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Bitcoin Tops $1,000 For the First Time

An anonymous reader writes with this bit from The Next Web "Bitcoin hit a new milestone today, passing the $1,000 mark for the first time. The virtual currency is currently trading above the four-digit figure, with its highest at $1,030 on Mt. Gox, one of the largest exchanges. Last week, Bitcoin's high for the day was $632. That means its trading value has surged 62.83 percent in a week, assuming we're looking at just its high points. That figure could of course rise even further if Bitcoin continues to push further up throughout the day."

45 of 371 comments (clear)

  1. Sell now. by Frosty+Piss · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The price may go up a little more, but all indications are sell now before the crash.

    --
    If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
    1. Re:Sell now. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nonsense, it'll keep skyrocketing in perpetuity! Adios Beanie Babies, daddy found himself a new gravy train. Choo choo!

    2. Re:Sell now. by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Tons of people said that when the price spiked from $4 to $20.

    3. Re:Sell now. by Njovich · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Great! Lets do a 100 dollar bet: if the price at January 1st is lower than now I pay you $100, otherwise you pay me $100. You're in?

    4. Re:Sell now. by CanHasDIY · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The price may go up a little more, but all indications are sell now to kickstart the crash.

      FTFY.

      Most market crashes are triggered by large sell-offs; by imploring people to sell, sell, sell, you're doing your part to make the prophecy self-fulfilling.

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    5. Re:Sell now. by CanHasDIY · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hey, shut up, man, I'm trying to give myself an edge over these suckers!

      Er, I mean... Ah... pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Sell bad!

      --
      An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
    6. Re:Sell now. by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The entire history of investing.

      --
      No sig today...
    7. Re:Sell now. by alexander_686 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Read up on “Short Selling” in the stock market.

      What you do is borrow BitCoins from party A, exchanging your cash for their BitCcoins. Then sell those BitCoins for cash to party B. You now owe BitCoins and own cash. When BitCoins crash you buy back those BitCoins at a lower price to satisfy your loan to Party A.

      There are people who claim that short selling can drive the price down. I don’t think you can. Or rather, a very large group can temporally drive the price down by short selling. But in the long run it balances out - as you said for every short seller there is a long buyer. So I don’t give the OP much credence. But then again I think he was trying to make a joke.

      A word of warning - there is a old saying that the markets can stay rational longer then you can stay solvent.

    8. Re:Sell now. by O('_')O_Bush · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Tons of people said that in 2006 with their house value.

      --
      while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
    9. Re:Sell now. by khallow · · Score: 3, Funny

      Selling bitcoin now isn't tempting fate so much as cutting off your nose to spite your face.

      At a sudden $1000 per bitcoin, that's a really generous return on spite.

    10. Re:Sell now. by lgw · · Score: 4, Informative

      "In the entire history of investing, there has never been anything like X before."

      This was said in earnest in every single past bubble. Bitcoin's future is entirely determined by fashion - as it becomes more fashionable, price will go up, if people drop it like last-years boy band, it can go to 0.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    11. Re:Sell now. by ultranova · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And when you do get margin called, you're fucked.

      Don't play more than you're willing to risk if it tanks completely.

      Better yet: stick to buying and selling. Leave derivatives to the professionals. Even they trip up on them, as the financial crisis shows, but they'll also get bailed out while you won't.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    12. Re:Sell now. by alexander_686 · · Score: 3, Informative

      One can as easily short currency as one can short stock. Or wheat, bonds, etc. I suggested looking up stocks because there is more and clearer information out there then on bonds. Let me see if I can make my point clearer. Remember, I am only going through the mechanics of a short sale.

      Example #1: I sell 1 BitCoin for $1,000. This is your example. It assumes you have $1,000 and are interested in a finial sale.

      Example #2: I borrow 1 BitCoin today from Party A and promise to pay back the 1 BitCoin plus interest sometime in the future. Party A does not trust me and asks for collateral so I post the $1,000 as collateral plus some extra amount as a buffer. I then sell the borrowed BitCoin for $1,000 to Party B. Under this scenario we don’t have to assume I have $1,000. Maybe I only have $5 or $10.

      And I am not sure what technical point you are making. Yes, the number of shares sold in a IPO is arbitrary. So was the choice for the number of BitCoins.

      As long as I can borrow BitCoins I can short BitCoins.

    13. Re:Sell now. by alexander_686 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What about the housing bubble? The value of land soared then fell – and they are not making any new land.

      There are lots of bubbles that have formed where the assets are fixed. The South Sea Bubble where the number of shares was fixed. Limited edition pound puppies. The Nifty 50.

      Or maybe the Hunt Brothers trying to corner the silver market. Could more silver be produced? Opening a new mine takes 10 years and would only add a very small fraction to the total supply of silver. Most mining of precious metals have almost zero effect on the overall supply. The last time a gold find had an impact on the price of gold was, IIRC, 1890 in South Africa.

      I could go on.

      No, it is a bubble when the price of a thing because disassociated with the intrinsic value of a thing and BitCoin has no intrinsic value. Of course, no money has any intrinsic value because it is the yardstick by which things are measured. You can only get relative measures, BitCoin vs. USD vs. Gold.

