Bitcoin $500

by _hv99 • 13 years ago

132 139 13 years ago

snitko2• 13 years ago

Well now it must definitely be too late to invest. Don't even think about it guys. It's a ponzi scheme slash not real money slash libertarian wet dream. I'd rather trust helicopter Ben with my savings than some obscure open source software that eats 10Gb of my disk space.

eudox• 13 years ago

Honestly can't tell if that's satire. Might be a symptom of approaching senility.

mike_esspe• 13 years ago

It's just a Poe's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

notdrunkatall3• 13 years ago

now it must definitely be too late to invest

So said people at $3, $30, $100, etc.

sturmeh2• 13 years ago

I came across this in my chat log history today, on a friend who I rarely message.

http://i.imgur.com/EaAVLYZ.png

frostmatthew• 13 years ago

That works the other way too...people who invest during a bubble are quick to say "it's not a bubble!" - I'm not saying this is a bubble (I won't pretend to know enough or have clairvoyance), but it's not a valid defense to say something isn't overvalued just because people had said that at prices it has since eclipsed.

sturmeh2• 13 years ago

It's not a ponzi scheme by definition, and you don't need to have a copy of the block chain on your harddrive.

davidgerard3• 13 years ago

Not at all! Technically, it's a pump-and-dump.

Aqueous• 13 years ago

The market capitalization of US dollars is (correct if I'm wrong) $3 trillion.

The current market capitalization of BitCoin is above $5 billion.

There will only be around 21 million BitCoins.

If the market capitlization of BitCoin even gets close to a national currency like the US dollar, each BitCoin will be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We are about to be at $500. Unless governments crack down on BitCoin(possible) I don't foresee this stopping anytime soon.

To me government intervention to the point of banning BitCoin seems like it would be, at this point, somewhat pointless. The Federal Government has known about BitCoin for some time and has yet to take any major regulatory action against it. I think if they wanted to shut it down they would have long before millions of people started using it, and long before major backers like Peter Thiel and the Winklevi had time to establish BitCoin-based companies and lobbying groups. You want to nip something like this in the bud before it becomes an entrenched interest - and they haven't done that yet.

I'd say it's not too late to invest.

Element_• 13 years ago

The US gov waited until eGold was doing ~2 billion in transactions annually before it moved to shut it down. Given the growth rate of btc it just recently became big enough to get the attention of the federal gov. I think it is certain the US government will attempt to shut it down more a question of when and how elaborate their attempt is (e.g. Will they try to: arrest a few btc users, dump large sums of money into the btc markets to destabilize it, or build a cluster larger than the entire btc network).

snitko2• 13 years ago

I think it's time for <irony></irony> tags on HN.

dwaltrip6• 13 years ago

Sounds like you've done your research and thoughtfully considered the different angles.

BrokenPipe2• 13 years ago

S curve. I think this is just the starters.

dcc1• 13 years ago

Its 470$ on bitstamp, please ignore mtgox rate, that site is unusable

joosters• 13 years ago

So who's using it then?

shocks4• 13 years ago

It's very easy to withdraw from MtGox with Japanese and Chinese currencies. BTCChina is very close to GoxUSD in terms of price. The MtGox price is actually pretty accurate, bitstamp is the one that is lagging behind.

gokhan• 13 years ago

$485 in Coinbase. Quite close to MTGox.

wmf3• 13 years ago

Technically this is true, but given the trajectory we can expect that BitStamp will get there in a few days.

pseudonym• 13 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it impossible to withdraw USD from MtGox at this point? How can this be a viable source of BTC->USD comparison when the only thing you can do with a USD balance on MtG is buy?

shocks4• 13 years ago

It's not impossible, but it is difficult.

However - it's much easier to withdraw in Japanese and Chinese currencies. BTCChina is pretty close to GoxUSD.

wozniacki• 13 years ago

Is localbitcoins dot com dead ? Does anyone use it anymore?

swalsh• 13 years ago

Stupid question maybe, I believe I still have a few bitcoins laying around (I got them when we were speculating how crazy it would be if Mt Gox ever reached $1)

I'd like to buy a pro copy of google sketch-up, and buy some lumber at this lumberyard that is cash only.

