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Funny how anti-crypto-currencies news always talk about how much of a fall the value of Bitcoin took since last year, but they never mention that it also rose by a lot to get to that insane peak value.

Remember that Bitcoin was proclaimed dead by a number of fools every time it went down in value.

Let's look at the four-years chart for a second. From july 2017 to december 2018 was simply a peak, but extrapolating that curve only shows it will keep going up.

air is going out of the baloon

Really?

https://bitcoincharts.com/char...

(Note: Log scale)

Yeap. Thanks for proving my point. It is still not close to the 2014 high where the last craze ended..

air is going out of the baloon

Really?

https://bitcoincharts.com/char...

(Note: Log scale)

Apparently there must be some tax liability the IRS believes you incur simply by holding Bitcoin

Holding alone, doubtful. I bet they're interested in people who bought Bitcoin, saw it appreciate greatly in value, and then used it to make direct purchases.

Suppose you bought 100BTC in January 2015 at $200/BTC, then last month when the value hit $700/BTC, you used your 100BTC to buy a $70,000 BMW. You realized a $50,000 in profit on your initial investment, of course the IRS would love to know about it.

> Agreed. I am surprised that they don't go after any exchange that transacts more than 6 figures.

Coinbase, in fact, does run a bitcoin exchange, which traded $96.6 million USD worth in the last 30 days:

https://bitcoincharts.com/mark...

For the few equity traders that buy Bitcoin that it is rare and that the Bitcoin economy is going to grow is enough. They just buy some Bitcoin and hold on to it.

I'll just leave this here:

Value of Bitcoin over the last two years

It's a good thing bitcoin will be there to show people what the stability of a crypto currency looks like:

http://bitcoincharts.com/chart... .

Yup no one there lost anything, but I guess when the "free market" bends you over it's ok because.....

Bitcoin is deflatory, your savings are growing over time (in buying power).

Not for anyone who purchased Bitcoins in the past year:

http://bitcoincharts.com/chart...

Bitcoin's effective value is based every bit as much on consumer confidence as any fiat currency. You can theorize about the inherent deflationary nature of the currency, but the historical proof says otherwise, and there is no guarantee of a bottom price.

+1 Interesting, thanks.

Although I can't help but view this as just short-term speculation. If you've got the money, then buy a huge mass of Bitcoins at $600 in a very public event like this one, creating renewed interest as the news breaks, which increases demand, which drives the price up. Then as upward momentum slows (e.g., at $720) sell gradually over the course of many days so as not to induce panic with a single high-volume dump. Now you've made a 20% gain on a multimillion dollar investment over the course of a week.

Look at the 6 month history of BTC price: http://bitcoincharts.com/chart... . The volatility is pretty apparent, and it's not like we haven't seen both sides of $600 (i.e., rising and falling) before.

There are exchanges that handle that many coins daily: http://bitcoincharts.com/marke...
And three investment funds on Wall Street with more than that amount already.

All you need to do to not crash the price is arrange a private sale, or release the coins gradually. About 3800 newly created coins are generated every day, and the market absorbs that, so just keep your daily sales smaller than that, like 1000 a day or less.

Can someone explain how this isn't silly? He wants it backed by intrinsic value, which I think may be missing the point of Bitcoin, and his example of the perfect thing with intrinsic value is "stocks"?

Stocks do have intrinsic value because owning a stock is equivalent to owning a company, and all the company owns (factories, farmland, guns, whatever). Bitcoin, on the other hand, has no intrinsic value.

Partly because of this, stocks are also much less volatile than bitcoin and are better at being a store of value. For instance, compare this recent bitcoin chart with this S&P500 chart over the same period. As you can see, the difference between the min and max stock is about 4%, while bitcoin is about 40%. That's 10x worse.

Is there a way of transferring stock (for instance an S&P500 ETF) as easily as bitcoins can be transferred? I don't know, but it would be very cool, and definitely much better than Bitcoin. So anyway, his idea is probably unworkable, but it's not silly or ridiculous IMHO.

This was evident to those of us 3 years ago, who casually downloaded the bitcoin client, left it run for a week or so, and saw not one coin in return. We (by which of course I mean "I") subsequently lost interest and uninstalled the client.

Yep, bitcoin has been doing really poorly over the past 3 years.

Vicurex is tiny. They only did US$30,822 of business in the past 30 days. The corner pawnbroker is probably a bigger business. The corner gas station definitely is.

