Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#351

Post by canes123456 » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:29 PM UTC

nxsynonym wrote: post #94

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…

Unfortunately the high price and get-rich-quick stories associated with Cryptocurrencies in general will overshadow and hinder meaningful technological progress. The best thing that could happen for any meaningful development would be a crash down to 2016 levels and a stagnation period. Let the hype fade away and get back to making something useful, instead of trying to pump and dump.

Yeah but if it falls to 2016 levels it will spike and fall many times as people try to get it back to 2017 levels.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#352

Post by sireat » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

cloverich wrote: post #224

stinkytaco wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I remember when many alt coins collapsed in 2013/2014 one problem was that with miners dropping off, difficulty stayed. Many coins with longer difficulty adjustments couldn't get back to reasonable confirmation times.

So let's say BTC difficulty drops 10x (China cracks downs on farms or simply miners moving to a different more profitable coin, who knows)

Currently this would be ruinous, as difficulty adjustments are every 2 weeks, so that would be 140 days until things get back to normal.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#353

Post by skj » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

nxsynonym wrote: post #123

hobs wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

/s indicates a "closing" sarcasm tag.

He edited in the /s after the fact - and besides sarcastic comments don't add any value to the discussion.

The /s was pretty clear before the fact too.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

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Post by tehlike » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

rc_bhg wrote: post #303

tehlike wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Bitfinexed This guy claims the increase in price is due to fake money being injected into market.

A lot of conspiracy theory type lingo in those tweet. Really reminds me of they type of stuff I'd see from Trump supporters or other crazies.

https://medium.com/@untetheredbtc/how-the-tether-usdt-distri...

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#355

Post by bluGill » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

mikepurvis wrote: post #223

bluGill wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People rarely do this. However a lot of accountants do this.

Nearly all large and even mid sized companies have customers who use a different currency and have to deal with it. Big companies hedge foreign currency risks. It is common for the press release for a companie's earning to say "we made $x per share driven in part by foreign currency values and ..." Which is to say when looking at a press release they believe their investors (perhaps a legal requirement?) will want to know that a significant factor wasn't sales but just currency trade.

Now bitcoin is super-volatile. That isn't relevant to a general discussion, but it is a major factor when discussing bitcoin in specifics. There are other foreign currencies that have similar considerations at times though, it isn't unique to bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#356

Post by yellow_postit » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:47 PM UTC

bogomipz wrote: post #154

mutteraloo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't know what they were buying; bits in a database. A very poorly implemented database that was - not scalable - not rare - didn't have any government backing or big institutional backing in case the price dropped from 19,000 to 11,000 - easily hackable (tether, fake trades, scam exchanges, etc) - too expensive to do a single transaction this applies to most crytocurrency

>"- not rare" Its not a commodity it's a currency. Why does it need to be "rare"? The US dollar is also not backed by anything "rare" and hasn't been since Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1973. >"didn't have any government backing or big institutional backing in case the price dropped from 19,000 to 11,000" You realize this is the exact reason it was created right? That's the whole point. It's not coincidence th…

I’m not sure Bitcoin knows if it’s a currency or a commodity yet. Seems to be in flux depending which interest group is currently commanding the headlines.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

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Post by soundwave106 » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:51 PM UTC

gressquel wrote: post #19

Downvote me all you want, but HN really needs to cure this bitcoin-jealousy. Yes, people who invested early became millionares and billionares with a single mouse click. I know it feels unfair when you spend countless hours creating and innovating and not being rewarded. But some of you here needs to stop hating and being bitter. I have been watching HN and bitcoin related threads for months now. Same pattern.

I don't think a lot of what I'm hearing was bitterness. Instead, there was a (seemingly correct) assumption that Bitcoin was undergoing a massive bubble at the moment. There was a lot of signs similar to other bubbles, such as the late 1990s dot com bubble and the mid 2000s real estate bubble.

There's no problem with putting a little into Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, but at the moment, it is a very speculative investment. If you diversify, and don't do something silly like massively borrow, then that's fine. In fact, this sort of investor probably doesn't care too much that Bitcoin crashed in value. It may go up by silly amounts, or it may go down by silly amounts. That's life with any speculative investment. I personally can't see Bitcoin justifying its valuation unless it fixes its transaction issues, but there is plenty of room for disagreement there.

Now, the fact that a fair bit of current marketing / promotions of crypto has the whiff of pyramid schemes and other dodgy "make money fast" type things is of concern to me. Mainly because these sorts of things usually never end well. I think it would be very foolish to put a significant percentage of your assets into crypto right now, and it would be extremely dicey to invest in crypto on the margin. In fact, it would probably be better if one was seriously interested in crypto to wait until a major crash clears these sort of "you're gonna get rich instantly with CRYPTO!" players out of the market.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

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Post by stinkytaco » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

vec wrote: post #342

stinkytaco wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I suppose anyone can create a currency out of thin air. In fact, I'd wager there's hundreds of currencies, as nearly every sovereign state has one. It's not meant to be a store of value, which is why this bubble will burst, but that doesn't mean it's doomed. It has the characteristics of a currency: 1. scarce. 2. useful.

But not 3. fast and easy to transfer ownership of or 4. stable in value over time. Plenty of things (houses, human toes, pre-release copies of films, etc.) Are both scarce and useful without also being good candidates for a medium of exchange.

Fair enough, but Bitcoin certainly can be either of those things, even if it's not right now. History shows us any currency can have those problems. Inflation can become so high that as a medium of exchange it's pointless. It can become so unstable in value that people use something else.

Bitcoin is no panacea, but the "fake money" argument seems misplaced to me. It's current failings are not failings of crypto-currency in general.

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

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Post by bogomipz » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #339

bogomipz wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are being paid in dollars you are already holding dollars. Paying tax on dollars you are already holding does not create a demand.

If a US company is paid in euros or gold it still needs to pay taxes in dollars. Further, property taxes for example are independent of your income stream. As owning land creates a liability, but land in no way creates money from thin air. People do transactions in USD specifically because they need to pay taxes in USD not the other way around. Thus, these transactions are simply a multiplayer on top of the Tax deman…

>"If a US company is paid in euros or gold it still needs to pay taxes in dollars"

And similarly if a European company is paid in dollars they still need to pay taxes in Euros. Why is this relevant?

>"As owning land creates a liability, but land in no way creates money from thin air." Owning land creates money out of thin air by appreciating in value. People have gotten fantastically wealthy by doing nothing except letting time pass.

>"People do transactions in USD specifically because they need to pay taxes in USD not the other way around."

This is not unique to the US. Where else can you pay local taxes in a foreign currency?

Re: Bitcoin and almost every other cryptocurrency crashed hard today

#360

Post by aviv » Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 5:52 PM UTC

Klathmon wrote: post #221

aviv wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 foc…

One could argue the exact opposite - that all the infrastructure around Bitcoin makes it an inferior store of value. For example, the fact that Litecoin does not (yet) have ETFs and other financial vehicles that can be used to manipulate its price without actually dealing with "physical" Litecoins, makes it a more stable store of value.