Bitcoin Prices Surge Past $5,000 Three Weeks After Passing $4,000 (fortune.com) 179
Less than three weeks after surging past $4,000, Bitcoin reached $5,000 on Asian exchanges Friday. An anonymous reader quotes Fortune: The idea of Bitcoin breaking the symbolic milestone of $5,000 would have been unthinkable to most people at the start 2017, when the price topped $1,000 for the first time. If you're keeping track, the digital currency is up 500% this year, and nearly 2200% since mid-2015, when it was in the doldrums at around $220. There appears to be no single reason for the recent run-up. Instead, it can likely be explained by the same factors driving this year's cryptocurrency bull run: Publicity-driven speculation; New financial products creating unprecedented liquidity; Trading surges in Asian markets; Institutional investors treating digital currency as a permanent new asset class.
"Magical Internet Money Hits $5k" writes Bitcoin News, adding "so far in 2017 bitcoin has outperformed all government issued tender and a vast majority of stocks and commodities."
While the head of the Bitcoin Foundation has urged people to invest "no more than they can afford," Bitcoin now has a market capitalization of $82.6 billion.
"Magical Internet Money Hits $5k" writes Bitcoin News, adding "so far in 2017 bitcoin has outperformed all government issued tender and a vast majority of stocks and commodities."
While the head of the Bitcoin Foundation has urged people to invest "no more than they can afford," Bitcoin now has a market capitalization of $82.6 billion.
Remember the dot com bubble (Score:2, Insightful)
Nasdaq hits 5000, everyone started piling in, and then came the big crash. This is no different because many bought stock in companies that are gone or worthless. It's a sham.
Re:Remember the dot com bubble (Score:4, Interesting)
Nasdaq hits 5000, everyone started piling in, and then came the big crash. This is no different
Actually, this is different. A stock is inherently worth the value of future profits. Once it became clear these companies would never be significantly profitable, it was clear that the stocks were way overvalued. Bitcoins have no inherent value, so any valuation is just as "valid" as any other. People were predicting imminent collapse when Bitcoin passed the "ridiculous" value of $1.
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Nasdaq hits 5000, everyone started piling in, and then came the big crash. This is no different
Actually, this is different. A stock is inherently worth the value of future profits. Once it became clear these companies would never be significantly profitable, it was clear that the stocks were way overvalued. Bitcoins have no inherent value, so any valuation is just as "valid" as any other. People were predicting imminent collapse when Bitcoin passed the "ridiculous" value of $1.
Sorry Bill. Stocks do not pay dividends anymore so no future profits. Just some guy MIGHT pay more than what you bought it for. With bitcoin at least you can buy things with it. I think when the next recession hits Gold and bitcoin is going to skyrocket and you are going to kick yourself when you didn't buy in at only $5,000. Serious hundreds of thousands of dollars per coin is right around the corner once all the big banks start buying them up when a recession hits. Where else are you going to put your mon
Re:Remember the dot com bubble (Score:4, Interesting)
Lol, you're actually using the argument that it's worthless to say it's not worth less!!!
No inherent value is not the same as valueless. Here are some other things that have little or no inherent value:
1. Gold
2. Diamonds
3. Dollars
Whatever (Score:3, Insightful)
It's basically one big ponzi scheme, let's wait and see who's left holding the bag. Can always jump in you think the game will be played a while longer, but when it ends, it will end quickly.
Re:Whatever (Score:4, Insightful)
It's basically one big ponzi scheme
Bitcoin may go up, or it may go down, but it absolutely is not a Ponzi scheme [wikipedia.org]. If you think it is, then you don't understand Bitcoins, you don't understand what a Ponzi scheme is, or both.
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It's basically one big ponzi scheme
Bitcoin may go up, or it may go down, but it absolutely is not a Ponzi scheme [wikipedia.org]. If you think it is, then you don't understand Bitcoins, you don't understand what a Ponzi scheme is, or both.
