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Bitcoin Businesses The Almighty Buck

Bitcoin Breaks Above $20,000 for the First Time Ever (cnbc.com) 76

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Bitcoin breached the $20,000 level for the first time in history Wednesday, as crypto enthusiasts pointed to increased demand from institutional investors for the red-hot digital currency. From a report: The world's most-valuable virtual currency traded 4% higher to a price of around $20,327, according to market data from Coin Metrics, taking its year-to-date gains to more than 180%. Bitcoin has been on a tear this year. Analysts say it's gotten a boost from big-name investors such as Paul Tudor Jones and Stanley Druckenmiller moving their own assets into the cryptocurrency, while tech firms such as Square and MicroStrategy have also sought to flock into bitcoin.
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Bitcoin Breaks Above $20,000 for the First Time Ever More

Bitcoin Breaks Above $20,000 for the First Time Ever

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  • Most valuable? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gnasher719 ( 869701 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @09:55AM (#60837312)
    Can we change "most valuable" to "highest priced"? The value of bitcoin is and will always be zero. What people are willing to pay is totally independent of that.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by majorme ( 515104 )
      which is more than we could say for your post disclaimer: I don't have bitcoins, nor do I care much about them. But complaining about them is just silly

      • But complaining about them is just silly

        So we can't complain about incredibly stupid people? They're the primary reason the world's such a fucked-up place.

    • Re:Most valuable? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @10:02AM (#60837328) Homepage Journal

      Can we change "most valuable" to "highest priced"? The value of bitcoin is and will always be zero. What people are willing to pay is totally independent of that.

      If you're selling, the price is the value. Change it in your head if you like, the statement is equally true either way. Every currency's value is based on what people are willing to pay, that doesn't differentiate bitcoin in any way.

      The only thing that makes bitcoin fundamentally anything besides a clever hack is that it requires costly proof-of-work, which makes it malignant.

      • you confuse commodity with currency (Score:5, Insightful)

        by aepervius ( 535155 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @10:36AM (#60837456)
        Stating that currency "by what people are willing to pay" is hiding a complex network of evaluation based on the economy of the country, how much it is used in international exchange, how easy to exchange other commodity with it, stability of value, and so forth. OTOH many of those are not valid for a commodity and is solely valued on what people are expecting the future value to be. As such bitcoin is not valued as a currency would be , otherwise alone for stability and ability to exchange service it would fail completely. As such, Bitcoin are valued as a commodity would be. Which is why it goes in such short cycle of busting and soaring. And also why it cannot ever be used as a currency in its form : if the value is dropping like a stone, as it often does, then selling an object of stable value (e.g. a burger, a ton of ore, or whatever you classically buy with currencies) for the bitcoin value is a losing proposition because you are essentially stating your object can have its value thoroughly trashed within days/months time. That does not happen with stable currency the reason why they are used as exchange. The same if bitcoin value is soaring then you would be an idiot to use it to buy a stable value object (e.g. a burger, a ton of ore, or whatever you classically buy with currencies) because waiting a bit more you get a factor that many time of value object for the same amount of bitcoin on a short term days/months time.

        Something which as volatile as BT is cannot ever be used sanely as currency for normal economical behavior (illegal stuff is another matter). At best it is a speculative commodity.

        As long as BT can make such jump in short time it will never ever be used as currency as dollar, euro or others are.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ries ( 765608 )
        Price is what you pay, value is what you get, which is nothing.

      • Short of an actual bitcoin economy - its primary use appears to me to be to hide/launder money.

        • Yes, absolutely. The primary use case for bitcoin is crime.

          What that says about bitcoin has to be examined in a larger context, though.

          We live in a world where the people and corporations with the most money can afford to use the most tax loopholes. I have a hard time getting a hard-on for anyone else who's evading taxes when they are comparatively barely making a dent.

    • The value of anything and everything other than human life is and will always be zero. What people are willing to pay is totally independent of that.

      FTFY. Hopefully you won't need some sort of car analogy for further clarification. This is Slashdot after all.

    • The value of fiat currency is also zero by some definition of value. So I'll trade you a case of canned peaches for whatever cash you have. Seems fair right? Because none of this has any intrinsic value.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • this comment is why the poor stay poor and smart money gets richer.

      most normies who bought Bitcoin sold in fear at the first dip or sold after 50% profits to buy a depreciating asset.

      let's talk about value lol.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by reanjr ( 588767 )

      Its value relative to other currencies is increasing. So that makes national currencies worth less than zero.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by vxir ( 668726 )
      Lol, sounds like sour grapes. The "value" of something is always subjective. People in desert climates value water more than those in rain forests. Bitcoin is subjectively valued by more people to be higher than any other cryptocurrency.

    • > The value of bitcoin is and will always be zero. What people are willing to pay is totally independent of that.

      Economics before 1880 thought this way and didn't do so well. The Soviet Union's pricing bureau also had disasters trying to establish objective value and wound up using Western markets for their internal pricing.