How do I do it if i can't withdraw usd?

fsniper2• 13 years ago

use coin2pal.info. I have used their service a few times and it is working. Slow but reliable process.

jnbiche3• 13 years ago

Register with Bitstamp, provide paperwork (passport + U.S. drivers license is probably best bet), wait a few days for them to process, sell Bitcoins, wire transfer to your U.S. bank account, wait ~ 5 days to clear, profit!

Once you've done this once, everything will go a lot faster next time.

Don't bother with mtgox, there's a reason why there's such a price discrepancy and we all use Bitstamp as the real exchange rate.

EDIT: I just read elsewhere that mtgox is still highly liquid if you're in Japan or China, which means that there may be a good reason for the price discrepancy (high demand in China). But don't bother with gox if you're in the U.S.

ye6• 13 years ago

BitStamp just hit $470 an hour ago, and you can definitely withdraw from them.

seanalltogether• 13 years ago

I cashed out all my coins at $144 over a month ago now and I've still been waiting for money to show up. One the one hand I feel annoyed at losing out on the huge rise in value, on the other hand this huge delay makes me feel justified in escaping this terrible system.

smtddr• 13 years ago

I sure would like to know what bitcoin service you were using...

prezjordan• 13 years ago

Sold 5 for $10 a piece and never got my money. The process of converting BTC to USD is insanely convoluted. I should've sold them to a friend.

dwaltrip6• 13 years ago

Mtgox != bitcoin. For everyone who is wondering, Coinbase actually has pretty good service.

ok_craig• 13 years ago

You could've just sent the bitcoin to Coinbase and sold them there.

dm2• 13 years ago

I've used CoinBase and their withdrawal process is very easy. The funds were in my bank account within 3 days.

Zoomla• 13 years ago

You should be able to at least withdraw your bitcoins, which you could then keep locally or sell for cash?

coin• 13 years ago

Not exactly cash, but Gyft does BTC --> Amazon.com gift card very painlessly.

archQuestions• 13 years ago

CaVirtex.com was paying higher than MtGox yesterday...

flux_w42• 13 years ago

I constantly read about people waiting for months on their money from MtGox so I tested it a few weeks ago: I did a withdrawal of 250 EUR from MtGox to my European bank account and it took exactly 12 days. Not blazingly fast, but for sure not impossible.

Mad_Dud• 13 years ago

Could the recent peak be related with the Cryptolocker campaign?

mwilcox• 13 years ago

It's more likely driven by recent interest of Bitcoin from China: http://index.baidu.com/main/word.php?word=%B1%C8%CC%D8%B1%D2

Egregore2• 13 years ago

Can't great firewall of china be configured to block port 8333?

ck22• 13 years ago

What happens to the price when only people with 500Ghash/sec+ can make coins next month?

Early adopters are rightfully getting a nice reward now, but how do you get "fresh blood" when the difficulty is off the chart unless you have several thousand dollars in hardware?

3pt14159• 13 years ago

You tell people they can buy things on the internet with bitcoins that they can't otherwise buy on the internet.

ye6• 13 years ago

What happens to the price when only people with 500Ghash/sec+ can make coins next month?

What do you even mean? That's what pools are for. You can make bitcoins even with a shitty CPU (but will probably spend more on electricity).

grimgrin• 13 years ago

You cannot make bitcoins with a shitty CPU, or a shitty GPU. You can try, but the difficulty is too high, and is always increasing.

If this is a new concept to you, imagine:

When I first received my BFL Jalapeno (ASIC 5G mining rig) and started mining, to the time I sold it, the difficulty had increased enough that I was seeing a .05 BTC gain in twice the time. So now you can imagine how eventually only people above a certain mining speed will be profitable.

venomsnake• 13 years ago

You start a new blockchain with few million more of the late adopters.

oleganza8• 13 years ago

Difficulty does not affect the price at all. Bitcoins are produced at a more-or-less stable rate regardless of the amount of mining competition.

In fact, before hashrate was that high a lot of investors' money was going into mining, not to exchanges (30% growth every 10 days over the last 6-7 months). As mining becomes more and more competitive, less money will go there and more to BTC holders, thus moving the price drastically.

Edit: typos and more clarity.

