Bitcoin Price Pressure • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#41

Post by mdemare » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:46 PM UTC

boyaka wrote: post #37

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #33

In a moment of some depression, reflecting back on sinking so much money into Bitcoin at close to the peak of its price history, I made this: http://i.imgur.com/f3tIJwK.png It's important to understand that Bitcoin is dangerous to you, and you need to respect its danger if you decide to buy some. You need to be using a secure cold storage wallet. You need to not trust services like Coinbase to hold onto your coins fo…

Can you provide reasons/evidence for why I should not trust Coinbase?

Not trusting is the default. It is up to Coinbase to prove that they can be trusted.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#42

Post by pmorici » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:46 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #13

MarkPNeyer wrote: post #2

> The other way to get enough buy pressure would be if many people started deciding they want to hold bitcoin as a hedge or a speculation. ding ding ding. that's all i'm doing. i've had a bunch for a while. i don't need the liquidity, so i figure i might as well hang on to them. i think a lot of us are in the same boat. if a group of 100,000 'crazy' and 'irrational' people all decided to put $100 USD a month into bit…

The only "outs" therefore are the greater fool theory ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory ) or a pyramid scheme structure. Or, perhaps all of this price-mongering is the wrong way to look at things. Consider this: BTC success should instead be measured in transactions / day . The only people who care about BTC per $$$ are speculators.

In order to facilitate transactions BTC has to have value greater than $0 You can't transfer value via Bitcoin if the value of a Bitcoin is zero.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#43

Post by mangeletti » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:46 PM UTC

tl;dr

BitCoin is taking a breather on its upward speculative bubble phase, and is being used primarily as a transactional currency at the time, while downward pressures remain the same as they were before the bubble days started.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#44

Post by jnbiche » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:46 PM UTC

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #33

In a moment of some depression, reflecting back on sinking so much money into Bitcoin at close to the peak of its price history, I made this: http://i.imgur.com/f3tIJwK.png It's important to understand that Bitcoin is dangerous to you, and you need to respect its danger if you decide to buy some. You need to be using a secure cold storage wallet. You need to not trust services like Coinbase to hold onto your coins fo…

For many of us, Bitcoin represents far more than an opportunity to gain or lose money. For us, the freedom from financial and fiscal paternalism is worth the risk.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#45

Post by thisiswrong » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:47 PM UTC

Yes. We hear this each time. All that i can respond to this is: log chart, log chart, log chart [1]! By looking at a simple log chart one can notice a repetitive cycle. One may even notice that now is actually the best time to buy. Following the pattern, the next boom is only 2-6 weeks away. Who knows what could cause the next boom? Russia pump, Ukraine banking shutdown, E.C.B. Quantitative Easing, USD weakening ? ...

[1] https://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap?timespan=2year&sho...

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#46

Post by tethis » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:47 PM UTC

But if the currency is deflationary with a coin limit, over the long term the only way more people can enter the market / make use the currency is for, as an example, $1 USD to be represented by smaller and smaller subdivisions of BTC. This necessarily increases the value of 1 BTC.

Why is there ever any incentive to do anything with BTC besides hoarding?

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#47

Post by flatline » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:47 PM UTC

boyaka wrote: post #37

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #33

In a moment of some depression, reflecting back on sinking so much money into Bitcoin at close to the peak of its price history, I made this: http://i.imgur.com/f3tIJwK.png It's important to understand that Bitcoin is dangerous to you, and you need to respect its danger if you decide to buy some. You need to be using a secure cold storage wallet. You need to not trust services like Coinbase to hold onto your coins fo…

Can you provide reasons/evidence for why I should not trust Coinbase?

Bitcoin was meant to be a trustless system. You are handing over your private keys to a third party, and hence all the direct control over your funds. How do you know they are solvent? How transparent are their security measures? There are many, many examples of this going horribly wrong with people who could supposedly be trusted by the community, and there are more popping up on a regular basis.

You are asking the wrong question -- why should you trust Coinbase or anyone else?

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#48

Post by robot » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:47 PM UTC

"It still makes sense to mine if you’re living in a dorm and don’t pay for electricity" it will be nitpicking on a whole post, but I don't find it ethical to make such gains. The fact that you don't legally need to pay does not entitle you to use resources of someone else this way (in this case the educational institution). I guess he meant "it theoretically makes sense if you don't pay for electricity"

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#49

Post by joosters » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:49 PM UTC

applecore wrote: post #10

There's no such thing as "default price pressure" (up or down) in financial markets. Every trade has both a buyer and a seller—for someone to have sold bitcoins, someone else has to have bought them.

Not at all. 'Real money' currencies are inflationary, for lots of reasons, including the fact that we keep printing more money. If I stash my $millions under my mattress for a decade, do you reckon they'll be worth less or more after that time?

Bitcoin however has deflationary pressures, because there's a fixed upper limit on the coins (21 million) and they become harder and slower to mine. With a price of (say) $1000/BTC, that means there can only be 21 billion dollars worth of bitcoins out there. But if you expect bitcoin usage to explode and account for trillions of dollars of wealth, then the bitcoin price has to increase.

Re: Bitcoin Price Pressure

#50

Post by sillysaurus3 » Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 7:49 PM UTC

boyaka wrote: post #37

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #33

In a moment of some depression, reflecting back on sinking so much money into Bitcoin at close to the peak of its price history, I made this: http://i.imgur.com/f3tIJwK.png It's important to understand that Bitcoin is dangerous to you, and you need to respect its danger if you decide to buy some. You need to be using a secure cold storage wallet. You need to not trust services like Coinbase to hold onto your coins fo…

Can you provide reasons/evidence for why I should not trust Coinbase?

Indeed: https://hn.algolia.com/#!/comment/forever/0/author%3Asillysa...

(I want to preface this by saying that I'm talking about people storing their savings in Bitcoin. If you don't care about what happens to your money, then it doesn't matter whether you trust Coinbase.)

The most convincing argument, I think, is that you're putting your faith in an entity that's not FDIC insured to hold onto your entire future and keep it safe. Your savings is your future. If you lose it, you lose your future. You'll have to exchange months or years of your life to get it back, as I now have to. There are many reasons that businesses fail, and it's important to never forget that Coinbase is a startup, and the fate of startups always hang in the balance.

There's no reason not to trust an entity that's ensured by the government (banks) with your savings. They won't vanish.

The only reason right now to trust Coinbase with a lot of money is if you're hoping the price will rise, as far as I can tell, because there's no other realistic application of Bitcoin right now unless you want to send some money to a friend, in which case you can just buy it as-needed. So it's essentially long-term gambling. Now, there's nothing wrong with that. I knew when I did it that there was a chance things could turn out horribly awry (though I don't think I fully appreciated how "down" the downside could be for me). But if you're going to do it, at least be smart about it: The coolest thing about Bitcoin is that you don't have to trust anybody but yourself to keep your coins safe. There are secure cold storage wallet solutions. Find one, use it. I've heard good things about Armory, for example.