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Bitcoin’s Overnight Collapse Probability Is About 50%

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Re: Bitcoin’s Overnight Collapse Probability Is About 50%

#131
post #129
post #100

Bitcoin in itself is quite useful, it’s something people will exchange for usd or things of value which the gov can’t censor or directly police. Bitcoin’s price is determined by zero fundamentals, so it will swing wildly if you zoom Out enough, forever. That’s why if you ask me it makes logical sense to have 1-10% Of the portfolio betting long or short, because it has a much better than 1 in 10 chances of going x10 o…

Bitcoin is useful for what? Getting around the law? For pumping and dumping?

If you don’t trust your own gov, wether because they’re a bunch of crooks or you’re doing smth fishy, it’s useful.

Re: Bitcoin’s Overnight Collapse Probability Is About 50%

#132
post #5

Bitcoin is powered by a shared belief in its value. While it has been powered by scams as well, couch couch Tether, tt seems to be getting more adherents to believing that it is intrinsically valuable. The fact that it tends to go up so quickly also yields to FOMO. Because Bitcoin is just shared belief, it is hard to dispel that belief via real-world events such as earnings releases and other things that affect more…

it is intrinsically valuable How? As an intrinsically valuable means of speculation because sound investment opportunities are absent?

Bitcoin is a group of technologies, the one that creates Bitcoin's "value" is a digital implementation of scarcity. Usually digital things are easy to copy infinitely, so Bitcoin's implementation of scarcity is one of its core innovations. Scarce things inherently have value in society, beyond the material themselves, because we primarily make transactions (trade) using scarce things. In other words, scarce things are useful simply by being scarce. So if you take there's value in something being purely digital, and decentralized, then Bitcoin has value through its implementation of scarcity.

Re: Bitcoin’s Overnight Collapse Probability Is About 50%

#133
post #5

Bitcoin is powered by a shared belief in its value. While it has been powered by scams as well, couch couch Tether, tt seems to be getting more adherents to believing that it is intrinsically valuable. The fact that it tends to go up so quickly also yields to FOMO. Because Bitcoin is just shared belief, it is hard to dispel that belief via real-world events such as earnings releases and other things that affect more…

> I wonder if Bitcoin will ever be forced to bend towards an inflationary monetary policy controlled by government like entities? It is code and code and always be changed. If it is so successful it becomes necessary to co-opt it into the existing system.... weird stuff.

You can change the code, but it's up to the miners to actually run that code. Not saying it's impossible, but that's a big ask for a controversial change like that. Maybe someday if the mining is even more centralized than it currently is.

Re: Bitcoin’s Overnight Collapse Probability Is About 50%

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is intrinsically valuable How? As an intrinsically valuable means of speculation because sound investment opportunities are absent?

It has a social network effect of people who agree that it's the store of value for the future. Your paper dollar bill has very little intrinsic value. It's just a shared acceptance.

Uh, my paper dollar is backed by the might of the US government and the US economy. It's a lot more than just "shared acceptance". Countries couldn't just switch off the US dollar reserve currency for international trade without massive economic repercussions, which is why no country or set of countries has developed a viable alternative to the dollar for a global reserve currency. It's not like China/Russia wouldn't like to, they have no choice.

The EU came the closest, but no one outside of Europe has wanted Euros since the Greek economic crisis. Hell a large chunk of internal European trade is still done in dollars on the back-end.

On the stick side, under Obama the US stepped up the various mechanisms such that we can cut off trade denominated in dollars on a whim to anyone we want, that's part of how sanctions work. If we (the US) decides we don't want a country to be able to trade internationally, we just cut them off from converting into dollars at the exchanges. There are no economically viable ways around this at present. Just ask Iran.

Bitcoin however, will collapse the moment enough of the crowd loses the faith. It'll go on for a while because it's the new hotness, and some people will get lucky and rich, but at the end of the day it's an ultimately worthless commodity (unless you're trying to avoid government regulation over financial transfers) that exists as long as world governments allow it to exist.