Bitcoin may be a future currency (though I doubt it is The Future of Currency). It may be a very bad high risk investment (though calling it a Ponzi scheme would be giving the players far too much credit). Whichever it is, or wherever in between, it is no more or less what it was in the (nearly imperceptible) wake of Vicurex's failure.

Really?

Last 5 days: http://bitcoincharts.com/chart...

Last year: http://bitcoincharts.com/chart...

Really?

Last 5 days: http://bitcoincharts.com/chart...

Last year: http://bitcoincharts.com/chart...

Guess what... bitcoin price is arguably still trending up.
All you have to do is look at the logarithmic graph.
And frankly, logarithmic is the only way to view it, considering the exponential price movement.
Here's the data: http://bitcoincharts.com/chart...

Well, the main place to do it is (was) MtGox.
No it wasn't and hasn't been for a long time

I would disagree.

I couldn't find historical data, but MtGox dominance is even great if you go back only a few months.

http://bitcoincharts.com/chart...

they have gone from 1200 to 150. I have no idea where you are getting 800. Since the date on you post is 15 minutes ago, I think that instead of looking it up, you just pulled a wishful number out of your ass.

http://bitcoincharts.com/chart...

http://bitcoincharts.com/chart...

MtGox has dropped from number 1 to number 3, with 21% of bitcoin volume. http://bitcoincharts.com/chart...

The declaration from China came in the middle of a bubble. In my analysis (yay, random internet guy analysis), it seems as if that drop was not because of any direct impact of the declaration, but simply came because enough people knew it was in a bubble and was simply waiting to sell as soon the bubble seemed to burst. The declaration acted as a signal for the end of the bubble.

Oh, and it seems to keep dropping.

Seems to be flattening out now that Mt Gox is allowing withdrawals again. I think it'll come back up now - until the next bad news story, just like any other currency :-)

I'm not sure how one can evaluate whether the bitcoin value is in a bubble or not as there is no way to evaluate how much it should be worth other than current demand, which will fluctuate based on whatever news is happening at the moment rather than on any intrinsic value or economic indicators which might be used to valuate real property or nation based currencies.

For the China adjustment though, I think is more because it had been very recently taking off in China specifically as their currency is very tightly controlled and when the government came down on exchanging it the Chinese have backed off to see what happens. Being as large a country as they are, combined with the currency controls (which is unusual for a large country to have in place) means that the potential demand in China is enormous.

The declaration from China came in the middle of a bubble. In my analysis (yay, random internet guy analysis), it seems as if that drop was not because of any direct impact of the declaration, but simply came because enough people knew it was in a bubble and was simply waiting to sell as soon the bubble seemed to burst. The declaration acted as a signal for the end of the bubble.

Oh, and it seems to keep dropping.

Daily 12.000.000 usd worth of bitcoin is converted on biggest exchange ( http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/btceUSD.html ) Converting 20.000 usd is triviall.

Wow, that's a dumb statement. Take a look at this chart http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg150ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv. See that little blip at the beginning of October? Yeah, that's your "panic."

Bitcoin was held down because of silk road, not supported.

Says the idiot AC with no research skills.

From Bitcoin Charts
Bitcoins sent last 24h 1,303,510.08 BTC
Bitcoins sent avg. per hour 54,312.92 BTC

So the FBI's 174,000 coins would equate to less than 13% of the current daily volume, or in other words wold satisfy the full current demand for, oh, about 3 whole hours.

Several altcoins are available on BTC-e (currently Litecoin, Namecoin, Novacoin, Peercoin, Featercoin, Primecoin and Terracoin).

I would call BTC-e a "valid exchange" because 16% of Bitcoin trades happen there (http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/volumepie/). Bitstamp has 19%, and MtGox has 22%.

Plotting wildly changing values on a linear scale is not really informative. The only relevant metric is relative change, so a logarithmic scale is the only thing that makes sense. Bitcoin does seem to be in a bubble that started mid October/start November, but in the long run, sorry, over the last three years, the price chart seems consistent with a steady increase of around a factor of 5 per year, overlayed with a number of bubbles. This slower increase could be another bubble, but then I wouldn't expect the increase to be that steady, particularly not spanning several bubble bursts. It doesn't seem consistent with the mechanisms of bubbles (but I have no training in economics, so I could very well be mistaken).

The release on Nov 1st had no noteworthy impact on the Bitcoin market;
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg10zig6-hourzczsg2013-10-28zeg2013-11-11ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv
( You can check other exchanges if you'd like. )

It had a huge impact on the number of Redditors panicking (or trying to cause panic), on the other hand.

