Slashdot Mirror
Friday's Big Swings, Mostly Down, Illustrate Bitcoin Value Volatility
An anonymous reader writes "As cool as Bitcoin is, it looks like it lost 1/3 of its value in the last 24 hours. Lots of big sells, complaints of liquidity, and pissed off nerds." The linked article goes on to explain that the value rose again, so the aggregate loss was considerably less. The author also helps defuse claims that Bitcoin is untraceable or otherwise especially well suited to nefarious activities.
I keep waiting for someone to jump out and shout "April Fool!"
Yes, yes, all currency is imaginary. But there's imaginary and frigging deluded.
I have some tulips for sale.
The opposite of progress is congress
The gst of the article is "Bitcoin is important. It's just like real money. See, it even has a market like real money, but the problems of the market aren't too bad." Despite the Slashdot headlne mentioning the volatility, the article goes out of its way to say to say that the problems aren't all that bad and goes on to emphasize how much it is like real money. It then goes for four sections (out of five total) explaining exactly what Bitcoin is, why people might want to have it, how it's being attacked for no fault of its own, and how some people don't like it but it's just paranoia.
It's a disguised ad It's like having an article whose headline says that a popular diet doesn't always work, then reading the text and finding that the reason it doesn't work is because it's too natural and some people refuse to obey the diet because they don't like natural things. Then followed by paragraphs of details about the diet, where to buy a book about it, and complaining about how the media doesn't like the diet.
Someone just cashed out a large deposit of bitcoins, and these nerds and bitcoin miners just got played. 3 months ago, this thing was less than $1. Now it was $30? lolz Someone made some good money, and waited for there to be enough liquidity for them to be able to cash out and raped the order book. This is a classic accumulation/distribution (a.k.a pump and dump) pattern where a few buyers suck in a multitude of retail fools by slowing raising the price through accumulation, and then once retail fervor hits, they dump it and get out. It's so stereotypical, it's a cliche, and I guess bitcoin just fell for it as well. I only wish I could short this thing, it's going back to below $1.