Bitcoin hits $15,000 | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin hits $15,000

theverge.com

30 pointskarimf26 comments

Hmm... if I owned any bitcoin I guess i would sell at this point. I can not imagine it just rising like this for much longer, but honestly I do not understand the dynamics of why this is happening so I am just defaulting to "what goes up must come down" type reasoning.

Random non-technical people I know are just getting into the cryptomarket this week and last as they have heard it is a good must win investment. But is that really driving up the prices?

I think we're beginning to see the end of bitcoin, as much as I love the technology. It'll be a few years (maybe), but it's just too inefficient from a power standpoint. If the protocol is changed to a memory intensive proof-of-work rather than power intensive, or perhaps to a proof-of-stake or other means, then it may survive.

Many are scratching their heads: "WTF? When will Bitcoin come crashing down?"

The thing is, if individual and institutional investors decide, in the aggregate, that Bitcoin is a new kind of asset in which they want to have a tiny amount of exposure, the price could still go up much higher.

Investors worldwide currently own around $300 trillion in financial assets.[a] If as a group they decide to hold, say, 2% of their wealth in Bitcoin, say, to diversify away from all countries on earth, then Bitcoin's marketcap would go up 30x, from around $200 billion to $6 trillion. The number of bitcoins is fixed, so the price would go by a similar multiple.

Note that before Bitcoin it was impossible to diversify away from all countries on earth.

[a] http://money.visualcapitalist.com/worlds-money-markets-one-v...

Interesting analysis! Question-- has gold been a way to diversify away from all countries in the past?

At this point its no longer a currency. Steam stopped accepting it, and I doubt anyone wants to buy anything with it. Its just a commodity, but one with no underlying value, perhaps like tulip bulbs. I don't think this is going to end well.

Which is a shame, because the blockchain is amazing technology.

> Which is a shame, because the blockchain is amazing technology.

Apart from wasting space (e.g no cleanup even after years), energy, and calculating the nothing, sure, it's amazing.

(I might have a different opinion, let the proof of work be calculating SETI, math questions or science problems)

Not trying to disagree with you overall, but the thing that always bothers me about the tulip bulb analogy specifically (or beanie babies, comic books in the 90s, etc.) is that tulip bulbs and beanie babies did have underlying value. A lot people wanted to own them because they were in some sense fashionable objects. The demand brought in speculation and when it faltered because of changing fashions the bubble burst.

No one is buying bitcoins to put them on a shelf because they're pretty. As long as Bitcoin goes up or serves in some sense as a financial reserve it's probably not going to "go out of fashion."

Of course Bitcoin may still be a bubble, but it would be a bubble for different reasons.

> I doubt anyone wants to buy anything with it

I don't understand this sentiment. I bought a new gaming PC last week and not only did I use Bitcoin to do so, but I specifically chose Newegg because they supported Bitcoin payments.

Another fluff piece about - Bitcoin hits $x. Given the price now on coinmarketcap, we might as well post - "Bitcoin hits $16,000" in couple of hours.

What I seriously want this guys to write about: Where is the volume coming from? Bitcoin has crossed 20k on the Zimbawean exchange Golix. So what is happening now?

If you love market panics, you're going to love this one.

So many just bathing there with no swimsuit whatsoever.

I wonder if now would be a good time to invest in ethereum or litecoin. I mean, when the bitcoin bubble burst, will it drag down the price of other cryptocurrencies or cause a mass migration to them?

I recently got out of ETH despite being bullish on it longterm because Bitcoin is almost certainly going to crash soon, and I personally believe it will almost certainly add uncertainty into the legitimacy of the entire sector.

many people will run from bitcoin to ether. many people will run away from cryptocurrencies all together . which crowd is bigger determines the price.

> On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Whereas this article is the opposite, it has no content. It's just trivia. There's nothing special about crossing $15k, particularly since most trade isn't even denominated in USD.

The story is that it has risen 50% in less than a week. That is an insane rise, and it isn't even fundamentals driven for the most part.

man..many Bitcoin websites and APIs lagging and timing out big time

Just wait until it drops, most people will not be able to cash out until it is likely worth nearly othing. There will be no automatic breaks (I think) that usually happen on large stock market drops.

I think it may be technically possible for Bitcoin to drop 90% in a single day and with most people unable to sell at any price if they want it settled on the block chain.

It could be Armageddon with nearly everyone holding bitcoint getting wiped out.

That MtGox guy should sell his billion of bitcoin soon, like right now. It is a hot potato right now and I wouldn't want to be left holding the bag with things go south.

I was a student in the first dotcom bubble and it was similar to this. And people predicted it would drop and then it did drop and basically wiped out the whole tech sector for nearly 3 years.

> There will be no automatic breaks (I think) that usually happen on large stock market drops

This is a very, very good thing. There are no breaks going up, therefore there should be no breaks going down. What's even better is that Bitcoin is 24/7 so there's not even the option of "waiting for the train to stop" when you're trying to get off.

The breaks are there to stop panic selling. That is something that was intensional and learned from the 1987 stock market crash.

Then there should equivalently be breaks to stop panic buying, not so?

They are for both directions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trading_curb

The trading curbs are incredibly important because if there is false information and everyone rushes to the exit, people can be wiped out in the panic and then find out the next hour that nothing was true.

With bitcoin there will likely be settlement issues for days after a crash. It will be messy as hell.

I would love to buy at a 90% discount. I have some cash on the sidelines for that reason

No one disputes that it will fall at some point, but obv. no one knows when .

All it takes is for some of the major holders who accumulated before 2016 or so to unload and the price will fall a lot.

It would correct a lot quicker if it was easy to short it.

people thinking " Oh I just get out when the price starts falling" are utterly mistaken:

Transactions now taking several hours might then take several days.

Already getting Error 520 on Kraken

Yeah when the price starts falling, the first thing that'll go down is the exchanges, causing more panic. It's not like these sites don't go down all the time anyway now, just wait until there's an actual panic.

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