8 ms·

It is interesting to watch the effect of the Russian ruble collapse on Bitcoin markets... It is causing an influx of Bitcoin buyers on Russian exchanges: over t

by mrb 12y ago

It is interesting to watch the effect of the Russian ruble collapse on Bitcoin markets... It is causing an influx of Bitcoin buyers on Russian exchanges: over the last 14 days, BTC is up +11% from 19000 RUB to 21000 RUB with most of the uptick happening in the last 24 hours (https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/btce/btcrur https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/btce/btcrur) despite being down -13% from 380 to 330 USD on American markets (https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/bitstamp/btcusd). There is an opportunity for arbitrage! The ruble is collapsing so fast that even buying at 21000 RUB is a steal (worth 310 USD as of Dec 16 21:00 UTC). And the collapse will likely continue in the next few days and weeks, so the arbitrage opportunity will grow bigger. Edit: @potench preev.com is an inaccurate indicator of the BTC/RUB rate because it is basing its calculation "based on the USD Bitcoin price" per its footnote, so of course it will never show a big deviation from the BTC/USD rate. For the true rate you need to look at the real-time bid/ask spread on a BTC/RUB exchange such as btc-e.com which is why I linked to https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/btce/btcrur https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/btce/btcrur or you can also look at https://btc-e.com/exchange/btc_rur https://btc-e.com/exchange/btc_rur: bid/ask is 20855/21099 RUB as of 22:09 UTC, so the arbitrage opportunity is approximately 2000 RUB.

IgorPartola 12y ago
From a 10k foot view, you know things are bad when BTC is your stable currency of choice.
- jordigh 12y ago
  Honestly, coming myself from a currency that had huge devaluations, the fluctuations of bitcoins' value are relatively minor in comparison.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    $1200 to $350 is minor? If people think such a scenario can't easily happen again, then they're wrong about that. A small number of major bitcoin holders mostly determine the price.
    - staunch 12y ago
      $1200 to $350 and almost certainly back to $1200 at some point. Compare that with a government issuing a new currency and rendering the previous one invalid.
      - sillysaurus3 12y ago
        $1200 to $350 and almost certainly back to $1200 at some point. You can't afford think that way. I did, and it took me a long time to realize that I was being insane while I was doing it. Unless you're planning for a timescale measured in "decades," you're setting yourself up to get burned. Out of all the persuasive arguments I could make, consider this: There are better ways to double your money than bitcoin. Within the next decade, you probably won't see something like the leap from $6 to $600 again. I'll be happy to eat my words about that. Personally, I don't see how you'd even get to 10x your investment. $350 to $1200 would be 3.4x ROI. And while that's a good return, there are other ways to grow a nest egg from $20k to $68k without gambling it. And if we can't publicly admit that bitcoin is essentially gambling, not investing, then we should at least admit that to ourselves. EDIT: One point I'd like to underscore is that the price of bitcoin is mostly determined by the major holders. If any of them lose faith and pull out, that will trigger others to pull out. Also, they have a lovely tendency to dump a lot of money into the market, which jumps the price, which causes other people to pour money in. Then the major player sells, capturing all of that money that everyone else poured in. You see? It's a predatory game, and you don't have to take my word for it. Examine the graphs and you'll see "jump-sells" like that over and over again.
        waterlesscloud 12y ago
        The timeframe for Bitcoin returning to $1200 is certainly not 'decades'. If it hasn't done so in a few years, it's never going to. It's going to die.
        polarix 12y ago
        > there are other ways to grow a nest egg from $20k to $68k without gambling it If you mean to do so quickly, and without taking some significant risk, I'll call.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  For reference, here's how stable BTC/$ has been: http://i.imgur.com/V0y5mcE.png http://i.imgur.com/V0y5mcE.png
  - Keyframe 12y ago
    It looks like a stable fall at least.
slayed0 12y ago
Do BTC exchanges process the currency exchange for you automatically or do you first have to get your USD exchanged and into a Russian account?
techrat 12y ago
Bitcoin, however, was still a worse investment over the Ruble for all of 2014 (So far.) http://qz.com/312598/bitcoin-is-the-worst-investment-of-2014/ http://qz.com/312598/bitcoin-is-the-worst-investment-of-2014...
- mikeash 12y ago
  As of yesterday, when the article was written, maybe. The ruble has dropped another ~10% in the past 24 hours.
- venaoy 12y ago
  That's a misleading comment. Sure, if you bought BTC on January 1st, 2014, maybe, since this would have been timed perfectly to align with the peak of the Bitcoin bubble. But if you bought BTC only 60 days earlier (November 1st, 2013), it was at $200, so you would have a +65% return rate as of today, easily beating the ruble, or virtually any of the world's currencies for that matter: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zigDailyzczsg2013-10-01zeg2014-12-17ztgSzm1g10zm2g25 http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zigDailyzczs...
- modeless 12y ago
  Barely! The ruble is down 50% YTD and Bitcoin is down 54%. But also consider that in 2013 the Ruble went down 6% and Bitcoin went up 800%.
  - AlexMax 12y ago
    That's actually even more distressing. You want stability out of a currency, not wild swings.
    - Sevrene 12y ago
      Indeed, but keep in mind they are talking about investment, not currency. Wild swings are great for investment, as long as it swings up eventually.
      - 12y ago
potench 12y ago
At the time of writing: 1 BTC is 22,810.00 RUB (1) 1 BTC is $330.80 (2) $330.80 is 22,982.67 RUB (3) Arbitrage of 172.67 RUB 1. http://preev.com/btc/rub http://preev.com/btc/rub 2. http://preev.com/btc/usd http://preev.com/btc/usd 3. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=usd%20to%20rub https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  BTC/$ is currently falling: http://i.imgur.com/NxbqPqW.png http://i.imgur.com/NxbqPqW.png Unless you've already established accounts at several different exchanges, you really shouldn't try anything based off of an HN comment. Please be careful not to deposit funds which are then frozen because your account is new. That type of thing. New accounts are subject to much scrutiny. In particular, be very careful when your motive is greed (or "to seize an opportunity," to use a euphemism). Bitcoin isn't subject to regulation. Exchanges essentially play by their own rules. And when the world is going nuts, that means exchanges have the ability to do pretty much whatever they decide is the right choice. If they decide to temporarily halt withdraws, and you're caught up in that net, you could potentially lose a lot, even if it doesn't seem like it. Try not to risk more than, say, 20% of whatever you can afford to lose. Even if you think you can afford to lose it, the reality of losing it might kick you in the stomach harder than you probably realize. EDIT: Also, if you absolutely insist on taking crazy risks like this, here's a tip: estimate the transaction fees, and then double it. That gives you a margin of error. Your transaction fees are usually what eat up much of your potential profits in this kind of thing, so if you pretend like they're double, you can avoid making some extremely risky decisions. In fact, I'm just going to urge you to avoid this altogether. It's not fun to be in a position of staring at a financial chart and willing it to go up, knowing that if it doesn't, you're screwed. It's also not fun to sell, thinking you're screwed, when in reality if you'd just waited a little bit longer you would've been fine. Or when you resent yourself for selling too early and "not making as much money as you could have." This kind of greedy standalone thing will wrap your emotions around a pole, and it's way too easy to convince yourself you're the kind of person that can handle it. Also realize that even if you do profit off of this, you can't really credit yourself for being clever. You'd be fooling yourself. At best, you can simply feel lucky. So there's not much skill involved in this, beyond putting in a lot of time to research how things work, etc, and then hoping the world ends up obeying your mental model, which rarely happens anyway. Poker is way more fun than this. Go do that.
downandout 12y ago
>so the arbitrage opportunity is approximately 2000 RUB. That is actually pretty striking. There aren't many abritrage opportunities in the 5%+ return range that last for very long. I assume such opportunities always exist since Bitcoin markets are far from perfectly efficient, but these spreads are pretty big.