From the Wikipedia page you linked to: "a Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation where the operator generates returns for older investors through revenue paid by new investor". Every dollar that comes out of bitcoin needs to be supplied by a new investor. If new investors stop coming into bitcoin the value drops to zero. Bitcoin is the dictionary definition of a ponzi scheme.
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If Satoshi were ever allowed to cash in his exclusive pre-owned block of coins, then it would be a Ponzi scheme. It wouldn't collapse Bitcoin outright but the sudden influx of coins would cause the value to dip (or crash, if he'd done it a few years ago).
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If Satoshi were ever allowed to cash in his exclusive pre-owned block of coins, then it would be a Ponzi scheme.
Nonsense. Satoshi's coin stash is public knowledge, recorded in the blockchain. There is absolutely nothing fraudulent about it. Claiming that this makes it a "Ponzi scheme" makes as much sense as saying Google is a Ponzi scheme because Larry and Sergey have founder's stock.
Charles Ponzi ran a Ponzi scheme. Bernie Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme. They lied, cheated, and defrauded their clients, and went to prison. Satoshi lied to no one, cheated no one, and defrauded no one. Bitcoin may or may not be a goo
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Bitcoin may go up, or it may go down, but it absolutely is not a Ponzi scheme [wikipedia.org]. If you think it is, then you don't understand Bitcoins, you don't understand what a Ponzi scheme is, or both.
Yes, a ponzi scheme is an investment scam from the get-go, because it is mathematically predestined to collapse.
Bitcoin is more like tulip mania, driven by the greater fool theory [wikipedia.org]. The irony is, unlike tulip bulbs, Bitcoin's rarity could be easily adjusted by forking the coin (yet again) and then, coins for everyone! Everyone can be rich!
Heck, if I was better at coding, I'd do it. I'd call it "Bitcoin Inflation Totally Couldn't Hurt". When everyone loses their money, then I'd get to say "Well, ain't tha
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Bitcoin is... (Score:5, Interesting)
...one of those things in life you'll either stand idle by and watch it like it was a show, you'll think "oh why - oh why did I not invest when it was new and cheap", and when it plummets down, you'll sigh a relief and think to yourself - oh, I'm glad I didn't do that, those fools - or you'll be a part of it, getting free money if you pump it out at the right time.
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one of those things in life you'll either stand idle by and watch it like it was a show, you'll think "oh why - oh why did I not invest when it was new and cheap"
Kind of like the stock market. Why didn't I buy Apple before the 7:1 stock split. Why didn't I buy Google. Why didn't I buy Amazon. Why didn't I buy Ali Baba - oh wait, that one I did.
But it's ok. Life is a lifetime of missed opportunities. And then you die. The point of life is enjoying the opportunities you DID seize.
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...one of those things in life you'll either stand idle by and watch it like it was a show, you'll think "oh why - oh why did I not invest when it was new and cheap"
Here's the part most people miss: High risk investments are only for the rich, to make themselves richer.
Most of us who work 9-5 for a living would rather have money in our bank accounts than tied up in wild speculation.
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Well yeah it is only rich people that generally have money for investments. The whole bitcoin thing was an exception though. In the beginning even a poor person (by first world standards at least) could have mined and/or purchased it when it was cheap and now would be very very very rich. It is money that just came out of nowhere. I think most of us who can remember the very first slashdot stories about bitcoin are kicking ourselves for doubting and ignoring it. It turned out to be more of a speculative bub
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you'll think "oh why - oh why did I not invest when it was new and cheap",
There's always another chance to make money. Right now, you can place an order for stock, which by the end of the week will make more money than if you had bought bitcoin. Identifying that stock is of course the tough part, but trying to figure it out will get you more than lamenting the high quality of your hindsight.
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There are other options: I bought in at about $200 and cashed out at about $2500. It was a good ride but I was not expecting it to behave like this after the fork. There is also the sadness of leaving money on the table.
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With stocks, you are buying ownership in a company. You don't lose until you sell or the stock goes worthless.
If you know what you're doing, you don't lose period.
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You don't have to know what you're doing. In fact, it's better if you don't "know what you're doing."
Buy index funds or throw darts at the financial pages. Don't ever check the value of your stocks.
