8 ms·

Bitcoin drops 50% overnight as China’s Biggest BTC exchange stops Yuan deposits

78 points by linux_devil 13y ago

dcc1 13y ago
It rebounded back to almost same level http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD % change 24hrs, -10% at time of this post
- presidentender 13y ago
  Everybody bought for the bounce, thereby causing the bounce.
  - loceng 13y ago
    Thereby perpetuating the illusion of stability - which might all be that's needed to continue with more people adopting it.
    - meowface 13y ago
      I don't know if it'll ever be a stable currency/stock, but at the least, given what you said, it won't become a dead currency/stock (for a long time anyway).
      - edias 13y ago
        >but at the least, given what you said, it won't become a dead currency/stock (for a long time anyway). There is no grantee of that with something as volatile as bitcoin. All it takes is the people playing the market getting burned one to many times and saying fuck it. This could happen tomorrow or never. I really can't think of any investment as risky as bitcoin.
        fennecfoxen 13y ago
        > I really can't think of any investment as risky as bitcoin. Oh, that's easy. Short-sell some overpriced darling stock like Tesla Motors or Amazon or something and watch the market remain irrational longer than you remain solvent. :)
      - loceng 13y ago
        Exactly. It'll be once investors are done putting money into it. Is there a way to know how much pure investment money has gone into it though? I'm not sure.
    - fennecfoxen 13y ago
      The Flash Crash of 2010 was nondissimilar: stocks were available at a ridiculously good price, and as people realized this, they created buy orders driving back up the price. Bitcoin may be more vulnerable to these crashes than other currencies, commodities, stocks, or similar instruments. It's got a smaller size, lower volume, generally high volatility, and no sophisticated market instruments or automated high-frequency trading algorithms operate to make the market more efficient. (oblig. disclaimer. this post is not a bitcoin advocacy post or a bitcoin hate post, but rather is meant to explore interesting properties of markets.)
- edias 13y ago
  From my brief observation of bitcoin this seems to be the defining characteristic for bitcoin, crashes followed by rebounds, pretty much since it was created, making me believe that most of bitcoin usage is speculation (is that already confirmed?). Anyway, the question that keeps me from investing a dime into bitcoin is "What if it doesn't rebound?". If it really is being used as an investment vehicle and not a currency, than the answer to that, in my opinion, is eventually it will drop and continue to drop to the point where it's worth pennies on that dollar. With the boom and bust nature, I suspect many people will eventually just give up on it as a currency which would be close to a death sentence for bitcoin. I am heavily biased towards index funds with the lowest fees so I'm rather pessimistic about bitcoin in general, just like I am about playing the stock market. It would be interesting to see what would happen if banks started to care about bitcoin. The market needs to grow many times over but I would expect them to be the only people making consistent money (and not even sometimes) just like they do on the stock market.
  - ihsw 13y ago
    There faster, more efficient ways to cause your hair to turn gray and fall out than watching BTC's waxing and waning on an hourly basis. Personally I suggest looking at the 52-week moving average -- it's a lot more comforting and a lot less stressful.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - ashray 13y ago
    Not all bitcoin usage is speculation but you are right, most of it's current value is probably reflected through speculation. Now there are two things that give bitcoin it's value: 1. Usage / Adoption 2. Speculation Right now, China seems to have trouble speculating in bitcoin. There is no question of China ever having any usage in the near future given their government's stance on bitcoin. Adoption of bitcoin has been on a steady rise over the past few months. No, apple or amazon are not yet accepting bitcoin but there are a growing number of people who are starting to see why they should accept it and why it's a viable payment method. It's impossible to say what it's value should be based on current adoption. The value right now could be $1 or $1000. My personal investment style is also biased towards low cost index funds.. I'm a Boglehead. However, Bitcoin is the only exception I have made so far. It's one of those rare moments that I personally see value in what the technology brings and can achieve. I'm invested, more in terms of building tools/startups around bitcoin than in just buying and speculating, though I'm guilty of the latter too. It's even more fun because I truly believe in it's potential. (gambling by comparison, is less fun ;))
