Bitcoin Surges Past $400 • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#191

Post by Mithaldu » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 6:57 PM UTC

csomar wrote: post #35

There is nothing that can guarantee that this ride is real, but here are a few things: 1. However big is MMM, it's probably too small for the size of the bitcoin economy right now. Remember that if you are transacting in bitcoin, there is one party buying and the other one selling. So you are not rising the price to the moon. 2. The number of transactions has been growing again as of late. It's heating at the blockch…

Maybe it's related to this auction of the silkroad bitcoins: http://www.usmarshals.gov/assets/2015/dpr-bitcoins/

Note the correlation between the registration deadline date and the start of the rise.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#192

Post by thescriptkiddie » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 7:01 PM UTC

blantonl wrote: post #190

xacaxulu wrote: post #189

I slowly bought about 25 BTC since January. Honestly this is very exciting right now and I've basically been daytrading for the last few days. I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it's been enjoyable to set alerts for different price points then buy/sell as necessary. I like the liquidity and 0 government involvement/taxation - something I couldn't do with stock/options/CDs etc.

If you convert BTC to $$ or your local currency, expect a tax situation.

Why would you want to do that when you can just pay for things directly?

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#193

Post by jcslzr » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 7:07 PM UTC

its because all those youtubers talking about a dollar collapse, because the fed wont raise the interest rate (more like the fed can not raise rates)

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#194

Post by aianus » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 7:09 PM UTC

godzillabrennus wrote: post #164

jarboot wrote: post #162

The little pile of bitcoins I had laying around from a couple weeks ago has doubled in price. Should I spend them now in anticipation of a bubble bursting or wait for the price to possibly go up?

As with any volatile investment you should get out when you are ahead, or in need of the money. You may lose out on further gains but the likelihood of another crash is high. It's better to win than lose.

> It's better to win than lose.

Mathematically that's just not true. In objective terms not winning an extra $100 is exactly the same as losing $100.

This psychological fallacy (called 'loss aversion') is the primary reason the average player loses at poker. They're afraid of losing $100 when they might be behind but they constantly fail to extract that extra $100 value bet when they know they're likely ahead.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#195

Post by Goronmon » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 7:09 PM UTC

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #192

blantonl wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you convert BTC to $$ or your local currency, expect a tax situation.

Why would you want to do that when you can just pay for things directly?

Why would you want to do that when you can just pay for things directly?

That doesn't change the fact that in many places you'll still owe taxes, regardless if you don't cash out in a distinct step somewhere. At least as far as I understand things.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#196

Post by TomAnthony » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 7:09 PM UTC

xacaxulu wrote: post #189

I slowly bought about 25 BTC since January. Honestly this is very exciting right now and I've basically been daytrading for the last few days. I'm no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but it's been enjoyable to set alerts for different price points then buy/sell as necessary. I like the liquidity and 0 government involvement/taxation - something I couldn't do with stock/options/CDs etc.

Where are you doing your trading?

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#197

Post by gavazzy » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 7:11 PM UTC

julianpye wrote: post #3

That may become the fastest journey across the Gartner trough of disillusionment that I have seen. So it answers Fred Wilsons's question at http://avc.com/2014/09/the-bitcoin-hype-cycle/

I think it's far more like this:

http://imgur.com/bcf2DbW

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#198

Post by aianus » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 7:12 PM UTC

a3voices wrote: post #122

The Bitcoin dream of it being accepted by banks and replacing fiat currency will never come true, especially since financial institutions are focusing on blockchain technology as opposed to Bitcoin. This recent price increase will possibly be viewed as a dead cat bounce.

> The Bitcoin dream of it being accepted by banks and replacing fiat currency will never come true

Bitcoin doesn't have to "replace fiat currency" to be extremely successful. The transaction float of Visa and SWIFT (both of which are vastly inferior to Bitcoin) is enough to support a higher valuation than this 'bubble'.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#199

Post by thescriptkiddie » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 7:12 PM UTC

mike_hearn wrote: post #177

kristofferR wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is in constant development, so it's a hard question to answer. If Bitcoin core development suddenly stopped right now it wouldn't be very future proof. Trading volumes are irrelevant from a scaling perspective, what matters is number of transactions per second (tps). Right now Bitcoin has a really low capacity, just 7tps, way below VISA for example. However, progress is underway on creating the Lightning Netw…

Lightning isn't going to happen any time soon. Bear in mind it's not even block chain based, nodes are stateful and control signing keys, and no existing software works with it. Lightning will require entirely new wallets to be created for it, and those wallets will be very complicated. It's a multi-year project at most. The reality is that Bitcoin will fall apart if too much load is placed on it, and it's getting cl…

The good news is that support for BIP 101 is growing fast, so we should see larger blocks sooner rather than later. If the tps limit is reached before then, we will likely see increased adoption of micropayment channels, since most transactions at the moment are quite small.

Re: Bitcoin Surges Past $400

#200

Post by aianus » Wed, Nov 04, 2015, 7:13 PM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #166

dragonwriter wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many times in the past bitcoin companies have been hacked, embezzled or otherwise lost user funds. There is no recourse. Many times, other companies have had that happen, and there is all kinds of recourse. To the extent bitcoin companies are special, its because people participating in the bitcoin craze have been willing to entrust large amounts of value with companies that don't have the basic characteristics tha…

Given that BTC is a currency that is not backed by a national treasury (and is, in fact, technologically not backable by printing more money), such insurance would be a prohibitively expensive percentage of a company's BTC resources. The same features of BTC that serve as its advantage and, arguably, goal make it more difficult to offer basic protections that other fiscal infrastructures have had for decades.

You can store $100m in bitcoin on a piece of paper in a vault. It reduces perfectly to the solved problem of securing $100m in $100 bills in a vault (which, yes, you can insure).