4100 stolen, not sure how many they had. The current total number of bitcoin in circulation almost 1.2 millions each at about $ 300 piece. number of bitcoin in circulation price chart

Look at the current graph. To me it looks very much like now is not the time to buy.

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg360ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

But if the chart looks good and you like to speculate on bitcoins, buy what you can afford to lose.

Not even "in the days", more like "in the hours". Check that spike in trades at 6pm Oct 2, when the news hit the Web - somebody made a pretty dollar (or a pretty Bitcoin) on people panicking, by midnight trades dropped to usual level and by 6pm Oct 3 it already more or less stabilized at $130.

Even if it's so, reality agrees with GP. Check how it dropped in last two hours since the news hit the net.

ASDFnz writes "It has been just over two months since the bitcoin block chain was rocked by a near disastrous fork causing the bitcoin price to crash. ..."

Right. Near fucking disastrous. You can see the effect right here, after clicking the "DRAW" button. At least, if you look very hard, and squint just right, you might just be able to pick up the crash that happened 2 months ago.

Actually, I can't see a bloody thing. ASDFnz is a liar.

You don't have to be a professional economist to recognize that a "currency" that collapses and loses half its value in the space of minutes is a bad investment.

Shrug. I said a few weeks ago that the value of bitcoin seemed to be approximately correct at about $70-$80. If it's been higher in the interim, that's just because some speculators made bad purchase decisions. Chart... looks to me like the current value is about right and the recent highs were a bubble. I'd wait a little to see if the price drops further before making a buy decision, but now doesn't look like a good time to sell. Bubbles happen, but don't affect the validity of the underlying instrument.

If this was true we would not have just seen a $100 drop.

We haven't seen a $100 drop. We've seen a bubble caused by speculators inflate the price by about $150 over the course of about 3 weeks, and a correction back to a figure closer to the long term average value. See this chart. The line at the bottom is the 200-day average value, which is basically a lagging indicator of the actual value once all the short-term fluctuations have been taken out. It has barely budged; it certainly hasn't dropped at any point recently.

Where were your big BTC holders in this period?

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#czsg2011-05-31zeg2011-11-01ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zi1gVolzv

Speculators will come, speculators will go, however, mining pressure will always be there, day after day.

See how your instrument without any yields or dividends does after 8 years of constant selling.

Look at this chart:

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#igWeeklyztgSzm1g10zm2g25zi1gVolzv

Right after the start of trading, volume went to 50k per week, and never went below. 50k per week was the old block award per week total.

Look at the period from July 2011 to December 2011. Constant downward pressure.

January 2013, block award halved, this current bitcoin bubble started.

I would be really curious to see stats on that. I see people claiming it is being hoarded, and others claiming it is being widely used for every day living. I have yet to see anything to back up either extreme.

Well, since the entire transaction history of Bitcoin is open for anyone to browse, it's just a matter of comparing the volume of trades for the amount in existence.

According to http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/ the numbers are a total of 10,967,175 BTC in existence and 1,568,786.54 BTC sent in the last 24h. Which doesn't really seem to support the hoarding claims to me.

BTW, this is yet another reason why Bitcoin is so interesting: it's a goldmine of accurate data for economists, precisely because every transaction is immediately visible to everyone. You'd think every ministry of economics would kill to switch their national currencies to a system like this - not necessarily Bitcoin itself, but the system can be easily adapted to fiat currencies, or do things like automatic taxation - where they see very last trade as it's being made, 24/7/365.

Anyone else notice that this question is being asked during a massive bubble period, and what is necessary to prop up a bubble is public awareness? Just like my post just now is shamefully unrelated to its parent, might the true purpose of this Ask Slashdot be to bring in a few more suckers before it crashes down to 15 or 20?

I will admit my biases against Bitcoin and my post history speaks to this, but this is a tactic also used to prop up stocks and precious metals. So yeah, I'm calling out TFS.

Volatile??? Have you even been following bitcoin over the past 2+ years?

I dunno about the guy you are replying to but I have been following bitcoin and it has certainly been volatile. It's not all that unusual for the value of bitcoins compared to major world currenecies to double or halve within a single month.

What other new currency has this kind of upward trend?

