No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250 • Hacker News Board

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#121

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

pault wrote: post #109

quickben wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> could venture a guess about the reasons for the sudden drop It has to decline, I was giving it 2-5 yeas, but it seems it dropped much faster: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15760415 As for the faster than usual now, my guess is few things. Main contribution is NVidia that had their earnings report, they told the planet flat out gpus aren't selling as well, so the gig that everybody is increasingly mining was…

Hasn't GPU mining been unprofitable for at least five years now? I remember everyone moving to asics back in 2012.

[deleted]

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#122

Post by mdgrech23 » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #20

Since the article states "the trigger for the latest sell-off is unclear" I'm really curious if somebody here could venture a guess about the reasons for the sudden drop. The Bitcoin Cash fork seems suspiciously correlated but is it big enough news to cause such a turmoil? Being a cryptocurrency-skeptic I won't pretend that I don't experience a little bit of schadenfreude when I see CC crash, however if I'm trying to…

Quite the lexiphanicism aren't you?

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#123

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

ladybro wrote: post #116

Miners in China supposedly throwing out their rigs after this latest crash made them too expensive to keep running. https://twitter.com/DoveyWan/status/1064878600594305025

It's difficult for me to accept that it's cheaper to wheelbarrow out a bunch of machinery, than it is to just cut power to a warehouse for a month.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#124

Post by ForHackernews » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

alanfalcon wrote: post #91

na85 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone come up with a use case for blockchains yet, that isn't buying illegal drugs or money laundering? I keep seeing pie in the sky hypotheticals like "supply chain trust" from people who think farmers are etching their cucumbers with serial numbers, but I've yet to see any use case presented for a blockchain that has real utility and isn't better solved by existing processes or systems.

True ownership of scarce digital assets is something that blockchains excel at, particularly decentralized blockchains (because true ownership means no individuals have the power to control your asset) - there are still endless questions about what this means and how this plays out in practice, but it’s a real use case with a fascinating future that will live independently of the get rich quick fantasies of most bloc…

What "scarce digital assets" exist other than blockchain-backed cryptocurrencies? You've invented a problem for your solution.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#125

Post by kaffee » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

superkuh wrote: post #66

jeletonskelly wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trading volume has dropped significantly over the last 6 months. Large holders have been patient waiting for new money to enter the market. Eventually, when the only activity is a few automated traders and the exchange liquidity provider, large holders are faced with opportunity costs of investing in something else and the limited liquidity the market can absorb as they exit. It's a domino effect as they see each oth…

This is also the result of the federal governments of the world, the US in particular, choking off all the fiat crypto exchanges with their expanded and draconian know your customer laws. As an anecdote, I didn't buy my monthly bitcoin purchase early this month because I've been (and still am) locked out of my ~5 year old coinbase account I use constantly because they are being required to require new forms of ID and…

I broadly agree with this.

My sense is that KYC hurts individuals who value their privacy and maybe catches some mid-level crooks. The big criminals bypass it without much difficulty. The recent case of Dankse Bank confirmed my opinions about this. Here's a forbes piece: https://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2018/09/30/the-b...

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#126

Post by wyldfire » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

Scoundreller wrote: post #90

tboyd47 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Occam's Razor - could just be a symptom of the current stock market crash.

What stock market crash? Vanguard’s Total Market Index (VTI) is up 2% for the year, and only down 10% from its All Time High (excluding dividends): https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/vti Tech stocks aren’t the whole market.

True but a lot of Bitcoins investors probably get disproportionate amounts of equity compensation in that part of the market.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#127

Post by sea_sftwrngnr » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

These discussions are interesting as a distilled, pure exhibition of cognitive biases.

Nobody has any way to accurately value BTC. Yet when it goes up everyone discussing knew it and was right all along, and when it goes down everyone discussing knew it and was right all along. Logical arguments are applied to observed history & present conditions and used to forecast the future of something fundamentally impossible to predict.

You know the future price of bitcoin about as well as you can predict my next coin flip. Afterward, if you've guessed correctly, you might believe supreme intuition or reasoning led you well. And if you believe you've done something well, you're more likely to say so on some public channel such as this one.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#128

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #37

arijun wrote: post #10

Good. Bitcoin is too wasteful when it’s at a high valuation. The amount of resources in both electricity and gpu hardware that gets locked into mining is too high. It can still do it’s job as a currency with a lower valuation.

The problem is that all that computing power still exists. If the hashrate drops, then a 51% attack becomes possible. Remember that those mining farms still exist, even if they've temporarily turned off their mining equipment. Someone can turn all that equipment on suddenly to attack the network and start double-spending their coins. In effect: the hashrate MUST remain high if the BTC network is to remain secure. Tha…

> The electricity usage will remain high, OR a 51% attack will happen. The electricity usage can never drop without severe risk to the entire system.

Sounds like the best argument against bitcoin I've heard yet.

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#129

Post by lowercased » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

tboyd47 wrote: post #69

simias wrote: post #20

Since the article states "the trigger for the latest sell-off is unclear" I'm really curious if somebody here could venture a guess about the reasons for the sudden drop. The Bitcoin Cash fork seems suspiciously correlated but is it big enough news to cause such a turmoil? Being a cryptocurrency-skeptic I won't pretend that I don't experience a little bit of schadenfreude when I see CC crash, however if I'm trying to…

Occam's Razor - could just be a symptom of the current stock market crash.

was thinking the same thing. and... it's not (yet?) a 'crash' but we're definitely seeing a downturn in various sectors - apple/fb have been down at lot in the past few weeks. Assuming some correlation between "tech" in a broad sense and "crypto" doesn't seem too far-fetched. Loss of some confidence in one area might be bleeding over in to another?

Re: No End in Sight for Crypto Sell-Off as Bitcoin Breaches $4,250

#130

Post by overcast » Tue, Nov 20, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

nickik wrote: post #43

overcast wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innovators. No one really heard of Bitcoin prior to the $1000 pump.

I learned of it from this very website when it was 2.3$

By virtue of being of participating in this site, you are operating in a realm that is so far out of touch to most people. We seem to forget that we are definitely in a bubble here.