Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin Fall Extends to 25% as Fears of Crackdown Linger

bloomberg.com

51–60 of 371 posts

Re: Bitcoin Fall Extends to 25% as Fears of Crackdown Linger

#51

Time to buy. Down from what price since January? Cryptocurrency is a long term play from a software and financial engineering vantage. It also continues to irritate the hell out of banks (bank accounts are being closed and restricted from exchange transfers, including coinbase) and general investors. It's not liquid enough yet, creates no need for middle men and Bitcoin itself is now being manipulated by futures cont…

Yes, but what? Ripple's seen maybe the biggest loss, but it's not clear that part of its loss isn't due to decreasing confidence in the underlying, which is bad if you want to BTFD. Same can be said for many others. Though if you look at todays charts e.g. in ETH, it's clear someone's probably made good money intraday buying dips.

Agreed. Crypto is experiencing manipulation like stocks, bonds, debentures, CDs and derivatives of all kinds. Sharks, snakes, wolves are part of the game now for all kinds of reasons but the development communities also have a real chance at creating a better balance with assets based on the blockchain.

Re: Bitcoin Fall Extends to 25% as Fears of Crackdown Linger

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speculation. Investing is something different entirely, just like the lottery is different than owning a chunk of a business.

Eh, there's no hard line between the two.

No, but there are extremes that can be easily labeled as such and this one is clearly speculation, not investing.

Re: Bitcoin Fall Extends to 25% as Fears of Crackdown Linger

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive speculators are buying cryptocurrencies on their credit cards without understanding the volatility https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/bitcoin-b...

> Naive speculators The problem with this characterization is when enough people lose their shirts on leveraged crypto purchases, a problem of individual finances becomes one of collective policy. I'd be careful with dismissing the problem as one contained to the stupid. There was a thread on the front page, earlier, where multiple commentators were equated the odds of a massive and permanent Bitcoin crash with that…

> Korea may already be at the point where a 50% sustained drawdown plunges a significant fraction of the population into hardship. That, in turn, could trigger a recession.

That seems unlikely. Something like 2M of 51M people have any crypto there, and only a small fraction would be overextended significantly. Anyone buying a couple months ago would still be up.

Re: Bitcoin Fall Extends to 25% as Fears of Crackdown Linger

#54
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive speculators are buying cryptocurrencies on their credit cards without understanding the volatility https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/bitcoin-b...

How much I think is key here. I'll try and find the article from late 2017 but it said that most crypto buyers invested ~3k or less. A large portion of BTC is concentrated in fewer than 1k people. What this means is that for most people when crypto crashes, it sucks but will simply be a cool story. This isn't .com or the housing bubble where many people's lives were ruined. Of course with the craze, the stats could h…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin Fall Extends to 25% as Fears of Crackdown Linger

#55

The suicide prevention hotline is pinned to the top of cryptocurrency subreddits because the price of bitcoin is where it was at the beginning of last month. Think about that for a minute. When we really have a bear market people are going to lose their minds.

Well it doesn't matter what it was last month if you just took the plunge... So many stories of people putting in their college funds, taking out loans, using credit cards, exchange margin, etc.

Re: Bitcoin Fall Extends to 25% as Fears of Crackdown Linger

#57
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive speculators are buying cryptocurrencies on their credit cards without understanding the volatility https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/bitcoin-b...

How much I think is key here. I'll try and find the article from late 2017 but it said that most crypto buyers invested ~3k or less. A large portion of BTC is concentrated in fewer than 1k people. What this means is that for most people when crypto crashes, it sucks but will simply be a cool story. This isn't .com or the housing bubble where many people's lives were ruined. Of course with the craze, the stats could h…

The question is whether people have invested a significant amount of their life savings in bitcoin, not whether they own a significant amount of bitcoin proportional to the total market. For people who have, they may be panicking about how they'll support themselves in their later years, they may have invested in a lifestyle with the expectation that they can pay for it with Bitcoin's growth, and so on and so forth.

People's lives may be ruined by this - they've often essentially been scammed into investing in cryptocurrency because they cannot understand the risks. If a financial adviser were promoting bitcoin to most people, it'd be illegal. I don't think it's fair to say this is OK because it won't affect people you know.

Re: Bitcoin Fall Extends to 25% as Fears of Crackdown Linger

#59

Time to buy. Down from what price since January? Cryptocurrency is a long term play from a software and financial engineering vantage. It also continues to irritate the hell out of banks (bank accounts are being closed and restricted from exchange transfers, including coinbase) and general investors. It's not liquid enough yet, creates no need for middle men and Bitcoin itself is now being manipulated by futures cont…

Ahh the "time to buy cheap coins" rally of the die-hard bitcoin shysters. Your own post says "It's not liquid enough yet, creates no need to middle men and Bitcoin itself is now being manipulated by futures contracts based on supply being increased artificially." Does that sound like buying now is a good idea? Doesn't to me...

Bitcoin is, was and always will be a highly manipulated penny stock. It spiked from $1000 to $20k for absolutely no reason, and now it is dropping down to $10k for absolutely no reason. Any price bitcoin spikes or drops to has no reason behind it... what kind of "store-of-value" / "currency" does that?

Re: Bitcoin Fall Extends to 25% as Fears of Crackdown Linger

#60
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Naive speculators are buying cryptocurrencies on their credit cards without understanding the volatility https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-11/bitcoin-b...

How much I think is key here. I'll try and find the article from late 2017 but it said that most crypto buyers invested ~3k or less. A large portion of BTC is concentrated in fewer than 1k people. What this means is that for most people when crypto crashes, it sucks but will simply be a cool story. This isn't .com or the housing bubble where many people's lives were ruined. Of course with the craze, the stats could h…

Beyond the concentration, there are a lot of millionaries out there. Much more than 1k. I always tell that I know more crypto-millionaries than startup ones.
Post reply on HN