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Bitcoin Reaches 1000 USD
- guilamu 13y agoWrong, did not reached it yet.
- Aqueous 13y agoIt is still around $950.00 on CoinBase. Mt. Gox is usually ahead of CoinBase and BitStamp.
- gnerd 13y agoRight but this demand is coming from China (for the last 3 hours) and the other markets are just closing the gap as they catch up (some nice arbitrage opportunities if you have a CNY account). If the trade spikes were on MtGox for USD I would agree that it is an inaccurate price but as MtGox has more trade volume than CoinBase, I think they just close the gap sooner.
- wallzz 13y agoThe price is in EURO if you want the USD try https://www.mtgox.com/?Currency=USD https://www.mtgox.com/?Currency=USD
- guilamu 13y agoNow it does: http://uppix.net/Cv5mZP.jpg http://uppix.net/Cv5mZP.jpg
- PinkBunny 13y agoWhy does the bitcoin price differ on different exchanges?
- VMG 13y agoBitcoin is more expensive on MtGox because there are severe delays when getting dollars out
- namwen 13y agoI believe it has to do with the likelihood that you'll be able to sell? Some exchanges have a lot more users.
- AndrewDucker 13y agoBecause the price is based on what people are offering them for/buying them for on the different exchanges. Because different exchanges make it easier/harder to work with different currencies, different people use them.
- mbeattie 13y agoThere are delays trading between dollars and bitcoins so as the different exchanges vary, people can't easily arbitrage it and close the gap.
- brador 13y agoMad panic to buy means people aren't price sensitive by a few %. "$930 for $900 of bitcoins? Sure no problem, it'll be $950 tomorrow" kinda thing.
- gnerd 13y agoBecause they are sold in different markets. Its just like a fish or vegetable market, supply and demand at the market will set the price. The difference with traditional currency markets is those markets are very deep and competitive so the slightest discrepancy in price between markets is an arbitrage opportunity for someone which then pushes the price in line with other markets. The more liquidity there is on the BitCoin markets, the less the price will differ. BitCoin just doesn't have that sort of liquidity or market depth yet.
- broolstoryco 13y agoto the moon.
- dmix 13y agoIn Canada our biggest market is $924.
- ck2 13y agoIt seems to be lifting all boats too, litecoin broke $25
- kclay 13y agoWhy on earth did I sell off my litecoins
- broolstoryco 13y agoTo buy bitcoins, right? RIGHT??
- kclay 13y agoYes :'(
- shiftpgdn 13y agoTo me this is the interesting discussion. What's going to happen with the rest of the alt coins?
- shawabawa3 13y agoCan people please stop reporting MtGox prices? The real[1] price is closer to $950 [1] The price on exchanges where you can actually withdraw USD, e.g. bitstamp
- drcode 13y agoI agree mtgox prices are borked, but historically mtgox prices were used as the "official" price, and I think this is going to continue well into the future. Since these price milestones are arbitrary anyway, does it really matter?
- makira 13y agoThat, and MtGox is often a leading indicator for the other exchanges.
- blhack 13y agoI'd say most people are quoting coinbase as the "official" price at this point.
- waterlesscloud 13y agoYou'd definitely be wrong about that.
- downandout 13y agoIt's either ridiculously underpriced or ridiculously overpriced. Not exactly sure which yet.
- oleganza 13y agoBitcoin is a bet that it becomes world money. If it's not broken and trust is not shaken, its target price is somewhere from 1 to 50 millions of today's dollars. When it's suddenly broken, well, people will sell off and lead the value to zero. I bet it will replace currencies, gold and silver.
- stinkytaco 13y agoDo you mean "currencies: gold and silver" or "currencies, gold, and silver"? Do you really believe it will replace traditional currencies? Do gold and silver have any real value (as in I can exchange them for good somewhere)? I wonder because I've noticed that generally people who bet on bitcoin as "world money" seem to forget a few things: 1. the information infrastructure necessary for bitcoin is not universal and requires constant upkeep (thus a stable political and economic climate) and 2. there are currently many currencies and the world seems to get by with them. Is there reason to believe that bitcoin's adoption will be fostered by the necessary stable political climate and if it's enough of an improvement over paper monies to replace them entirely? EDIT: I guess to summarize what now seems to be a confusing point: my dollar still work fine. What does bitcoin have that will motivate me to replace my dollars? NOTE: I hold bitcoins and will continue to hold them. I buy webhosting and a few other things with them on a fairly regular basis.
