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Lol I wouldn't call a £100 drop a dive for bitcoin. Honestly i expected more but it's already recovering it was more like a minor bump in the road.

by Fuxy 13y ago

Aloisius 13y ago
Uh. FTFA: > Prices on BTC China, the country's biggest Bitcoin trading platform -- which had stood at more than 7,000 yuan (around $1,100) each -- plunged by more than a third to an intra-day low of 4,523.12 yuan. A 33% reduction in value is a dive. It may be constrained to the yuan, to China, to the particular exchange or just the crazy fluctuations of bitcoin, but it is still a dive no matter how you slice it.
- ye 13y ago
  That's in China though, due to the new laws. Everywhere else the dive was much smaller, and it's already recovering.
bradleyland 13y ago
Working in amounts doesn't tell the whole story. Volatility is easier to understand when expressed in percentages. Have a look at the charts on bitcoinwisdom.com: http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd Explore various intervals (time period). Even at the 1d interval, there are 15% swings. Is this bad, given the qualifier that "it is Bitcoin" after all? That depends on what you expect Bitcoin to be. If you expect to use it as a currency, then yes, it's very bad. If you earned your Bitcoins yesterday, and you have to pay a bill today, then that kind of swing is a big problem. You could end up taking a 15% haircut. If you expect to use it as a speculative investment, then you've got a lot of opportunities for trading. Both of these are fine, but they're opposing goals. Most economists agree that you want stability in a currency; that is the currency should act as an accounting measure only. It is a means of storing value at as close to NET zero gain/loss as possible, with it's real value being the ability to transact goods indirectly. I'm not sure what values Bitcoin endeavors to hold, but if we're using duck typing, it looks a lot more like a speculative investment than a currency.
- undoware 13y ago
  ...except you can't buy heroin with penny stocks. 'Platypus typing', maybe?
  - makomk 13y ago
    I'm not sure you can buy heroin with Bitcoin anymore either, all the online markets have shut down one way or another last I heard.
- mpg33 13y ago
  >Both of these are fine, but they're opposing goals. Most economists agree that you want stability in a currency; that is the currency should act as an accounting measure only. It is a means of storing value at as close to NET zero gain/loss as possible, with it's real value being the ability to transact goods indirectly. I'm not sure what values Bitcoin endeavors to hold, but if we're using duck typing, it looks a lot more like a speculative investment than a currency. I tend to agree that Bitcoin acts more like a store of value than a primary medium of exchange. Theoretically if a lot people started to use Bitcoin the volatility should decrease. Even still I think we may see the development of an alternative cryptocurrency that's supply is able to inflate dynamically to offset deflation...
- Myrth 13y ago
  the values of bitcoin, as I understand them, are ability to quickly transfer to any location without 3rd party, predictable total quantity, and exceedingly hard to counterfeit
- Fuxy 13y ago
  If you implement a system that trades the bitcoin back into regular currency as soon as you get the butcoin its volatility should be negligible. This could be a viable way of taking relatively anonymous payments and not loose more the say 5% to market fluctuations. And you have 50 - 50 odds of loosing or gaining from market fluctuation so i don't see the problem. Plus you can temporarily stop taking payments if your automated script notices the market fluctuate too fast and resume after the market has stabilized.

Lol I wouldn't call a £100 drop a dive for bitcoin. Honestly i expected more but it's already recovering it was more like a minor bump in the road.

by Fuxy 13y ago

Lol I wouldn't call a £100 drop a dive for bitcoin. Honestly i expected more but it's already recovering it was more like a minor bump in the road.

Aloisius 13y ago

Uh. FTFA: > Prices on BTC China, the country's biggest Bitcoin trading platform -- which had stood at more than 7,000 yuan (around $1,100) each -- plunged by more than a third to an intra-day low of 4,523.12 yuan. A 33% reduction in value is a dive. It may be constrained to the yuan, to China, to the particular exchange or just the crazy fluctuations of bitcoin, but it is still a dive no matter how you slice it.

ye 13y ago
That's in China though, due to the new laws. Everywhere else the dive was much smaller, and it's already recovering.

bradleyland 13y ago

Working in amounts doesn't tell the whole story. Volatility is easier to understand when expressed in percentages. Have a look at the charts on bitcoinwisdom.com: http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd http://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd Explore various intervals (time period). Even at the 1d interval, there are 15% swings. Is this bad, given the qualifier that "it is Bitcoin" after all? That depends on what you expect Bitcoin to be. If you expect to use it as a currency, then yes, it's very bad. If you earned your Bitcoins yesterday, and you have to pay a bill today, then that kind of swing is a big problem. You could end up taking a 15% haircut. If you expect to use it as a speculative investment, then you've got a lot of opportunities for trading. Both of these are fine, but they're opposing goals. Most economists agree that you want stability in a currency; that is the currency should act as an accounting measure only. It is a means of storing value at as close to NET zero gain/loss as possible, with it's real value being the ability to transact goods indirectly. I'm not sure what values Bitcoin endeavors to hold, but if we're using duck typing, it looks a lot more like a speculative investment than a currency.

undoware 13y ago
...except you can't buy heroin with penny stocks. 'Platypus typing', maybe?
- makomk 13y ago
  I'm not sure you can buy heroin with Bitcoin anymore either, all the online markets have shut down one way or another last I heard.
mpg33 13y ago
>Both of these are fine, but they're opposing goals. Most economists agree that you want stability in a currency; that is the currency should act as an accounting measure only. It is a means of storing value at as close to NET zero gain/loss as possible, with it's real value being the ability to transact goods indirectly. I'm not sure what values Bitcoin endeavors to hold, but if we're using duck typing, it looks a lot more like a speculative investment than a currency. I tend to agree that Bitcoin acts more like a store of value than a primary medium of exchange. Theoretically if a lot people started to use Bitcoin the volatility should decrease. Even still I think we may see the development of an alternative cryptocurrency that's supply is able to inflate dynamically to offset deflation...
Myrth 13y ago
the values of bitcoin, as I understand them, are ability to quickly transfer to any location without 3rd party, predictable total quantity, and exceedingly hard to counterfeit
Fuxy 13y ago
If you implement a system that trades the bitcoin back into regular currency as soon as you get the butcoin its volatility should be negligible. This could be a viable way of taking relatively anonymous payments and not loose more the say 5% to market fluctuations. And you have 50 - 50 odds of loosing or gaining from market fluctuation so i don't see the problem. Plus you can temporarily stop taking payments if your automated script notices the market fluctuate too fast and resume after the market has stabilized.