      So I might point to Shiller’s checklist for bubbles. (He won the Nobel Prize for his work with bubbles.)

      Check and Bingo - “New era” theories to justify unprecedented price increases
      Check - Sharp increases in the price of an asset like real estate or dot-com shares
      Check - Great public excitement about said increases
      Check -An accompanying media frenzy
      Check - Stories of people earning a lot of money, causing envy among people who aren’t
      Check - Growing interest in the asset class among the general public
      No Check - A decline in lending standards

    14. Re: Sell now. by myowntrueself · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's part of the problem. People are putting real value into the bitcoin market, value that the holders of old coins can come and claim whenever they feel like it. If any significant amount of old coins are cashed in, it's going to cause the mother of all crashes.

      AFTER that happens, bitcoin might be a reasonably stable currency to do things with. It depends on whether the cashing in kills it or not.

      If 10 people with 1000 bitcoins each now went to MtGoX and wanted to cash in their bitcoins, what would that do to MtGoX? I think they'd be fucked.

      Seriously, this is empty speculation and there isn't the actual money invested in bitcoins to support this increase in face value. The system is fucked. Theres no way the bitcoins in circulation today could actually be cashed in for actual money.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    15. Re:Sell now. by Capsaicin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I bought at $7. They are now worth $1000. Should I feel foolish?

      No, you should fee lucky. Have you made any profit yet?

      --
      Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
    16. Re:Sell now. by michelcolman · · Score: 3, Informative

      You obviously suck at math, then.

      If you have $2000 and can buy bitcoins at $1000:

      1. Buy 2 bitcoins (spending $2000), short one, bitcoin drops to zero: you have $1000 (gain from the short)
      2. Buy 1 bitcoin (only spending $1000), bitcoin drops to zero: you still have $1000 (saved from the start)

      How on earth did you expect to make more money by shorting something while being long on the same thing, rather than directly selling what you have?

  2. dammit... by gabereiser · · Score: 5, Funny

    why didn't I buy 1,000 bitcoins when they were $50 a few years ago!!!

    1. Re:dammit... by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Massive currency volatility makes long term business planning impossible.
      Unless bitcoin settles down, it'll never become a viable mainstream alternative.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    2. Re:dammit... by brit74 · · Score: 5, Informative

      They were at $90 five months ago. (Not sure why you're modded as "informative" when you're inaccurate.) https://coinbase.com/charts

  3. Re:Who wants to prick the bubble? by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm a bitcoin miner and I do agree they are overpriced at the moment. It should be $200-300 IMHO.

  4. If central bankers are like rats... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... then Bitcoin is like rat poison.

    Seriously, its your protection against money printing.

    1. Re:If central bankers are like rats... by Megane · · Score: 3, Informative

      It is apparently also much easier to steal, or have you not noticed all the buttcoin articles on /. over the past few months where there is a major heist or a trading company vanishes with millions of dollars worth? I even saw something today where someone threw out his computer with a bitcoin wallet on the hard drive (not backed up, of course) and now he wants it back (duh).

      --
      #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  5. Big ass hole by Lord+Apathy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Man, when this cash cow comes crashing to the ground its going to make a huge ass hole. Yes, it will come crashing down and I think it will be soon.

    Bitcoins are a nice idea but people are not treating them like money. They are treating them like stocks and commodities. They are not commodities, they are coins and coins are supposed to be spent.

    So when the fall does happen, and it will, then maybe we can start using them for what they are supposed to be used for. An not hording them like bunch of fucking dragons.

    --

    Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification

    1. Re:Big ass hole by lxs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sour grapes. He didn't get any when they were cheap and now he missed the boat.

    2. Re:Big ass hole by Lord+Apathy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There is no ulterior motive or even sour grapes, just pure speculation at this point. Even most bitcoin "investers" believe that bitcoins are over priced. An they would be correct.

      People are hording them like stocks hoping the value will keep going up and up. While bitcoins maybe be a virtual currency and not subject to the whims and regulations of any government they are still affected by the laws of economics, human greed, and insecurity.

      The higher the value that bitcoins go the more people will start to get nervous about it and start wanting to sell. When this happens more people will sell and then the market will become over saturated with sellers and not enough buyers. Then the value will crash, free fall is a better word for it.

      An since bitcoins are not regulated by any government there are no safety nets in place to stop a bitcoin freefall. I don't even know if it can be stopped because of the way they work.

      I'm not just pulling these theories out of my ass ether. There is precedent for just such a collapse. The stock market collapse in the late '20 and early '30 that brought on the great depression. The things that caused it are currently all in place to cause a "great bitcoin depression."

      Now I'm not saying that a bitcoin free fall will cause any kind of global economic collapse. Bitcoins are not that popular or even well known to cause that. In reality a bitcoin collapse will probably be barely noticed by most people.

      --

      Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification

    3. Re:Big ass hole by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bitcoins are a nice idea but people are not treating them like money. They are treating them like stocks and commodities. They are not commodities, they are coins and coins are supposed to be spent.

