Bitcoin at an all-time high

https://www.coinbase.com/charts

by ca98am79 • 10 years ago

58 80 10 years ago

coinbase.com

danbruc2• 10 years ago

At least close to it, still a few Dollars to go, the all-time high is $1,216.73 from 2013-11-17 on the Mt. Gox. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bitcoin#Prices_and_...

TheDong• 10 years ago

Frankly that value shouldn't count.

At that time, you could not get any money, USD or BTC, out of the exchange. Those were not USD, those were GOXUSD because they could not be transacted with anywhere but the exchange nor transferred.

Same for the BTC there, they were GBTC, not real BTC.

xyzzy44• 10 years ago

That's not true. I withdrew some Bitcoin out of the exchange at that time. It was a month or so later when it was impossible to withdraw any funds.

droopyEyelids• 10 years ago

The rumors I've heard tie this to activity spurred by changes in yuan valuation.

Does anyone know of a site that visualizes information that could add information to that hypothesis? I'm thinking something like trading volumes per geographical area.

I'm also curious what role bitcoin could play in mitigating currency risk. Are people using it to buy foreign currencies and keep them in secret bank accounts? Are they attempting to use Bitcoin as a store of value?

curiousgal2• 10 years ago

trading volumes per geographical area.

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets

Sort by volume. It's not as accurate as you requested but it's close enough.

xyzzy44• 10 years ago

Bitcoin is very useful for three things, which are a store of value similar to gold (although it is more volatile), money remittance to other countries, and illegal or anonymous activities. I don't know how many people are using it for each, though.

Also as a side note it's typically very difficult to make bank accounts in other countries if you are not a resident.

automatwon• 10 years ago

I worked in data science at a tech startup that focused on remittance ($1 billion ARR). I was also offered a position at an early stage bitcoin startup in Vietnam, one of the top 'send countries' for remittance from the U.S. This is the first and primary Bitcoin service provider in Vietnam.

Bitcoin is not ideal for remittance in practice.

Speed: If you use your own wallet, waiting for the blockchain to propagate might actually be slower than currency through a remittance company. I don't know what the clearing process is for Bitcoin wallets SaaS, but Bitcoin is equal to if not slower than normal remittance tech startups. After all, speed is one of the factors these remittance startups are tackling to disrupt Western Union.

Rate: I can't speak universally, but doing remittance in or out of Vietnam with Bitcoin was too high last year. ~5% if we go USD -> BTC -> VND. ~10% in the reverse. These rates are indicative of the local currency being worthless. I also remember transferring Bitcoin internally in the U.S. last year through SaaS would eat out half a percentage.

Foreign workers who remit to their loved ones are price sensitive. That leaves Bitcoin as remittance viable to people who aren't price sensitive, at the asset of more anonymity. IMO, dirty money is not price sensitive. 10% fee to launder money is cheap. If you're already going down this road though, Vietnam mom and pop shops offer practically free remittance. They are unlikely to be regulated. And again, local Vietnam currency is useless. It's not stable or a good store of value. The government sets artificial exchange rates. People in Vietnam desperately want to exchange their money for USD, and are willing to pay a premium, which is still better than the governments rate, and so the remittance shop is able to offer people sending USD to Vietnam a free service.

A Bitcoin provider will have to exchange to and from the local currency if it's to be used for remittance. In the case of Vietnam, the exchange must exchange Bitcoin for the more worthless local currency, and hence charge the higher exchange rate. The provider in Vietnam has an underlying market exchange, actually, where there is no liquidity because people with Bitcoin expect a huge premium to exchange it for local currency.

I think Vietnam's situation can be generalized to other remittance countries where the local currency is undesired, and the government has locked down people exchanging it for USD.

the_rosentotter2• 10 years ago

The chart in this article (Washington Post two days ago) shows the correlation between bitcoin price and yuan devaluation (scroll to the middle of the article):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/01/03/why-b...

(Not a very strong correlation, in my opinion. Note the short arbitrary time period chosen.)

DesiLurker• 10 years ago

perhaps also something to do with indian demonetization of large currency bills.

nullc• 10 years ago

I'm thinking something like trading volumes per geographical area.

There are a number of exchanges in China with zero cost trades, which distorts volume figures.

momentmaker• 10 years ago

This site tracks live where in the world people are buying Bitcoins from.

http://fiatleak.com/

Most of the volumes do come from China.

dwaltrip6• 10 years ago

You have to be careful. Most people believe the volume numbers reported by Chinese exchanges are heavily inflated.

