Hacker News Reader

Comment by fthssht | Hacker News Reader

I think "not entirely true" is an understatement. Bitcoin has a 115 Billion dollar market cap and is traded all around the world in arms length transactions for local currencies and is treated as fungible. Like to gold market people loudly insist that its manipulated but I don't understand how it could be to any large degree when I can go to a pawn shop and buy or sell it anywhere in the world. I'm not sure what central regulatory body would give any greater confidence than that fact.

View on HN

What's the point of market cap here? It's just (current price)*(number of bitcoins), so if some speculators drive the price up, even if there are low volumes on the exchanges, the market cap will rise by a corresponding percentage.

Hypothetical example: If there is a single trade at say twice the current price, the market cap will double.

It absolutely does not represent how much adoption Bitcoin has.

I would like to see how much "actual" usage there is to Bitcoin as a currency (i.e., sending bitcoin to another person in exchange for goods or services). You seem to believe it's a lot; I don't believe that.

My point only is that the total value is relatively very high and its price would be as difficult for one individual to move around as a large cap stock.

Your hypothetical 1 trade a day isn't reality. Click this link and look at the depth chart. You would need millions of dollars to move the price from 6925 to 6950. https://www.gdax.com/trade/BTC-USD

I don't think its used a lot as a currency now. I think there is a lot of investment in it based on the belief that it will be used as a currency in the future or that it can act as a store of wealth.

  You would need millions of dollars to move the price from 6925 to 6950.

That's not entirely true, the operators of Bitfinex, tether, or any of the early adopters who control a major percentage of BTC could push the market with the amount of influence on the ecosystem they control.

Traders and bots will attempt to arbitrage other exchanges which have unverifiable volume and possibly large amounts of counterfeit capital.

That's not how it works. Most of that liquidity it's anchored at a specific distance away from the price. When the price moves up/down, that liquidity will move with it.

Thus you need much less to move the market, because the liquidity will get out of your way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com