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Bitcoin Price Touches $1,000 Again as Overstock Sales Hit $130,000

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Re: Bitcoin Price Touches $1,000 Again as Overstock Sales Hit $130,000

#81

Post by chii »

tadfisher wrote: post #77
barkingcat wrote: post #76

I sure hope Overstock's opsec people are securing their bitcoin wallets. Worst news to hear would be that someone took their bitcoins out of their wallets the next day.

Overstock isn't accepting BTC, they are accepting USD from Coinbase, who in turn accept BTC. Coinbase bears the security risk.

so swap the reference to the opsec of Overstock with coinbase's.

as soon as there's enough money, well funded organizations will start attacking, and robbing a bitcoin wallet is probably less risky than a bank...

Re: Bitcoin Price Touches $1,000 Again as Overstock Sales Hit $130,000

#82

Post by uniclaude »

aaronpeck wrote: post #78
jval wrote: post #13

This is just ridiculous. If Overstock is the biggest retailer in the world accepting Bitcoin, and on their opening day they only manage $130,000 in sales (130 BTC), what does that tell you about the volume of Bitcoin actually being used in trade and commerce rather than speculation? There are 12.5 Million BTC in circulation. I don't doubt that Bitcoin will become a revolutionary system of payments and money storage d…

Yeah, a currency that has no transactional cost from a third party thus offering a 2-4% discount to either buyer, seller or split by both, that maintains one value globally, and isn't controlled buy a particular nations government, probably is of no interest to the retailers of the world and likely just inflated bits that will never become an actual system of payments down the road. If you believe that, I have a plet…

> I don't doubt that Bitcoin will become a revolutionary system of payments and money storage down the track

The tone I get from your comment makes me wonder if you really understood what GP meant. You could be both right, as in BTC being very useful to a lot of people, but still overinflated.

Re: Bitcoin Price Touches $1,000 Again as Overstock Sales Hit $130,000

#83

Post by uniclaude »

kolev wrote: post #55

I feel sorry for those buying bitcoins at prices $900+, seriously! China has two more weeks until the shut down - so far Huobi and a couple of other exchanges still allow bank transfers into the exchanges and the Chinese are making their last profits. When Yuan stops flowing into the exchanges (or becomes much harder), the only Yuans you can get to buy is when you sell. I'm sure people will figure out to buy via frie…

Don't feel sorry for those people, exchanges exist for a reason. If people feel like they do not want to hold on their cryptocurrencies anymore, they can still sell them. Moreover, as long as there are enough people willing to buy those coins at a higher price, it can only keep rising.

I'm not a bitcoin booster or super believer or whatever the term is (even though I have some), but even if we are to follow your arguments, and assume that Chinese traders got the price that high, we can say that with a market cap as low as $10B, China hadn't likely injected as much money as Wall Street would if they entered the market. My point is that even if the price crashes because of some bad news in China, it still has a chance to rise again when Wall Street comes (if we are to believe that those companies still want to enter).

It really looks like speculation is what keeps the btc/usd pair rising, but with such good news coming, I can't think of a lot of reasons why people would stop speculating. Keep in mind that there is no short supply of people who want to get rich with little work.

Re: Bitcoin Price Touches $1,000 Again as Overstock Sales Hit $130,000

#84

Post by steveklabnik »

XorNot wrote: post #69
eridius wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check back in a few days. It's almost certainly going to go down, not up.

Has anyone been following what BTC price Overstock is allowing? Because I seriously doubt you get market top or even average price in BTC for something.

Coinbase aggregates a few different markets to determine the price in real-time.

Re: Bitcoin Price Touches $1,000 Again as Overstock Sales Hit $130,000

#85

Post by mrb »

jval wrote: post #13

This is just ridiculous. If Overstock is the biggest retailer in the world accepting Bitcoin, and on their opening day they only manage $130,000 in sales (130 BTC), what does that tell you about the volume of Bitcoin actually being used in trade and commerce rather than speculation? There are 12.5 Million BTC in circulation. I don't doubt that Bitcoin will become a revolutionary system of payments and money storage d…

You fail to realize that Overstock represents a tiny fraction of all the commerce done in bitcoins.