Jach5• 13 years ago

wat. The important figures for miners are the btc/usd conversion rate, the network difficulty, your hash rate itself, how much you initially paid for your rig ($/Gh) and how much power you're drawing ($/watt). All of these factors are important, but what will dominate over the coming months is power cost. Someone mining a 100 GH/s rig will make 5 times less BTC per day as someone mining a 500 GH/s rig, it's true, but if the 500 GH/s is sucking up proportionally more than 5 times the electricity then it can be better to mine with the lower hash rate. If the conversion rate improves that delays the period where electricity costs outweighs the income. For the difficulty to rise another order of magnitude (which would make BFL 60 GH/s Singles worthless), there needs to be about another 30 PH added to the network -- where's that coming from in only a month? In any case, people dropping their rigs because they're too power hungry may cause the difficulty to go down and make it worthwhile again for some who live in low-electricity-cost areas... There are variables you're not taking into account, hence the wat.

ck22• 13 years ago

That's the thing, the new 500Ghash machines can smoke your 500Mhash machines and they use only a little more power. They are using 28nm ASIC.

A farm from a year ago can be completely outpowered by a couple of these machines.

And they are coming online in force over the next 30 to 60 days.

smokeyj• 13 years ago

You can buy shares in mining efforts.

polarix• 13 years ago

It turns out we might have enough miners for a while. No problem, time to beef up the exchanges and merchant systems.

wmf3• 13 years ago

If Bitcoin is only about mining then it deserves to die. If Bitcoin wants to be an actual currency then it should be able to work like any other currency where you can't print money.

rdl• 13 years ago

I'm really glad I wasn't able to figure out how to short bitcoin right after the Silk Road takedown; I would have gone broke.

mtgx• 13 years ago

Shorting bitcoin sounds like very bad idea. If you're going to "invest" in Bitcoin, then going long term is definitely the way to go. Even if you invest say right now, but then Bitcoin drops to $300, it's best to keep it a year longer, and then watch it pass $1000 or whatever.

thomasz• 13 years ago

Or watch it fall below $10.

Tycho• 13 years ago

I wouldn't want to short the one asset that's been on an exponential growth curve. It can only go down 100% but who knows how high it could climb. At least put a ceiling on it.

iamjustin• 13 years ago

It can only go down 100%

Isn't this true of all stocks/commodities? You can only lose 100% of your money.

wslh• 13 years ago

"Bitcoin will have to change the mining hashing function (SHA-256) in 7 years" https://twitter.com/SDLerner/status/401467511784235008

oleganza8• 13 years ago

For the purposes of hashing, double SHA256 is very far from being "broken" or drastically accelerated. If there's some ultra-fast chip that increases hashing by a factor of million, there are still enough of non-zero bits to have unique block hashes. And if, by chance, two blocks have the same hash, it does not break anything at all: each block has a unique serial number ("height") anyway. Hash is only used as a proof of work for a given height.

kmfrk3• 13 years ago

I remember trying to buy some BTC on MtGox for fun, the last time the price crashed.

What an unspeakably horrible service. I thought I was in for hundreds of dollars over budget, but it turns out that not a single BTC was purchased at all.

I only intended to buy ~$50 worth, so I would only have earnt something like $200, but for the love of everything, stay the hell away from MtGox. It's insane how unprofessional they are.

healthcare.gov may be bad, but this is five circles of hell down from that.

VexXtreme• 13 years ago

I find that many companies related to Bitcoin are extremely unprofessional and they still run their businesses like 3 years ago when Bitcoin was just an internet novelty and not a real currency the way it is today.

Just look at the latest Blockchain fiasco where the guy who runs the company got butthurt over some Reddit comments and got involved in a flame war. MtGox's lack of professionalism is just the tip of the iceberg.

I love BTC and I wish it would take off in a major way, but in order for that to happen people with shitty attitude need to stop running the community. I guess this is why regulation exists in the real world... oh well...

kmfrk3• 13 years ago

Definitely, which is why I tried to just buy a few (fractions of) bitcoins just for the historical fun of it, but as intensely skeptical I am of all the bitcoin craze, I was still shocked at just how awful MtGox is. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if I could code something better.

Just to tell people that as amateurish as they may think these exchanges are, it's actually much worse.

