Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Bitcoin The Almighty Buck

Bitcoin Plummets Below $8,000 For First Time Since November (axios.com) 298

Posted by msmash from the free-fall dept.
Bitcoin's value dipped $8,000 this morning -- the first time since November 24, according to CNBC -- just hours after the cryptocurrency made news after going under $9,000. From a report: After the news that Bitcoin had headed south of $9,000, CNBC branded the range of $9,000 to $10,000 as "a difficult one for bitcoin to break below" after its surge over $10,000 last year.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Bitcoin Plummets Below $8,000 For First Time Since November More

Bitcoin Plummets Below $8,000 For First Time Since November

Comments Filter:

  • Random number generator (Score:5, Funny)

    by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:06AM (#56054347) Homepage

    I think it's time that we categorize the "BTC to USB exchange rate" officially as a "strong random number generator" and call it a day ~
     
    :-D

    (NOTE: Jokes aside, that doesn't preclude that idea of the cryptocoins' decentralized protocols can be useful).

  • Bummer (Score:5, Funny)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:09AM (#56054357) Homepage Journal
    I invested a lot of money in Bitcoin when it hit $10k. I better just hold onto it until it goes over $10k again, then I will sell. Until then, I'll just sit back and collect the dividends from it.
    • HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

      I'd sell now if you don't want to make a huge loss on it
      • Actually, I just bought more. Buy low and sell high.

        • Unless it will still go down to its actual value. Thus you are still buying high.

          The point of bit coins was to buy thing with it. Not hold onto it and convert to cash as a retirement fund.
          While people are still hording it, and not spending them, they are in essence useless. Because even at 8k that is still too expensive and too volatile to risk buying stuff with it.

          I remember the guy who bought a pizza for a lot of bitcoins. Which at the time was about $20.00 worth. Which only after a few years became Milli

          • Re:Bummer (Score:5, Funny)

            by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:24AM (#56054459) Homepage Journal
            What is the actual value of a bitcoin? It will go back up. Things always continue upwards.

            • Re:Bummer (Score:5, Insightful)

              by tbannist ( 230135 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @11:02AM (#56054785)

              What is the actual value of a bitcoin?

              The actual (intrinsic) value of a bitcoin is $0.

              The only reason it's valued above $0 is the perception that it has more value than that. I can't tell you whether Bitcoin will ever be valued above $10k in 2017 equivalent dollars, again because that's mostly down to the actions of speculators and possibly currency manipulators. There's also the small problem that there isn't really anything special about Bitcoin that make it inherently more valuable than Litecoin, Namecoin, Swiftcoin, Bytecoin, Peercoin, Dogecoin, Emercoin, Feathercoin, Gridcoin, Omni, Primecoin, Ripple, Nxt, Auroracoin, BlackCoin, Burstcoin, Dash, NEO, MazaCoin, Monero, NEM, PotCoin, Titcoin, Verge, Stellar, Vertcoin, Ether, IOTA, Sia, sixEleven, Decred, Waves, Lisk, Zcash, Komodo, Ubiq, EOS, Electroneum, TRON, Cardano, or Petro. It's value is basically based on speculation and name recognition.

              Note, I left Tether off that list because Tether is inherently more valuable than Etherium because it is tied to $1 USD, but because it's tied it's value shouldn't fluctuate making it speculative value approximately $0.

              It will go back up. Things always continue upwards.

              As a warning, it's been almost 400 years since the peak of Tulip mania [wikipedia.org] and looking at a Dutch flower exporter, the highest price is approximately $2 per bulb, but the high price in 1637 was reported to be around $100 guilders. That means the current price is approximately 3.6% of the peak value (using today's exchange rate). At that rate, the price will have fully recovered in approximately 10,000 years. Now inflation will surely cause it to reach $100 sooner than that (using historic rates, it would still take over 100 years), but the point is it could take a very, very long time to recover.

              • The intrinsic value if Bitcoin is based in the amount of suckers remaining. They think they're the clever ones who can make money with it, but everyday they are becoming wise to the whole scam and getting out with what they can. Thus, the precipitous drop.

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              by Rolgar ( 556636 )

              Can't tell if you are serious or not.

              What happens when the cost of mining (processing transactions) drops below the amount you would make in new coins? If it costs $4000 in energy to mine a coin and the cost of bitcoin drops below that price $4000, and intelligent miners turn off their rigs or switch to other coins, and the entire house of cards that is bitcoin will collapse.

              • Re:Bummer (Score:5, Informative)

                by Aaden42 ( 198257 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @11:36AM (#56055003) Homepage

                The difficulty balancing algorithm prevents that from happening. The amount of computing power needed to solve each block is variable based on how much real time it took to solve the last block. The algorithm adjusts the difficulty (how much of hash has to be zeros in Bitcoin) to keep the solve time relatively constant.