- oleganza 13y agoNational currencies, gold, silver and other commodities used to hedge against USD, EUR, banks etc. Our whole global economy and lifestyle enjoyed by billions of people needs computers and electricity, otherwise we go back to middle ages. People want one money - most liquid, most used one. Gold does not fly, USD is politically controlled and restricted. Bitcoin weights zero and unrestricted by design. http://blog.oleganza.com/post/54121516413/the-universe-wants-one-money http://blog.oleganza.com/post/54121516413/the-universe-wants...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- cs702 13y agoWow -- $1030 per BTC as I write this. This is happening way faster than anyone ever expected.[1] All else being equal, the more people who decide to use or hold Bitcoin, the higher its price will be, because the maximum number of bitcoins that can ever exist is permanently fixed. It's a scarce commodity by design. So, greater adoption = higher price. -- [1] In early 2011, I speculated it could take a decade for price to reach the thousands of US dollars per Bitcoin: http://cs702.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/on-the-potential-adoption-and-price-appreciation-of-bitcoin-in-the-long-run/ http://cs702.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/on-the-potential-adopt...
- oleganza 13y agoIf at some point chain reaction is triggered (people are not afraid it's another bubble and jump in non-stop until everyone has some coins), then the growth must be not exponential, but even faster.
- fat0wl 13y agothat's the nature of any pyramid scheme -- the potential cashout of any individual is higher when more money is put into the system without being removed. The funny thing about the Bitcoin scheme is that everyone has the ability for the cashout, it's simply a really complex Game Theory scenario (lol, simply complex). Still though, the early adopters have a much greater shot at grabbin all the marbles, just people suspect they won't because it's been a while and they still haven't. So either they're A) Absurdly greedy. B) Asleep at the wheel. C) True believers in the idea & want to see it succeed. D) Cashing out coins periodically enough to give them a decent lifestyle without disrupting the ecosystem.
- oleganza 13y agoAll three A, C and D for sure. Here's a thing: in both cases, when Bitcoin is a fraud and joke, and when Bitcoin is a future world-changing technology, price must grow up like crazy. So the price alone does not give us any clue about the nature of Bitcoin. Only analysis of fundamentals and analysis of the econo-political environment we are in can tell us something about value of Bitcoin.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoholy cr!9 - I was thinking of trying to mine some to get a handle on the whole thing - last week when it was 800 bucks.What the hell? If I understand it, there is a upper limit to number of bitcoins available ever - what is that number and when will it be equal to the total asset value of the planet? I mean is it feasible that bitcoins could really work? Edit: ok there is a limit of 21million bitcoins by 2030, and a world assignable wealth of ~210 trillion USD. So, if bitcoin works and can be the repository for all worlds currency, it would have to be worth 10,000 USD per bitcoin. Then any growth in value. So ... this might just work folks. And if not it still makes for a great DHT
- stinkytaco 13y agoOf course it's feasible. It already "works": i.e. I can buy things with it, which is how currency works. Will it displace all other currencies? Unlikely. There are major barriers such as lack of financial services, difficulty of use in any area without Internet (which is lots of places worldwide), volatility, etc, but there's no fundemental reason it can't work.
- lifeisstillgood 13y agoit does not need to displace them I guess - same way Euro does not need to displace USD, just needs to be a viable alternative. Which I suspect means being a viable repository of value of all current wealth so it can have a stable exchange rate I am interested in its ability to be a more secure Distributed hash table ala namecoin, but the tulip mania has me itching to just start mining. Oh well, why did I not start earlier? BTW do we know how many coins have been produced to date?
- stinkytaco 13y agoAbout 12 million coins have been produced. The reward halved a few months ago, so mining is probably not your best bet now. Of course, if the value increases, then I'm wrong, but mining is quickly becoming a professionals game.
- 13y ago
- relaxedricky 13y agohttp://preev.com/ http://preev.com/ - 963.1 USD at time of posting
- drzaiusapelord 13y agoIs the success of cryptolocker raising the value of this currency? Essentially, we have quite a bit of proof now that it is truly an untraceable currency and previously shy buyers might feel emboldened by this. More demand == higher value.
- base698 13y agoIt is not untraceable, and in fact it's the most traceable currency ever. I can't imagine what a forensic gold mine it will be about spending patterns and who spends money where, especially when coupled with the online activity already used.
- drzaiusapelord 13y agoRight, the ledger is public but the ledger doesn't have my name on it. Big difference there.
- quasque 13y agoThe ledger may not have your name on it but merchant and payment processor metadata may well link your identity and Bitcoin addresses.
- saalweachter 13y agoAnyone know what is driving the price? My supply-side model, which I felt pretty smug about for the last couple of months, only calls for a price of $450-500, so it clearly can't account for the current price. So much for that. Seems likely then that this is coming from an increase in demand. Does anyone have any good guesses about where that increase in demand is coming from?