      Menger fixed this with Subjective Value Theory.

      Here's a link that requires careful reading but the "mainstream" links I found quickly aren't accurate.

      https://mises.org/library/subj. [mises.org]

  • Tulips! Hot off the pan! Get em right here!

  • 20'000 USD today... (Score:4, Funny)

    by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @10:15AM (#60837356) Homepage

    ...then 0.02 tomorrow, then 1 million the day after.
    Yes, we know, it fluctuates a lot.

    Wake us up once it hits: sqrt(-1), that would be interesting~

    ---

    ( ^- common, there's a very easy follow-up joke waiting for you).

  • Bitcoin Breaks Above $20,000.53 for the First Time Ever!!1!11!

  • Bitcoin: for the other 1% - this time that 1% is all the geeks.

  • Bad Sign. (Score:3)

    by jythie ( 914043 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @10:35AM (#60837442)
    Right now due to high inflation in the stock market there is too much money and not enough investment opportunity... so that money is increasingly flowing to riskier and riskier things. BTC is kinda like subprime mortgages.. there is a demand for investment vehicles that promise fantastic returns, so clever marketers and sellers figure out how to package something to meet that demand.. then FOMO keeps investors buying it since short term that can be really profitable as long as you pass the bag before it explodes.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • You are hilarious. Bitcoin inflates and deflates again and again like a blow-up sex doll but you think USD inflation is "bad" in comparison.

        Bitcoin is nothing without the USD, no business or bank is stupid enough to accept bitcoin, they always exchange it for dollars.

  • as they always say before the crash

  • The speculators are predicting a strong market for money laundering this year! They are expecting at least $100M of US campaign funds being moved into bitcoin and cashed out in Russia.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rossdee ( 243626 )

      Does Czar Vlad accept BTC ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      That and the stock market is experiencing heavy inflation due to stimulus money being dumped into it. It is one of the reasons Tesla has seen such a jump in price, there is a surge of money and people being reckless with it because they can afford to take risks.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      The speculators are predicting a strong market for money laundering this year! They are expecting at least $100M of US campaign funds being moved into bitcoin and cashed out in Russia.

      That's the hazard of being a speculator in a bull market. You can get the horns.

  • Bitcoin is the ultimate proof that a lot of investors always believe they will know when to get out before everyone else does.

  • First of Many (Score:3)

    by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @12:51PM (#60838074)
    Headline: Bitcoin Breaks Above $20,000 for the First Time Ever

    There's nothing to get excited about - I'm sure this will be the first of many times its value crosses that threshold.

  • To see John McAfee eat his own dick on live television.

    I suppose he'll be eating someone else's in federal prison soon, though. I can live with that.

  • It will probably hit $100.000 right about when a single transaction goes from taking several hours to complete to infinity. So whoever wants to cash in can cash in really bigly, but only if they're really patient. Poetic justice...

    • The transaction processing rate is designed to be constant of 1 block per 10 minutes.

      Transaction-computation difficulty increases if the overall transaction rate increases, to prevent run-away mining.
      Transaction-computation difficulty decreases if the overall transaction rate decreases, to entice miners.

      There is a delay to regain statis, but "goes from taking several hours to complete to infinity" would not happen unless there are 0 miners. If there is 1 or 2 miners, the computation rate is effectively free

  • Posting for Posterity (A love letter to /.) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gwills ( 3593013 ) on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @06:04PM (#60839208)
    The Slashdot community has been so horribly wrong, and arrogantly so, about bitcoin. You'd think the dawning of a new financial technology would be something Slashdot was right - and excited - about... At what point will you admit defeat? It's already laughable, yet I get trolled from no-coiners about bitcoins use-case, and how smart they are for whatever reason. Meanwhile, myself, a few others in this community and *MAJOR Institutions* are all on-board and the markets reward us. I say this as a long time /.'er and with love, but missing this reveals you nerds are worse with money than you are with women. Lets wake up to the future of money and embrace reality, ever grudgingly, and potentially create some wealth together. So, see you guys at $30k, $100k, and beyond.
    • They all missed the chance to buy for pennies and will be forever salty. Mark my words though, the day will come when landlords, farmers and other suppliers won't sell their products for slips of dirty green paper with numbers written on and they will have to begrudgingly buy in or perish.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

        The ultimate conclusion of 'greater fool' theory; the greatest fool of all is the one that denies the new reality.

    • its because /. is a big majority of leftists, big govers.

      I am from the other side and bought early in 2013, the only friend who bought as well is even more right to my side.
      All the other didn't. Some bought in 2017. All my left leaning friends NEVER bought.

      They didn't see it coming. And most are still in denial. It hurts my reason to know its because of emotions. Just like reading /.

      It means the human brain is seriously flawed when educated with sissy emotions front and center.

  • Bit-coin was originally called circle-jerk, but the domain was taken.

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