- shin_lao 13y ago
  10% drop in a day is considered a big drop.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  This: > It rebounded back to almost same level contradicts this: > % change 24hrs, -10% at time of this post -10% change over 24 hrs in a commodity price isn't "almost the same level".
  - maaku 13y ago
    It is when that's on par for daily fluctuation.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      If that's the typical daily fluctuation, it is still not "about the same level", it just means that the commodity has an extremely unstable value.
    - raganwald 13y ago
      Then it has "Rebounded to within its normal trading range."
- tedunangst 13y ago
  Where are all the cynics making 2009-era "even a dead cat bounces" comments?
  - krapp 13y ago
    Even a dead cat bounces? Then it tumbles? Then it inevitably disintegrates?
dlsx 13y ago
Dogecoin 50% gain only alt coin to post gains in 24 hours. >reddit and 4chan Well looks like the internet has decided what coin they want to use. Buttcoins are deprecated.
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  I'm still shocked how a dumb meme-based altcoin gained so much popularity, where all other just as boring and generic Bitcoin forks died down or are completely insignificant. To their credit though, they based it off of Litecoin... making it a fork of a fork. Either I have no sense of humor, or we aren't going to be seeing October 1993 any time soon. Can't wait for "Latvian Potato Coin" to appear in the future.
  - thenmar 13y ago
    wow such cynic very not-with-the-times
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - EStudley 13y ago
      If I wanted these kinds of comments I'd go to reddit.. Keep memes off this site please, it's one of the last public forums on the internet without them.
      - asciimo 13y ago
        This is one of the very rare HN contexts in which a comment like that is spot-on.
  - dlsx 13y ago
    Your shocked because your old and have no sense of humor and think money is serious business. Dogecoin has the fastest rate of adoption, of any crypto-currency. Ever, period. It makes every coin, even bitcoin look like an absolute failure. Because it's fun, and kids think it's cool. You guys missed the boat, because you were too busy being serious.
sergiotapia 13y ago
The /r/bitcoin subreddit has a suicide hotline disclaimer stickied to the top. Yikes. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1t5ofu/please_sticky_usa_suicide_hotline_1800273talk/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1t5ofu/please_stick...
- bsirkia 13y ago
  Yowza. I guess it's true that the majority of people investing in Bitcoin saw it as more of an quick-flip play than a long-term value investment.
  - atwebb 13y ago
    That sub is about as volatile as the currency itself. Though some people mentioned buying bitcoin on credit and that could put you in a pretty bad situation.
    - corin_ 13y ago
      No worse than buying material goods on credit, which a huge number of people do. If anything it's less bad, as at least with a gamble you might get the money back to pay off the credit. Of course, whether you value a TV or a chance of getting rich more is subjective. edit: I stand corrected, good points below. But it is still very possible to use credit to speculate without it being a huge problem, e.g. if you could afford $x over 3 months but think you need to spend it all now to see the benefits then the slight interest on the credit just becomes part of your risk, but doesn't mean you'd be in trouble if it doesn't work out, other than losing money which is a risk regardless.
      - pistle 13y ago
        Uh... yeah it is worse than material goods. Someone will give you $5 for a TV or you could at least enjoy kicking it down a hill. With a devastated, leveraged position in an illusion, you ain't got squat. Once the bubble pops, there is 0% chance of rich or break even. You can wait forever, but the lack of diversification means you are 99.9% likely to be holding the thing that never recovers. A broad market recovers. A speculative vehicle is dead. No chances. Hold long :~)
AznHisoka 13y ago
