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Bitcoin heading towards $200, new bubble forming

bitcoinwisdom.com

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Re: Bitcoin heading towards $200, new bubble forming

#61
For a more clearer picture, look at this graph:

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg1460zig12-hourztg...

Bitcoin is deflationary and has enough actual use to support small trading volume even without speculators. It's perfect vessel for speculators and bubbles, but the long trend is pretty obvious. I suspect that it will grow until it has reached all of it's potential users and potential speculators.

It has actual use as currency for bad stuff, money laundering and avoiding currency restrictions like in China for example, so I think the exchange rate will grow for some time. I suspect that grey economy might support money supply worth of 200-300 billion at least. Government interventions might cut it into much smaller number though. Virtual currency has little value if you can't interact with the rest of the economy.

It's not path to cyberanarcist-utopia, but it's not clearly useless either. I think it might find it's niche or be replaced with something similar.

Re: Bitcoin heading towards $200, new bubble forming

#62
post #25

$200? Hardly. Maybe if you look at Mt.Gox, it might look like you could get $190 per bitcoin. Howerver, there is no way to actually get that money to your bank account, since Mt. Gox hasn't been doing any banktransfers for months. The price is high on Mt.Gox because people that have money on there can only get it out by buying Bitcoins and transfering those to other exchanges. This drives the Mt.Gox price up. If you…

People have been saying this for the last $100 or so of rise.

And yet here we are.

Re: Bitcoin heading towards $200, new bubble forming

#63
post #26
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if someone could build a new digital currency that starts let's say at 1 trillion units, and is expanded by 2 percent per year (that 2 percent being split so a slight increase happens every day, so it doesn't happen all at once, but after a year, the increase rounds up to 2 percent). The problem would be seeding it and distributing it early on. But it could still be mined much like Bitcoin, with the differen…

The problem is that for a real currency you ideally want inflation to match the growth of the economy. Fixed inflation rates (including 0) are decidedly non-optimal.

There are arguments in favor of the fixed supply model. The usual economic one is this:

When you earn and stockpile currency units, what you are doing is producing more than you consume, so in real terms you are allowing others to temporarily consume more than they produce. This essentially means that you are investing the difference into society as a whole. Thus, it makes sense that if the economy grows by 2x, your currency units should grow 2x in value, as that's the way any other investment works.

Re: Bitcoin heading towards $200, new bubble forming

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its inherently deflationary anyway (which is a terrible idea for a currency).

Only if that currency is the basis for your economic system, and you wish to continuously stimulate artificial demand in your economic system through continuous currency debasement. It has been theorized that though such continuous stimulus may lead to greater growth on paper, that growth is more likely to be malignant than it would be were the economy allowed to grow at a more natural rate. Furthermore, continuous i…

I guess it comes down to whether you believe people are overly conservative with their money. Inflationary currency incentivizes investment, which is useful in a world with scarcity. But if you believe enough people spend too much on luxuries, deflationary currency wins out.

Re: Bitcoin heading towards $200, new bubble forming

#65
post #2

What is the reason? Can't find any news.

Its inherently deflationary anyway (which is a terrible idea for a currency).

It's extremely implausible for everyone to know that the value of ${commodity} will rise steadily, with no risk, for the foreseeable future.

Why? Think of the second-order effects of what you're saying--I expect the value of ${commodity} to rise indefinitely, so what do I do? Buy ${commodity}. Or, I own a bunch of ${commodity} and expect the price to rise indefinitely--what do I do if someone offers to buy my ${commodity}? Either sell for a higher price, or don't sell at all.

Both of these have the effect of bringing the future price increase into the present. If everyone expects a 10% increase in the next year, the price today will increase by roughly (10% - the risk-free interest rate).

Now, is the picture different for currencies? Yes. Economists call short-term prices "sticky," and sticky prices are why demand-side recessions are possible. If I'm earning $40,000 a year today, and my boss decreases my pay to $39,000 a year, I don't say "well, there was deflation this year, so I actually got a raise!" On the other hand, if I'm earning $40,000 a year, and my boss doesn't increase my pay at all, I don't say "there was inflation this year, so I just got a pay cut!" In the short term, sticky prices make things (like labor) cost more or less than they would in a frictionless market. That stickiness is why countries with deflationary currencies have problems.

Now then--bitcoin may be a currency of sorts, but are bitcoin prices sticky? No. Companies selling products for bitcoins overwhelmingly price their goods in dollars. At whatever time the transaction is conducted, the buyer converts that price into bitcoin and transfers bitcoin to the seller, who sells the bitcoin for dollars. A buyer will never say "yesterday your price was 1BTC, and today it's 1.2BTC--why have you increased your prices?" A seller will never say "yesterday you offered to pay me 1BTC, and today you're only offering 0.8BTC--no sale!" Both sides of the transaction are dealing in dollars, only using bitcoin as a medium to exchange those dollars. In other words, bitcoin is a medium of exchange but not a unit of account.

Is bitcoin likely to become sticky in the future? Well, if a large proportion of people were paid solely in bitcoin, and could live comfortable lives spending bitcoin instead of dollars, it's possible that we could have a cultural shift to thinking "I'm paid 333BTC a year" instead of "I'm paid $60,000 a year." And at that point, bitcoin's deflationary nature would be an issue. How likely are we to reach that point? Not very, not least because it's a self-limiting cycle--if the sticky-price/deflation combo is an issue in the bitcoin economy and not in the dollar economy, people have very little incentive to switch their accounting to bitcoin. But that's an entirely separate issue from whether bitcoin is or will remain a useful medium of exchange.

Re: Bitcoin heading towards $200, new bubble forming

#66
post #24

I know you can sell your coin when the price is high; but can you trade quickly enough to profit from such temporary surges (buy low then sell high only a dozen hours later) ? What is the average request processing time if you want to buy, say, 10 BTC on mtgox ?

buy & sell occurs at an exchange, which is instant as long as the exchange does it instantly. The exchange is keeping tracking of which account inside their exchange has what stuff. So it is just the exchange writing its records to database.

This has nothing to do with how long a bitcoin transaction (sending bitcoin from address a to address b) takes. bitcoin transaction occur in bitcoin network. The buy & sell is just internal to an exchange (eg. mt. gox) and occur outside of bitcoin network.

Re: Bitcoin heading towards $200, new bubble forming

#68
post #2

What is the reason? Can't find any news.

There are probably many reasons; this post on bitcointalk lists most of them: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=313806.msg3367122#ms... (I know this forum is pretty bad in general, but I like that specific post.)

Re: Bitcoin heading towards $200, new bubble forming

#69
post #58
post #2

What is the reason? Can't find any news.

China is leading this rally - so look there for answers. Baidu accepting bitcoins is a good example of what is going on there - this would not happen if the party did not want it - so many people think that maybe the Chinese government would like to give it a try, experiment, maybe not as the final move - but to test the grounds of alternative international currency.

What leads you to believe so ?
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