                If lots of people turn off their rigs for any reason, the current block will take a long time; but the next block will drop its difficulty to compensate based on available mining resources. If the difficulty gets high enough that cost of power exceeds the value of the coin mined, some people give up, and the difficulty falls accordingly until it reaches equilibrium.

                Balancing should ensure that people who mine make a modest profit. It's only mad money for miners when the coin they mine is in the middle of an asset bubble that balloons its value almost before they've finished earning it. The bubble has to deflate eventually (I believe I hear a leaking sound now...), but mining should continue to stay profitable as long as people are interested in using coin.

              • I wish this bubble would burst, it'd be nice to get a video card at a reasonable price this year.

                • Re: (Score:3)

                  by jwhyche ( 6192 )

                  I would be wary of any graphics card used in a mining operation. Most of those cards will be way overclocked with out adequate cooling, and ran for months that way.

            • Things always continue upwards.

              I've got some Enron shares in a shoebox somewhere.

            • Re:Bummer (Score:4, Insightful)

              by beernutmark ( 1274132 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @11:40AM (#56055029)
              Yep. Any day now I expect my Beanie Baby collection to go back to it's old value and continue it's inevitable upwards climb.

          • Re:Bummer (Score:5, Insightful)

            by sjames ( 1099 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:31AM (#56054521) Homepage Journal

            And there's the issue. The bubble has to pop. The entire basis of bitcoin retaining value was that it would become an everyday currency used for buying and selling goods and services. It's current value and volatility preclude that, so it's valueation (not value) is supported primarily by investors running around like chickens looking for the next kernel of corn. Let someone yell BOO and it all goes to hell.

            • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

              by 110010001000 ( 697113 )
              But it is based on blockchain technology. You guys don't know what you are talking about. My cell phone can talk to me and answer my questions using AI.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by jrumney ( 197329 )

                My cell phone can talk to me and answer my questions using AI.

                You do know your voice commands really just go through to a call center full of carefully trained orcas, don't you?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mysidia ( 191772 )

              The entire basis of bitcoin retaining value was that it would become an everyday currency used for buying and selling goods and services. It's current value and volatility preclude that

              If its current volatility is temporary, then it doesn't preclude that --- so long as its value is increasing, and the merchants have a payment provider willing to protect the merchant from price changes during the payment process.

    • Why don't you just go to Vegas and put it all on red? Your odds are about the same.

    • Buy High and sell Low!

      • Re:Bummer (Score:4, Funny)

        by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:20AM (#56054429)

        Buy High and sell Low!

        I think a lot of bitcoin investors probably bought whilst high.

        • I'm too lazy to work it out but I suspect that more than half the money sent in on bitcoins was when it was above 12000.
      • If there is one thing I have learned from Slashdot: past performance is an indicator of future performance. Just look at computers: my first one only had 64k in memory and had a 1MHz processor. Look at my computer today. Thus, the computers twenty years from now will be amazing! After all, things just continue getting better and better. There are no limits: only your dreams!

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          But then you'll install windows 20 on it and the standard 12 anti-virus programs and the 6 hidden trackers and keyloggers and the performance will resemble an Altair.

          • By then your typical computer will be fully AI and blockchain enabled and will be able to defend itself against virus and malware. Computers can already beat the best Go masters at Go. So you can count on it happening.

            • By then your typical computer will be fully AI and blockchain enabled and will be able to defend itself against virus and malware.

              By then, your computer will consider you to be the virus/malware.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by XXongo ( 3986865 )

                By then your typical computer will be fully AI and blockchain enabled and will be able to defend itself against virus and malware.

                By then, your computer will consider you to be the virus/malware.

                And the actual malware will be a self-aware AI.

        • If you build it... they will come.

  • Bubble Economics. (Score:5, Informative)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:14AM (#56054385)

    Products that are getting more expensive because they are expected to be sold for more money later. Is often creates a bubble condition.

    The Bit Coin price kept on going up, so people wouldn't spend them, thus cause the price to go up further. Until they hit a peak were they decided to sell them. Then the market gets flooded with bit coins who's guaranteed value to increase is no longer expected. So they will sell them for less to get as much as they can out of it.

    This happened with the Housing Market
    This happened with the Tech Market
    This happened with the Comic Book Market

      Lucky for us, the Bit Coin Bubble wasn't a big part of the economy, so the looser in the Bit Coin Gamble arn't bringing the rest of the economy down.
     

    • This is very accurate. I do wish I'd gotten on board when it was in the $900 range, or lower obviously, but I can't imagine all the people who got it when it was fast approaching $20k, that is going to be a huge loss. With all the governments around the world blocking crypto currencies and loss of confidence it will probably settle at a more realistic number that represents the value of using your PC to mine it, providing processing power to those who don't want to build their own datacenter.