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If you know what you're doing, you don't lose period.
... and its contrapositive: if you lost, then you didn't know what you were doing.
Therefore every investor knows what they are doing, right up until the moment when they don't.
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If you think it's possible to only gain in the stock market, then you certainly don't know what you are doing.
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If you think it's possible to only gain in the stock market, then you certainly don't know what you are doing.
Of course not. However it is also possible to offload the risk onto someone else. The problem is not the stock market, it's the trader's own greed.
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Re: Strange statement (Score:1)
I dont like it the same way i dont like tulip mania or beanie babies. It's a bunch of people betting on things with unsound fundamentals. It's a basket of fallacies wrapped up in marketing to get hype built and a handful of people get rich.
It's a big bullshit factory. Even it's claims from the start are bullshit (remember the early hype about how anonymous it was and how you can't be traced? Obviously bullshit in any practical view of it.)
Just one big bubble of bullshit.
Bubble Bubble Boil'n Trouble (Score:1)
beheaded (Score:2)
We all know where this is be headed.
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Honestly, I'm not sure where it's headed. Sure, the value will probably crash back down to a three digit value in the short term, but five years from now it might be worth $20,000 each.
This really depends on how willing the world governments will allow the currency to exist, knowing that most of the transactions are being used for less than legal purposes (drug buys, kiddie porn, money laundering, cryptolocker ransoms, etc).
White rabbit (Score:2)
Might I remind everyone that it is now September, the month when pins are most often stuck in bubbles.
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Bitcoin will go up in value once a recession hits just like gold. It is a great time to buy if you have the money as stocks do not pay dividends anymore anyway so it's no different.
When the next recession hits and prices surge past $50,000 or more per coin is the time to sell and buy stocks. Yes, it sounds ludicrous but people said the same about gold. With trillions upon trillions of assets Wall Street has you think they want to keep their money in stocks?? Hell no, gold and bitcoin will skyrocket and ever
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Keep in mind (Score:3)
In the case of bitcoin, it is used to trade with. exchanges like Bittrex trade everything against bitcoin. All money has to funnel through bitcoin either directly or indirectly. All other arguments and benefits aside, as long as bitcoin remains the de facto gold standard backing the entire crypto world, and as long as money goes into the crypto world, the price of bitcoin is not going to go down (volatility aside).
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But it has some serious limitations, like the number of transactions per second - even with the recent upgrade it still seems dismal. I won't do any predictions though - I am completely mystified by the continuous price increase, I was pretty sure the price would have "corrected" by now...
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Oh, I know. The way bitcoin is used currently is way outside of the scale it was used even just a year ago. Both Bitcoin and Ethereum are working on projects to get fast transfers. When that finally happens, we can send large transfers around the globe near instantaneously without having to give the banks or paypal an arm and a leg.
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They do: but most of the exchanges are taking smaller curs than the traditional banks e.g. 0.25%.
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It's not even that, there are fundamental limitations to cryptocurrency that I'm not sure *can* be eliminated. Blockchain size, for example. The design of cryptocurrency is such that to known the amount of coins in a wallet, you need to know the entire blockchain. Currently, the Bitcoin blockchain is 130 GB, for 250 million transactions (incidentally, that's about as many transactions as Visa handles per day). That's already fairly large for consumer miners (it means you can't realistically store the chain
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The only way around that is to use some technique that trims the blockchain, but I'm not sure if that's even technically possible.
Sure it would, just have the blockchain sign a complete account balance and everyone could restart from there. It could be vulnerable to a 51% attack totally rewriting the balance but you probably also make some sort of rejection mechanism saying that if >1% of the blockchain rejects the account summary you continue from the last universally acknowledged one. And some nodes would probably stay in full history mode anyway. That doesn't seem like a particularly hard problem, compared to all the other ones.
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There are a couple of ideas for trimming the blockchain.
One is "segregated witness", seperating the signatures from the actual ledger. The idea being that while old ledger information needs to be kept forever there is no real reason to keep signatures around forever.
