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Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

#11

Post by sharemywin »

The biggest factor behind the rally was the announcement of Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s decision to offer Bitcoin futures.

In an earlier rise, coming after the Aug. 1st fork, Bitcoin hit a massive rally that was attributed to Wall Street flooding into Bitcoin once the heat was off from the so-called ‘civil war.’

https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-what-and-why-bitcoin-pric...

Re: Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

#12

Post by alva »

CME has announced they intend to introduce a Bitcoin Futures product. If this is allowed it will allow institutional investors (think pension funds, hedge funds etc) to legally indirectly invest in bitcoin.

The amount of money in the hands of institutional investors is huge, multi hundred billions. If a minuscule numbers of these investors put a tiny amount of their portfolio in bitcoin, the price will rocket even further.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

#14

Post by theklub »

xchaotic wrote: post #8

By design, Bitcoin is scarce - there will only be 20999999.9769 bitcoins ever made. Contrast that with USD where more and more money is being printed or added to the system via: quantative easing increasing federal debt ceiling So that is one factor. The other is simple supply and demand - more and more people want to invest in bitcoin for speculative reasons, not as a means to buy goods and services but to heard in…

It's not really scarce though because you can divide up bitcoins into tiny pieces. It's more of a mental scarcity.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

#15

Post by xendo »

Some reasons behind bitcoin rising so fast: CBOE announces plans to launch futures and options trading for Bitcoin[0]. Amazon buying cryptocurrency domains[1]. Bitcoin segwit2x hard fork coming[2]. Snowball effect

If you are looking for an investment advice for cryptocurrencies then a Fortune Teller may be your best bet, but please don't invest more than a couple % of your savings.

[0] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4118265-bitcoin-cboe-trade-... , [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/01/amazon-buys-crypto-domains-b... , [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2017/10/31/what-will-...

Re: Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

#16

Post by shanusmagnus »

tobltobs wrote: post #5

There is yet another Bitcoin fork (seg2wit) coming. If you hold BTC at the time of the fork you might get free money like with the last fork (bitcoin cash). If and when it will fall? Hard to predict, but it sure looks like a Ponzi scheme.

This fork is Segwit2x, and is considered to be an adversarial fork -- some even consider it the first battle in a civil war. The 'dividend' of getting free money does not apply here. In fact, a lot of folks in the Bitcoin community think that the price of BTC is actually signficantly _depressed_ because of this uncertainty. It's almost certainly not contributing to the price rise.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

#17

Post by theklub »

I've said this before, my non-educated analysis of the situation... There is no reason for it not to go up..there is a finite amount and people are buying because its going up. Each time someone buys bitcoin it goes up because typically people are only going to sell above what they paid. It's not a stock, there isn't a huge company behind bitcoin trying to satisfy people. It's a store of value and a way of transferring value. The only reason it would go down is if the network gets hacked or the government makes laws against it or some pure panic situation (which has happened before). Other than that why would something like bitcoin drop? People stop being interested but with the price going up and the news coverage it advertises itself.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

#18

Post by xendo »

theklub wrote: post #14
xchaotic wrote: post #8

By design, Bitcoin is scarce - there will only be 20999999.9769 bitcoins ever made. Contrast that with USD where more and more money is being printed or added to the system via: quantative easing increasing federal debt ceiling So that is one factor. The other is simple supply and demand - more and more people want to invest in bitcoin for speculative reasons, not as a means to buy goods and services but to heard in…

It's not really scarce though because you can divide up bitcoins into tiny pieces. It's more of a mental scarcity.

Dividing is not same as 'printing' for regular currencies. It won't drive the inflation.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

#19

Post by asafira »

theklub wrote: post #14
xchaotic wrote: post #8

By design, Bitcoin is scarce - there will only be 20999999.9769 bitcoins ever made. Contrast that with USD where more and more money is being printed or added to the system via: quantative easing increasing federal debt ceiling So that is one factor. The other is simple supply and demand - more and more people want to invest in bitcoin for speculative reasons, not as a means to buy goods and services but to heard in…

It's not really scarce though because you can divide up bitcoins into tiny pieces. It's more of a mental scarcity.

I don't think that means it isn't scarce: if there was a supply of water (and you could buy it in any amount) and people were buying it up and selling it on a secondary market, it would still cause the price to go up.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Bitcoin's value rising so fast?

#20

Post by mapmeld »

- price has been less variant (moving around between $5600-6000) from mid-to-late October, so maybe catching up to a rising trend

- up and down and back over $7000 - Bitcoin tends to do rapid swings around $1000 milestones, probably due to buyers and sellers setting their next bid for that point

- China rumors and lack of China rumors (though this can be pointed to for any movement)

- upcoming Bitcoin fork causing uncertainty (as mentioned by other commenters)

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