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?width=940&m=bitnzNZD&SubmitButton=Draw&r=&i=&c=0&s=&e=&Prev=&Next=&t=S&b=&a1=&m1=10&a2=&m2=25&x=0&i1=&i2=&i3=&i4=&v=1&cv=0&ps=0&l=0&p=0&

So you talk about 2+ years and then link to a chart that only covers about 1.5 years and therefore conviniantly misses off the 2011 peak. Yes in the last month or so the value of bitcoin has surpassed it's 2011 peak but only time will tell whether the current price is stable or another bubble (personally I suspect the latter).

http://www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?width=1223&m=mtgoxUSD&SubmitButton=Draw&r=&i=&c=0&s=&e=&Prev=&Next=&t=S&b=&a1=&m1=10&a2=&m2=25&x=0&i1=&i2=&i3=&i4=&v=0&cv=0&ps=0&l=0&p=0&

Volatile??? Have you even been following bitcoin over the past 2+ years?

I dunno about the guy you are replying to but I have been following bitcoin and it has certainly been volatile. It's not all that unusual for the value of bitcoins compared to major world currenecies to double or halve within a single month.

What other new currency has this kind of upward trend?

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?width=940&m=bitnzNZD&SubmitButton=Draw&r=&i=&c=0&s=&e=&Prev=&Next=&t=S&b=&a1=&m1=10&a2=&m2=25&x=0&i1=&i2=&i3=&i4=&v=1&cv=0&ps=0&l=0&p=0&

So you talk about 2+ years and then link to a chart that only covers about 1.5 years and therefore conviniantly misses off the 2011 peak. Yes in the last month or so the value of bitcoin has surpassed it's 2011 peak but only time will tell whether the current price is stable or another bubble (personally I suspect the latter).

http://www.bitcoincharts.com/charts/chart.png?width=1223&m=mtgoxUSD&SubmitButton=Draw&r=&i=&c=0&s=&e=&Prev=&Next=&t=S&b=&a1=&m1=10&a2=&m2=25&x=0&i1=&i2=&i3=&i4=&v=0&cv=0&ps=0&l=0&p=0&

These sound like reasons why you think bitcoin should lose ground, or why you want it to lose ground, not proof that it is losing ground. Take a look here to see a graph of bitcoin trading activity:

http://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed-min-week?showDataPoints=false&timespan=&daysAverageString=7&scale=0

And here is a graph of volume and price:

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgTzm1g10zm2g25zvzcv

It's obvious from the above that its usage has been increasing. Also, if you have a google alert on bitcoin you'd notice that these have been increasing as well, so the media is picking up on it.

The bubble is obvious: look at the 2013 BTC/USD chart.

Despite periodic "corrections", the price is still continuing to rise precipitously. The volatility is insane, but how viable is it that the price on 1 Jan 2013 was 1 BTC/~$15, and now it's trading for ~$70? The value has more than quadrupled in the 81 days so far in 2013. If the present bubble is extrapolated that represents roughly a 103,000% APY; clearly, that growth is unsustainable.

So... is anyone selling put options on BTC?

Seems like purchasing a few puts on BTC will pay off handsomely.

Every 6 months we get a story about how the value of BTC has dropped 25%

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zl

Every 6 months we get a story about how the value of BTC has dropped 25% again and theres been a hacking incident at some exchange or something, but its OK because its mathematically proveable and thus a viable currency.

True, but I think a better argument for you is the fact that despite these periodic "corrections" the price is still continuing to rise precipitously. The volatility is insane, but how viable is it that the price on 1 Jan 2013 was 1 BTC/~$15, and right before this latest glitch, it was pushing ~$50 per BTC?

Look at the chart. See the exponential growth? The value has more than tripled in the 71 days so far in 2013. If the present bubble is extrapolated that represents roughly a 49,000% APY; clearly, that growth is unsustainable even in the face of "pigheaded wishful thinking".

Want to buy some tulip bulbs? I hear they are a "can't lose" investment!

Right. But my point is that if spending is shown to increase globally (which it is), we can infer that the remaining volume of bitcoins that are hoarded is diminishing (volume = number of bitcoins multiplied by frequency of transactions). Also, you need to realize that the ultimate goal of hoarders is to sell at some point in the future, in order to realize a profit. Therefore there is always going to be some amount of bitcoins available for purchase if the exchange rate continues to climb. See http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html : the sell orders smoothly cover a price from $30 or so up to trillion of dollars. Therefore "lack of liquidity" is never going to be an issue - the exchange rate is just going to climb and entice some hoarders to sell.

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

Even if you bought at the top of the previous peak, as long as you didn't sell you're back in black.

At all other times, buying and holding will have netted you a nice profit (if you sell now).

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgSzm1g10zm2g25

Yes, trading is going on. http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html