This is a farce. There's only been negative news today and yet prices jump higher than ever. There's no conceivable way this doesn't end badly. I guess people are gambling on being lucky enough to exit before then.
Edit: removed unnecessary hostility. If you have money to spare on a high risk gamble like this then by all means. But in general there's just no way everyone jumping in is fully aware of the risks.
I suspect some of the money that chased dotcom stocks in the 90's is chasing bitcoin and alt coins. There hasn't been a stock bubble since the 90's, so I guess bitcoin fills that need to speculate, that the stock market is not providing.
It's the first in a new asset class that provides things that never existed before, mainly being the ability to quickly transact value over great geographic distances and national borders with zero interference from third parties. The value of that is extremely underestimated by most people, and shouldn't be so hard to grasp. Analogous examples are the Internet and Google, which provided very straightforward and simple value propositions that most people did not get, could not predict, and decried until they actually grew to enormous and important positions in society. Cryptocurrency is very possibly in the same vein, making valuations like this seem less absurd.
I wish I had the time and motivation to go back over the last 6 years and create a timeline of people making the same tired statements as yourself. The same types of statements were made when it hit 10 dollars.
I anticipate that a lot of comments about "bad bubble" and "bad bitcoin" will emerge like on every thread about bitcoin on HN.
I think people just don't understand that most participants in "Bitcon boom" knows this is a bubble. Every major news outlet says it's a bubble every couple of weeks. This is a common knowledge, everyone are saying it's a bubble.
I know it's a bubble too and I have bitcoins but I don't care that it's a bubble. I am holding BTC from the time it was worth couple of times less when everyone was saying it's a bubble also. Even if it goes down a lot below 10k now I will still make money.
I think a lot of people yelling "you morons don't buy bitcoin!!!1111" need to understand that people are aware of the risk, like they are aware when going to casino that they can lose money and there will be people that will lose their money for sure. The last one in the game takes the highest risk, that's all.
"I am holding BTC from the time it was worth couple of times less when everyone was saying it's a bubble also. Even if it goes down below 10k now I will still make money."
It sounds like you haven't been through a bubble before.
In the dot-com bubble, the losing stocks didn't see their value cut by 3-5x. That was the winning stocks - Amazon lost 93% of its value between 2000 and 2001, EBay lost 75%, Cisco lost 80%. The losers saw it cut to zero. In a very short period of time, too - slower flameouts took a matter of months, quick ones were literally overnight. One day a company would have 3000 employees and be worth $5B, the next day the company would be bankrupt and everyone would be laid off.
I've got a few grand in Bitcoin too (a remnant of the last Bitcoin bubble in 2013 that I never bothered to dispose of), and it's been a fun ride, and it wouldn't surprise me if this is still near the beginning of the Bitcoin bubble and we have a while to go. But please, for the love of god, do not invest money in Bitcoin that you can't afford to lose. Because when bubbles pop, they don't just drop a couple percent or even a couple times. They usually go to zero, and everyone who was burned avoids that asset class for at least the next decade if not for life.
How is that relevant, the price spiking isn't because of people like you. It's because of people buying in now.
People are obviously not capable of understanding risk. Are you serious? You bring up casinos when they are perhaps the best example of how ill-equipped the majority of people are to understand risk and probability.
Seems like a significant portion of the capital is coming from Asia, mainly South Korea, with just Bithumb BTC/KRW trades making almost 11% of today's volume.
I'm in Seoul as we speak, and it's an insane mania here.
It has absolutely nothing to do with North Korea. If Koreans want to keep money safe, they can, for example, buy US stocks and bonds. They can buy US Treasuries. Bitcoin they buy out of greed and fear of missing out. Korea is the land of the trend, of bangdwagonning.
I feel bad for all of the people who are going to be burned.
I saw an ad on YouTube, in Korean:
VOICE: How easy is it to make money in Bitcoin?
[Shot of a finger pressing a button. The price goes skyward. Finger presses again to sell, showing screen of juicy profit.]
VOICE: That's how easy it is.
I literally hear random people in coffeeshops and the subway talking about their BTC schemes. I met someone at a coffeeshop and a group of four well-dressed guys at the next table were talking about their bitcoin scheme.
I went back about a week later. A different group at the very same table were chatting about their bitcoin thing. "We know it's not very original, but we're thinking of making a new bitcoin exchange... with a twist... so we're thinking about what the twist should be!"
Go to the unrelated programming meetup, it's half about bitcoin. A few guys are working together. Their project? Something bitcoin. They weren't sure what. But gotta be bitcoin. "I'm gonna make a new cryptocurrency business based on Bitcoin! We're gonna be big boys on the blockchain! Oh, what's Ethereum? I've never heard of it."
When I go online my browser windows are festooned with various bitcoin ads in Korean.
Although quite different, this has a very similar smell to the real estate boom in Los Angeles, when every waiter and wannabe actor and person between jobs was talking about buying their million dollar shack.