- makira 13y agoChina
- saalweachter 13y agoIs there a surge in Chinese speculators or users? I remember a few years back there were stories about how broken the savings system was in China; something like the only two legal investments were state banks, which gave 1% interest when there was double-digit inflation, and real estate, where you could buy apartments in empty cities on the premise that it was really hard to do worse than the negative 10% real rate of return you got from banks. In that environment I could see how an investment vehicle like BTC could really take off.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Is there a surge in Chinese speculators or users? Probably both, though its probably not simple to figure out the ratios.
- VMG 13y agoA few days ago yes, but currently there hasn't been an increase in Chinese demand as far as I can tell Compare http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/btcchina/btccny http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/btcchina/btccny and http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/mtgox/btcusd http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/mtgox/btcusd
- gesman 13y agoTrust in Bitcoin == distrust in other currencies + distrust in government ability to handle economy
- wil421 13y agoWhat happens in 5 years?
- oleganza 13y agoIn 5 years Bitcoin will replace almost all world currencies and cause massive reallocation of wealth in EUR and USD territories. USD and EUR will hyperinflate and lose value dramatically and eventually become abandoned.
- broolstoryco 13y agofap fap fap
- pakitan 13y agoDon't forget about the coming of Cthulhu
- oleganza 13y agoWanna bet?
- owenmarshall 13y agoI'd bet you Ron Paul Fun Bucks don't supplant USD or EUR in five years, but I'd bet you wouldn't be willing to pay out in the filthy fiat currency I'd demand.
- oleganza 13y agoSo if in 5 years Bitcoin does not displace half of the sovereign currencies I pay you $10K. But if it does, you pay me 1 BTC. We need to formalise the measurement first, but what about the general outline?
- pakitan 13y agoForget what I said above about not trusting an escrow :) With such lovely odds, I'll gladly take you on this bet. Contact John K from bitcointalk about doing the escrow and I'm in. We can even up the sum a bit :)
- AndrewDucker 13y agoAre there any decent estimates for how much one bitcoin will be worth if it ends up being a generally used currency for international transfers? i.e. if it becomes the new Paypal, how much would one bitcoin need to be worth?
- VMG 13y agoSome pointers: http://www.btcglobe.com/tool/calculate-future http://www.btcglobe.com/tool/calculate-future
- foxhill 13y agopaypal claim to have done $44 billion of trade in Q3 2013(1). so lets assume paypal do $4x44 billion of trade for the year. there will only ever be 21 million BTC in existence* , there are much less than that right now (12 million ish). 4x44,000,000,000/21,000,000 = $8380/BTC this assumes of course, that Bitcoin totally replaces paypal and nothing else (which is already not true). * - this ignores the fact that there are already thousands, if not millions of BTC that have been lost due to lost wallets, forgotten coins, invalid transactions, etc. (1) - https://www.paypal-media.com/about https://www.paypal-media.com/about
- carbocation 13y agoI think bitcoin is extremely interesting, but price reports like this are not intellectually stimulating. 1,000 is an arbitrary number. Let's talk about bitcoin, but for a volatile currency, let's not fire off news articles every time it crossed another arbitrary threshold?
- oleganza 13y agoPrimary value of Bitcoin is being money. To be good money it must be widely valuable, there must be as many hands willing to hold it, as possible. Since the supply is fixed, price must grow. So price acts as an indicator of liquidity. Other functions based on blockchain (contracts, timestamping, escrows etc.) are only valuable if Bitcoin has enormous hashrate and is trusted by everyone as money. Hashrate is supported by high demand for generated bitcoins and desire to make transactions (reflected in voluntary fees). I wrote about it here: http://blog.oleganza.com/post/66953255676/transactional-currency-and-store-of-value http://blog.oleganza.com/post/66953255676/transactional-curr...
- carbocation 13y agoWhat you say is interesting—so interesting in fact that I submitted your write up just now ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6808420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6808420 ). I would much rather read that than see a post about the current exchange rate of Bitcoin.
- tokenizer 13y agoExactly. If the goal of bitcoin is to be a great buy/sell commodity, then it's definitely looking like a fun rollercoaster ride! However if it truly wants to be considered a currency, the developments it needs are more ATMs (like the one Vancouver), more merchants accepting bitcoin, and more adoption in terms of velocity.
- wwwtyro 13y agoI don't think it's fair to say that it's entirely arbitrary. The 1000$ mark holds significant psychological impact. When the price rises, it's going to be reported on, and it makes sense for it to be reported on when it hits a psychologically important value like 1000$ rather than 947.13$
- snorkel 13y agoAs someone who witnessed the dot-com boom, I always tell the kids nowadays: sell. sell it all. now.