      Money is a commodity. Money markets and foreign exchange markets prove that it is.

      --
      The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
    4. Re:Big ass hole by cusco · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is reminding me more and more of the tulip bulb bubble all the time.

      --
      "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
  6. Re:Who wants to prick the bubble? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nope, he's old school, pickax and wheelbarrow. The black lung is a bitch though.

  7. Re:Who wants to prick the bubble? by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes.. ASIC blades mostly.

    Really, the spike is good news because I'm making so much more money than usual (per USD), but this isn't going to last. It's not going to deflate to $0 though...

  8. Why do they call it a currency? by bob_super · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is just a hyper-volatile investment which can be bartered against goods from people who are either gamblers or clueless.

    All currencies are volatile to some extent, but this thing has no fundamentals to back it up.

    1. Re:Why do they call it a currency? by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 5, Insightful

      same ol' shit every thread.

    2. Re:Why do they call it a currency? by kokojie · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It is not traceable, unless you are just careless with it. Silk road itself was running a free mixer service, to make your coins untraceable.

  9. Where is all of this money coming from? by jandrese · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With the high profile shutdown of Silk Road the number of things you can buy with Bitcoin would be considerably less. While it's true that there are other services available, it seems strange to me that so much money is being dumped into the system now. Maybe someone is trying to buy up enough coins for a trip to space? Or maybe someone is laundering a crapload of money and is having trouble on the outbound side (converting the money back into real life currency) and is creating a backlog?

    Or it's an attack on the system itself, maybe someone figure out a way to race the market and make money?

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
    1. Re:Where is all of this money coming from? by crtreece · · Score: 4, Funny

      I do ATM

      You might want to spell out the acronym in that context.

      --
      file: .signature not found
  10. Re:Who wants to prick the bubble? by east+coast · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh, so he plays Minecraft too?

    --
    Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
  11. Anyone want tulips? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    .Seems like March 1637 all over again.

  12. Cryptolocker Spike? by texaopian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does anyone think that the rise in price might be a result of the new demand for Bitcoins due to Cryptolocker outbreak?

  13. Re:November, 2013: by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sometimes being able to buy stuff without being fucking tracked is not only perfectly reasonable, it's a damn good idea.

    Like elections.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  14. Re:Who wants to prick the bubble? by Pr0xY · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I recently had a discussion about whether or not the spike in BTC is a bubble or not and came to some interesting conclusions.

    From what I can tell, essentially a bubble burst occurs when prices have become so inflated that people are priced out of buying in. This creates a lack of buyers, causing the sellers to dramatically drop their prices. For example, if I buy a house for $100,000, and then sell it for $150,000, then they sell it at $250,000, etc, etc. Eventually the price gets so high that people just won't buy the house. Leaving the last buyer to take the hit and sell at a loss (if he chooses to sell).

    BTC is somewhat different though. It is divisible to 8 decimal places (infinitely divisible in theory, just need to update the clients). So people can never be "priced out" of the market, they can just buy a smaller slice of the pie if they desire. This is unlike a house where I (typically) can't buy just a fraction of it.

    So the only thing I can say for sure, is that we cannot be sure whether or not the rapid rise in BTC value is a bubble which will burst or not.

  15. Re:Who wants to prick the bubble? by jythie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wish I had mod points ^_^ but yeah, that is an element that differs from classic bubble mechanics.

    We might encounter other problems though such as traders making BTC unproductive for people using it for goods and services. It could also crash if some large (or simply enough) players cash out and deplete various exchange's ability to convert BTC into other currencies, which could cause exchanges to close shop and thus reduce the utility.

    Though historically there are plenty of examples of bubbles of easily subdivided items, even including things like gold. So you can not get a housing-style bubble with BTC, but that does not make it immune from the general pattern.

  16. Looks like deflation by Algae_94 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember a lot of argument on old bitcoin posts about whether bitcoins were a deflationary currency or not. It is certainly looking that they are right now. The value of them is increasing with time allowing one bitcoin to buy more and more with each passing day. So with the current market, why would someone spend bitcoins? They can wait a day and spend less coins for the same goods, or wait two days and possibly spend even less. This will kill it as a currency. Bitcoin will be solely used as an investment for speculation soon.

  17. Re:November, 2013: by CanHasDIY · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sometimes being able to buy stuff without being fucking tracked is not only perfectly reasonable, it's a damn good idea.

    Like elections.

    Except that several websites keep a running tally of who has donated to whom, and how much.

    Sadly, the people buying elections have so much money and power that fear of discovery doesn't even cross their minds; hell, some of them are proud to be subverting the democratic process.

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  18. Not really over $1000. by Animats · · Score: 3, Informative

    Buy Price $968.80 Sell Price $963.76 (Coinbase).

    Coinbase prices are real, because if you sell there, you get the money. Mt. Gox prices are higher, but you can't get US dollars out.

  19. Re:Who wants to prick the bubble? by iluvcapra · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you buy a commodity, or any item with a static underlying value, with the expectation that you will profit from appreciation, you are a speculator. Having a years-long time horizon, or a moral commitment to the commodity, does not significantly change your status.

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.