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Bitcoin Fall Extends to 25% as Fears of Crackdown Linger

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

#171

Post by ezzaf »

vthallam wrote: post #108
komali2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love bitcoin and cryptocurrency as potential solutions to problems with gov-controlled currencies (I've used crypto to buy drugs, for example). But I'm still confused why people refer to purchasing currency as an "investment." Obviously the rates are going up now, but doesn't everyone expect them to just come back down? I don't convert my USD to Yen and call it an "investment."

You would call it an investment, if the USD-YEN prices are so volatile and give you 1000X profit in 6 months. Again, this all goes back to whether Bitcoin is a store of value or a medium of exchange. By now it's very clear, it can't be medium of exchange.

I disagree that short term returns make it an investment. Speculation is term that much better fits the action of buying a currency with intent to return a profit.

"A speculator is a person who trades derivatives, commodities, bonds, equities or currencies with a higher than average risk in return for a higher-than-average profit potential" https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/speculator.asp

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

#172

Post by celticninja »

whyenot wrote: post #159
gruez wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a rumor/meme. supposedly during the last crash, r/bitcoin had the suicide hotline pinned, but i wasn't able to confirm that on archive.org either.

It was pinned at the top of /r/bitcoin for a brief time during the crash in January 2014. I was there. I saw it, although I realize that wouldn't necessarily be convincing evidence to someone else. While it's easy to make fun of the suicide prevention hotline being posted (and many did make fun of it in 2014), at least one regular poster in /r/BitcoinMarkets did commit suicide during that crash.

I can confirm it was previously posted in r/bitcoin but this time it is r/cryptocurrency.

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

#173

Post by flick »

sytelus wrote: post #167

I have been trying to figure out eventual equilibrium price of BitCoin and here is one approach: Due to wealth inequality, we assume that majority of the crypto investment would be from ultra-rich. It might become quite normal for them to invest 1% of their wealth in crypto for uncorrelated diversification. In a way this is very similar to buying art which probably doesn't have much utility except among other wealthy…

That doesn't make any sense. Using this logic you could argue that basically anything should have an eventual market cap of ~$1 trillion.

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

#174

Post by cableshaft »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #150
cableshaft wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ripple will bounce back up (maybe not back up to $3 anytime soon, but I'm pretty sure it will go back up). A lot of people that got out are just trying to time the bottom as well as they can. I'm tempted to buy more myself. Part of me wants to wait to see if it drops more, part of me thinks I should just get in instead of trying to time the market and missing the opportunity.

Why so sure? It seems to have gone up based on the news that Japanese banks were getting involved, but then it turns out they likely won't use the actual coins, just the tech?

Just based on the general patterns and trends, and that it seems to be the favored coin of the banking world, at least so far. But I very well could be wrong. Someone can be very confident and very wrong.

But as a general rule I'm conservative with how much I put into these things, just a small amount each month. I can afford to be very confident and very wrong about Ripple.

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

#175

Post by agorabinary »

perseusprime11 wrote: post #130
agorabinary wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is naive of Buffet when his only evidence of a "bad ending" is the existence of a massive rally. The entire near-future automated economy depends on programmable money. There is literally nothing interesting happening in FinTech right now apart from the crypto space.

“entire near-future automated economy depends on programmable money” It also depends on banks and states signing up to that vision. We have seen zero adoption on that front. On top of that, it still does not explain the hundreds of alt coins.

"it still doesn't explain the hundreds of alt coins"

It's open source. How many Linux distros are there?

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

#176

Post by 21 »

lkrubner wrote: post #162
nukeop wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "no reason"? Supply and demand are the reasons the prices are shaped the way they are. It's a near perfect market.

What is the P/E ratio of Bitcoin? There is none. So there is no rational basis for any price. $1 is as valid as $1 million. There is no traditional way to analyze this investment and figure out its real worth. To the limited extent that Bitcoin helps Chinese citizens out-maneuver the capital controls that the Chinese government has tried to enforce, then it could be analyzed as a shadow of the Chinese currency, but s…

> There is no traditional way to analyze this investment and figure out its real worth.

Is that bitcoin's problem or a traditional economists problem?

Behavioral economics does have frameworks for thinking about bitcoin price, but then again, behavioral finance is not traditional and highly controversial. For once, it dispenses with the myth of the rational investor (homo economicus)

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

#178

Post by jstarfish »

olivermarks wrote: post #26
austenallred wrote: post #19

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.

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

Not true, it's a very savvy move. You're gambling with someone else's money-- credit card debt can be discharged in bankruptcy.

You don't lose your house or your shirt, and the only real consequence is poor credit for a few years.

And if bitcoin goes up? Pay it off, keep the profits...you still win.

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

#179

Post by 21 »

gruez wrote: post #125
bdcravens wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The suicide prevention hotline is pinned to the top of cryptocurrency subreddits Which ones? I checked r/bitcoin, r/btc, r/ethereum, r/litecoin, r/bitcoinmarkets. Only one I saw with it was r/cryptocurrency

it's a rumor/meme. supposedly during the last crash, r/bitcoin had the suicide hotline pinned, but i wasn't able to confirm that on archive.org either.

It actually happened in 2014: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51f7fbb3e4b088f41b107...

News report: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a26570/bitcoin-min...

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

#180

Post by matwood »

vertex-four wrote: post #57
matwood wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The stats were not just people I know. One of the coin sites pulled them together. If 3k is a significant amount of someone's life savings, then they should not have put in BTC.

Proportional to the total market is important because it puts into perspective how few people will really be impacted, and if it is something that could spread into the economy as a whole.

Found the stats: https://coinspectator.com/news/127996/survey-finds-average-b...

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