- base698 13y agoIn the past three years the same thing was said at $33 and $266. Whenever new global interest arises it goes even higher. While I agree there is a ceiling I can't really imagine what it will be in a truly global market.
- JabavuAdams 13y agoAs someone who sold shares for $8 that I got through my employer at $2.50, I always tell the kids nowadays: I should have waited until it hit $80. There are no easy answers.
- snorkel 13y agoA bird in the hand is better than two in the bush. Don't get greedy, just take the profit and be thankful for it.
- oleganza 13y agoSell into what? Both dotcom shares and USD are promise-papers. Bitcoin is the only money in the entire world that you can truly own. Even gold you can't own completely. At some amount you have to put it in vault and hire people to guard it. But you can put millions of Bitcoins in your brainwallet. I elaborated on this recently: http://blog.oleganza.com/post/67362431718/you-can-own-bitcoin-you-cant-own-your-dollars http://blog.oleganza.com/post/67362431718/you-can-own-bitcoi...
- snorkel 13y agoThe price of anything, especially Bitcoins, is driven by demand, greed, speculation, and irrational market behaviors. It's people running the price up, not math and science, but people. At this moment those people will be become either winners or suckers. The suckers will be the ones who believed the math of Bitcoin makes it magically valuable just as those who believed that Pets.com had a bright future.
- adrianwaj 13y agoWait 'til Wall Street gets on board. I've setup a simple webpage (with @btcprice) for displaying prices: $1,022.90 mtgxUSD $943.00 bitstamp $943.00 bitpayBBB http://btcpricenow.com http://btcpricenow.com
- bottled_poe 13y agoI think it's naive to think that stokebrokers have not been paying attention for the last few years.
- adrianwaj 13y agoThe narrative around bitcoin is changing. It can be seen more of an investment now than a bet. Up until now I think bitcoin has been an "as yet proven, volatile, geeky, alternate, viral internet currency with network effects." And the conservative are left wondering if it's a fad or a bubble. Now it's just an emerging asset class with unique fundamentals that could have real utility within the financial services community itself... eg to settle trades.
- simplemath 13y agoThe "unique fundamental" is a built in pseudonomous chargeback-less, ACH-less, nearly instantaneous global transaction system that has proven extremely difficult to cheat. This fundamental alone gives BTC tremendous value.
- wololo 13y agoHow do we quantitatively tell when they started paying attention?
- Torn 13y agohttp://bitcoinity.org/markets/ http://bitcoinity.org/markets/
- brador 13y agoRemember kids, it's only real once you sell. Until then it's paper money. With a price rise, either there's more demand from speculators or more people holding.
- oleganza 13y agoUnless it becomes world money. USD is a promise paper like stocks. Bitcoin is like a gold coin. You can fully own the real thing without trusting someone to store it for you.
- brador 13y agoYou really think Bitcoin will make it as a usable currency? You know deflationary = hold and never spend, right? Not much use as a currency if there's no flow or will to exchange for goods.
- oleganza 13y agoMoney is valuable for "reservation demand". The more people want to hold it, the more useful it is to everyone. Only this way it can become a currency. You can't have currency without value and can't have value without holding and having many hands to hold. http://blog.oleganza.com/post/66953255676/transactional-currency-and-store-of-value http://blog.oleganza.com/post/66953255676/transactional-curr... http://blog.oleganza.com/post/43378777734/on-circulation-of-money http://blog.oleganza.com/post/43378777734/on-circulation-of-...
- gnerd 13y agoWell for a reserve currency, deflation is positive as a hedge for inflation. China have bought more gold than anyone else in the world for that reason, to mitigate holding foreign reserve currency (which they limited just last month) or debt priced in foreign currency that inflates beyond their control or liking. One would expect this is the role BitCoin would take, just like gold except a lot more convenient to move around. It is a solution to the Triffin Dilemma, which in 2009 the Governor of The Bank of China wrote about. That same year Russia proposed a new international reserve currency backed by precious metals and a currency basket to solve the same problem. In South America there have been proposals for a petro dollar, backed by oil for the same reason. Deflation is good for a reserve currency, in some ways it is fairer than gold because you don't have to rely on the geographical distribution of gold in the ground.
- seanalltogether 13y agoIt's now been over 5 weeks since I sold all my bitcoins on mtgox and still haven't received any of my money from them.
- csmuk 13y agoThis is the thing that worries me. I have 2 BTC and was hoping to sell to grab a MacBook but I get the feeling turds and fan are going to impact each other soon.
