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Bitcoin hits $200

bitcoincharts.com

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Re: Bitcoin hits $200

#31

Post by lvh »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #23

It's fascinating to watch this, largely because Bitcoin has no "natural" value. The only utility it has is as a transfer of value from one place to another, and it can do that equally well with a bitcoin being worth $1 or $200. But it's really interesting to watch the value ratchet up, and easy to see how you can do this - if people will only ever sell a bitcoin for (say) 1% more than they bought it for, and people b…

I'm not sure if it can do so equally well at $1 than at $200, particularly when trying to transfer non-trivial amounts of value, due to Bitcoin's (formerly) quite limited liquidity.

I'm not sure I would have been able to purchase 100k worth of Bitcoin easily, and what would've happened to the price if I had attempted that. If I had been able to, perhaps it would've worked out in my favor.

Re: Bitcoin hits $200

#32

Post by tomp »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #23

It's fascinating to watch this, largely because Bitcoin has no "natural" value. The only utility it has is as a transfer of value from one place to another, and it can do that equally well with a bitcoin being worth $1 or $200. But it's really interesting to watch the value ratchet up, and easy to see how you can do this - if people will only ever sell a bitcoin for (say) 1% more than they bought it for, and people b…

The alternative possibility is: the amount of bitcoins kept for trade significantly outweighs the amount of bitcoins kept as an investment. Then, the price (in $) would roughly equal to the ratio of the amount of money circulating in the society over some period of time (in $) the number of available bitcoins. Thus, bitcoin would probably be worth somewhere between $100,000 and $1,000,000.

Re: Bitcoin hits $200

#33

Post by tomp »

madaxe wrote: post #26

The funny thing is that it didn't hit $203, or $201.12, but $200. Whoever is driving this big buys to drive up the price is doing it at very predictable, very specific price points, across multiple currencies. On mtgox GBP, for instance, it plateaus and peaks at very predictable values - £125, £130. Frankly, I think that what's going on is there are a few traders (actual traders, not BTC speculators) who are driving…

What's more likely is that a lot of people set their limit sell orders to 200, because the number is easy to come up with and easy to type.

Re: Bitcoin hits $200

#35

Post by aneth4 »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #23

It's fascinating to watch this, largely because Bitcoin has no "natural" value. The only utility it has is as a transfer of value from one place to another, and it can do that equally well with a bitcoin being worth $1 or $200. But it's really interesting to watch the value ratchet up, and easy to see how you can do this - if people will only ever sell a bitcoin for (say) 1% more than they bought it for, and people b…

Gold also has no "natural" value as a currency, and make no mistake gold is traded as a currency, not for it's actual usage.

Re: Bitcoin hits $200

#36

Post by mikecane »

Hermel wrote: post #9
mikecane wrote: post #4

Is it safe for me to express my belief that Bitcoin value is being manipulated by forces who intend to crash it? I've stayed away from it simply because of that. I fear some people are in for a very rude awakening. Don't count your money just yet -- and, for god's sake, don't try to use it as the basis for any paper money loans! None of you knew about Stuxnet. The story of Bitcoin's infiltration and manipulation is y…

Who do you have in mind? I don't see anyone who wants Bitcoin to crash desperately enough to spend millions on inflating a bubble and then pop it - which is a very risky and costly plan. More likley would be a scenario in which someone who holds a lot of Bitcoins pushes MtGox prices upwards in order to be able to sell OTC at inflated prices. However, given that Bitcoin on MtGox has a volume of USD 20 million daily, t…

>>>desperately enough to spend millions on inflating a bubble

Millions is pocket change to those who deal with figures in the hundreds of billions.

Re: Bitcoin hits $200

#37

Post by AndrewDucker »

lvh wrote: post #31
AndrewDucker wrote: post #23

It's fascinating to watch this, largely because Bitcoin has no "natural" value. The only utility it has is as a transfer of value from one place to another, and it can do that equally well with a bitcoin being worth $1 or $200. But it's really interesting to watch the value ratchet up, and easy to see how you can do this - if people will only ever sell a bitcoin for (say) 1% more than they bought it for, and people b…

I'm not sure if it can do so equally well at $1 than at $200, particularly when trying to transfer non-trivial amounts of value, due to Bitcoin's (formerly) quite limited liquidity. I'm not sure I would have been able to purchase 100k worth of Bitcoin easily, and what would've happened to the price if I had attempted that. If I had been able to, perhaps it would've worked out in my favor.

True, if you're wanting to transfer £100,000 then you're out of luck unless there's an awful lot of liquidity.

But then people don't seem to be making transfers that large, last I checked.

Re: Bitcoin hits $200

#38

Post by ewoodrich »

DanBlake wrote: post #11
oleganza wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everyone new to Bitcoin already has heard every scare story about drugs, money laundering, tax evasion, viruses, hackers, conspiracy etc. The news about DDoS or stolen money will not be a huge surprise (unless ALL money is stolen at once :-)

What I am suggesting is a league above the things you mention. The US generally does not fuck around when it comes to those sorts of things and has much broader power to do crazy shit (seize domains, secret subpoenas, etc..) when it involves national security vs generic anti-drug and weapon agenda.

Drugs dealers typically use a large amount of cash, but that hasn't produced a pervasive stigma about physical currency in the US. So I don't think users will necessarily be dissuaded by reports of criminal use.

Re: Bitcoin hits $200

#39

Post by Cieplak »

bobsy wrote: post #20

What goes up... The past couple of weeks has shown how easily the bitcoin market can be manipulated. People used to do this with shares. Buy up all the shares to push the price up. Then get out with a profit crashing the value of the share. I don't think this is any different. I wouldn't be surprised if a handful of parties were responsible for the explosion in bitcoin value. You could point to the Cyprus banking cri…

Are you saying that someone has cornered the bitcoin market?

Re: Bitcoin hits $200

#40

Post by jbverschoor »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #23

It's fascinating to watch this, largely because Bitcoin has no "natural" value. The only utility it has is as a transfer of value from one place to another, and it can do that equally well with a bitcoin being worth $1 or $200. But it's really interesting to watch the value ratchet up, and easy to see how you can do this - if people will only ever sell a bitcoin for (say) 1% more than they bought it for, and people b…

Actually it's natural value is related with the power usage to mine these things. As the difficulty goes up and payouts go down, the natural value increases. Regardless of demand
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