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Bitcoin Exchange Value Halves After Chinese Ban

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the newton's-law-of-should-have-gotten-out-last-week dept.

An anonymous reader writes with news of the latest major fluctuation in the price people are willing to pay for Bitcoins. From the article: "China's ban on its financial institutions handling bitcoin causes world's largest exchange to cease trading, halving the value of the currency from $1,000 to less than $500 in a matter of days. The country's central bank took a hard line on Bitcoin in early December when it banned financial institutions from handling the decentralized crypto-currency, and as a result BTC China, the world's largest bitcoin exchange, has stopped accepting deposits from its users." Just watch that line trend downward.

7 of 475 comments (clear)

  1. This is just a clever trick by China . . . by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now that they have driven the price of bitcoins down, they will now buy up all of them at low prices . . . and then . . . announce that the will accept them as currency . . .

    Profit!

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  2. Crypto COMMODITY by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I wish people would stop calling these "crypto-currencies", because it is a total misrepresentation of what these things are. They are crypto-commodities. BTC is just like gold right now - it is not used to transact, it is used as a value store - except it is much worse as a value store because it is orders of magnitude more volatile. No one can use BTC as a currency because its value fluxuates so wildly. Everyone who is SUPPOSEDLY using it as a currency just has it pegged to the US dollar with a live update.

  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. No surprise in the collapse by timholman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When a couple of my friends started posting "now is a great time to buy into BitCoin" messages on my Facebook feed a couple of weeks ago, I had a feeling the BTC price was about to take a strong downward turn. It is never a good sign when the "true believers" begin actively recruiting new buyers into a price bubble.

    The collapse of BitCoin as a speculative investment is inevitable, and its own success will be its downfall. The speculative frenzy over BTC is based strictly on artificial scarcity. The problem is that there are an infinite possible number of cryptographically signed digital currencies. If only X amount of gold exists in the world, there is no replacement for it, assuming you desire the exact physical qualities of gold. But if only Y digital coins exist, it is trivial to create another digital coinage with a slightly different protocol that behaves exactly the same way as far as a user is concerned.

    The boom in BTC has led to several new competitors, with similar frenzies growing around some of them. And given the low barrier to entry, you can expect more and more competing digital currencies to appear. It is only a matter of time before people realize that they're fighting over a particular set of tulip bulbs while standing in an infinitely large field of tulips. Once that happens, the speculative bubble will pop for good for all digital currencies. In the long run, this is a good thing, because once the speculators are gone, some digital currencies may actually prove useful as a real medium of exchange, with values that don't fluctuate wildly from one day to the next.

  5. Re:Comparison: Bitcoin is like 'Abortion' in the U by Captain_Chaos · · Score: 5, Informative

    "No one governing" the Euro is what almost caused the collapse of the EU over one small state having credit difficulties.

    Wow. It's been a long time since I've seen such a high concentration of ill informed bullshit in one sentence...

    1. The Euro is not "not governed". It is governed by a very strong and independent central bank, namely the European Central Bank
    2. The EU did not "almost collapse". A few countries have received some large loans, all of which still look like they will be paid back in full. At no point was the "EU" in danger, nor even the Eurozone (despite wild speculation in the media), which is what you probably meant
    3. The Euro was not "dramatically volatile" at any point. It's been trading for about $1.20 to $1.40 consistently for the last ten years
  6. Re:Darn! by sunsurfandsand · · Score: 5, Funny

    silly me thought my 5GH miner was going to make me stupid rich...

    One out of two ain't bad.

  7. Re:profit by Clent · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I bought $20 USD worth of bitcoins, back when that bought more than one. Around the peak, located conveniently around the same time as black friday, I sold a fraction of one coin for a $250 USD Amazon gift card. The fee was in bitcoins and was (at the time) equivalent to less than $5 USD, I think it was closer to $2.50 USD. The process was not immediate but it took less than 4 hours. When I originally purchased bitcoin, getting it back to USD like this wasn't an option.