- danielweber 13y agoThere is an old stockbroker joke about penny stocks. Broker: "This stock is at 1 cent and could keep on going up." Client: "BUY!" The next day: Broker: "Good news, the stock is at 3 cents and is showing no signs of slowing." Client: "BUY!" The next day: Broker: "Awesome news, the stock is at 10 cents and people think it could hit 50 cents in a week." Client: "SELL!" Broker: " . . . to whom?"
- fat0wl 13y agoahhhhh you may be my soulmate on this thread :)
- nezza-_- 13y agoWhich is why you look at market depth indicators. http://bitcoinity.org/markets http://bitcoinity.org/markets or http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html for example.
- ye 13y agoSo sell them at an exchange that doesn't suck at withdrawals. BTC is trivial to transfer.
- freework 13y agoIf you can find a place to buy a macbook directly with bitcoins, you'll be OK. Selling BTC for dollars is whats tricky, as it requires money to pass through Gox's bank account. The banks don't really like BTC that much, so it's a pain. I've bought things directly with BTC before and it's an easy process.
- BenjaminN 13y agoWhen it will be as easy to buy a bitcoin as it is to buy, say, an ebook, it will go up significantly. For example, I tried to buy some last monday and realized that I had to justify my address, my bank account, my identity and so on. I still can't figure out why it's so complicated to buy a bitcoin. I've been waiting for my bitcoin-central account since then, and received confirmation for my account on bitstamp last saturday. I still have to transfer some money there. My question is: why is it so complicated to buy bitcoins?
- VMG 13y ago> why is it so complicated to buy bitcoins? The legacy banking system, rules and regulation in particular.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> My question is: why is it so complicated to buy bitcoins? Because bitcoin transfers are irreversible, unlike most methods of transferring currency to pay for them other than direct p2p cash transfer (which is, itself, somewhat inconvenient.)
- nikolak 13y agoBecause it doesn't have chargebacks. A lot of services that allowed its users to purchase bitcoins without having to verify their identity and buy bitcoin using PP or CCs were abused by people using stolen PP and CC info. So they lost money if the real owner issued chargeback and bitcoins were already transferred.
- BenjaminN 13y agoI actually never realized the banking system was not trustful. Obviously, I thought that when I entered my credit card number, you can easily check I have enough money, switch the money from one account to another, and let the store knows the money is now in his account. But it's obviously much more complicated.
- stinkytaco 13y agoSomeone pointed out chargebacks, which is one issue. The other is financial regulation aimed at money laundering. Anyone who deals in this much money has lots of questions asked by governments. That's why your best bet for bitcoins is either to buy them locally from someone you meet up with or to use an exchange like Coinbase where you use bank transfer and it's all above board. Everything else is a lot of work.
- granfalloon 13y agoman, this has been fascinating to watch (and not just because i have a little skin in the game). the tech and theory underlying the currency; its mysterious founder; the idea of massive "mining" operations where people are essentially printing their own money; the fact that one of the major exchanges was orginally a MTG exchange; the senate hearings; the tor black markets and FBI "seizures"; the absurdly juvenile chatter in the "troll box" on BTC-E, a major exchange; and of course, the goldrush-like nature of the skyrocketing prices. i'm looking forward to hearing what people have to say about all this a few years down the line
- eegilbert 13y agoHas Bitcoin been subjected to serious academic research? Quickly scanning this bibliography [1], at least, I don't see many top ACM conferences. [1] http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~clark/biblio.html http://users.encs.concordia.ca/~clark/biblio.html
- oleganza 13y agoAcademics hate Bitcoin for 51% attack and lack of formal proofs. Theoretically it's not cool invention. Practically, it can change the whole world and be viable economically for a very long time.
- mafribe 13y agoMany academics are deeply fascinated by Bitcoin. The lack of formal proofs has many reasons, not the least of which is that there is no security definition that one could base a proof on. Coming up with a good security definition is going to be a major undertaking. Last year's Turing award was given for the security definition of something much simpler.
- archQuestions 13y agoIt was born on the cypherpunks mailing lists so I assume it has been vetted by the appropriate individuals.
- bottled_poe 13y agoWhat makes bitcoin special? It's not like we've seen widespread adoption of this particular cryptocurrency. Do litecoin, feathercoin, et al. use the same algorithm with different seeds? I dont't understand why bitcoin is gaining so much value. It seems that an identical cryptocurrency could be created with or without the coins already mined. It seems to me that $1000 per bc can only be speculation by the wealthy at this point. It is surely a bubble waiting to implode.