who cares? Nobody owns it anyway.. This is what I don't get. They say only 1000 ppl own Bitcoin. So why the popularity? I mean who cares if those 1000 ppl get rich or lose all their money?
- Avalaxy 13y ago
  1000?! Where did you get that number from? Coinbase has 650.000 users alone...
  - tedunangst 13y ago
    users or owners?
  - aquateen 13y ago
    There was some headline about a week ago that said roughly 1000 people own half of all bitcoins.
    - Guvante 13y ago
      Bitcoin is deflationary, a very non-trivial amounts of bitcoins are lost forever.
    - Avalaxy 13y ago
      True, but the total amount of bitcoin owners are in the millions. AznHisoka stated that only 1000 people own bitcoins, which is simply not true.
Houshalter 13y ago
In other news the United States Dollar has almost doubled in value in a single day: http://www.coinion.com/2013/12/07/united-states-dollar-almost-doubles-in-value-in-a-single-day/ http://www.coinion.com/2013/12/07/united-states-dollar-almos...
- maratd 13y ago
  Ha! The story is of course a jest, but there's no reason why you can't look at it that way. A cup is either half empty or half full.
  - batbomb 13y ago
    > A cup is either half empty or two cups. Fixed
  - jbooth 13y ago
    There are as many reasons as there are other things in the world besides bitcoin why you can't look at it that way. $/yuan, $/euro, $/big mac, $/potted plants, $/dinner at applebees...
    - Houshalter 13y ago
      No, it's just that those things also doubled in value.
      - jbooth 13y ago
        Touche, sir
- azmenthe 13y ago
  That's not really true per se. That's the chart of USD/BTC so the inverse of BTC/USD which has dropped significantly in the past few days so of course the inverse has shown an increase. For a more accurate picture of the dollar I track the UUP ETF which pegs it's value to the dollars exchange rate over a basket of currencies. (Which btw has been on a steady downtrend in the past 6 months, definitely not doubling everyday) [1]: http://www.invescopowershares.com/products/overview.aspx?ticker=UUP http://www.invescopowershares.com/products/overview.aspx?tic...
warfangle 13y ago
Buy btc when it's low, buy things with btc when it's high :) If you're trying to invest in it like a forex trader without adding liquidity to the market (e.g., buy-n-hold), you're part of what drives these bubbles in the first place.. I treat these bubbles as periodic shopping sprees. I bought a bunch of e-cigarette stuff and a few christmas presents during this bubble. (and I still have more $us worth of btc than what I spent on the original btc).
- oskarth 13y ago
  Buy low and sell high? What a brilliant strategy. EDIT: If you think you've found a sure-fire way to beat the market, you are probably wrong. That or you are doing insider trading or high-frequency trading (arbitrage).
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    You'd be surprised how many people buy high when caught up in the euphoria, then capitulate and sell low...
    - kayoone 13y ago
      when you think they buy high, they might think they buy low. Oh if wed only knew when low is low and high is high.
  - warfangle 13y ago
    Ah, except I'm not trading for cash. I'm trading for something that means more to me than cash (which I would have used cash to purchase anyway) :) What the merchant does with it afterwards, on the other hand. And I'm not in it to make a fast buck. I'm just using it for occasional vanity purchases. I don't like treating a volatile commodity as a forex investment.. just doesn't seem wise. If it crashes to <$1/btc, I'll be out like, a hundred bucks. So what?
    - Johnie 13y ago
      What's the difference between what you are doing and selling btc for cash and using that cash to buy stuff? The only difference is that you are forced to buy things at a certain time rather than keeping it in cash. The underlying transaction is the same.
Zarathust 13y ago
At least it shows where the bitcoins are used
bhartzer 13y ago
I'm still in it for the long haul. I'm sure it will go back up at some point.
simonebrunozzi 13y ago
I am not an expert in markets or finance, but this is my observation: a lot of inexperienced people owning BTC will sell when they see these sudden drops; experienced investors will be there, reaping the benefits and buying BTC at a "discount". It wouldn't surprise me if BTC will go back to 1,000 US$ and beyond just in a matter of weeks. This is NOT an investment advice, but I would buy some BTC now that the price is at approx. 600 US$, and keep it for a few months at least.
