Hacker News Reader

Comment by d33 | Hacker News Reader

This is absurd on so many levels. For example, it's pretty obvious that Bitcoin cannot be valued based on its exchange price in such huge quantities - if any party decided to sell $5bn worth of BTC, the price would obviously go down dramatically at this point. What's the logic behind this order?

View on HN

The order talks of handing over Bitcoins. The dollar value was added by journalists to illustrate the amount in question.

There are indeed many absurd things about this case, but that's not one of them: the value of anything will collapse if you try to sell a significant fraction of the world's total supply at once.

"I'm sorry, your honor, the laws of supply and demand make it unpalatable to comply with the court's order."

As noted elsewhere, the court is demanding that Wright hand over half the bitcoins, not $5B in USD.

I agree, although this is not the point to which your original post, and my concurring post, respond. Had the court ordered liquidation--of bitcoin, hogs, apartment blocks, whatever--it seems unlikely that market volatility would stay the court's hand. (Again, we agree about this.)

They're not ordering him to hand over cash they're ordering him to hand over half the BTC. The cash amount is just there to illustrate just how much 'value' that many coins would have.

Maybe I missed something, but I don't think there was anything in the order about selling any of the bitcoin.

I see you're new to Australian media reporting standards, or lack thereof =)

The Guardian is a British newspaper, not Australian. Also, the trial took place in the United State.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com