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Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

status.coinbase.com

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Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#101

Post by __sha3d2 »

wott wrote: post #75
phil248 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having purchased several cryptocurrencies recently, I can attest that I am certainly not acting rationally. But at least I'm having fun!

I should start a business selling thin air. Thin air from France, thin air from Japan, thin air from Mexico, and so on, you can collect them all, it is super fun. Then I could introduce cold captured thin air, warm captured thin air, etc. Wet thin air, dry thin air for year 3. More fun every year. Even better, I should sell just a paper (well, an electronic one) stating you own some thin air. Hey, geeks, how cool can…

I'm not kidding when I say that you would be surprised at the size of the market for canned air. I made this same joke several years ago and then looked into it and was blown away.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#103

Post by liquidise »

joering2 wrote: post #77

Tulip Mania comes to mind... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

The most obvious difference between cryptocurrencies and tulips is that tulips existed centuries before their rise. These coins are based on an effectively new technology. If you want to compare it to a bubble, compare it to the dotcom boom. How the tulip argument continues to be peddled on HN escapes me.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#104

Post by cookiecaper »

csbrooks wrote: post #59
lopatin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, this weekend I've seen 4 (non-technical) friends throw $500 - $5,000 into the three CoinBase coins this weekend, all individually. Before this weekend, they were merely familiar with Bitcoin but no interest in investment, and they did not know what alt coins were. All it takes is for someone to see the hockey-stick growth on the coins to want in. It's too exciting to pass up. The atmosphere is "If I lose…

I think the really difficult part might be figuring out when to take it off the table. For example, let's say bitcoin goes up 10x. Then do you decide to sell, because it might crash back down the next week? But what if you miss out on another huge increase by selling?

Yeah, this is the dilemma, but can't beat yourself up too much over it. I mined my first bitcoin in February 2011 just out of interest in this cool experiment, not expecting it to go anywhere. I've always had a bit of btc in reserve but every time there's a big jump the impulse is "Better sell out of this silly bubble while I can". People who imagine that they'd have $50M today neglect that they'd most likely have had a similar reaction when it was $20, $100, $500, and so on, and it's unlikely they would've held a substantial portion until it hit $20k.

I think the part that's hard is that there is a stickiness to hype. Hype starts as baseless hype, but the belief and interest of others is frequently enough to sustain a company or project that has nothing of actual benefit to offer. This makes it hard to dismiss hype-fueled bubbles entirely. There's a circular effect somewhere here that converts the initial baseline hype into value just by the sheer force of will of "true believers".

This applies not only to bitcoin/litecoin, but also companies, software, and all sorts of other things. Generating hype, goodwill, and other mostly-positive forms of human attention is inarguably more valuable to a project or venture's long-term lifecycle than providing actual objective value. Get enough attention or interest on something and any objective value that may potentially exist is liable to materialize, at least in part.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#105

Post by jjawssd »

berberous wrote: post #41
_m8fo wrote: post #11

Can someone familiar explain why cryptocurrencies aren't a bubble? They both seem to exhibit similar characteristics. Clearly, are shown by the site here, these aren't nearly as liquid as fiat currencies, nor are they really used to purchase anything. So... What is it? EDIT: upon thinking about it, MLM wasn't the term I meant.

It is definitely a speculative bubble. I think we are in a similar position as 1998. The technologists can see that [the Internet]/[cryptocurrencies] are very interesting technologies, with the potential to change the world. But retail investors are pouring in, without any understanding of the tech, and inflating both good and bad [companies]/[coins] in a pure speculative frenzy. If I had to bet, there is still lots…

I think the big question here is what the crash will settle at for the big 3: BTC/ETH/LTC. Thoughts?

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#106

Post by scottnyc »

hartator wrote: post #80

I just hope cryto speculators won’t ask to be bailed out when everything will fail.

You know they will. But they should have no basis as this is an unregulated market and global, so local governments will have no incentive to socialize the losses of foreign citizens.