Edit: I was incorrect. See below, it seems this doesn't apply for this website as they aren't using volume data from exchanges.

the_rosentotter2• 10 years ago

Go bitcoin! An alternative monetary system can only be a very good thing, and bitcoin is one of a very short list of contenders.

pg3143• 10 years ago

can only be a very good thing,

No. It has enabled the rise of ransomware.

oleganza• 10 years ago

So did computers and tcp/ip. Should we roll them back too?

bdcravens2• 10 years ago

Not sure where they're getting that data; Bitstamp's all time high was 1163 which hasn't been broken yet (likely will today)

http://bitcoinity.org/markets/bitstamp/USD

curiousgal2• 10 years ago

Many Exchanges have prices higher than that.

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets

bdcravens2• 10 years ago

True, but I think you want to limit yourself to BTC/USD pairs, and to exchanges that were trading at the last ATH.

Marazan• 10 years ago

While not as strong as previous years the bitcoin price-to-GoogleSearchPopularity correlation is still strong.

For previous spikes price leads the search popularity on the upswing but search popularity leads price on the downslope.

gchokov4• 10 years ago

The baloon will pop out soon. It's clearly a balloon - people using it to get money out of China. At some point, what goes in, will go out. Money Flow.

pat2man2• 10 years ago

There will be another country where this happens. The fact that Bitcoin works well in this situation is further proof that it is a decent currency for international trade.

technotony• 10 years ago

New York times suggests this boom is caused by India and Venezuela, so yes other countries are picking up on this: http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/business/dealbook/bitcoin-...

gchokov4• 10 years ago

These are all valid comments.

nickthemagicman• 10 years ago

Doubtful. This is literally a revolutionary technology like the internet. The only hash coin that has proven stable over the long term. Why won't it just keep rising?

gchokov4• 10 years ago

Don't mistake blockchain with bitcoin. Please, don't.

formula1• 10 years ago

Because theres no use for it besides activity people want to do anonymously (often illegal) or avoidance of state economies (like venezuala). Outside of that, its mostly speculation and hoarding.

mikeash4• 10 years ago

It hasn't just kept going the previous n times it spiked, why would this time be different?

zsw• 10 years ago

I agree that Bitcoin and its underlying technologies are completely revolutionary, and that Bitcoin has proven to be the most stable implementation of these technologies over time. And I personally think that Bitcoin is worth many times more than what it is trading at now. However, the price and trading of Bitcoin over the past few weeks have been driven by hype and speculation, not by the unique value that the technology brings. When prices increase because of speculation, they will likely re-correct. I expect the price to drop again after the hype cools off.

amalcon2• 10 years ago

This is literally a revolutionary technology like the internet.

You can't say things like this without supporting them and expect to be taken seriously. Blockchains look to me like a brilliant approach to a real problem, but the approach is still not good enough to actually solve that problem. Also, most Bitcoin enthusiasts seem to misidentify the problem that it approaches.

xyzzy44• 10 years ago

I doubt it. You don't think Bitcoin has a fair market cap at around $10-20 billion? Seems like a reasonable range to me, especially since gold is worth way over $1 trillion. The gold bubble should pop way before Bitcoin does.

thfuran• 10 years ago

Gold actually physically exists and, aside from more practical uses, has been prized for decoration and jewelry for thousands of years. I don't really see that as a particularly good comparison.

pyrophane• 10 years ago

Yea, but if I have a lot of gold I don't have to worry that another, slightly different version of the metal is going to show up tomorrow and take away all of the value of my gold.

With Bitcoin however, assuming I believe that unregulated digital currencies are valuable, I'm still left with the question 'why is this one particularly valuable?'

The answers typically given include market adoption, support from companies, current value, and name recognition. These things have value, but none of them are intrinsic to bitcoin, and are all subject to rapid change.

For that reason, I don't consider bitcoin to be in any way 'stable,' especially since most of its value is driven by speculative investment rather than actual utility.

mmanfrin• 10 years ago

  The gold bubble should pop

>waits patiently for 7000 years

elastic_church3• 10 years ago

historically, sometime after the 1,000% gains over previous all-time highs.

This usually comes after an exchange experiences a loss of service. I would be curious to see what drama unfolds this time, since the exchanges are more numerous and seemingly more robust at this point in time.

gchokov4• 10 years ago

Or big liquidation event. It's now a mainstream trading currency, a lot of retail dudes going just become it goes up. Let's see what happens :) edit: not pair, but currency.

kordless3• 10 years ago

Bitcoin's intrinsic value is related to its ability to store a moderate amount of "debt" related data in an immutable way. As long as this "feature" continues to work well in our current economic environment, people/entities will continue using it. Saying it's going to the moon, or pop, is simply a result of a biased argument against the technology and neglects the real value in being able to say this transaction is related to these events created by human causality.

danbruc2• 10 years ago

Bitcoin's intrinsic value is related to its ability to store a moderate amount of "debt" related data in an immutable way.