Yes, I've been reading about the South Korean frenzy for a day or two. This morning, a Bloomberg article[0] pointed to fear of war with North Korea, and fear of financial chaos around ongoing corruption scandals.
But there's little doubt that immanent trade in Bitcoin futures is the major driver. From a recent Coindesk article[1], I get that sellers of futures contracts are hedging in case the price falls. There's no requirement to own Bitcoin for selling futures contracts. But there is the expectation that they will hold Bitcoin at settlement.
So maybe some are buying now, and expect to win big in the futures crash.
It's obvious to nearly everyone that this is the world's biggest pump-and-dump scam.
Sentiment on HN, Twitter and the financial press is nearly unanimously negative. Co-workers and family members are convinced this will end in tears for the foolish speculators.
But one thing bugs me about all this.
Historically, bubbles burst after long-time critics finally capitulate. Pyramids and Ponzis collapse when most people have bought in and there's nobody left to sell to.
Are there any examples of bubbles bursting when 98% of the population knew it was a bubble in advance?
People are also seeing their co-workers and families asking about how to "invest" in Bitcoins.
So the old story about Joe Kennedy and the shoe shine boy applies too? The saying " You know it's time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips. This bull market is over."
I'm pretty sure everyone knows that most bubbles are bubbles in advance. People don't invest because they think it won't crash, they invest because it is definitely going up and they hope they can cash out before it does.
I will archive this comment, and ping you back if you're still on hackernews in 2020. We'll see the value of bitcoin then, and how far along adoption has gone in marketplaces such as Amazon. :)
Could we stop turning HN into a Bitcoin ticker? It feels like every day we get a "Bitcoin reaches $X" post and it's getting old. It's certainly not newsworthy.
If there's something concrete that _causes_ Bitcoin to move majorly, I'd be happy to see that but if I just want to watch the price, I'll look at an actual Bitcoin ticker.
As someone that has been in since 2013, I don't even recognize the current scene. The only reason the vast majority of people are getting into it is to get rich. It seems totally unsustainable, but the only incentives for people on the inside are to loudly convince others to join them.
Transaction times are slow because there are so many of them. What you're saying is sort of equivalent to "look at how much traffic there is at that mall, it's going to fail".
Yet another hack resulting in the loss of tens of millions of dollars, transactions taking forever, retailers announcing that they no longer accept Bitcoin, massive questions surrounding one of the largest exchanges:
I don't think anyone knows WTF is going on with it. I also sincerely hope people have only invested what they can afford to lose -- and that they've realized the gains that they'd be happy with.
Of course, it could just as likely be $20k tomorrow.
Might be an indicator of the old FOMO maneuvers. Whether the underlying realities are solid (fast, cheap transactions) or not is less relevant if people were, say, profit taking on their alts and pouring it into BTC since they feel BTC is rallying more/consistently with the spotlight on it.
For those who want to sell but not cash out in fiat (because on exchanges such paperwork can take over a week), what's the easiest stable thing to exchange your BTC for?
[+] [-] bllguo|8 years ago|reply
Edit: removed unnecessary hostility. If you have money to spare on a high risk gamble like this then by all means. But in general there's just no way everyone jumping in is fully aware of the risks.
[+] [-] paulpauper|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aerovistae|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JBlue42|8 years ago|reply
Maybe that's part of it. Things seem dire for a lot of folks now (even if they aren't) so a little short-term game or gambling high isn't so bad.
[+] [-] colordrops|8 years ago|reply
I wish I had the time and motivation to go back over the last 6 years and create a timeline of people making the same tired statements as yourself. The same types of statements were made when it hit 10 dollars.
[+] [-] lossolo|8 years ago|reply
I think people just don't understand that most participants in "Bitcon boom" knows this is a bubble. Every major news outlet says it's a bubble every couple of weeks. This is a common knowledge, everyone are saying it's a bubble.
I know it's a bubble too and I have bitcoins but I don't care that it's a bubble. I am holding BTC from the time it was worth couple of times less when everyone was saying it's a bubble also. Even if it goes down a lot below 10k now I will still make money.
I think a lot of people yelling "you morons don't buy bitcoin!!!1111" need to understand that people are aware of the risk, like they are aware when going to casino that they can lose money and there will be people that will lose their money for sure. The last one in the game takes the highest risk, that's all.
[+] [-] nostrademons|8 years ago|reply
It sounds like you haven't been through a bubble before.
In the dot-com bubble, the losing stocks didn't see their value cut by 3-5x. That was the winning stocks - Amazon lost 93% of its value between 2000 and 2001, EBay lost 75%, Cisco lost 80%. The losers saw it cut to zero. In a very short period of time, too - slower flameouts took a matter of months, quick ones were literally overnight. One day a company would have 3000 employees and be worth $5B, the next day the company would be bankrupt and everyone would be laid off.