Makes you wonder how a company like CoinBase even got funded by YC, come to think of it.

davidgerard3• 13 years ago

This is part of the scary naivete of Bitcoin boosters. It's as if how to set up and run computers for serious financial systems was never worked out by anyone before. There has to be a Bitcoin exchange that isn't run by clowns ... hasn't there?

oleganza8• 13 years ago

MtGox was handling 90% of exchange last year, but now - only 25-30%. Bitstamp is huge now, and Bitcoin-Central.net is easy to use (although it hasn't regained it's past volume yet).

kmfrk3• 13 years ago

Bitstamp looks interesting, but Bitcoin-Central is down, ironically.

ye6• 13 years ago

From my own experience, Bitstamp is ridiculously easy to use.

Nilzor2• 13 years ago

Just signed up with Bitstamp to try it out, but why don't they accept VISA deposits?

foobarqux• 13 years ago

I'm not very confident about a upstart financial services company based in Slovenia.

Not a single mention of financial guarantees, insurance or regulation on their site.

singular• 13 years ago

For those who are interested, pleasingly it's considerably easier to buy/sell btc in the UK these days, [32] and [33] are very functional - I used [32] to buy coins and then [33] to sell some just today. [33] looks much better value both ways but [32] is about as easy as it gets.

* Using comedy numbering scheme in reference to [1337].

[32] https://bittylicious.com/ [33]:https://localbitcoins.com/ [1337]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373

fabiofederici• 13 years ago

Is it possible to predict Bitcoin? https://www.facebook.com/coinalytics

Mahn• 13 years ago

No.

dugmartin2• 13 years ago

I went to this talk in 2011 where Gavin Andresen tried giving bitcoin away to anyone that emailed him: http://blip.tv/amherstmedia/making-money-gavin-andresen-igni...

kbaker• 13 years ago

At the time of the talk (Feb 2011) 1 BTC was equal to 0.50 USD.

Amazing that it is up 100000% in about 2 1/2 years.

haakon• 13 years ago

So – did you email him?

dugmartin2• 13 years ago

No, and I have a feeling in a few more years they will be worth as much as they were then.

pearjuice2• 13 years ago

Here we go again. A thread full of financial experts, conspiracists and excessive naysayers. Let's keep Bitcoin off the frontpage until it crashes, okay? With this trend it will reach an all-time-high every week or so which every tech blog will wrap in a bag-full-of-fluff-blogpost, there will be new analysis et cetera.

Let it go. Just enjoy the ride.

drewblaisdell• 13 years ago

Let's keep Bitcoin off the frontpage until it crashes, okay?

Because you say so, right?

pearjuice2• 13 years ago

It was a proposal and my current opinion on the Bitcoin spam every few days on Hacker News. I wasn't expecting anyone to agree with me, but for one am free to state my opinion.

tux• 13 years ago

Now is the time to convert your bitcoins to cash, because this wont last for much longer :-)

DennisP• 13 years ago

Depends on your investment goal. Personally my main reason for holding bitcoins is so I don't feel like punching myself every time it goes up another $100.

riffraff• 13 years ago

arguably, you could still punch yourself for not having bought more :)

SG-2• 13 years ago

that doesn't make any sense. it will be $1000/btc in less than a year.

JoeAltmaier• 13 years ago

And it draws into question whether bitcoins can be a useful currency. Can you trade fractional bitcoins? I'm ignorant on the subject, but if not, well carrying around $500 bills is pretty limiting.

ceejayoz• 13 years ago

You think it will be, unless you're The Doctor.

notdrunkatall3• 13 years ago

No matter your take on bitcoin's long-term viability (or lack thereof), it can hardly be argued that this isn't damn interesting to watch unfold.