What is this supposed to mean? It sounds a bit like carving IOUs in stone but that is probably not what you were hinting at.

dr_win• 10 years ago

On lower level, Bitcoin's intrinsic value is the right/ability to write a new row into an immutable append-only decentralised censorship-proof spreadsheet table. It is valuable not only in economic context to create a border-less cash-like virtual commodity. It could be used for proof of publication or proof of existence and in many other ways.

nchuhoai• 10 years ago

Does anyone know how to buy put options on Bitcoin? Or any other limited loss way of shorting bitcoin?

xyzzy44• 10 years ago

You can borrow Bitcoin from a friend, sell the Bitcoin on an exchange, and then buy your friend the same amount of Bitcoin a month from now.

bboreham• 10 years ago

That's a future, not an option. The potential loss is unlimited.

pat2man2• 10 years ago

A few options mentioned here: http://cryptorials.io/how-to-short-bitcoin-5-ways-to-profit-...

vessenes• 10 years ago

If you are willing to take some counterparty risk (and who isn't, amiright?) bitfinex has plenty of leverage and options-type trading. Chinese exchanges also offer high leverage to many customers if you really like the idea of gambling.

jboggan• 10 years ago

Years ago I built an options and futures trading platform for Bitcoin but we were strangled by regulatory compliance and I shut it down. There are always a few around but the problem with the market is that no major holder of Bitcoin wants to hedge their position in the slightest. It's such a highly volatile asset in and of itself.

popol12• 10 years ago

Don't think about bitcoin as a western individual. Think of it like you were in a poor/developping country, where 95% of the population doesn't have a bank account. Well, bitcoin gives an international bank account to anyone. With the growth of internet in these areas, Bitcoin will grow.

watty• 10 years ago

Right, but what % of those people in poor/developing countries have the internet access and knowledge to securely manage a Bitcoin attack?

andrewd18• 10 years ago

Given how regularly Western Bitcoin exchanges are hacked, I'm not convinced anyone has the knowledge to securely manage a Bitcoin attack.

facepalm2• 10 years ago

You mean an attack on their phone to steal the coins from their wallet?

drcode• 10 years ago

The problem right is that $0.25 transaction fees are now common- Not exactly ideal for a developing country (though the current price spike is mostly unexplained, so it's totally possible it is succeeding for some developing country use cases, despite the high fees)

elastic_church3• 10 years ago

Its more like 25 cents to exit one economy for an international one denominated in bitcoin.

mamcx• 10 years ago

Except when is rule out of the law, as in Colombia where is prohibited (under the premise is only used by scammers):

http://www.eltiempo.com/tecnosfera/novedades-tecnologia/bitc...

bagosm• 10 years ago

Does this article take into account bitcoins that are in wallets lost forever?

jason_slack3• 10 years ago

Is BitCoin mining still mostly done by huge mining farms running ASIC miners?

Can someone with 4 Titan-X cards even mine anything worthwhile? Given municipal electricity is very cheap, etc?

illegalsmile• 10 years ago

Can someone with 4 Titan-X cards even mine anything worthwhile? Given municipal electricity is very cheap, etc?

No.

jason_slack3• 10 years ago

and I guess it has been this way for a while.

It seems you really need a huge hardware investment to mine anything and you must mine long term to even pay for the investment you made.

What are current miners like, hardware wise?

mikeash4• 10 years ago

It looks like you could expect around 800 million hashes/second doing Bitcoin mining on a Titan X. The current Bitcoin hash rate is about 2.5 quintillion hashes/second.

The current reward for a block is 25 bitcoins, plus whatever fees are included in the transactions which are relatively small at the moment, as I understand it. A block is mined roughly once every 10 minutes, so that's 3600 bitcoins/day mined. At $1100, that's about $4 million/day.

You could expect to see, on average, an amount relative to the proportion of total hashing power you bring. That would be $4 million * 8e8 / 2.5e18 = 0.13 cents/day, approximately. (Note, not $0.13, but $0.0013.)

So, yeah, not really worthwhile.

jason_slack3• 10 years ago

What a great explanation! Thank you for taking the time to do so. Are the mining farms still using ASIC miners?

npongratz• 10 years ago

The current reward for a block is 25 bitcoins

If I may offer a slight correction: the reward per block halved to 12.5 bitcoin in July 2016 [0]. Doesn't materially change the results [1], but probably worth mentioning for posterity.

[0] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36763524

[1] 1800 bitcoin / day mined @ $1100/BTC is $2MM/day, so one would gross $2MM * 8e8 / 2.5e18 = $0.00064/day. And at today's ~$900/BTC, $0.00052/day.

TYPE_FASTER• 10 years ago

As much as I really don't care for the energy waste associated with mining, when parents at the bus stop started talking to me about production block chain deployments they were working on, it's obvious the block chain will be adopted by the enterprise.

r00fus• 10 years ago

Jeebus where do you live where that bus-stop talk happens?

asdz• 10 years ago

Yet Mtgox still owe me my bitcoin :/

Bitcoin at an all-time high

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