Sure, if theoretically some critical mass of the population all collectively decided Bitcoin was the future it would be, but right now we can't get a critical mass of US citizens to wear masks during a pandemic that's killed hundreds of thousands. So I wouldn't hold out too much hope for pan-Bitcoinism.

Re: Bitcoin’s Overnight Collapse Probability Is About 50%

#135
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Crashes are just discounts” is one of the more pernicious financial memes around.

and the hodl-gang's interpretation: "dips exist only so that coins could go from weak hands to strong hands" :D

Thanks for making me laugh. Kind of reminds me how "weak hands" swayed by WSB, bought GME just before its share value tanked

Re: Bitcoin’s Overnight Collapse Probability Is About 50%

#136
post #131
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is useful for what? Getting around the law? For pumping and dumping?

If you don’t trust your own gov, wether because they’re a bunch of crooks or you’re doing smth fishy, it’s useful.

Which is why fiat conversion will eventually be heavily regulated. People forget private gold ownership was illegal for decades of the 20th century.

Re: Bitcoin’s Overnight Collapse Probability Is About 50%

#137
One point as a researcher working in a central bank and studying state-of-the art macroeconomic theory, is the absolute conviction that some crypto holders have that society is rotten to the core and that the financial industry (and for that matter the broader well established large cap economy) is a malfunctioning/rotten machine only benefiting the 1%.

I mean reading journals on monetary policy transmission, central banking, and finance in general, it is an extremely complex arena (understanding the global economy might be the most complex man made "game" to try to understand). And those researchers will readily admit faults and shortcomings of our current theories. I never ever see any statements from researchers that carries the same strength of conviction about any of the aforementioned topics compared to the crypto crowd, whatsoever.

Some perspective might lend itself useful.

Re: Bitcoin’s Overnight Collapse Probability Is About 50%

#138
post #83

As I watch the total crypto market cap shoot through the roof over the past year, one thing I've been wondering is what will stop a global "bank run" on the exchanges when/if something like this does happen? I was reading thru Coinbase's own insurance wording, and it's clear they dance around it by saying: To the extent these funds are held as USD in U.S. banks, they are maintained as pooled custodial accounts at one…

Coinbase doesn't use Tether to store customer funds, they are straight USD or the BTC/ETH itself. I'm not sure how a "bank run", or heavy withdrawal of USD, would cause any more problems than processing delays.

Re: Bitcoin’s Overnight Collapse Probability Is About 50%

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet more people use dollars, and have bank accounts with dollars or their home country's currency. Bitcoin's block reward can be changed as well, it's not some immutable law of the blockchain. I'm not claiming that it will change, but I also see the potential for there to be a change there to incentivize mining once the block rewards are minuscule and miners are dependent on transaction fees for profitability.

> And yet more people use dollars, and have bank accounts with dollars or their home country's currency. Those people are losing money due to inflation. This is well known and an issue with people keeping cash in "mattresses". > Bitcoin's block reward can be changed as well, it's not some immutable law of the blockchain. I'm not claiming that it will change, but I also see the potential for there to be a change there…

And yet people still own dollars. I own various investments, and also dollars.

I'm aware of what a hard fork is, I'm also aware of what a 51% attack is. The risk of that down the road could be a fair amount of incentive for folks (and the network effect) to get on board. I'm not saying something will happen there. You do need to maintain clarity to understand the reality of what's possible though. It's also possible that bitcoin's first mover advantage is overcome at some point.

As I said, I own some cryptocurrency too. It's important to see through the mania that is the current market.

Re: Bitcoin’s Overnight Collapse Probability Is About 50%

#140
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also @dang, should require every user to add a tag/label that will show us if they are a Bitcoin speculator/owner, and would be great if then upvotes/downvotes had a stat that was viewable to see what % of upvotes/downvotes posts or comments have are by those who are financially incentivized for Bitcoin to succeed. Edit to add: what are the odds this comment would be downvoted in a Bitcoin thread? Would be great to s…

Taleb would say that those people should be listened to more, because they have skin in the game.

That’s fair, but I feel compelled to point out that a penny stock pumper also has skin in the game.
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