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Bitcoin falls from $266

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Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#111

Post by jessriedel »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #71
clicks wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: Is that really a fair criticism of BTC? Because afterall, our beloved US currency is fiat based, and often subject to whims of geopolitical games.

USD are backed by the fact that US citizens have to pay in USD to pay their taxes. Bitcoins have no such imperative.

My Econ 101 understanding is that the value of USD is not primarily due to taxes, i.e. if the government stopped collecting taxes (or started forcing people to pay taxes in gold or Euros) the value of the dollar would not tank. Instead, we're in a Nash equilibrium where we're all accepting dollars as a means of exchange and it would be costly and have little benefit for individuals to defect. The intrinsic value of the dollar is roughly set by the value of all good and services exchanged in a given time period divided by the number of dollars in circulation.

That said, the tax part does add a bit of stability in the form of an additional friction to any hypothetical plan for everyone in the US to coordinate to start exchanging gold or Euros in lieu of dollars.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#112

Post by smrtinsert »

ashray wrote: post #13

Before crying wolf, understand that bitcoin exchanges are unfortunately not battle hardened internet businesses. Two of the largest exchanges MtGox and bitstamp are both under DDOS. This may be an attempt by someone to make a large buy at a cheaper price. Due to lack of trading, prices are going downward. However, BTC China is still trading at above $275! That's the beauty of bitcoin, it isn't restricted to just one…

Those people who converted their USD to BTC yesterday just got screwed. If only there were a central authority to regulate bitcoins volatility. oh wait...

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#113

Post by tibbon »

ponyous wrote: post #2

Two of the largest exchanges seems to be under DDOS (mtgox and bitstamp). And it wasn't 6 hours it was more like 1 hour.

Is that the likely root of that fall?

Any idea who/why someone is DDOSing them? And why they are so effective at it? Can't they just use Cloudfront which supposibly 'fixes' DDOS issues?

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#115

Post by trotsky »

driverdan wrote: post #102
wting wrote: post #17

I'm interested in the price of Bitcoin, but we don't need these daily submissions. If you're interested in following the price, I suggest these links: - https://bitcoinity.org/markets - http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD - http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/ If you're interested in talking about the price, try #bitcoin-pricetalk on Freenode.

Agreed. I'm going to start flagging them. Due to their volume they've become spam.

for what its worth, i lost my flagging privileges doing the same thing in the bitcoin bubble two years ago

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#116

Post by mattacular »

Helianthus wrote: post #77
songzme wrote: post #31

To everyone claiming that bitcoin isn't a currency, no shit! Currency doesn't happen overnight, it's a process to get there. Just like anything revolutionary, it takes time before anyone knows what it will be come. By the time (with a very big IF) bitcoin becomes a viable currency, it's price won't be $200 anymore. It'll be at least a few thousand per coin and people will be transacting in micro bitcoins. What bitcoi…

I have a personal reason to hate it: it thinks it's revolutionary when it's actually just... money. It solves no problems because it carries greed with it.

It solves the problem of giving Libertarians something to feel good about?

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#117

Post by dunmalg »

akavi wrote: post #90
Symmetry wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold is useful stuff in all sorts of electronic applications... I'd say at least 4x that of Bismuth or around $50/pound.

So, about 0.2% of its actual value.

more like 0.2% of its actual COST. His point is that he thinks cost and value are out of sync.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#118

Post by [deleted] »

epscylonb wrote: post #103
mikeash wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is someone in Cyprus going to buy bitcoins? If the exchange is out of the country, then it doesn't help, because you already have to move the money out of the country to get it to the exchange. If the exchange is within the country, then the rate offered is likely to be far less favorable than elsewhere in the world, because demand is higher.

If the exchange allows international traders then the price will equalise with the rest of the world due to arbitrage.

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#119

Post by ashray »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #106
ashray wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All bitcoin sites, whether they are forums or exchanges went down. It was a widespread DDOS on pretty much anything bitcoin related. For example: bitcointalk.org was also down.

That still does not verify beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a widespread DDoS on "pretty much anything bitcoin related". Can you please explain why such attackers would bother spreading their DDoS volume across such a wide range of sites instead of focusing it on the one site that handles 80% of btc usd conversions?

What exactly causes reasonable doubt here ?

If 80% of bitcoin sites unrelated to each other are down at once, there's obviously some sort of attack going on. Several unrelated sites (but sharing a common theme) don't normally go down ... unless there's an Amazon outage :P (which there wasn't..).

The question was, whether the DDOS was caused by a large volume of trades. The answer is, no, because there wasn't a larger than normal volume of trades occurring, it wasn't possible due to the lag on the exchanges.

I don't know why all those bitcoin sites were down, but the fact is that the largest bitcoin sites were all down for at least a few minutes each.

The intention though was probably to trigger a market reaction to buy in at lower prices. It appears to have worked temporarily.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#120

Post by mikecane »

This is interesting. But I think it's only test to see how they can actually crash it to zero later on.

And if we're voting here in Comments too, yes, let's have the Bitcoin submissions. Hacking a currency is interesting.

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