A cryptocurrency with zero backing that exists only in digital form is now worth many billions of dollars. Is it a bubble? Will this foment a currency revolution of sorts? If it doesn't crash, how will governments react? If it does crash, what will replace it? Obviously there is a demand for a decentralized currency, and as more people realize that something like this is possible, I can only see demand for it going one way: up. Most people have never even heard of bitcoin; I've only talked to a few people in my own life who are even familiar with the word, and fewer still who know what it actually is. Yet with even such a small awareness, bitcoin's value has grown from zero to billions in a few years. Unless governments step in and find some way to put the kibosh on decentralized currencies in general, it seems unlikely that demand is going to shrink as awareness continues to increase. We're so used to governments essentially owning currencies that it is very difficult to imagine a world where they don't, but obviously, if cryptocurrencies take off in a big way, the implications for the future are profound.

oleganza8• 13 years ago

1. Any money is a bubble in a sense. It's a feedback loop of speculation that the commodity at hand will be widely accepted by other speculators in the future. The only basis for this speculation is that people need some money to trade. The money bubble pops only if there's some other, better commodity on the horizon that speculators may bet on. http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.fr/2013/04/bitcoin-...

2. Some governments are very supportive (at least, not intrusive): Germany, China, Hong Kong, Canada. In United States Bitcoin is effectively 90% forbidden already. Banks close accounts for Bitcoin businesses with no reason, regulatory approval is very slow and very-very expensive (need to get it from all states), past history of very aggressive raids on financial experiments.

enraged_camel• 13 years ago

>1. Any money is a bubble in a sense.

Not really, no. Peter Thiel's explanation of bubbles is great. He says that bubbles arise when there is (1) widespread, intense belief that’s (2) not true. During the dotcom bubble, people were pouring money into companies simply for having a domain name; the intense belief was that the companies were worth a ton of money, and that simply was not true. A similar reasoning led to the housing bubble: the intense belief in that case was that houses are great investment vehicles and they always appreciate in value. Turns out that also was not true.

Currently, the main thing that is driving Bitcoin's price is speculation. There is widespread, intense belief that it will become a major currency. Is that belief true? The simple answer is we don't know.

But that's not true with just any money. The dollar for example is not a bubble: people believe it to be a reliable medium of exchange, and the fact that it is backed by the US government makes that belief true. Therefore it is not a bubble.

crassus• 13 years ago

Moldbug is great. What do you think of Urbit? From what I understand, it's attempting to create property rights in digital identity like bitcoin does for digital money.

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

As an economic hobbiest I wonder how much of this is part of BitCoin and how much is part of the restriction on the 'float' of available coins. Specifically several recent actions, from the Silk Road take down to the wallet services going away have reduced the quantity of available coin that can be used for transactions. Is that the driver behind the price? After all the drug trade didn't just "stop" when Silk Road was taken down. And if you've got obligations to pay in BitCoin and your wallet provider just went off the air with your stash? Now you are out trying to get coins to finish the transaction before the other side of that transaction declares it invalid right?

kristopolous• 13 years ago

I lost hundreds of them due to a disk crash a couple years ago (they were worth I think $0.06 then). I think that's the biggest downfall of the currency. As time progresses, more and more coins will be "lost" and the replacement rate will slow to, well, 0.

It will become as much a currency then, as rare baseball cards or antique physical coins.

Egregore2• 13 years ago

What will happen with the price of bitcoin if quantum computer with enough q-bits will be invented?

oleganza8• 13 years ago

Most probably, quantum computer will not be invented overnight. Hash functions are not seriously vulnerable, but ECDSA signatures are. Fortunately, most funds are sitting on never-used addresses which are basically the hashes of the public keys, which are not instantly crackable by a quantum computer. People will probably have time to switch to a new signature method which is resistant to QC. Like Lamport Signatures, for instance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamport_signature

The price will dip, but may recover pretty quickly, like when the famous v0.7/v0.8 fork that happened this March.

If the Bitcoin can't be fixed and becomes unusable, its value will instantly become zero and everyone's savings in it will become permanently lost.

knodi2• 13 years ago

I hope there is a crash coming.

dwaltrip6• 13 years ago

That is a curious thing to say. Why is that?

knodi2• 13 years ago

so I can buy them as a cheaper price point and the current market gain is just people buying to making 10% gains daily and not really to use the coins as currency.

dwaltrip6• 13 years ago

One of the most interesting things about discussions regarding bitcoin is you can always count on a few people getting quite angry and spiteful, as if they are personally offended by its existence.

Remember friends, keep your identity small ;) -- http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

prawn• 13 years ago

Options for purchasing for someone in Australia? Coinbase appears to be US only. Their support docs suggest international support in early 2013, but no sign of that being realised.

Bitcoin $500

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