- unethical_ban 13y agoBitcoin is special because it has more users and recognition than litecoin, and it has more users and recognition because it's special. A currency gets its value from the recognition by others of its use for trade. Bitcoin has more of that than the others.
- gagege 13y agoThank you for asking these questions! No one seems to be answering them.
- rescripting 13y agoHopefully someone can clear this up for me: With the price rising so quickly what incentive is there to actually use BTC as intended, as a currency? Because the maximum number of coins is fixed it's pretty easy to project where the valuation is headed, and so anyone in their right mind should just hoard their BTC instead of spending it, which in turn should drive the price down, no?
- wikwocket 13y agoUsing BTC as money is an independent decision from holding BTC as an "investment." If you have 0.02 BTC (~$20), you can spend $20 on a pizza, keeping your 0.02 BTC. Or you can spend 0.02 BTC on the pizza, and have $20 more USD to buy BTC with. This of course assumes you can easily transact with BTC, and convert USD <-> BTC, which seems to be anything but a sure thing.
- bunderbunder 13y agoThey're deeply dependent on each other. Both kinds of user are strongly influenced by BTC exchange rates, and BTC has the same exchange rate regardless of how you intend to use it. I encourage you to read up on the recent history of Iceland's currency.
- brown9-2 13y agoThis ignores the part where you're not sure if that same pizza will cost 0.01 BTC tomorrow or 0.04 BTC or 10 BTC tomorrow. If I think that my 0.02 BTC could get me two pizzas tomorrow, why would I trade that amount for one pizza today?
- yebyen 13y agoCan you make it til tomorrow? Are those 0.02BTC all you have? If you're sure you're going to buy a pizza with BTC tomorrow, why not buy the BTC today, or five days ago? The prices have been pretty consistently going up. Yeah, there's a chance that pizza will have been 5% cheaper if you bought the coin to pay for it yesterday, or if you wait til tomorrow. So, why wouldn't you just take all of your USD savings and convert them to BTC? Wait, you mean to tell me you _only have_ that 0.02BTC? (Wait, you mean to tell me you only have that $20 in the bank?) I have way more USD value of BTC than I ever planned on having. It started as $50 and when that performed well, I put some more in, and bought some mining equipment, and put some more in, and now it has significantly more than eclipsed my USD cash savings at this point. It is for this reason that I would love to spend BTC, in fact it's a karmic imperative for me to try to spend BTC, since I've done so well with it so far. I can always replace it at the market rate at Coinbase. If you're spending the bitcoins and you're valuing them lower than it costs you to replace them, you're getting screwed. If things keep moving the way they are moving, you're going to have a talk with your vendor that accepts bitcoins. (It's always fun to get to ask, "Tell me why am I paying you extra?") I make more hoarding a few meager bitcoins in the midst of this bubble than riding a desk at my dayjob. So you can see why I am in your corner. Still, I don't think there has been a bad day to buy BTC in the last (how long has bitcoin existed so far?). I recognize that I would be a fool to keep less actual fungible cash than I need for groceries, rent, etc, and when I can use a Bitcoin in an actual transaction with a person (rather than trading it for cash at an exchange), I feel that it's probably a good idea to use some of that cash I saved to offset the impact to my BTC portfolio. All that being said, when I watched the price take a minor tumble the other day, from 850 to 785, I got nervous and went to SatoshiDice to recoup my perceived losses in an even riskier way. Nobody will take my bitcoins in exchange for anything I need (I can't spend them on rent, I can't pay taxes with them, I can't leave them at the grocery store or at the restaurant or the bar), apart from the exchange site (which will give me cash, that I do need)... but I have all of the cash I need for the moment and it doesn't do any fun tricks like these BTC. So why am I buying pizza again? I don't know if all that's a sign of a healthy market, but I don't think so. Still, you weigh the facts, you pick your horses and you take your chances.
- giarc 13y agoI was following BTC when it had hit $200-300 and was in the news quite often. I considered buying some but after reading lots of opinion pieces, decided against it. Many people were showing graphs comparing the dot com bubble and the bitcoin bubble and warning others that BTC would settle nicely into a lower price. Those people were obviously wrong, wish I hadn't listened to them.
- pizza234 13y agoThose people are not wrong at all. It's just that it's very hard to predict where this is going. Those people are right in the sense that, based on history, the whole phenomenon has much in common with a speculative bubble. As speculative bubbles, during the happening, you don't know where it's going. Don't forget that bitcoins right now have little intrinsic value. If somebody today decides to spend them for purchases, they have very few or no options. If it is a speculative bubble, then it's a risky game of assessing when it will explode. Even if it's not going to be a speculative bubble, the price may still fall considerably before stabilizing.
