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Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

nytimes.com

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Re: Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

#51

Post by exit »

jaibot wrote: post #44
celticninja wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

going all in is probably not adviseable in any technology investment, but I get his point, the Chinese Government see bitcoin as a way that its citizens can circumvent currency controls and it also affects the exchange rate of the RMB, which is very closely controlled byt he Chinese Government. This doesnt mean that bitcoin is "going to the moon" this means that as a disruptive technology it is making itself known an…

That sentiment is also often a way to cover for the incoherent belief "P(A|B) > P(A|-B) > P(A|B)".

can you expand that for us? what are A and B?

Re: Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

#52

Post by lukifer »

grey-area wrote: post #29
richardw wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong question, I think. This thing is barely a currency. It has built-in deflation, which makes it a great long-term store of value (assuming it isn't killed somehow) in a world of depreciating alternative stores of value, but a bad currency. If you want a currency for day-to-day use, USD is what you want. If you want to hedge against USD depreciation, BTC is one option.

Wrong question, I think. Bitcoin aspires to be a currency and is presented as one, at the same time as trying to boost adoption by presenting itself as a cannot fail investment (hence built-in depreciation, mining etc), so I think it's a fair question. If I declare white pebbles currency, and that there are only 20 pebbles acceptable, and each year I'll throw one into the deep sea, I have an appreciating currency. Wh…

Is a website a document? It is, sort of, but there's also Gmail.

BitCoin is a new thing; it does not map well to preceding concepts, be it "asset" or "currency" or something else entirely.

Re: Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

#53

Post by JumpCrisscross »

josu wrote: post #46
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has built-in deflation, which makes it a great long-term store of value It also has a very large risk premium, which makes it inferior to other options for solely a long-term store of value. > If you want to hedge against USD depreciation, BTC is one option. Bitcoin is an imperfect hedge against U.S. dollar depreciation. There are valid reasons for investing in Bitcoin, but this should not be one of them.

>It has built-in deflation, which makes it a great long-term store of value Besides, so far, Bitcoin has been highly inflationary. In a bit more than a year, the number of bitcoins in circulation has doubled. https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins?timespan=all&s...

>Bitcoin has been highly inflationary

Inflation and deflation are not solely functions of the supply of money. They are functions of the price of money, which is a function of both supply and demand. The price of goods, which have been reasonably stable in U.S. dollar terms, have fallen in terms of Bitcoin. Thus Bitcoin is presently deflationary, not inflationary.

Re: Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

#54

Post by lukifer »

erdoserdoserdos wrote: post #49

Unregulated capital flight is really not a feature of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is money with the ledger built into it. It's not for hiding wealth, but for tracking it. This is a market correction that had to take place. People get confused right now because the ledger is more or less blank. It won't be. (As a slightly dystopian side note, BTC with very little history may become very very valuable.) In the future, it is going…

Altcoins with faster transaction times and built-in inflation formulas could change the game. I'm bullish on crypto-currency in general, but I don't think it's a given that BitCoin is guaranteed to be the winner, long-long-term.

> BTC with very little history may become very very valuable.

Unpack this? I had thought that if you sent coins to a fresh wallet ID, it becomes effectively anonymous. (I've heard of some who generate a new public key for every transaction.)

Re: Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

#55

Post by [deleted] »

celticninja wrote: post #45
ivanplenty wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few things weird about this story. Are you really proud you have a leveraged position in bitcoin? Isn't that among the riskiest positions you can take on a very volatile, illiquid, and possibly illegal asset? That's totally a personal choice, but it's certainly not one I would or a typical retail investor should ever take. Your decision to buy-and-hold during a sell off in the Spring is at best an anecdote…

i love how you are telling him it was a dumb idea, when you have no idea if he sold enough at $1100 to cover his student loan, or that right now he is still in a position where he has doubled his money in a matter of months regardless of this crash. Too many people offering investment advice in hindsight round here.

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

#56

Post by jackgavigan »

Predictable outcome is predictable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6818821

Anyone who thought the Chinese government were going to ignore a mechanism that allowed people to bypass capital controls with impunity was pretty naive.

Bitcoin fanboys have classic tunnel vision - they're so enamoured of the libertarian ideal of an anonymous crypto-currency that's not controlled by any government, that they ignored all the practical, economic and legal challenges it would need to overcome before it could become a real currency.

It's a bit like the people who watched the moon landings on TV and believed that we'd have moonbases by the end of the 20th century. Technology needs time to develop and mature, and there typically needs to be a compelling commercial case for its adoption.

The technological principles that underpin Bitcoin will see more widespread adoption within the next few years but they'll be deployed within the pre-existing financial context, perhaps as a mechanism for OTC trading or to support real-time gross settlement in the wholesale markets. In the retail market, I envisage an M-Pesa-style digital payments/money-transfer solution that complements the the traditional banking and payments systems. We might see alternative currencies built on Bitcoin-style infrastructures but based on something that people value in a different way from dollars and cents (e.g. the rainforest).

But Bitcoin itself is too flawed from an economic perspective, too inefficient and too big a step to be able to function effectively as a currency within the current AML/sanctions-focused regulatory environment.

Re: Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

#57

Post by BrokenPipe »

taspeotis wrote: post #11
ekianjo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, you already have the dec 18 value while the day is far from over. You have a strange way to pick up numbers.

It's down to ~480 so it's lost $100 in 30 minutes. Let's just say that my strange way of picking numbers can be described as "flattering" ... at worst.

Today I've seen it back at 530 and now at 520. Who knows, I wouldn't be surprised if by EOB we're back above 600.

As parent said, with Bitcoin you have to look at things in a different way since it works in a very different way than anything else we've ever seen.

Re: Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

#58

Post by jaibot »

exit wrote: post #51
jaibot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sentiment is also often a way to cover for the incoherent belief "P(A|B) > P(A|-B) > P(A|B)".

can you expand that for us? what are A and B?

Any proposition, where A is the thing you want to believe and B/not-B are observations - it's a slightly tongue-in-cheek attempt to mathematically represent the idea that no matter what you see it confirms that you're right.

Re: Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

#59

Post by Anderkent »

lukifer wrote: post #54
erdoserdoserdos wrote: post #49

Unregulated capital flight is really not a feature of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is money with the ledger built into it. It's not for hiding wealth, but for tracking it. This is a market correction that had to take place. People get confused right now because the ledger is more or less blank. It won't be. (As a slightly dystopian side note, BTC with very little history may become very very valuable.) In the future, it is going…

Altcoins with faster transaction times and built-in inflation formulas could change the game. I'm bullish on crypto-currency in general, but I don't think it's a given that BitCoin is guaranteed to be the winner, long-long-term. > BTC with very little history may become very very valuable. Unpack this? I had thought that if you sent coins to a fresh wallet ID, it becomes effectively anonymous. (I've heard of some who…

> Unpack this? I had thought that if you sent coins to a fresh wallet ID, it becomes effectively anonymous.

Not really, you can see where the money came from, and assume the same owner (or a relationship between the owners).

To anonymize bitcoins you have to 'mix' them - take X bitcoins from N people, send them to a single address, then send X to new addresses for each of the N people. Because any persons bitcoins might end up going to someone else, you cannot assume it's the same person or a transaction any more.

Re: Bitcoin Value Sinks After Chinese Exchange Move

#60

Post by scotty79 »

Awesome. I have a little regret that I wasn't brave enough to sell at $1000. But then I'd have to decide when to buy and I'd probably chicken out and already buy for something like 800$. And I'd be risking the scenario I'm most afraid of that I get stuck without bitcoins and I can buy much less of them because the prize never goes below for what I sold them.
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