- justincormack 13y ago
  You are not an expert, that is not advice, but you advise people to buy it at some arbitrary value? Thats one of the many things wrong with bitcoin, all the stupid people talking shit. Classic bubble signs.
pistle 13y ago
The cognitive dissonance is magic. You couldn't fake the tragic similarities to the dotcom crash. People yelling "hold for long!" with people raining down and everybody having a little voice inside their head saying, "I'm smart. I'm sure I knew the risks better than the next guy. I read the forums. I got this computer. This is it. 50% down is nothing." Then when nearly everything was 95% down and liquidity was drying up because the bulls had all been beat into puddles in the street... everything went back to normal. And we did it all over again. It doesn't matter if you write the history and they read it. Human nature is to be dragged into these things. Recognize the pattern. Look for the short.
chadkruse 13y ago
I wonder how many Finance professors just opened up their Investment 101 lecture deck and added a new case study under the Risk/Return slide. I think a lot of investors and speculators just got reminded of regulatory risk. That said, the MBA professors are updating their case studies for Regulatory Arbitrage...outcome tbd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_arbitrage#Regulatory_arbitrage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_arbitrage#Regulatory...
kyledrake 13y ago
The reaction to all of this is completely ridiculous, because it lacks good context. Bitcoin is still up around 444% if you look at the chart from six months ago: http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD. It's still one of the best investments of the year, if you compare it to pretty much everything else (the stock market, gold price, options, housing, oil, you-name-it). When the fed tapering program begins, I think we are going to see a similar (though probably not as drastic) drop in the stock market as well, which I also believe to be overinflated. That hits a lot of people too, most of whom have their retirement funds built on it. It's just the nature of investing, which I have a lot of trouble at times isolating from the idea of gambling. The real lesson here is that if you're just trying to get into Bitcoin to make easy money, you're going to be disappointed. People should be hesitant of get rich quick schemes in general, and in altcoins in particular. When friends and family ask if they should buy Bitcoin, I immediately warn them that getting into Bitcoin solely on price increase speculation is akin to gambling or stock investing and should be treated as such. As Roger Ver said, Bitcoin's price is the least interesting thing about it. What excites me about Bitcoin is the ability to control your own purchasing power, and not require a central system (bank, payment processor) to manage and send it. Bitcoin is still at an incredibly early stage in its development, and like anything, there is a lot of uncertainty now, and to come. It's not my intention to gloat, but I want to give you a positive story against all this. I sold enough of my ownership of Bitcoin at about $950/BTC to pay my usual salary in USD for an entire year, which will allow me to work on Coinpunk and Neocities full-time, and have some extra funds to pay people that help me work on it. I have never had this opportunity in my life, and I'm really excited about it. It's like getting angel investment without the investor, and it gave me complete autonomy to do for the project what I feel is right. For me (and for people that were sensible about it), it's been a very good year. My prediction is that the China situation is going to get sorted out eventually. But sure, until that happens, the value of Bitcoin has fallen because of concerns about liquidity. If the US banned the ability to exchange dollars, I imagine you would see a similar drop in its value as well. And it's looking like most countries are invariably going to not ban Bitcoin. The US hearings in particular were quite positive. If China's government decides it's done with Bitcoin, it just means that other countries will have the opportunity to become the leader in Bitcoin startups. And that's also a positive thing for me ultimately, but sadly, not as much for future entrepreneurs in China. As someone that works on startups for a living, I would always rather have a level playing field than be given an opportunity due to a punitive effect.
rf1331 13y ago
Can we finally stop listening to the Winklevoss twins now?