- brandong 13y agoThese people may have not been wrong, just early. Keep inflating a balloon - it's hard to say when it's going to pop, but still accurate to say that it will at some point. If I had money invested in bitcoin, I would pursue a strategy that kept in mind that it very well could be a bubble- and one that could lose most of it's value before you have a chance to get out. The wisest plays aren't the ones that make the most money, but the ones that concrete gains by taking the profit off of the table: Sell out X% every time it hits a new arbitrary high.
- gagege 13y agoI'm afraid of Bitcoin becoming the world's only currency. Someone with enough computing power can massively game the system. I'm not saying that that can't happen with today's government driven currencies, but that there are at least other options right now. Maybe we shouldn't all switch to Bitcoin.
- oleganza 13y agoYou haven't read in detail how Bitcoin works and why no one has pulled this off when the hashrate was smaller, but amount of money still big. Malicious miner has little to gain, a lot to invest and it's easy for the rest of the network to censor him. Edit: "haven't read" instead of "have read".
- swalsh 13y agoI'd be afraid of it becoming even a common currency. The problem is bitcoin does not encourage economic growth. It is smarter to hold then to spend. In a good currency, the demand for the money itself should not cause prices to fluctuate. I think this could be solved if instead of the difficulty target being determined based on a steady release, was instead determined in someway based on the quantity theory of money (MV = PY) so as there is greater demand for coins more coins would be produced, and the opposite, when we have enough coins, less are produced.
- judk 13y agoIf bitcoin concept gets popular, why would the next set of adopters buy into btc instead of trying to be early adopters in a different technically equivalent cryptocurrency?
- drcode 13y agoNetwork effects. It's easier to perform transactions if both parties prefer the same currency. This will always put Bitcoin in a class by itself.
- gagege 13y agoWhat I'm hoping is that a bunch of other crypto-currencies will become more popular in the wake of Bitcoin news. Ideally this will give us a nice market for trading different crypto-currencies. Also, as a result, we'll see more and more businesses that accept these currencies. I just hope we don't end up with one worldwide currency. Where would be the fun in that?
- gnister 13y agoBitcoin is not a traditional currency. It's more like gold or another scarce commodity. Bitcoin is an electronic commodity with no intrinsic value that has been rigged to be perfect for speculation. What would a national bank do if the value of its currency exploded like this? It would print more money, regulate interest rate or take other actions to keep the currency value more stable compared to other currencies. There is no "bank" supporting Bitcoin. Comparing Bitcoin to traditional currencies make people think about Bitcoin the wrong way.
- borplk 13y agoHow easy is it to sell bitcoins now? Especially for large amounts, can someone just cash 1000BTC on mtgox now?
- crististm 13y agoNobody has an answer for you, but this is a very legitimate question. If you can't cash out at any time, the market is not liquid and the $1000 value is just smoke. I believe that the BTC valuation is based more on newcomers expectations of growth and less on anything tangible - like trading it for goods or cash. We will probably see the facebook scenario where everybody -before IPO- was shouting the incredible 100billion valuation while secretly hoping enough fools will jump to buy shares to raise the price so they could cash out in profit.
- knodi 13y agoI hope there is a crash coming.
- TomGullen 13y agoWhy? You got a large position on Gold?
- gerhardi 13y agoCould someone explain how is the blockchain going to maintain integrity and the transfer lag is taken into account "when" bitcoin is globally used everywhere and thousands if not millions of transactions are happening every single second?
- wmf 13y agoBitcoin just doesn't support thousands of transactions per second, so that won't happen. Most likely people will be driven to use some non-Bitcoin system that is denominated in BTC (e.g. banks).
- 00rion 13y agoI'm curious about this too. Miners who maintain the blockchain will have to do more work for less bitcoins. If miners are earning less bitcoins, the value will have to continue increasing in order to encourage the miners to maintain the blockchain. At what point is this unsustainable?
- MattyRad 13y agohttps://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Storage https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability#Storage
- paweld 13y agoWhat if mtgox is buying bitcoins for money which doesn't have. Could that drive prices up.
- crististm 13y agoThe price should be based on what people are able to _cash out_. Is this the case? Are people getting $1000 money in the hand for 1BTC or is it just the "valuation" we're talking about here?
- samolang 13y agoRight now you can sell you bitcoins for $979.74 on coinbase (minus 1% commission + transaction fee). So pretty close to $1,000.
- crististm 13y agoWhat other markets are there besides coinbase? If the market is not liquid enough then the $1000 value is just smoke. I have a hard time believing that the price is not rising artificially because of low transaction count with the outside world (people holding to BTC instead of cashing them out).
