like gold...wanting to hoard it rather than use it. But, that desire will fade when the market settles down and becomes more predictable.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    You are hand-waving away this step: "...once you have enough vendors accepting Bitcoin..." There is also some irony in this statement: "people are still clinging to bitcoins like gold" Lots of people have gold but you would be hard-pressed to find any shop that accepts payments in gold.
    - SwellJoe 13y ago
      I'm not really intending to hand-wave it away. I just assumed it would come to pass, based on past evidence (there's more vendors every day, with the pace accelerating). I may be making an incorrect assumption. There are, in fact, a lot of assumptions being made by those who are bullish on Bitcoin, and some or all of them may be wrong. In some cases, if the assumptions are wrong, it will mean the end of Bitcoin. In others, if the assumptions are wrong, it'll just mean Bitcoin is more limited as a currency than we might like. But, it can't be anything other than a hypothesis until it is tested; neither you, or I, can know how this is gonna play out. Bitcoin isn't quite like anything else that has existed before, including gold or other currencies, so we're all guessing. I've laid out what I think will happen, and a bit about why I think it will happen. One last point: Gold, precisely unlike Bitcoin, is not easily or cheaply transferable over the Internet. That's a big distinction and, I think, enough to make it clear we're dealing with a different thing entirely. I left it unstated before as I kinda felt it would be obvious to HN readers. But, any time anyone compares Bitcoin to gold or another traditional currency or store of value in a general way (without being specific about how Bitcoin seems to be behaving like that other subject in one way or another), I question the validity of the analogy straight away. I genuinely believe Bitcoin is something new, and new human behaviors will develop around it.