The other is the "lighting network". The idea is that small transactions can take place mostly off-blockchain with the blockchain used as an enforcement mechanism in the case of misbehaving parties and as a mechanism for processing the final net
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This difference explains much.
Only in your mind. You must be a pretty terrible scientist. You assigned me the identity of beancounter. Next you use this assignment to explain your superiority. Congrats with your hypothesis - except of course if your first assumption is false, everything that follows is also false. I am no beancounter. I also am a scientist. But you see intelligent people enjoy educating themselves across many fields. I'll let you work out what your aversion to learning for yourself says about you.
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I can only conclude you do not know what you are talking about at all when it comes to actually selling bitcoin for traditional currency.
I can conclude that no one is "actually selling bitcoin for traditional currency" - hence the geometric increase in price. Buyers far outweigh sellers. For now.
People aren't getting rich off of Bitcoin... (Score:3, Insightful)
They are getting rich by cashing out while others put their money in. Bitcoin is like a stock with no inherent value, but which is pumped in a pump and dump scheme. The only difference is that the people buying into it KNOW that the stock is a pump and dump, but are hoping to get off before everybody else stops piling in. Because it has no inherent value with which to compare it to, nobody can say that it is "overpriced", unlike a pump and dump stock however, so keeps going up. People will say "all currency has value simply because people trust it has value" but most currency is used to actually buy and trade for goods and services. Bitcoin, while it has SOME value for goods and services, is generally traded against other currencies. You get rich because the price of bitcoin goes up, vs. currency, you don't get rich just because you have Bitcoin.
That said, I expect that it will continue to go up, as people pile on the hype train, but at some point, the train will have a last stop, and everybody left on it at that time will realize that the last stop is just a cliff. Consider this--what happens if someone realizes there is some inherent flaw in the bitcoin blockchain system, and can corrupt it? How much value would be left?
Re:People aren't getting rich off of Bitcoin... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's inherent value is that it is limited in supply AND used as a gold standard on exchanges to trade all other crypto coins against. The only way bitcoin will suffer lasting drops in price is if the entire crypto world diminishes. Until then, its use for trading is what gives it its increasing value.
Maybe in the future there will be a different standard. Some exchanges implement trading pairs against ethereum. So it may happen. But until then, bitcoin is safe.
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All you are doing is extending the value to other things that also don't have value and saying that is why it has value. Everything in the crypto-currency markets have the same problem. Just because one pump and dump stock is used to trace between other pump and dump stocks doesn't make any one of them valuable. Until crypto-currencies are actually used to drive a reasonably significant percentage of transactions between consumers and businesses, there won't be any real inherent value. For this to happe
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I've been spending $10k worth of crypto a week because of the reduced transaction costs. It has value. Only the stupid don't see that. It's got value in all sorts of ways. I don't have to pay 3% to the credit card companies when customers pay me in bitcoin. I'm making as much as 26x as much profit because we're accepting bitcoin and purchasing our raw materials in it. We both save 3% AND we get between 19-33% off of raw materials for my business because of it. This is over any other discounts. Bitcoin has m
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All you are doing is extending the value to other things that also don't have value and saying that is why it has value. Everything in the crypto-currency markets have the same problem. Just because one pump and dump stock is used to trace between other pump and dump stocks doesn't make any one of them valuable.
That's what *all* currencies are about... are there going to be telltale signs of people retreating to "safe" currencies... there's a reason why in times of trouble people invest in USD, swiss francs (I forget the TLA) and EUR it's because they're massive economies that won't fail without an economic Armageddon. Also precious metals like gold and silver that people assume will "always" be valuable without any real reason except for thousands of years of history.
While the price of bitcoin keeps surging people won't use it for things outside of the crypto-currency markets. It must stabilize, and the entire design of it won't allow that. It will either keep surging or it will fall, stable is not what it is designed for.