Bitpay alone is seeing an exponential growth of Bitcoin transactions: they appear to be doing about $20-30 million/month at their current rate: http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/bitpay-drives-explosive-growt... and http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/bitpay-exceeds-100000000-in-b...

Re: Bitcoin Price Touches $1,000 Again as Overstock Sales Hit $130,000

#86

Post by thelsdj »

chii wrote: post #81
tadfisher wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overstock isn't accepting BTC, they are accepting USD from Coinbase, who in turn accept BTC. Coinbase bears the security risk.

so swap the reference to the opsec of Overstock with coinbase's. as soon as there's enough money, well funded organizations will start attacking, and robbing a bitcoin wallet is probably less risky than a bank...

I believe Coinbase holds the majority of their BTC in offline wallets distributed in multiple bank vault around the world.

They are probably one of the groups with the best BTC storage security (while maintaining usability). So yes, if they WERE to be robbed, then that would basically mean that no one is able to properly secure BTC.

Re: Bitcoin Price Touches $1,000 Again as Overstock Sales Hit $130,000

#87

Post by throwaway_yy2Di »

mrb wrote: post #85
jval wrote: post #13

This is just ridiculous. If Overstock is the biggest retailer in the world accepting Bitcoin, and on their opening day they only manage $130,000 in sales (130 BTC), what does that tell you about the volume of Bitcoin actually being used in trade and commerce rather than speculation? There are 12.5 Million BTC in circulation. I don't doubt that Bitcoin will become a revolutionary system of payments and money storage d…

You fail to realize that Overstock represents a tiny fraction of all the commerce done in bitcoins. Bitpay alone is seeing an exponential growth of Bitcoin transactions: they appear to be doing about $20-30 million/month at their current rate: http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/bitpay-drives-explosive-growt... and http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/12/bitpay-exceeds-100000000-in-b...

That's still astronomically low compared to non-bullshit money. The US economy goes through its M1 money supply 7 times per quarter, or over twice per month [0]. If Bitcoin had that ratio, it would now be running $30 billion of meaningful transactions per month, not $30 million.

[0] http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M1V

[Ctrl-F keyword: "velocity of money"]

Re: Bitcoin Price Touches $1,000 Again as Overstock Sales Hit $130,000

#88

Post by kolev »

socillion wrote: post #66
kolev wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for downvoting without giving a reason why!

How does the ban on 3rd party payment processors affect direct bank transfers?

As it's obvious that they are using the letter of the ban to go around the spirit of the ban.

Re: Bitcoin Price Touches $1,000 Again as Overstock Sales Hit $130,000

#89

Post by kolev »

uniclaude wrote: post #83
kolev wrote: post #55

I feel sorry for those buying bitcoins at prices $900+, seriously! China has two more weeks until the shut down - so far Huobi and a couple of other exchanges still allow bank transfers into the exchanges and the Chinese are making their last profits. When Yuan stops flowing into the exchanges (or becomes much harder), the only Yuans you can get to buy is when you sell. I'm sure people will figure out to buy via frie…

Don't feel sorry for those people, exchanges exist for a reason. If people feel like they do not want to hold on their cryptocurrencies anymore, they can still sell them. Moreover, as long as there are enough people willing to buy those coins at a higher price, it can only keep rising. I'm not a bitcoin booster or super believer or whatever the term is (even though I have some), but even if we are to follow your argu…

You cannot deny that the current high price is due to the extremely high demand in China. Get China out of the picture, add a bit more due to Zynga and Overstock, the price should be less than $300.

Re: Bitcoin Price Touches $1,000 Again as Overstock Sales Hit $130,000

#90

Post by uniclaude »

kolev wrote: post #89
uniclaude wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't feel sorry for those people, exchanges exist for a reason. If people feel like they do not want to hold on their cryptocurrencies anymore, they can still sell them. Moreover, as long as there are enough people willing to buy those coins at a higher price, it can only keep rising. I'm not a bitcoin booster or super believer or whatever the term is (even though I have some), but even if we are to follow your argu…

You cannot deny that the current high price is due to the extremely high demand in China. Get China out of the picture, add a bit more due to Zynga and Overstock, the price should be less than $300.

I'm not denying it, just pointing that some other factors could have the same effect.
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