Hacker News Reader

Comment by joakleaf | Hacker News Reader

Anyone have any idea why it exploded like this recently?

Lots of hard forks and people wanting to have the new bitcoins (bitcoin cash, bitcoin gold, etc) for free, the fact that CME will list the BTC derivatives in about 2 weeks, so new money are expected to enter the game. Maybe even the fact that no government can print BTC at will and that nobody can sequester your BTC account as long as they don't find your wallet. There are lots of reasons, but I don't know why now and not 2-4 years ago.

Information takes time to propagate, and people need to hear about some things for a while before they take them seriously.

From my perspective, nothing fundamental has changed about the Bitcoin situation since it was priced at about $1000. I suspect that some inevitable catastrophe is going to eventually cause a massive selloff. Per usual.

I have plenty of FOMO for not buying a couple years ago. But not trying to jump on the bandwagon now.

If you had bought in a couple years ago would you have been the type to sell out a year ago?

While I regret not grabbing a couple extra coins back in 2013 when I was playing with BTC I know for a fact I'd have cashed out in the hundreds. If not then definitely would have when it was worth $1000/1BTC

> If you had bought in a couple years ago would you have been the type to sell out a year ago?

Probably so! Either that, or I'd be dollar cost averaging through the booms and busts and it wouldn't matter anyway. That's why I don't really kick myself over it.

I keep going back to my fundamental beliefs:

- There's definitely something to the underlying technology.

- It has not yet impacted the life of anyone I know, aside from its fluctuating price. So basically, it's had about the same impact as sports betting.

- It's yet not clear to me whether trustlessness is worth it. (i.e. whither Bitcoin, Ethereum, or permissioned blockchains)

> I have plenty of FOMO for not buying a couple years ago. But not trying to jump on the bandwagon now.

BTC has doubled in value the past three months, that's still an amazing return on investment very few business could ever give you specially in such a short amount of time. How could you not have FOMO if you had it before?

You know what else has a better ROI than most businesses? Successfully hitting a trifecta at a horse race.

I reserve my FOMO for things I think I could have known.

Awareness grows exponentially. And for an asset that's so easy to "invest" in, and having such a limited supply, the price curve grows proportionately with awareness unlikely anything in the past.

1. A huge amount of market manipulation

2. A pyramid effect (more and more people are getting in)

3. The prospect that owning 1 or 2 bitcoin now might be a fortune in 30-40 years

The last point is interesting because it might true. Bitcoin might be a very valuable and scarse resource in the future. Or it might just pop and become another bubble you can read about on wikipedia. It's hard to predict.

Mass human psychology, the price rise leads to more people buying, from 'fear of missing out'. Also unsophisticated investors pile in after all the news coverage of the price rises.

This all creates a self reinforcing dynamic, where further price rises feed even more of this sentiment, which leads to more buying and price increases.

There is speculation about artificially inflated prices. The world's largest bitcoin exchange in terms of volume (Bitfinex) is assumed having pushed the price of bitcoin by creating Tether tokens out of thin air. Additionally the price by was supposedly increased using wash trading practices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Reporting_Standard

High transaction fees and appreciationary speculative loop

Reply on news.ycombinator.com