You're casually dismissing all the actual thin
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Right now, a lot of people in China are trying to move money offshore, and Bitcoin is the way to do it with the least losses, heck right now, you get an increase while you hold the bitcoin before you get the money into it's destination currency. Since there are a limited number of Bitcoins, and a huge amount of money that is being moved, the extremely high cost of the Bitcoin is actually a feature because it allows a much greater amount of currency to be moved through Bitcoin. If this continues to be the ca
Is there a safe place to short BTC? (Score:2)
Asking for a friend.
Not safe in terms of the volatility or the bet going bad, that's risk I'd be happy to assume. But if the bet goes good, a place where you can cash out 5+ digits of actual money without being raped on fees or a risk of some rando website shutting down and taking your real money with it?
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The answer appears to be 'no'.
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uh, who gives a shit? this is a financial investment strategy, not a moral judgement. lol
Intrinsic value and so on (Score:2)
on instantaneous performance measures (Score:2)
A man leaping from the roof surely passes another man taking the stairs.
Much depends upon a rucksack of Houdini Handkerchiefs 2.0 sandwiched betwixt our hero's blades.
South Sea Bubble (Score:2)
The original pyramid investment scheme takes it's name from this phenomena.
http://www.historic-uk.com/His... [historic-uk.com]
http://www.investopedia.com/fe... [investopedia.com]
How to cash out? (Score:2)
Let's say that I had bought (or mined) 200 bitcoin back when they were practically free(*), and now I want to transition from "Bitcoin millionaire" to "actual US dollars millionaire" by selling all my bitcoins at their current value.
How would I realistically go about doing that? Is it really just a matter of going to a Bitcoin exchange site and clicking "sell 200 bitcoins"?
(*) to be clear, this isn't actually the case; if it was, I would probably already be Bitcoin-savvy enough that I wouldn't need to ask
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First you sign up with an exchange. They need to verify your account againdt a real world identity to comply with money laundering laws. This involves exchanging id and takes a couple of days. Then you transmit the bitcoin to them. Then you convert it via them to a bank deposit in a real world account.
Bad headline (Score:2)
bitcoin dud not "outperform" (Score:2)
Re:Woohoo! (Score:5, Informative)
Bitcoin is not an investment, it is a gamble.
Hope is not an investment strategy.
Re:Woohoo! (Score:4, Informative)
All investments are an "educated" gamble
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All investments are an "educated" gamble
Sigh. In the old days back when stocks REQUIRED dividends it wasn't. You bought stocks once and you got a share of the revenue. That is how it is SUPPOSED to work. When you retire you check out with the revenue generated from your share.
Now they do not pay dividends and the valuations are well over 30 years to break even if it did pay a dividend. Worse the investors compensate themselves like it is the firms money (in the old days) and not the clients money so they take a cream of the earnings. It is ridicu
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Not really, by that line of reasoning virtually everything is a gamble because we don't know what the future will hold.
Yup. That's how it works.
The blockchain will survive, perhaps not bitcoin (Score:3)
For Wall Street, the blockchain is the future, bitcoin is just a current speculative instrument. Wall street has played a large role in the current price spike, if their attention moves elsewhere a huge crash is likely.
Keep in mind that bitcoin has already gone off plan. It is no long
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Bitcoin was also supposed to eliminate the big transaction fees charged by banks. But in order to get a transaction processed you have to pay fees that even the banks might blush at.
The scariest thing though is that lots and lots of bitcoin is held by a few random anonymous nerds. If one of those guys gets greedy, desperate or bored and tries to cash out....
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> Bitcoin is just one of many users of the technology.
Well, I usually say that blockchain's killer app is money. And bitcoin is the first blockchain-based money. Network effect is really important in money, so if Bitcoin doesn't fuck up (which is a possibility, yes) or get fucked up (which is a possibilty, yes) it will be more than one of many "users of blockchain tech". It'll be the money of the internet or maybe even the "people's money".
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The problem is that a 500% increase in value in 8 months makes it completely unsuitable as money.
Would you sign a 2 year phone contract that was denominated in bitcoin when you have no idea what the agreed amount would be worth in 2 years time?
Greater Fool Theory (Score:3, Insightful)
The belief that there is always someone out there willing to pay more and bug it off you.