by mrb 12y ago

IgorPartola 12y ago

From a 10k foot view, you know things are bad when BTC is your stable currency of choice.

jordigh 12y ago
Honestly, coming myself from a currency that had huge devaluations, the fluctuations of bitcoins' value are relatively minor in comparison.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  $1200 to $350 is minor? If people think such a scenario can't easily happen again, then they're wrong about that. A small number of major bitcoin holders mostly determine the price.
  - staunch 12y ago
    $1200 to $350 and almost certainly back to $1200 at some point. Compare that with a government issuing a new currency and rendering the previous one invalid.
    - sillysaurus3 12y ago
      $1200 to $350 and almost certainly back to $1200 at some point. You can't afford think that way. I did, and it took me a long time to realize that I was being insane while I was doing it. Unless you're planning for a timescale measured in "decades," you're setting yourself up to get burned. Out of all the persuasive arguments I could make, consider this: There are better ways to double your money than bitcoin. Within the next decade, you probably won't see something like the leap from $6 to $600 again. I'll be happy to eat my words about that. Personally, I don't see how you'd even get to 10x your investment. $350 to $1200 would be 3.4x ROI. And while that's a good return, there are other ways to grow a nest egg from $20k to $68k without gambling it. And if we can't publicly admit that bitcoin is essentially gambling, not investing, then we should at least admit that to ourselves. EDIT: One point I'd like to underscore is that the price of bitcoin is mostly determined by the major holders. If any of them lose faith and pull out, that will trigger others to pull out. Also, they have a lovely tendency to dump a lot of money into the market, which jumps the price, which causes other people to pour money in. Then the major player sells, capturing all of that money that everyone else poured in. You see? It's a predatory game, and you don't have to take my word for it. Examine the graphs and you'll see "jump-sells" like that over and over again.
      - waterlesscloud 12y ago
        The timeframe for Bitcoin returning to $1200 is certainly not 'decades'. If it hasn't done so in a few years, it's never going to. It's going to die.
      - polarix 12y ago
        > there are other ways to grow a nest egg from $20k to $68k without gambling it If you mean to do so quickly, and without taking some significant risk, I'll call.
sillysaurus3 12y ago
For reference, here's how stable BTC/$ has been: http://i.imgur.com/V0y5mcE.png http://i.imgur.com/V0y5mcE.png
- Keyframe 12y ago
  It looks like a stable fall at least.

