Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 426 posts

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#221

Post by Klathmon »

aviv wrote: post #182
sowbug wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same is true about Facebook. Someone could clone the features and create facebook2.com, and everyone would flock to it. That's why Facebook stock is a Ponzi scheme. Anyone who thinks Facebook has a value above $0 is insane.

Nope. People use Facebook. People simply don't use Bitcoin for payments or any other use that benefits from its "network effect".

Look, i'm not convinced that bitcoin is worth the price it's at right even right now either, but that's just not true.

The network effect is extremely strong in the cryptocurrency space. Everything in the cryptocurrency space supports bitcoin, and fractions of everything support anything else. Payment processors, exchanges, hardware wallets, software wallets, secure storage and backup systems, etc... All of it is focused on bitcoin first, and adds others later (if ever).

If you want to buy or sell bitcoin, you've got tons of repudible options, you want to buy or sell monero? You've got 1/3 of the options, and most of them are small and shady or don't deal with fiat currencies in any way.

If that's not a network effect, I don't know what is.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#222

Post by saalweachter »

empath75 wrote: post #167
saalweachter wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the infuriating things about Bitcoin is that there's no reason 19K couldn't be the new normal. You don't have to trade in whole Bitcoins, so high prices just mean people trade in smaller fractions and low prices just mean people trade in higher numbers, unlike a stock where you might want to do a split to make it easier for people to invest.

There’s no reason $19 couldn’t be the new normal either.

Nope!

That's the exciting part of an asset with no fundamental value.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#223

Post by mikepurvis »

bluGill wrote: post #194
mikepurvis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can pay taxes with USD. You can pay employees. You can buy millions of different kinds of goods, including any other currency. Bitcoin can do none of these things.

The only thing you cannot do with bitcoin is pay taxes directly. You can do that indirectly by trading your bitcoin for USD. There are a lot of different goods you can buy with bitcoin, some of which you cannot buy any other way (many are illegal but that is a different matter). Bitcoin is traded for other currency all the time. I tend to believe those who say bitcoin will not last are right, but right not it is a cu…

That's like saying I can pay my taxes in barrels of oil, I just have to sell them first so that I can pay in my government's currency.

Like, what accountant would be capable of planning finances for a business where every single liability is denominated in a super-volatile asset? The whole thing is nuts.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#224

Post by cloverich »

stinkytaco wrote: post #189
cloverich wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When a very large scale economic or state collapse happens, the most important thing to have are a community of people around you who believe in each other. But isn't that one of the hopes of cryptocurrency -- that it can survive a state collapse, because the relatively normal currency manipulation leading up to said collapse would be less (or not at all) viable? I feel like that was the spirit of OP's tongue in ch…

> But isn't that one of the hopes of cryptocurrency -- that it can survive a state collapse, because the relatively normal currency manipulation leading up to said collapse would be less (or not at all) viable? I've always wondered about this argument. It seems to me that a state collapse would be accompanied by the collapse of things that make bitcoin possible: electrical grid, Internet, mobile networks, and so on.

That's definitely a good point and I think it would probably apply in some cases. From my standpoint I"m most interested in the leadup to a collapse where governments start manipulating currency to greater degrees, destabilizing the countries economy (to the eventual point of temporary collapse) further than it otherwise would. I'm not sufficiently well read on the subject to argue deeply about it, just always seemed like if cryptocurrencies were viable they could perhaps alleviate or improve those situations. Maybe modern Venezuela is a good example. I'm not well read enough on either topic to take a strong stance but if it holds water, it's always seemed like a very promising thing for humanity.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#226

Post by jcranmer »

monocasa wrote: post #162
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #134

There's essentially nothing driving the price increase in 2017. Payment processing, remittance, asset-backing, digital identities, micropayments, bitcoin ATMs, VC-backed bitcoin startups, none of these things took off at all in 2017, in fact if anything the exciting years regarding these usecases/infrastructure ventures were 2013-2015. I bet if you ask 100 people why they bought and if they use bitcoin for anything i…

And a big piece of gold's value is that it's been a store of value for longer than recorded history. Hell, if the world went belly up, Mad Max style, there's a good chance that whatever gold you have would be worth even more.

Serious question: what value would gold have in a post-apocalyptic world? If I'm selling something, why should I take gold in exchange for it, instead of something useful, like ammunition or food or water?

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#227

Post by strebler »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #192
nlh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key moment of bubble insanity for me was overheating the security screeners at Heathrow talking about how they just signed up for “this new app called CoinBase” which was going to make them all rich.

Yeah I knew it was time to get out when my neighbor's dog started telling me about this hot new ICO.

Hey, WoofCoin is going to change the world! Only WoofCoin uses blockchain technology to finally solve the age old question "who's a good boy?"

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#228

Post by ryanwaggoner »

CiPHPerCoder wrote: post #200
cloakandswagger wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the cynics much less tolerable than the crypto-evangelists. HN is a haven for them: bitter, jealous people who never miss an opportunity to trash crypto when it's up or mock it when it's down. This likely isn't the end of Bitcoin just as its numerous other 30%+ corrections didn't stop its rise. Whatever happens, I'll be proud to have participated in such an important new technology while avoiding the leagues o…

http://cryptoisnotcryptocurrency.com/

Nonsense. It has been used in the past to refer to cryptography, but it's just an abbreviation, and it can easily change as our language evolves.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#229

Post by autokad »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #83

As someone who owns and believes in cryptocurrency, I'm actually glad this happened. I was getting sick of all the get rich quick people who've been driving the price lately, even for the coins that shouldn't be pumping. It was almost as if the entire cryptocurrency space had turned into a huge unregulated casino. I was at a couple of Bitcoin meetups recently and was surprised to find that most attendees were proudly…

the price is going down because an exchange got hacked. that is never good for people and the cryptocurrencies

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#230

Post by aviv »

dsacco wrote: post #202
aviv wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2nd amendment my friend. Note to criminals: don't try this in Arizona.

Your friend shot them?

Luckily for them it didn't have to go that far, but he did pull it and they immediately took off. He then got in his car and called the police to report what happened.
Post reply on HN