Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin crosses $10B market cap again

coinmarketcap.com

21–30 of 62 posts

Re: Bitcoin crosses $10B market cap again

#22
I wouldn't be so sure. The reason ETH has be rising is because bitcoin has become clogged and the developers refuse to unclog it. Most likely very few people have even heard of Homestead yet or will hear about it on Monday. Bitcoin's price was about to break out from last year's bottom until the network got clogged on November 5th. The exact same thing will happen every time the price tries to shoot back to the ATH and it will never do anything different until the network capacity is increased.

Re: Bitcoin crosses $10B market cap again

#24
As someone actively working in this space for the past 3 years, I have a few observations on Bitcoin's price movements:

* The only parameter that in any way is correlating to Bitcoin's price is it's transaction count over time. In fact, if you take out Bitcoin's extreme price spikes they almost completely match up. number of transactions should go through the roof one the Lightning Network is functional.

* The only real world application of Bitcoin that I have seen so far has been 1) Black markets; 2) International money transfer (it's faster to do Bank-Exchange-Bitcoin-Exchange-Bank in most cases than direct bank to bank transfers. That should tell you something about the current state of banking.

* Using market caps for a commodity is ridiculous. The only meaningful parameters to track is nr of transactions, depth of order books globally, nr of exchanges in countries.

Side note: I don't hold any crypto currencies anymore. I don't invest in things which I can't have direction over.

Re: Bitcoin crosses $10B market cap again

#25
post #10
post #7

This is inevitable as everyone saw what happened at the litecoin halving last summer (if you don't pay attention to such things, it was a massive spike then dump).

So I take it you bought loads of bitcoin a few weeks ago?

I wish.. I just spent 5 years of minimum wage grad school so my pockets are not that deep.

Re: Bitcoin crosses $10B market cap again

#26

As someone actively working in this space for the past 3 years, I have a few observations on Bitcoin's price movements: * The only parameter that in any way is correlating to Bitcoin's price is it's transaction count over time. In fact, if you take out Bitcoin's extreme price spikes they almost completely match up. number of transactions should go through the roof one the Lightning Network is functional. * The only r…

The reason for slower bank-to-bank over international borders is probably more related to managing liability than it is to inefficiency.

Re: Bitcoin crosses $10B market cap again

#27

As someone actively working in this space for the past 3 years, I have a few observations on Bitcoin's price movements: * The only parameter that in any way is correlating to Bitcoin's price is it's transaction count over time. In fact, if you take out Bitcoin's extreme price spikes they almost completely match up. number of transactions should go through the roof one the Lightning Network is functional. * The only r…

> only real world application is black markets; money transfer

Currently bitcoin is in between a commodity & a currency. Given that the R3 bank network will be more of a transfering network and btc having difficulty with scaling, I see bitcoin as a currency. It bas lots of potential uses, here are more than the ones you touched on currently:

* Pricing and purchasing conduit to all major crypto currencies.

* Crypto speculation/investment vehicle.

There are more applications than the 4 we listed but I somewhat agree with transaction vol being the metric. For all other alts and btc actual trade volume is more important than market cap. like fiat, it is based on trust and ascribed value. just because there are provable transactions and known amounts, volume & transactions are an insication of value (or perceived value) and this likelihood people begin accepting them

Re: Bitcoin crosses $10B market cap again

#28
It's kind of a pity that three years have passed since it arguably went mainstream (among the tech literate at least) and the most prevalent use case is still by and large speculation. Making money is cool and all but the technology had a lot more promise than this.

Re: Bitcoin crosses $10B market cap again

#29

As someone actively working in this space for the past 3 years, I have a few observations on Bitcoin's price movements: * The only parameter that in any way is correlating to Bitcoin's price is it's transaction count over time. In fact, if you take out Bitcoin's extreme price spikes they almost completely match up. number of transactions should go through the roof one the Lightning Network is functional. * The only r…

The reason for slower bank-to-bank over international borders is probably more related to managing liability than it is to inefficiency.

Long settlement times are a feature, not a bug. It reduces externality costs (drugs and terror) and reduces insurance costs. (reverseability)

Re: Bitcoin crosses $10B market cap again

#30

As someone actively working in this space for the past 3 years, I have a few observations on Bitcoin's price movements: * The only parameter that in any way is correlating to Bitcoin's price is it's transaction count over time. In fact, if you take out Bitcoin's extreme price spikes they almost completely match up. number of transactions should go through the roof one the Lightning Network is functional. * The only r…

> only real world application is black markets; money transfer Currently bitcoin is in between a commodity & a currency. Given that the R3 bank network will be more of a transfering network and btc having difficulty with scaling, I see bitcoin as a currency. It bas lots of potential uses, here are more than the ones you touched on currently: * Pricing and purchasing conduit to all major crypto currencies. * Crypto sp…

R3 offers no efficiencies over incumbent transfer systems. SWIFT/ACH/etc are far more efficient than R3. R3 seems to be figuring that out, and is rapidly pivoting from their original goals (including blockchain)
Post reply on HN