Governments need to quickly enforce suitability guidelines along the lines of accredited investor status asap (I believe some countries already working on this.) Some would argue this is unfair, but people just getting by have no business playing in this wild west.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#108

Post by kss238 »

sidlls wrote: post #22
sd_mikey wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that the there are a lot of newbies now on Coinbase (#1 app in the Apple AppStore). They are buying the cheapest “bitcoin” without actually understanding what they are buying. This has increased demand for the cheaper of the only three options in Coinbase thus increasing price.

Yes, and I've cashed out handsomely as a result of being lucky enough to predict exactly this. For clarification: I bought some $1000s worth of LTC when it was under $100 shortly after the Futures news hit. It was pure gamble on my part and I could have easily lost instead of the other way around. I also bought a few ETH coins when it was around $400 but haven't cashed those out yet. I'm predicting my LTC gains will…

Eth is at $630 right now, so unless I'm misunderstanding something, you'll have made money.

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#109

Post by yebyen »

EGreg wrote: post #91

I wonder, what are these exchanges like GDAX, BitMex etc. doing with their dollar/euro/etc. reserves? They obviously need to keep dollars on hand in order to cash everyone out. But what if Bitcoin goes up in price? If there is a run on the exchange later they may have to sell their bitcoins on the spot market to cash people out. Banks reinvest money held into loans and other speculative investments. But what do you d…

The exchange is not the market maker (it can be, but not always.)

If Coinbase is making the market prices by leaving large limit orders at certain prices, and Coinbase limit runs out, then the price moves past their limit. It's as simple as that.

Nobody can place limit orders with money they don't have (I understand there is a "margin trading" option, but I don't have that enabled on my account and I'm uncertain how many accounts on GDAX do have that feature.)

If Bitcoin price goes up, that just means that the supply of Bitcoin at a lower price point has evaporated.

Coinbase is not buying and selling coins (let's assume, but also assume that if they are buying and selling, they play by the same rules as everyone else. No imaginary wallets.)

The exchange are just playing matchmaker so that Market Order X that crosses Limit Orders Y, Z, P, Q, R... that intersect, are all matched and executed together. Then, GDAX can collect a fee from the person who placed the Market order, and GDAX Limit orders are fee-free. Coinbase-proper is 100% market orders with a slightly larger fee, so they can clean up even more on each transaction there, because Coinbase still does not need to sell some of their own currency for each buy; they are just the matchmaker.

Coinbase and GDAX are the same company. If Coinbase needs some of GDAX's liquidity so that it can match Coinbase customers with GDAX's limit orders, they can do that opaquely. The customers do not need to know where their cryptocurrency came from exactly.

If all of the liquidity on GDAX dries up, then there will be a problem (but still, the problem/opportunity is not Coinbase's problem, it is the whole market that comes grinding to a halt until someone opens up some more liquidity at a particular price point.)

Re: Litecoin and Ethereum buys and sells are temporarily disabled

#110

Post by xutopia »

_m8fo wrote: post #11

Can someone familiar explain why cryptocurrencies aren't a bubble? They both seem to exhibit similar characteristics. Clearly, are shown by the site here, these aren't nearly as liquid as fiat currencies, nor are they really used to purchase anything. So... What is it? EDIT: upon thinking about it, MLM wasn't the term I meant.

Today I went to one bank to transfer 60k from one account to an account in a different bank. I paid 7.50$ to get a certified check from Bank A. Went to the Bank B near my house to deposit it there. Unfortunately the branch near my house isn't where my account is. They tried faxing a photocopy of my certified check to the other branch but the line was busy. They're going to continue trying until 3pm today when they close. After 2 hours I see the funds are in my account but I'm not allowed to access it because I'm limited to only 2000$ per day. They didn't call me as per instruction once the funds were in my account.

During that same time I transferred 15k$ from one crypto-wallet to another. It took 10 minutes all told.

Sure there are lots of people who are buying crypto because they think they'll make loads of money but a significant portion of us are in it because we dislike the infantilizing ways the current banks hold us hostage.

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