Currently, it's Bitcoin, Tesla, and Amazon flying to new highs for no reason.
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The belief that there is always someone out there willing to pay more and bug it off you.
And there is. Until suddenly there isn't. And least I can short Amazon and Tesla.
Re:Greater Fool Theory (Score:4, Interesting)
And least I can short Amazon and Tesla.
You can also short Bitcoin. Go to Google an type in "How to short bitcoin". Several links will tell you how to do it.
Before you do that, you might want to understand why Bitcoin is going up. To understand that, try Googling "Currency controls in China".
China is running huge current account surpluses, and moving money out of the country is severely restricted, yet the value of the RMB relative to the USD has been weak. Why? Where is the money going? Think about that, and then think about whether shorting bitcoins is really such a bright idea.
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Re: Greater Fool Theory (Score:2)
Because Bitcoin can't go to zero and nobody has a vested interest in making it crash.
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I sure wish that had been one of the idiots that bought bitcoins when they hit $100.
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Re:Woohoo! (Score:4, Insightful)
Does anybody know how to short bitcoin?
Buy dollars.
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Bitcoin data right now on Bittrex:
24h high: $4945
24h low: $4204.113
That's volatile as shit.
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That's a 14.98% change over 24 hours. I have had stocks drop faster than that!
Personally, I don't think the price of BTC is sustainable because it has risen too fast, but I have been wrong before.
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Lol, Everyone said it was a ponzi scheme when I bought it back at $1 a bit coin.
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Free fuckings for all the latecomers!
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They were saying that back when it was $5 a bit coin. Everyone claimed it was over priced and would fall back to $0.50 a coin.
404 cannot regulate. (Score:2)
you can't regulate internationnal crowd.
Re: 404 cannot regulate. (Score:1)
It's the U.S. Either you're Europe or Asia, and you'll do whatever the U.S. says because you like money, or you're somewhere else and you'll do whatever the U.S. says because you like not getting blown up.
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That process is not called regulation.
BTC-e proves you can "regulate" (Score:2)
you can't regulate internationnal crowd.
Yeah, that is what users of BTC-e thought.
"The BTC-e website is offline since 25 July 2017, following the arrest of BTC-e staff members and the seizure of server equipment at one of their data centres. In addition, suspected BTC-e operator Alexander Vinnik was arrested while vacationing with his family in Greece and is currently awaiting extradition to the US. These events led to the temporary suspension of the BTC-e service.
On the 28th of July 2017, US authorities seized the BTC-e.com domain name.
On t
Re: One thing is for certain (Score:1)
I'm not an economist, thought I will play a logic game. If Bitcoin has gone up this high, it must be related to volume trading driving the value up. I assume this is becaus a small group of investors are rapidly trading on a basically unregulated market. As the buzz caused stir, additional investors enter the market by routing percentages of funds (mutuals, hedge, etc...) which are financed through retirement plans, national treasuries, credit unions, etc... into the currency to allow large amounts of small
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Merchants accepting bitcoin never see a bitcoin (Score:3)
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The processor takes on the risk
Until the processor goes belly up and takes the merchant's money with them.
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He could also be mentioning BTC-E, Bitinstant, or the dozens of other smaller currency changes that have either gone bust or defrauded users over the past few years.
That's the downside of using a basically unregulated currency. If you lose it, you really have no legal recourse to get it back.
So, yeah... I have no interest in investing my life savings in Bitcoin now or anytime soon, no matter how quickly the perceived value rises.
2013: $1,000 2014: $450 2015: $250 (Score:3)
They've been well over 1000 for years. I've been invested since 2013, where is TFA getting its info from?
No. BTC was $1,000 in 2013, $450 in 2014 and $250 in 2015. 2013 had an incredible vertical spike like the current spike to $5,000 (which has pulled back to $4,500 by the time this article made it to slashdot), and not surprisingly it popped. Wiser investors than you who don't trust vertical spikes and expect bubbles to pop purchased in 2014 and 2015 and made two to four times as much money as you. Well, assuming they cashed out. If you or they are still holding, you made nothing.