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Bitcoin falls from $266

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Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#201

Post by wcoenen »

dia80 wrote: post #169
cs702 wrote: post #135

Evidently, many hoarders/speculators decided to cash out at once -- much like the audience in a movie theater would try to go through the exit door at the same time if someone were to yell "fire!" The naive souls who recently bought bitcoins to make a 'quick buck' are in for a rude surprise. In the short run, no one knows how Bitcoin's price will fluctuate. In the long run, however, if Bitcoin continues to work as in…

On the contrary this is just the most pronounced in a series of recent coordinated DDOS / aggressive selling attacks designed to (successfully) inspire panic. The attackers unload their bitcoin before the price gets smashed and presumably buy it all back again from frightened speculators. If anything it might be a positive sign for bitcoin that the attackers are keen to acquire it! On another note, mtgox.com the main…

> On the contrary this is just the most pronounced in a series of recent coordinated DDOS / aggressive selling attacks designed to (successfully) inspire panic.

The bitcointalk forums and /r/bitcoin are full of paranoia like this. After months of stress trying to divine market patterns, people see market manipulation and conspiracies everywhere.

The simple truth is that there was an agressive bubble. The doubling period for the price was halving with each iteration[1]. If you looked at the log plot[2], it still looked exponential! A crash was inevitable.

> On another note, mtgox.com the main exchange is shockingly unfit for purpose.

They have a big update scheduled for April 17th[3].

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=171312.0;all

[2] http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg180ztgSzm1g10zm2g...

[3] https://mtgox.com/press_release_20130409.html

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#203

Post by Ologn »

eksith wrote: post #146

BTC crashed primarily because the market suddenly got flooded by Bitcoinbillionaire : http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/bitcoin-crashes-losi... This bares repeating... The value of BTC is in the nature of the transaction; not the currency itself. People have turned BTC into a commodity instead of actually bloody spending it. Their old fashioned thinking still ties it to traditional fiat like a smoker trying to…

The value of BTC is in the currency itself.

How much is a three year old's scrawled drawing with the note "I love you Grandma" worth? To most people it is worthless, but to the recipient it has worth. Its utility and use value to the recipient is not measurable. The utility and use value of any commodity is not measurable. The drawing has a use value even if no one wants to buy it - it is useful to the recipient.

Commodity values also reflect the work put into them. Let's say I assemble PCs. I buy $600 worth of parts - motherboard, disk drive etc. I spend an hour assembling the parts into a PC. I now want to sell it for more than $600 since I want to be paid for my time, maybe $50 for the hour - it is now $650 total. Each of the components of the PC I paid $600 for the parts of is more expensive because of the labor costs associated with assembling that component. So the value of a commodity is also connected to its labor costs.

Utility can not be measured as it is subjective - like the child's painting. Exchange value can be measured though. I can buy an OK pair of headphones for $20, I can buy dinner for $20 as well. So a certain pair of headphones are worth the same as 20 dollars are worth the same as a certain dinner at a certain restaurant.

We have had currency for thousands of years. Currencies have always held value due to their inherit value as a commodity, not due to being an exchange medium. Attempts have been made over the centuries to try to change this, but it has never been long lasting. The US dollar was backed by gold until 1971. Now paper currency has value due to the US government accepting it for taxes, stamps and so forth, but such things have been relatively short-lived through history so far. Paper currencies like Confederate dollars, Reichmarks in 1945 and such depend on political factors for their worth( http://www.moneymuseum.com/moneymuseum/library/texts/text.js... ) . Gold and other precious metals have retained value over thousands of years, no matter which way the political winds blew.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#204

Post by phreeza »

binaryorganic wrote: post #104
motti_s wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that HN has a built-in mechanism for determining what's interesting to its users. If a Bitcoin related story gets voted up to appear in the top page every day, then maybe it should be there.

This. There's been so much talk about curation/deletion of posts lately. Letting the algorithm do it's job is the only way to determine what's HN worthy in my view.

The difference here might be that people who own bitcoin have a financial interest in keeping interest in bitcoin up, so they form a kind of implicit voting cartel, regardless of the real interestingness of the items?

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#205

Post by anonymoushn »

brador wrote: post #189
BrianEatWorld wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I have been waiting for prices to fall because I was looking to actually use some btc starting a month ago, but because Im planning on using a tumbler, I was afraid of where the price might be in a week.

What is a tumbler?

It's money laundering for btc.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#206

Post by trotsky »

dubfan wrote: post #179
dia80 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary this is just the most pronounced in a series of recent coordinated DDOS / aggressive selling attacks designed to (successfully) inspire panic. The attackers unload their bitcoin before the price gets smashed and presumably buy it all back again from frightened speculators. If anything it might be a positive sign for bitcoin that the attackers are keen to acquire it! On another note, mtgox.com the main…

Do you have any evidence at all of a coordinated attack against Bitcoin, or is this just an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory?

that was the line mtgox was feeding people to explain why their trading platform gets so lagged out at times.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#207

Post by DanBC »

cpressey wrote: post #178
Retric wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming that bit-coin is not passed over for a more useful digital currency at which point the network fails and the total value of all bit-coins falls to 0.

I wonder if the value would ever fall to precisely zero. Mightn't they still have value as a novelty or collector's item? Like, "Hey, a Bitcoin! I remember those... sure, I'll buy one, just to say I have one." It's unfortunate that you couldn't mount it in a decorative frame, though.

One guy made physical coins for bitcoin:

(https://www.casascius.com/)

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