51–60 of 83 posts
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Probably a tiny fraction. I'd guess that an algorithm recognized that buying 100 Bitcoin spread across 100k accounts is better than from 1 account.
Do orderbooks display account information? AFAIK 1 person putting 1000 orders and 1000 people each putting in 1 order looks identical (unless you're the exchange operator)
- Newton after he lost everything investing in the south sea bubble for a second time, just before it popped.
This has gained mainstream attention and no-one knows what they’re investing in any more, there is no there there to justify the price. Consider the trajectory of chain - a bitcoin startup that has gone from being about bitcoin to about block chains to about distributed ledgers to being about distributed applications (note these last things don’t care what they’re denominated in).
A founder wrote one of the best write ups of this space I’ve seen, and even he is pretty skeptical:
https://blog.chain.com/a-letter-to-jamie-dimon-de89d417cb80
All it needs now is for ordinary people to get nervous and start trying to realise their gains all at once for prices to plummet once again.
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Why are you so sure that it's a bubble?
Not OP but as someone familiar with BTC tech / history I still haven't discovered any real use for it. As in, issues 99% of people in first-world countries have with fiat that it solves, rather than exacerbate (let alone the other massive hassles with using BTC). It seems to only exist for speculation. Its meteoric rise in the face of all this screams bubble to me. (But.. I've also been saying this for a while.)
For example, the housing bubble in 2008 was detected when rental and mortgage prices diverged greatly.
Since the bare-bones value of Bitcoin is tied to the cost of computation power and electricity to mine, you could theoretically track the price of bitcoin vs. the cost of the computational power to mine bitcoin at it's current block difficulty.
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Out of interest, is it dangerous to publicly state that you buy drugs with BTC (with or without personally identifying information attached)? As in, is it likely that someone would/could be targeted by law enforcement because of that, and could a comment like that be used in court?
Meh. If they wanted to they could fine me ten bajillion dollars for having a pirated version of Zootopia on my harddrive. I guess my words could bite me in the ass but I am fairly confident as a non-dealer I'm not exactly a target. Probably on a radar for when the Fed runs out of Big Fish, but for now probably fine.
Bitcoin just hit 7000 dollars.
I'd be curious to know at this point what amount of bitcoin transactions are actually retail focused. There was a big push a couple years back by users wanting to make actual purchases with bitcoin and helping to build the infrastructure around that. Does this retail side of bitcoin still exist, or is everyone just mining and selling -> buying and holding?
As far as I know, most Bitcoin transactions take ~10mins to get confirmed, so I'm not sure the current infrastructure would work for retail. Admittedly I don't know what would need to be changed to speed up transaction confirmations to the point where you could use it in retail situations.
As someone not invested in any of this at all, its fascinating to watch as people jump in completely oblivious to risk involved. I've listened to friends and family discuss investing "only $100" or "only $1000" for fractional amounts of bitcoin with the idea that they're sure fire bets for making money. I feel a bit like a rube sitting it out on the sidelines (and they're chastising me for not acting) as the price ke…
I haven't been convinced that this has happened before, so other than "not diversifying is dumb," anybody that says with any authority "you should not be investing a small amount of money in cryptocurrency" has an equally strong argument as someone that says "you should be investing a small amount of money in cryptocurrency." I say as long as you follow centuries-old investment advice (diversify, always have a backup…
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywbbpm/bitcoin-mi...
Bitcoin - The new coal
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I haven't been convinced that this has happened before, so other than "not diversifying is dumb," anybody that says with any authority "you should not be investing a small amount of money in cryptocurrency" has an equally strong argument as someone that says "you should be investing a small amount of money in cryptocurrency." I say as long as you follow centuries-old investment advice (diversify, always have a backup…
gambling is gambling. if you want to gamble for fun then by all means enjoy yourself. but don't pretend it is an "investment."
"Gambling" has connotations of immoral behaviour, especially in zero-sum or always-lose scenarios like poker and casinos. I don't think it's fair to describe educated and informed investment or buy-ins with words like that. I think "risky venture" is a less loaded, more neutral, term to describe it instead.
As it is, I don't see Bitcoin and other currencies as true investments - just yet - I see the surge in Bitcoin mainly as a "distributed Ponzi-scheme" instead: those who are cashing-out now are those who bought-in early and being paid by the people buying it now - and the people buying it now expect more other people to buy into it later, pushing the price higher while supply and availability dwindle (owing to BTC's 28M cap). However, unlike a Ponzi-scheme, Bitcoin, Ethereum and others do have utility as a means of moving money around independently of existing, often state-controlled, bank networks or remittance services - and eventually Bitcoin will be the tool of choice for that - and when the tens of millions of people wanting to move money around do so is when we will know the real, unhyped, value of Bitcoin - until then, the question is if $7,000 USD/BTC is an obscene over-valuation, or is still comically low - and I don't know which side to believe.
We'll get a better idea when, or if, legacy companies like Western Union and SWIFT get involved - or when real-time BTC transactions cost less than a VISA or Mastercard transaction (say ~3%). Right now a 250 byte transaction will cost 54,240 satoshi ($3.83) and take 30 minutes to get the first confirmation - making it totally unacceptable for retail purchases, for example. Hopefully when the Lightning Network or other solutions get finalized we'll start to see some real traction, but how many bubbles will burst before then?
(Disclaimer: I'm a HODLer of BTC and ETH).
I’ve got my popcorn out. I keep encountering more and more everyday people who are investing serious money in Bitcoin. Uber drivers, barbers, baristas.