- samolang 13y agoI think there are a bunch. Here is another one that I was looking at earlier today: https://btc-e.com/exchange/btc_usd https://btc-e.com/exchange/btc_usd
- snake_plissken 13y agoBTFATH?
- EGreg 13y agoMy thesis is simple. The value of any currency to someoneis how much real stuff they need that they can exchange it for. Any cryptocurrency that is effectively limited in volume and viable to be used will grow. Because of the growing number users of the currency, some are developers who will make it easier for sellers to accept it. What bitcoin had going for it is that it DIDNT have mass adoption - it had a long way to go. Now the same is true of peercoin and litecoin - they are where bitcoin was a year ago. There's no reason they can't go to 1000 also. In short there are a few factors determining the price of a currency: Short term fads: 1. being newly listed on an exchange as exchangeable for the local currency of the country 2. news stories about the currency Long term fundamentals: 3. The increase in acceptance by merchants and metcalfe's law (I think n log n is more realistic than n^2 though) 4. Limit on new currency being produced. In this respect I feel litecoin beats peercoin in #4 and peercoin beats litecoin in #3, it has a longer way to go but it is more sustainable and is further behind so it has a longer way to grow from now.
- blackdogie 13y agoI was surprised that there wasn't a dip when it hit 1000, I'm sure that there must have been quite a few people will sell orders at this round, but arbitrary point. If this was the case there would have been some dip, is it just being overly inflated by some rich backers who are slowly taking the cash out, but backing it up when it dips ?
- thisiswrong 13y agoAnd meanwhile altcoins (alternative cryptocurrencies) are booming like never seen before - even more so than bitcoin. Litecoin just hit 30usd, Peercoin nearly at 4usd. http://coinmarketcap.com/ http://coinmarketcap.com/
- crististm 13y agoThis may be the weak point of these crypto-currencies. The proponents market them as scarce commodity but in reality you can just think today of another scheme like that. So why is it booming? It is booming because it is booming. It's a positive loop that will end when the new comers stop coming.
- thisiswrong 13y agoAnd meanwhile altcoins (alternative cryptocurrencies) are booming like never seen before - even more so than bitcoin. Litecoin just hit 30usd, Peercoin nearly at 4usd. http://coinmarketcap.com/ http://coinmarketcap.com/
- edubart 13y agoBack in 2010 I did mine 160 BTC in 3 days just with my average CPU, however at some point I stopped caring, because 3 years ago there weren't much blabling about bitcoin and everyone that I told at that time did't care. Months later I had to format hard disk because ArchLinux did a great job breaking the whole system in a update, in the moment I just didn't remember that there were a BitCoin wallet in my system. Now about 2 years later I am hopping to recovery the wallet using a recovery program, but I already know that there is almost no chance. Today I just can't stop thinking about what happened. Damn ArchLinux, I really hope you die in hell. At the moment around USD160000 lost. Anyway I am still sticking with you, in sickness and in health, in poverty or in wealth. Because you know, despite what you have done, you will be always by my side.
- brainburn 13y agoDon't blame archlinux for your forgetting of the wallet, you did that. Think of it like you're losing 3 days of cpu cycles, not 160K.
- xedarius 13y agoCan someone please answer me this. If a Bitcoin is worth +$1000 and I want to buy an item worth $50. How does one receive change?
- TomGullen 13y agoThey are divisible into 100,000,000 parts. So you can pay for a $50 item with 0.05 BTC and still have 0.95 BTC in your wallet to spend.
- nkuttler 13y agoThere are so many uneducated comments that I'll link to the bitcoin FAQ: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ. Really, anybody trying to argue for or against BTC should at least have read that.
- tokenadult 13y agoIn other news, tulip bulbs can be had for $9.99 for a dozen,[1] a decline (for some varieties) from the historic high price.[2] The history of commodity prices provides some interesting insights into human behavior.[3] [1] http://www.brecks.com/category/Tulip_Flower_Bulbs http://www.brecks.com/category/Tulip_Flower_Bulbs [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania [3] http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Charles-Mackay/dp/0486432238 http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Charle...
- AKifer 13y agoI'm afraid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania will again happen, wikipedia should already prepare an entry for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_mania http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_mania
- vishyboy 13y agoa nice look using cartoon at http://vish-speak.blogspot.in/2013/11/bitcoin-phenomenon.html http://vish-speak.blogspot.in/2013/11/bitcoin-phenomenon.htm...
- vishyboy 13y agoa nice look using cartoon at http://vish-speak.blogspot.in/2013/11/bitcoin-phenomenon.html http://vish-speak.blogspot.in/2013/11/bitcoin-phenomenon.htm...