      • There really isn't a loss. The loss from mortgages were the bankruptcies and "money" literally vanished. Here the wealth was transferred. People selling or the exchanges have that money.

        • Unless people also borrowed money to buy their bitcoins...

          Wealth includes assets. If someone owned 10 bitcoins that they bought for $10k each, then when bitcoins were $15k each they had $150k in wealth. Now they have $80k. That's clearly a loss in wealth, not a transfer of wealth (that $70k vanished from the books - they didn't transfer it to anyone/etc). Of course that's what you should expect when you "invest" in something so clearly volatile.

    • Lucky for us, the Bit Coin Bubble wasn't a big part of the economy, so the looser in the Bit Coin Gamble arn't bringing the rest of the economy down.

      Maybe this is the best thing ever. It puts the bubble speculators and idiots who twitch whenever the "next big market" comes along and puts them in their own virtual world which isolates them from the real economy and keeps housing / market prices sane. Just like a virtual machine on a computer does...

    • Re:Bubble Economics. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vtcodger ( 957785 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:52AM (#56054711)

      NY TIMES Nov 18, 2005 ... THERE is a venerable Wall Street joke featuring an investor who, having accumulated a large position in an illiquid stock, decides it is time to get out. "Yes, sir," replies the broker when he is told to sell. "To whom?"

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There is one more thing that's needed for a bubble, and that's leverage - investing with loaned money.

      A rich guy who invests in ugly modern art with his own money, in the hope of making a profit - he has the option of just holding on to his asset forever, deluding himself about its "real" value. Even though nobody would actually buy it at the price he asks, he can pretend that's what it's worth.

      But someone who's loaning money to buy ugly modern art, needs the asset to appreciate in order to pay interest on

  • Normally I'd point out that Bitcoin's typical cycle doesn't prevent it from dipping low, it just won't settle low, it will settle at a price higher but they are calling the current version Bitcoin Cash instead of Bitcoin and acting like the obsolete blockchain is Bitcoin so who knows what the impact will be. By acting like it is something brand new you create the illusion of something just as untested as all the other cryptocurrencies out there even though it is the same coin that has been unhackable and un
    • 7/10 troll. Bcash is just a scam coin made by bitmain to support his miner hacks so they can mine 0 kb blocks and increase their hashrate with asicboost. If Bcash really wanted to keep the traditional blockchain they wouldn't have increased the block size to 8mb and kept it at 1mb.

  • CNBC has fantastic track record. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:21AM (#56054441) Journal

    CNBC branded the range of $9,000 to $10,000 as "a difficult one for bitcoin to break below" after its surge over $10,000 last year.

    I know CNBC has fantastic track record. No matter how unlikely the event is, it would predict it just minutes after it has happened. Just minutes.

    How can it be a prediction if it has already happened? The lesser mortals might want to know. So, I will come down from the heights and mingle with the commoners as Scar would like to put it.

    Just seconds after an event the fantastic AI powered search will go through the archival footage of CNBC and find one talking head who predicted it. Within one minute that guy will be called. Within 3 minutes the video link would be set up. Within 5 minutes he (or sometimes she) would be on air, looking very intelligent and knowledgeable and explain how he predicted it.

    People who fancy themselves to be intelligent, people who worship Scientific Method would ask stupid questions like, "on the same session when this talking head predicted it there were six other talking heads predicted the opposite. What happened to them? Why don't you call for their explanation? How many predictions by this talking head has been proven right?" etc etc ad nauseum.

    To them, I say, "You are an index fund investing guy. Why are you even watching CNBC? Just chill, and get lost. CNBC owes you nothing. "

    • Totally 100% correct. There is always "one guy" who predicts something and looks like a genius in hindsight. Some people are predicting $100 oil, some are predicting $20 oil. I just predict that Exxon is going to pay a regular dividend and remain relatively stable in price.

    • That was a prediction. They predicted that bitcoin would stay above $9k. They were clearly wrong, but that was still a prediction made before the event.

      But yes if you make lots of conflicting predictions it's pretty easy to get a few right.

  • On what logic? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:24AM (#56054457) Journal

    CNBC branded the range of $9,000 to $10,000 as "a difficult one for bitcoin to break below" after its surge over $10,000 last year.

    Based on what reasoning? There is no price support for BTC. There is no equity or guarantor behind BTC at all. Control is centralized in a small handful of "owners". They could make it go from zero to 100,000 in a day, if they decided to.

    So what genius pundit decided there was a floor to the price, and how much does he get paid to make shit like that up?

