At this stage who is buying BTC? Who is the marginal buyer?
speculators.
Bitcoin drops 10USD in less than 4 hours
21–30 of 52 posts
Re: Bitcoin drops 10USD in less than 4 hours
#22My guess is that a LOT of the Bitcoin owners today are early adopters that own very little BTC as a novelty and/or with the idea that "Hey, who knows. Maybe my 4 BTC will be worth $1000s in a few years". This makes for a super volatile market. Especially coupled with the new Mining ASIC rigs coming to market, small volume trading etc. I would suspect that it will take a LONG time before we see if/how the 'currency' w…
that's pretty much what I'm doing. I bought 3 on the chance that they pop up at some point. I'm not fully convinced of their stability, and I'm not going to drop thousands into it until I feel better about it- just don't have the funds or risk appetite for that much outlay.
Re: Bitcoin drops 10USD in less than 4 hours
#23Meanwhile: Bitcoin gains nearly 10US$ in less than an hour
Re: Bitcoin drops 10USD in less than 4 hours
#24For a 'currency' that has gone up from $4 to $45+ in the last 10 months and the last 50% in a month, a 20% drop isn't really that unexpected.
Yeup. Volatile thing continues to be volatile hardly seems to be news.
It's interesting how 'Bitcoin falls $10!!' is news, while the fact that it's gone up 50%+ in less than a month, and over 1000% in 1 year somehow is not.
Re: Bitcoin drops 10USD in less than 4 hours
#25The thing is, it doesn't matter. As far as I know, nobody prices anything in Bitcoins, they price things in USD/AUD/ and then convert that amount to Bitcoins for the transaction.
You might end up paying 1.00 BTC, or 0.6 BTC, but it still works out to the be same in USD/AUD/ (numbers made up for example)
Re: Bitcoin drops 10USD in less than 4 hours
#26Just looking at Mt. Gox, the volume in each hour of the day is such a small representation of the overall amount of BTC out there, it seems perfectly reasonable you'd see such crazy swings. Most hours it seems there is <= 5,000 volume. If there is no real liquidity when buying or selling any instrument, the price will swing.
Re: Bitcoin drops 10USD in less than 4 hours
#27My guess is that a LOT of the Bitcoin owners today are early adopters that own very little BTC as a novelty and/or with the idea that "Hey, who knows. Maybe my 4 BTC will be worth $1000s in a few years". This makes for a super volatile market. Especially coupled with the new Mining ASIC rigs coming to market, small volume trading etc. I would suspect that it will take a LONG time before we see if/how the 'currency' w…
that's pretty much what I'm doing. I bought 3 on the chance that they pop up at some point. I'm not fully convinced of their stability, and I'm not going to drop thousands into it until I feel better about it- just don't have the funds or risk appetite for that much outlay.
Yep. I am pretty much acting the same way. I have a few BTC that I got years ago and a small ASIC mining rig ordered just 'For teh lulz'.
Re: Bitcoin drops 10USD in less than 4 hours
#28The thing is, it doesn't matter. As far as I know, nobody prices anything in Bitcoins, they price things in USD/AUD/ and then convert that amount to Bitcoins for the transaction . You might end up paying 1.00 BTC, or 0.6 BTC, but it still works out to the be same in USD/AUD/ (numbers made up for example)
Well it certainly matters for the people that are sitting on a bunch of bitcoins.
Re: Bitcoin drops 10USD in less than 4 hours
#29The thing is, it doesn't matter. As far as I know, nobody prices anything in Bitcoins, they price things in USD/AUD/ and then convert that amount to Bitcoins for the transaction . You might end up paying 1.00 BTC, or 0.6 BTC, but it still works out to the be same in USD/AUD/ (numbers made up for example)
Though very hard swings in short time DOES hinder wide adoption as it can cause retailers to lose money while a transaction is 'en route'.
No one wants to use a currency that swings 20% in hours of trading. Hell, that's prob 4-5x the margin on a lot of computer hardware.
Re: Bitcoin drops 10USD in less than 4 hours
#30If you look at the 6 month chart it's fairly obvious there's something unsustainable going on.
Bitcoin can't stay cheap forever, either more people use it and it has to gain value (because its so small at the moment) or people stop using it and the value ends at 0. Those are your two options. Grow until the Bitcoin economy is worth some 10 Billion at least, or it'll be evidently dead and close to 0. Its much more unlikely Bitcoins will stay around $20 - $60 for the next 5 years. (Although still possible)
I have no idea what variables you are using, or how you are reasoning that bitcoins somehow are 'cheap' at a certain price.
Using the only scale we have available (history) $40+ per BTC is VASTLY overpriced considering the previous historical fair market value.