78 points by linux_devil 13y ago

dcc1 13y ago

It rebounded back to almost same level http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD % change 24hrs, -10% at time of this post

presidentender 13y ago
Everybody bought for the bounce, thereby causing the bounce.
- loceng 13y ago
  Thereby perpetuating the illusion of stability - which might all be that's needed to continue with more people adopting it.
  - meowface 13y ago
    I don't know if it'll ever be a stable currency/stock, but at the least, given what you said, it won't become a dead currency/stock (for a long time anyway).
    - edias 13y ago
      >but at the least, given what you said, it won't become a dead currency/stock (for a long time anyway). There is no grantee of that with something as volatile as bitcoin. All it takes is the people playing the market getting burned one to many times and saying fuck it. This could happen tomorrow or never. I really can't think of any investment as risky as bitcoin.
      - fennecfoxen 13y ago
        > I really can't think of any investment as risky as bitcoin. Oh, that's easy. Short-sell some overpriced darling stock like Tesla Motors or Amazon or something and watch the market remain irrational longer than you remain solvent. :)
    - loceng 13y ago
      Exactly. It'll be once investors are done putting money into it. Is there a way to know how much pure investment money has gone into it though? I'm not sure.
  - fennecfoxen 13y ago
    The Flash Crash of 2010 was nondissimilar: stocks were available at a ridiculously good price, and as people realized this, they created buy orders driving back up the price. Bitcoin may be more vulnerable to these crashes than other currencies, commodities, stocks, or similar instruments. It's got a smaller size, lower volume, generally high volatility, and no sophisticated market instruments or automated high-frequency trading algorithms operate to make the market more efficient. (oblig. disclaimer. this post is not a bitcoin advocacy post or a bitcoin hate post, but rather is meant to explore interesting properties of markets.)
edias 13y ago
From my brief observation of bitcoin this seems to be the defining characteristic for bitcoin, crashes followed by rebounds, pretty much since it was created, making me believe that most of bitcoin usage is speculation (is that already confirmed?). Anyway, the question that keeps me from investing a dime into bitcoin is "What if it doesn't rebound?". If it really is being used as an investment vehicle and not a currency, than the answer to that, in my opinion, is eventually it will drop and continue to drop to the point where it's worth pennies on that dollar. With the boom and bust nature, I suspect many people will eventually just give up on it as a currency which would be close to a death sentence for bitcoin. I am heavily biased towards index funds with the lowest fees so I'm rather pessimistic about bitcoin in general, just like I am about playing the stock market. It would be interesting to see what would happen if banks started to care about bitcoin. The market needs to grow many times over but I would expect them to be the only people making consistent money (and not even sometimes) just like they do on the stock market.
- ihsw 13y ago
  There faster, more efficient ways to cause your hair to turn gray and fall out than watching BTC's waxing and waning on an hourly basis. Personally I suggest looking at the 52-week moving average -- it's a lot more comforting and a lot less stressful.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- ashray 13y ago
  Not all bitcoin usage is speculation but you are right, most of it's current value is probably reflected through speculation. Now there are two things that give bitcoin it's value: 1. Usage / Adoption 2. Speculation Right now, China seems to have trouble speculating in bitcoin. There is no question of China ever having any usage in the near future given their government's stance on bitcoin. Adoption of bitcoin has been on a steady rise over the past few months. No, apple or amazon are not yet accepting bitcoin but there are a growing number of people who are starting to see why they should accept it and why it's a viable payment method. It's impossible to say what it's value should be based on current adoption. The value right now could be $1 or $1000. My personal investment style is also biased towards low cost index funds.. I'm a Boglehead. However, Bitcoin is the only exception I have made so far. It's one of those rare moments that I personally see value in what the technology brings and can achieve. I'm invested, more in terms of building tools/startups around bitcoin than in just buying and speculating, though I'm guilty of the latter too. It's even more fun because I truly believe in it's potential. (gambling by comparison, is less fun ;))
shin_lao 13y ago
10% drop in a day is considered a big drop.
dragonwriter 13y ago
This: > It rebounded back to almost same level contradicts this: > % change 24hrs, -10% at time of this post -10% change over 24 hrs in a commodity price isn't "almost the same level".
- maaku 13y ago
  It is when that's on par for daily fluctuation.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    If that's the typical daily fluctuation, it is still not "about the same level", it just means that the commodity has an extremely unstable value.
  - raganwald 13y ago
    Then it has "Rebounded to within its normal trading range."
tedunangst 13y ago
Where are all the cynics making 2009-era "even a dead cat bounces" comments?
- krapp 13y ago
  Even a dead cat bounces? Then it tumbles? Then it inevitably disintegrates?

dlsx 13y ago

Dogecoin 50% gain only alt coin to post gains in 24 hours. >reddit and 4chan Well looks like the internet has decided what coin they want to use. Buttcoins are deprecated.

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
I'm still shocked how a dumb meme-based altcoin gained so much popularity, where all other just as boring and generic Bitcoin forks died down or are completely insignificant. To their credit though, they based it off of Litecoin... making it a fork of a fork. Either I have no sense of humor, or we aren't going to be seeing October 1993 any time soon. Can't wait for "Latvian Potato Coin" to appear in the future.
- thenmar 13y ago
  wow such cynic very not-with-the-times
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - EStudley 13y ago
    If I wanted these kinds of comments I'd go to reddit.. Keep memes off this site please, it's one of the last public forums on the internet without them.
    - asciimo 13y ago
      This is one of the very rare HN contexts in which a comment like that is spot-on.
- dlsx 13y ago
  Your shocked because your old and have no sense of humor and think money is serious business. Dogecoin has the fastest rate of adoption, of any crypto-currency. Ever, period. It makes every coin, even bitcoin look like an absolute failure. Because it's fun, and kids think it's cool. You guys missed the boat, because you were too busy being serious.

sergiotapia 13y ago

The /r/bitcoin subreddit has a suicide hotline disclaimer stickied to the top. Yikes. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1t5ofu/please_sticky_usa_suicide_hotline_1800273talk/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1t5ofu/please_stick...

