Bitcoin falls from $266 • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#401

Post by kragen » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:14 AM UTC

nwatson wrote: post #185

jjcm wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways the price is tied to the cost of electricity needed to mine a coin. Granted, the mining "price" is usually about two weeks behind the actual price, and the electricity required is variable based on the current sum of computational power being used by all the miners, so there's certainly some disconnect.

So if I shock a turd with a thousand dollars worth of electricity from my electric utility company, can I sell it for $1,000? Or add some non-intrinsic worth by calling it "art" and sell it for $2,000? Actually, make those figures $1,010 and $2,010 -- my turds also have intrinsic value.

If you do this let me know. I want to buy tickets.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#402

Post by mrab » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:16 AM UTC

mrb wrote: post #396

coldtea wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a broken argument. The US does not control the Euro, or Yen, etc, yet they do not make it illegal to trade in Euros/Yens within the borders. They don't, but that's because Euros/Yens are backed by foreign governments that would mind this on a diplomatic level. Bitcoin is a much easier target. And most governments would agree to work together on banning it. Also: the US might not "make it illegal to trade in…

"They don't, but that's because Euros/Yens are backed by foreign governments" . No, that is not the reason. Replace "Euros/Yens" with "gold" in my sentence, and my point stands with gold being backed by nothing . Basically the US government is totally fine with side markets that they cannot control directly and that exist in parallel with the USD (whether it is EUR, gold, Bitcoin, whatever). Your other argument also…

They need to be able to control the currency, thus bitcoin will never become more than it is now. I'd bet on the powers that be squashing it a million times.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#403

Post by wamatt » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:23 AM UTC

nikcub wrote: post #394

Sold everything I had yesterday at ~$240 https://twitter.com/nikcub/status/321751009598791682 I was buying and selling BitCoins with a very simple theory. Each time the currency would rally I would check the stories on Google News and check the graph on Google Trends[1]. Other price peaks would correspond with a peak on the trends graph[2], a new peak in new stories (with more stories in more general media publicatio…

..and this is probably going to look foolish when it goes to $1000 later this year. Your actions looks like someone trying to pat themselves on the back and reassure the "right decision".

I wish online P2P wagers were legal in the US :) I was watching everything during the "crash". It's already back up to 170 in a few hours. Previous crash took months to recover.

I've been around the block and the same tired and worn arguments were being used at $10 then $20 and $100.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#404

Post by wamatt » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:25 AM UTC

wcoenen wrote: post #201

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…

> 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 per…

>The bitcointalk forums and /r/bitcoin are full of paranoia like this.

'The HN forums is full of smug dismissiveness like this'

It's a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things, and tons of sites were DDOS'd and simultaneously going slow or down (bitcointalk, mtgox, bitcoincharts, bitstamp). The evidence is my own eyes and refreshing browser timeouts. Everything back to normal now.

Highly unlikely that all those sites would be bought down by "panicked" users alone.

Given profiteering DDOS attacks against casino operators are commonplace, I find it a stretch to think these attacks are not happening regularly against bitcoin sites.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#405

Post by mkr-hn » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:27 AM UTC

wamatt wrote: post #403

nikcub wrote: post #394

Sold everything I had yesterday at ~$240 https://twitter.com/nikcub/status/321751009598791682 I was buying and selling BitCoins with a very simple theory. Each time the currency would rally I would check the stories on Google News and check the graph on Google Trends[1]. Other price peaks would correspond with a peak on the trends graph[2], a new peak in new stories (with more stories in more general media publicatio…

..and this is probably going to look foolish when it goes to $1000 later this year. Your actions looks like someone trying to pat themselves on the back and reassure the "right decision". I wish online P2P wagers were legal in the US :) I was watching everything during the "crash". It's already back up to 170 in a few hours . Previous crash took months to recover. I've been around the block and the same tired and wor…

You sound like every person who believed in the non-bubbleness of every bubble. What justifies the price of Bitcoins? They have no real value before they're widely accepted, and that won't happen until the price is stable.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#406

Post by mrb » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:27 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #385

mrb wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a pessimist you are. I would not want to live in your world. In mine, in the hypothetical case we will need to fight for Bitcoin, we will, like we did against the SOPA bill. The government is made for the people. Don't you forget that.

> You misunderstand me. I meant it was an uphill battle to argue to all the paranoid people that the U.S. government has yet to outlaw trading in Yen, Euro, etc, even though it doesn't control those currencies either. What exactly gave you the right to call me "paranoid"? The fact that I said the US might ban the Bitcoin? For one, the Bitcoin is NOT like the Euro or the Yen at all. It doesn't have any government to b…

"Or like banning the private buying of gold (which the US had done, from 1933 to mid-seventies"

...which proves my point! This was stupid and ultimately led to all sorts of negative economic consequences, therefore the US reverted the decision in the mid seventies. Now you are arguing that the US would somehow make the same mistake with Bitcoin?!

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#407

Post by verbalist » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:41 AM UTC

saraid216 wrote: post #312

brazzy wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Divining that a price that is rising in a superexponential manner will be going down sometime soon is one of the least fooling things one can do when looking at a graph.

Are we really having a serious conversation on divination on HN?

It's the ultimate hack.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#408

Post by InclinedPlane » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:45 AM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #276

bdr wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> paranoia MtGox has said they were subject to DDoS attacks: https://twitter.com/MagicalTux/status/317423311174909954 > If you looked at the log plot[2], it still looked exponential! Trying to divine future price movement from looking at a graph has been proven definitively, repeatedly to be foolish.

Divining that a price that is rising in a superexponential manner will be going down sometime soon is one of the least fooling things one can do when looking at a graph.

Define "soon". Anyone could have looked at the stock market in 1998 and said that it was sure to be going down soon but it took a few years for that to be the case. And anyone could have looked at the housing market even in 2003 and been waiting for it to go down "sometime soon", and been waiting half a decade for it.

Keynes may have been mistaken on a lot of things but he got one thing right: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#409

Post by nikcub » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:56 AM UTC

wamatt wrote: post #403

nikcub wrote: post #394

Sold everything I had yesterday at ~$240 https://twitter.com/nikcub/status/321751009598791682 I was buying and selling BitCoins with a very simple theory. Each time the currency would rally I would check the stories on Google News and check the graph on Google Trends[1]. Other price peaks would correspond with a peak on the trends graph[2], a new peak in new stories (with more stories in more general media publicatio…

..and this is probably going to look foolish when it goes to $1000 later this year. Your actions looks like someone trying to pat themselves on the back and reassure the "right decision". I wish online P2P wagers were legal in the US :) I was watching everything during the "crash". It's already back up to 170 in a few hours . Previous crash took months to recover. I've been around the block and the same tired and wor…

> later this year

I play a much shorter game than that. If it is justified, I will likely jump back in. This isn't the first time i've bought and then sold BitCoins.

It has run out of new buyers to drive it to that level. The support from those who believe in the currency isn't worth more than $100 - much less than that.

Everybody else is an amateur investor who read about BitCoin in USA Today and believes in it for the profit potential, not as a currency. These people scurried at the slightest smell of a price shock.

Re: Bitcoin falls from $266

#410

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 11, 2013, 2:57 AM UTC

Ologn wrote: post #203

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. Com…

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