slayed0 12y ago

Do BTC exchanges process the currency exchange for you automatically or do you first have to get your USD exchanged and into a Russian account?

techrat 12y ago

Bitcoin, however, was still a worse investment over the Ruble for all of 2014 (So far.) http://qz.com/312598/bitcoin-is-the-worst-investment-of-2014/ http://qz.com/312598/bitcoin-is-the-worst-investment-of-2014...

mikeash 12y ago
As of yesterday, when the article was written, maybe. The ruble has dropped another ~10% in the past 24 hours.
venaoy 12y ago
That's a misleading comment. Sure, if you bought BTC on January 1st, 2014, maybe, since this would have been timed perfectly to align with the peak of the Bitcoin bubble. But if you bought BTC only 60 days earlier (November 1st, 2013), it was at $200, so you would have a +65% return rate as of today, easily beating the ruble, or virtually any of the world's currencies for that matter: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zigDailyzczsg2013-10-01zeg2014-12-17ztgSzm1g10zm2g25 http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg60zigDailyzczs...
modeless 12y ago
Barely! The ruble is down 50% YTD and Bitcoin is down 54%. But also consider that in 2013 the Ruble went down 6% and Bitcoin went up 800%.
- AlexMax 12y ago
  That's actually even more distressing. You want stability out of a currency, not wild swings.
  - Sevrene 12y ago
    Indeed, but keep in mind they are talking about investment, not currency. Wild swings are great for investment, as long as it swings up eventually.
    - 12y ago

potench 12y ago

At the time of writing: 1 BTC is 22,810.00 RUB (1) 1 BTC is $330.80 (2) $330.80 is 22,982.67 RUB (3) Arbitrage of 172.67 RUB 1. http://preev.com/btc/rub http://preev.com/btc/rub 2. http://preev.com/btc/usd http://preev.com/btc/usd 3. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=usd%20to%20rub https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...

sillysaurus3 12y ago
BTC/$ is currently falling: http://i.imgur.com/NxbqPqW.png http://i.imgur.com/NxbqPqW.png Unless you've already established accounts at several different exchanges, you really shouldn't try anything based off of an HN comment. Please be careful not to deposit funds which are then frozen because your account is new. That type of thing. New accounts are subject to much scrutiny. In particular, be very careful when your motive is greed (or "to seize an opportunity," to use a euphemism). Bitcoin isn't subject to regulation. Exchanges essentially play by their own rules. And when the world is going nuts, that means exchanges have the ability to do pretty much whatever they decide is the right choice. If they decide to temporarily halt withdraws, and you're caught up in that net, you could potentially lose a lot, even if it doesn't seem like it. Try not to risk more than, say, 20% of whatever you can afford to lose. Even if you think you can afford to lose it, the reality of losing it might kick you in the stomach harder than you probably realize. EDIT: Also, if you absolutely insist on taking crazy risks like this, here's a tip: estimate the transaction fees, and then double it. That gives you a margin of error. Your transaction fees are usually what eat up much of your potential profits in this kind of thing, so if you pretend like they're double, you can avoid making some extremely risky decisions. In fact, I'm just going to urge you to avoid this altogether. It's not fun to be in a position of staring at a financial chart and willing it to go up, knowing that if it doesn't, you're screwed. It's also not fun to sell, thinking you're screwed, when in reality if you'd just waited a little bit longer you would've been fine. Or when you resent yourself for selling too early and "not making as much money as you could have." This kind of greedy standalone thing will wrap your emotions around a pole, and it's way too easy to convince yourself you're the kind of person that can handle it. Also realize that even if you do profit off of this, you can't really credit yourself for being clever. You'd be fooling yourself. At best, you can simply feel lucky. So there's not much skill involved in this, beyond putting in a lot of time to research how things work, etc, and then hoping the world ends up obeying your mental model, which rarely happens anyway. Poker is way more fun than this. Go do that.

downandout 12y ago

>so the arbitrage opportunity is approximately 2000 RUB. That is actually pretty striking. There aren't many abritrage opportunities in the 5%+ return range that last for very long. I assume such opportunities always exist since Bitcoin markets are far from perfectly efficient, but these spreads are pretty big.