    • It's probably based on technical analysis, which studies the trend of trading for an instrument to pick out the psychological buy/sell levels. For example, if the trading history indicates many people entered BTC at $10k and the price has been trading consistently below that for some time, the expectation is that when/if it reaches $10k again there will be a lot of selling pressure by some holders who want to get out to break even. That creates what's called a resistance level. The same thing happens on th

      • Re: On what logic? (Score:4)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:42AM (#56054619)

        I other words, in pure bullshit. Technical are random patterns and luck, not market fundamentals you should rely on.

        • I'm not going to make the case BTC has any intrinsic value - IMO its intrinsic value is $0. But technical analysis is fare more than random patterns and luck, and doesn't require the underlying instrument to have intrinsic value to predict short-term movements of that instrument.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mysidia ( 191772 )

          Good technical analysis is sometimes used by traders and it's more reliable than "random luck"; although there are strong trends and weak trends, and there is always uncertainty. Will it make a break below that support line or not?

    • These people have made their living reading stock charts and looking for patterns, and have likely convinced themselves that they've figured out how to track it's value.

      I'm not sure how valid their metrics will be for something as volatile as Bitcoin, that has been known to go up 10X in value in a year and then lose 80% of that value in 2 days.

  • It's under nine thousaaaaaaaaannnnd!!

  • Editorial Note (Score:4, Informative)

    by vtcodger ( 957785 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:42AM (#56054613)

    "Bitcoin's value dipped $8,000 this morning "

    In English there is a difference between the verb **to dip** and **to dip to**. The latter is probably what was intended.

    "Prepositions" are important and they do not like to be ignored.

    • Indeed, "to dip" means placing a wad of tobacco (or snus) in one's lip. Surely bitcoin will not be dipping 8k of snus. What a laughable error in the summary!

  • ....is starting to look more and more like the boys at Davos got together and decided to take Bitcoin out. That being said, a lot of large banks and governments are very interested in using the blockchain for finance. They just want to control it and bitcoin was getting to big and they can't afford to let it get mainstream while they don't control it. It doesn't matter how good bitcoin is, the power that be aren't going to let their control of money get away from them. It will be interesting to see what

  • Wait for $1k. Then watch another 24 hours.

  • Still Much Too High (Score:5, Insightful)

    by StormReaver ( 59959 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @10:53AM (#56054717)

    Bitcoin's actual value is under a dollar. Until its price crashes down to that level, it is vastly overvalued. The word, "bubble" doesn't even come close to describing Bitcoin's current price.

    • Re:Still Much Too High (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @11:08AM (#56054827)

      >Bitcoin's actual value is under a dollar.

      That really depends on how you are measuring it. In practical terms, Bitcoin's value is exactly what you can get for it at a given moment.

      It's digital casino chips for a house that doesn't exist - but as long as there's a table to sit at, there's some value, I suppose. Just remember that nobody has any obligation to cash out your chips when you want to leave.

    • I completely agree. If cryptocurrencies are going to take off, it seems unlikely that it will be Bitcoin that will stand the test of time and become valuable. The processing overhead, the vast amounts of electricity necessary to maintain the blockchain, the high transaction costs, the latency between sending bitcoins and the ledge actualizing that trade, etc.

      I think it's likely that all of the current cryptocurrencies are worth $0.00, and if there is going to be a good one, it probably doesn't exist yet.

  • Finally reality has caught up with this inflated bubble. The lack of retailers accepting bitcoin as payment method and the horrible scaling issues which rendered micro payments impossible really made BTC a horrible option for what it actually was meant to be used for. Let just hope that the next big cryptocurrency can be used for anything other then speculation. Personally I spent my tiny investment a couple of weeks ago. The main SELL signal for me was when Steam stopped accepting BTC.

    • Finally reality has caught up with this inflated bubble.

      Bit quick to celebrate. Beware the "dead cat bounce".

  • Trading Places (Score:3)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @12:02PM (#56055253) Journal

    There is something in investing known as the "Bigger Idiot Theory". It states that an investment is good as long as there is a bigger idiot who will pay more for it.

    It appears that BitCoin investors don't have any bigger idiots left. They win the prize.

  • A lot of it (Score:4, Informative)

    by kilodelta ( 843627 ) on Friday February 02, 2018 @02:37PM (#56056517) Homepage
    Is certain Asian and southeast nations cracking down on crypto-currency. Governments in those places are cracking down because they realized they had nowhere to track payments using BitCoin, Ripple, Ethereum etc.
    >
    But like it or not it's coming, Ripple is interesting though. They're looking to super-cede the SWIFT banking transfer method and of course extract their pound of flesh for the doing. And they've got some big banks on board, like Santander, American Express, etc.

Slashdot Top Deals

E = MC ** 2 +- 3db

Close