bsirkia 13y ago
Yowza. I guess it's true that the majority of people investing in Bitcoin saw it as more of an quick-flip play than a long-term value investment.
- atwebb 13y ago
  That sub is about as volatile as the currency itself. Though some people mentioned buying bitcoin on credit and that could put you in a pretty bad situation.
  - corin_ 13y ago
    No worse than buying material goods on credit, which a huge number of people do. If anything it's less bad, as at least with a gamble you might get the money back to pay off the credit. Of course, whether you value a TV or a chance of getting rich more is subjective. edit: I stand corrected, good points below. But it is still very possible to use credit to speculate without it being a huge problem, e.g. if you could afford $x over 3 months but think you need to spend it all now to see the benefits then the slight interest on the credit just becomes part of your risk, but doesn't mean you'd be in trouble if it doesn't work out, other than losing money which is a risk regardless.
    - pistle 13y ago
      Uh... yeah it is worse than material goods. Someone will give you $5 for a TV or you could at least enjoy kicking it down a hill. With a devastated, leveraged position in an illusion, you ain't got squat. Once the bubble pops, there is 0% chance of rich or break even. You can wait forever, but the lack of diversification means you are 99.9% likely to be holding the thing that never recovers. A broad market recovers. A speculative vehicle is dead. No chances. Hold long :~)

AznHisoka 13y ago

who cares? Nobody owns it anyway.. This is what I don't get. They say only 1000 ppl own Bitcoin. So why the popularity? I mean who cares if those 1000 ppl get rich or lose all their money?

Avalaxy 13y ago
1000?! Where did you get that number from? Coinbase has 650.000 users alone...
- tedunangst 13y ago
  users or owners?
- aquateen 13y ago
  There was some headline about a week ago that said roughly 1000 people own half of all bitcoins.
  - Guvante 13y ago
    Bitcoin is deflationary, a very non-trivial amounts of bitcoins are lost forever.
  - Avalaxy 13y ago
    True, but the total amount of bitcoin owners are in the millions. AznHisoka stated that only 1000 people own bitcoins, which is simply not true.

Houshalter 13y ago

In other news the United States Dollar has almost doubled in value in a single day: http://www.coinion.com/2013/12/07/united-states-dollar-almost-doubles-in-value-in-a-single-day/ http://www.coinion.com/2013/12/07/united-states-dollar-almos...

maratd 13y ago
Ha! The story is of course a jest, but there's no reason why you can't look at it that way. A cup is either half empty or half full.
- batbomb 13y ago
  > A cup is either half empty or two cups. Fixed
- jbooth 13y ago
  There are as many reasons as there are other things in the world besides bitcoin why you can't look at it that way. $/yuan, $/euro, $/big mac, $/potted plants, $/dinner at applebees...
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    No, it's just that those things also doubled in value.
    - jbooth 13y ago
      Touche, sir
azmenthe 13y ago
That's not really true per se. That's the chart of USD/BTC so the inverse of BTC/USD which has dropped significantly in the past few days so of course the inverse has shown an increase. For a more accurate picture of the dollar I track the UUP ETF which pegs it's value to the dollars exchange rate over a basket of currencies. (Which btw has been on a steady downtrend in the past 6 months, definitely not doubling everyday) [1]: http://www.invescopowershares.com/products/overview.aspx?ticker=UUP http://www.invescopowershares.com/products/overview.aspx?tic...

warfangle 13y ago

Buy btc when it's low, buy things with btc when it's high :) If you're trying to invest in it like a forex trader without adding liquidity to the market (e.g., buy-n-hold), you're part of what drives these bubbles in the first place.. I treat these bubbles as periodic shopping sprees. I bought a bunch of e-cigarette stuff and a few christmas presents during this bubble. (and I still have more $us worth of btc than what I spent on the original btc).

oskarth 13y ago
Buy low and sell high? What a brilliant strategy. EDIT: If you think you've found a sure-fire way to beat the market, you are probably wrong. That or you are doing insider trading or high-frequency trading (arbitrage).
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  You'd be surprised how many people buy high when caught up in the euphoria, then capitulate and sell low...
  - kayoone 13y ago
    when you think they buy high, they might think they buy low. Oh if wed only knew when low is low and high is high.
- warfangle 13y ago
  Ah, except I'm not trading for cash. I'm trading for something that means more to me than cash (which I would have used cash to purchase anyway) :) What the merchant does with it afterwards, on the other hand. And I'm not in it to make a fast buck. I'm just using it for occasional vanity purchases. I don't like treating a volatile commodity as a forex investment.. just doesn't seem wise. If it crashes to <$1/btc, I'll be out like, a hundred bucks. So what?
  - Johnie 13y ago
    What's the difference between what you are doing and selling btc for cash and using that cash to buy stuff? The only difference is that you are forced to buy things at a certain time rather than keeping it in cash. The underlying transaction is the same.