I've got a few grand in Bitcoin too (a remnant of the last Bitcoin bubble in 2013 that I never bothered to dispose of), and it's been a fun ride, and it wouldn't surprise me if this is still near the beginning of the Bitcoin bubble and we have a while to go. But please, for the love of god, do not invest money in Bitcoin that you can't afford to lose. Because when bubbles pop, they don't just drop a couple percent or even a couple times. They usually go to zero, and everyone who was burned avoids that asset class for at least the next decade if not for life.
[+] [-] bllguo|8 years ago|reply
People are obviously not capable of understanding risk. Are you serious? You bring up casinos when they are perhaps the best example of how ill-equipped the majority of people are to understand risk and probability.
[+] [-] jurajmasar|8 years ago|reply
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets
[+] [-] malloryerik|8 years ago|reply
It has absolutely nothing to do with North Korea. If Koreans want to keep money safe, they can, for example, buy US stocks and bonds. They can buy US Treasuries. Bitcoin they buy out of greed and fear of missing out. Korea is the land of the trend, of bangdwagonning.
I feel bad for all of the people who are going to be burned.
I saw an ad on YouTube, in Korean: VOICE: How easy is it to make money in Bitcoin? [Shot of a finger pressing a button. The price goes skyward. Finger presses again to sell, showing screen of juicy profit.] VOICE: That's how easy it is.
I literally hear random people in coffeeshops and the subway talking about their BTC schemes. I met someone at a coffeeshop and a group of four well-dressed guys at the next table were talking about their bitcoin scheme.
I went back about a week later. A different group at the very same table were chatting about their bitcoin thing. "We know it's not very original, but we're thinking of making a new bitcoin exchange... with a twist... so we're thinking about what the twist should be!"
Go to the unrelated programming meetup, it's half about bitcoin. A few guys are working together. Their project? Something bitcoin. They weren't sure what. But gotta be bitcoin. "I'm gonna make a new cryptocurrency business based on Bitcoin! We're gonna be big boys on the blockchain! Oh, what's Ethereum? I've never heard of it."
When I go online my browser windows are festooned with various bitcoin ads in Korean.
Although quite different, this has a very similar smell to the real estate boom in Los Angeles, when every waiter and wannabe actor and person between jobs was talking about buying their million dollar shack.
That's to say, it smells like doom.
[+] [-] mirimir|8 years ago|reply
But there's little doubt that immanent trade in Bitcoin futures is the major driver. From a recent Coindesk article[1], I get that sellers of futures contracts are hedging in case the price falls. There's no requirement to own Bitcoin for selling futures contracts. But there is the expectation that they will hold Bitcoin at settlement.
So maybe some are buying now, and expect to win big in the futures crash.
0) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-06/bitcoin-f...
1) https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-futures-make-way-new-kind-w...
[+] [-] lossolo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csomar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] panarky|8 years ago|reply
Sentiment on HN, Twitter and the financial press is nearly unanimously negative. Co-workers and family members are convinced this will end in tears for the foolish speculators.
But one thing bugs me about all this.
Historically, bubbles burst after long-time critics finally capitulate. Pyramids and Ponzis collapse when most people have bought in and there's nobody left to sell to.
Are there any examples of bubbles bursting when 98% of the population knew it was a bubble in advance?
[+] [-] thisisit|8 years ago|reply
So the old story about Joe Kennedy and the shoe shine boy applies too? The saying " You know it's time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips. This bull market is over."
[+] [-] IshKebab|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zazpowered|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zzxxddere333|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xiphias|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Veratyr|8 years ago|reply
If there's something concrete that _causes_ Bitcoin to move majorly, I'd be happy to see that but if I just want to watch the price, I'll look at an actual Bitcoin ticker.
[+] [-] scotty79|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juanmirocks|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arcticfox|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeep|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darawk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 659087|8 years ago|reply
22% surge in a single day.
This is going to end well.
[+] [-] frakr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulpauper|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FLUX-YOU|8 years ago|reply
Of course, it could just as likely be $20k tomorrow.
[+] [-] randywaterhouse|8 years ago|reply
Interesting observation, in any case.
[+] [-] frakr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gestirn|8 years ago|reply
If people were keeping track of Satoshis (0.00014 USD/Satoshi) would they also think it is expensive?
[+] [-] koonsolo|8 years ago|reply
To compare, if Bitcoin reaches $400.000 per bitcoin, the total value of all Bicoins will be the same as the total value of all gold.
[+] [-] bemmu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sireat|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] watoc|8 years ago|reply
I wonder if we will still see this kind of crazy rallies as it will be easier to short it.
[+] [-] tudorconstantin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thisisit|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zzxxddere333|8 years ago|reply
No one in their right mind is going to short bitcoin unless they want to risk losing their shirts.
[+] [-] zzxxddere333|8 years ago|reply
So let me take the opposite side and say congrats to everyone who's hodling bitcoin!