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Bitcoin breaks $200

coinbase.com

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Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#51

Post by mayneack »

clarkm wrote: post #16
jnbiche wrote: post #5

The fact that the Gox gap is closing makes me suspect that a lot of this rise is coming from new money. I'm guessing few new Bitcoin purchasers are buying through Mt. Gox, which is driving the price up on other exchanges, and closing the gap due to Gox's illiquidity.

Bitstamp is also running up near 190, so it makes sense that lot of the new money has come in through MtGox. https://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD

What's the cause of the consistent disparity between exchanges? Is it just the slow speed of transactions?

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#52

Post by TylerE »

Fuzzwah wrote: post #18
TylerE wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what the btc crowd has said every time it bubbles How about you guys go 12 months without losing 25%+ of value in a single day before you start talking about being "here to stay".

I'd say it is here to stay: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360ztgTzm1g10zm2g...

That looks very similar to this one: http://www.ecotao.com/holism/add/enron/Enron_whole.jpg

If you look at it up to about end-of-year 2000.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#53

Post by paulhodge »

eterm wrote: post #26
astrodust wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything that should drive down prices.

Why? It's now harder and harder for the average person to get hold of a bitcoin. That fewer, richer people are now spending money to get more bitcoins isn't going to reduce the price if those players aren't liquidating their bitcoins.

For "average" users, mining has been prohibitively difficult for a while now. CPU mining has been worthless for years. GPU mining has also been mostly worthless, unless you picked (or happened to already have) one of the few cards that perform well.

So anyway, I think we're at a point where the mining difficulty has little impact on the price. Newcomers are going to buy coins, not mine them.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#54

Post by ferdo »

betterunix wrote: post #35
mateuszf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that small number of people use it. They will be not a real alternative unless they have some better features than Bitcoin itself.

In other words, there is no particular technical or legal feature of Bitcoin to differentiate it from another system. Bitcoin just happens to be the most popular and receive the most press. If you cannot identify a particular, distinguishing feature of Bitcoin that accounts for its popularity, why should we believe that this is not a bubble?

Bitcoin has a gigantic first mover advantage. The free rider alt coins are all essentially based on Bitcoin's blockchain innovation.

Until Bitcoin is broken through advances in computing or a solution better than Bitcoin comes along, Bitcoin is the top of the heap for digital cash.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#55

Post by ap22213 »

csomar wrote: post #36

If anything to like about Bitcoin is that it has proved that almost everyone else is wrong. * SilkRoad shutting down? Bitcoin is doomed. * Mt.gox is not paying in time or at all? Bitcoin doesn't work. * Asics? There will be a flood of new coins. And yet Bitcoin value continue to raise. If history repeats itself, we should see 1 Bitcoin levels at around $2,000. I think Bitcoin is an interesting phenomena to watch. Bei…

It's not surprising that it's rising in value. People are holding on to ~12M coins (worth approx. $2.4B) and are hyping it up so that more people buy them.

The more people that buy them, the more the price will go up, the more that they'll be worth, the more that people will buy them....

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#56

Post by saalweachter »

VaucGiaps wrote: post #29
saalweachter wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I always find very interesting is that we had a difficulty jump of ~40% in the last few days, closely followed by a (so far) ~40% increase in price. Is it crazy to think that BTC are largely supply-bound, and BTC miners have just upped the price to the new barely-profitable level?

You can't just 'up' a price.

You can most certainly up your price. The only question is how the market responds.

Miners have zero incentive to sell their bitcoins for less than the cost of producing them. Left to themselves, the price should approach the minimum cost of producing bitcoins (since they do have incentive to undercut each other as much as possible).

Speculators could respond to a price increase by miners by dumping their inventory on the market somewhere between the old break-even mining price and the new break-even mining price, undercutting the miners and lowering the price. This would go on until either the speculators exhausted their supply of cheap bitcoins, or the miners were all driven out of business.

The real question is how the supply of the miners compares to the supply of the (active) speculators. If the miners are the principal supply of new bitcoins, and speculators are by and large just holding their bitcoins until some future time when the price is even higher, then the miners could totally up the global price by upping their own prices.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#57

Post by marcell »

betterunix wrote: post #35
mateuszf wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that small number of people use it. They will be not a real alternative unless they have some better features than Bitcoin itself.

In other words, there is no particular technical or legal feature of Bitcoin to differentiate it from another system. Bitcoin just happens to be the most popular and receive the most press. If you cannot identify a particular, distinguishing feature of Bitcoin that accounts for its popularity, why should we believe that this is not a bubble?

I could make teddit.com, a reddit clone by copy & pasting their entire git repository at https://github.com/reddit/reddit. But I doubt anyone would use it, because of network effects. The same thing applies to bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#58

Post by ferdo »

TylerE wrote: post #12
simplemath wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally think critical mass has been reached, and unless someone actually cracks the protocol (which I seriously doubt) and brings down the txn network, BTC is here to stay. Quibbling about the current valuation misses the point. The secure transfer mechanism is the real value, and is not getting shoved back in the bag. Bet long on BTC and I doubt very highly you'll regret it, even if you get in at 200US and los…

That's what the btc crowd has said every time it bubbles How about you guys go 12 months without losing 25%+ of value in a single day before you start talking about being "here to stay".

Bitcoins bought with US dollars last year buy over 40x more than if the dollars had been saved. Bitcoin is here to stay for as long as the internet is.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#59

Post by dingaling »

ap22213 wrote: post #55
csomar wrote: post #36

If anything to like about Bitcoin is that it has proved that almost everyone else is wrong. * SilkRoad shutting down? Bitcoin is doomed. * Mt.gox is not paying in time or at all? Bitcoin doesn't work. * Asics? There will be a flood of new coins. And yet Bitcoin value continue to raise. If history repeats itself, we should see 1 Bitcoin levels at around $2,000. I think Bitcoin is an interesting phenomena to watch. Bei…

It's not surprising that it's rising in value. People are holding on to ~12M coins (worth approx. $2.4B) and are hyping it up so that more people buy them. The more people that buy them, the more the price will go up, the more that they'll be worth, the more that people will buy them....

Hmm, there are fewer than 12 million Bitcoins in existence.

https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins

I'm certainly hoarding a couple, but there are plenty of people selling on the exchanges. There is no liquidity shortage that I can see.

Re: Bitcoin breaks $200

#60

Post by meowface »

TylerE wrote: post #52
Fuzzwah wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it is here to stay: http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360ztgTzm1g10zm2g...

That looks very similar to this one: http://www.ecotao.com/holism/add/enron/Enron_whole.jpg If you look at it up to about end-of-year 2000.

The difference though is that Enron insiders were engaging in immoral and illegal activities. Bitcoin on the other hand is provably not a scam; it is an existing and backed commodity.

Market manipulation as an insider is impossible, as there are no insiders; manipulation is only possible by attacking infrastructure or accumulating enough BTC.

Future bubbles and crashes are likely, but I predict it's going to continue to bounce back pretty much forever. Only if many major governments began to criminalize it, or if some new somehow "better" cryptocurrency came out, would it be in risk of complete deflation.

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