Zarathust 13y ago

At least it shows where the bitcoins are used

bhartzer 13y ago

I'm still in it for the long haul. I'm sure it will go back up at some point.

simonebrunozzi 13y ago

I am not an expert in markets or finance, but this is my observation: a lot of inexperienced people owning BTC will sell when they see these sudden drops; experienced investors will be there, reaping the benefits and buying BTC at a "discount". It wouldn't surprise me if BTC will go back to 1,000 US$ and beyond just in a matter of weeks. This is NOT an investment advice, but I would buy some BTC now that the price is at approx. 600 US$, and keep it for a few months at least.

justincormack 13y ago
You are not an expert, that is not advice, but you advise people to buy it at some arbitrary value? Thats one of the many things wrong with bitcoin, all the stupid people talking shit. Classic bubble signs.

pistle 13y ago

The cognitive dissonance is magic. You couldn't fake the tragic similarities to the dotcom crash. People yelling "hold for long!" with people raining down and everybody having a little voice inside their head saying, "I'm smart. I'm sure I knew the risks better than the next guy. I read the forums. I got this computer. This is it. 50% down is nothing." Then when nearly everything was 95% down and liquidity was drying up because the bulls had all been beat into puddles in the street... everything went back to normal. And we did it all over again. It doesn't matter if you write the history and they read it. Human nature is to be dragged into these things. Recognize the pattern. Look for the short.

chadkruse 13y ago

I wonder how many Finance professors just opened up their Investment 101 lecture deck and added a new case study under the Risk/Return slide. I think a lot of investors and speculators just got reminded of regulatory risk. That said, the MBA professors are updating their case studies for Regulatory Arbitrage...outcome tbd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_arbitrage#Regulatory_arbitrage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_arbitrage#Regulatory...

kyledrake 13y ago

The reaction to all of this is completely ridiculous, because it lacks good context. Bitcoin is still up around 444% if you look at the chart from six months ago: http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD. It's still one of the best investments of the year, if you compare it to pretty much everything else (the stock market, gold price, options, housing, oil, you-name-it). When the fed tapering program begins, I think we are going to see a similar (though probably not as drastic) drop in the stock market as well, which I also believe to be overinflated. That hits a lot of people too, most of whom have their retirement funds built on it. It's just the nature of investing, which I have a lot of trouble at times isolating from the idea of gambling. The real lesson here is that if you're just trying to get into Bitcoin to make easy money, you're going to be disappointed. People should be hesitant of get rich quick schemes in general, and in altcoins in particular. When friends and family ask if they should buy Bitcoin, I immediately warn them that getting into Bitcoin solely on price increase speculation is akin to gambling or stock investing and should be treated as such. As Roger Ver said, Bitcoin's price is the least interesting thing about it. What excites me about Bitcoin is the ability to control your own purchasing power, and not require a central system (bank, payment processor) to manage and send it. Bitcoin is still at an incredibly early stage in its development, and like anything, there is a lot of uncertainty now, and to come. It's not my intention to gloat, but I want to give you a positive story against all this. I sold enough of my ownership of Bitcoin at about $950/BTC to pay my usual salary in USD for an entire year, which will allow me to work on Coinpunk and Neocities full-time, and have some extra funds to pay people that help me work on it. I have never had this opportunity in my life, and I'm really excited about it. It's like getting angel investment without the investor, and it gave me complete autonomy to do for the project what I feel is right. For me (and for people that were sensible about it), it's been a very good year. My prediction is that the China situation is going to get sorted out eventually. But sure, until that happens, the value of Bitcoin has fallen because of concerns about liquidity. If the US banned the ability to exchange dollars, I imagine you would see a similar drop in its value as well. And it's looking like most countries are invariably going to not ban Bitcoin. The US hearings in particular were quite positive. If China's government decides it's done with Bitcoin, it just means that other countries will have the opportunity to become the leader in Bitcoin startups. And that's also a positive thing for me ultimately, but sadly, not as much for future entrepreneurs in China. As someone that works on startups for a living, I would always rather have a level playing field than be given an opportunity due to a punitive effect.

rf1331 13y ago

Can we finally stop listening to the Winklevoss twins now?