Bitcoin Is Crashing (businessinsider.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Bitcoin is getting smashed. The cryptocurrency was down 18% to about $892 per coin as of 8:17 a.m. ET on Thursday. It is the biggest drop in two years. Earlier this week, on its first trading day of the new year, Bitcoin crossed above the $1,000 mark for the first time since 2013, but it has now tumbled below that level.

Comments

Previous article

[buchner.johannes]

https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
Probably a lot of people took the news of a 1000$ high as a chance to sell now?

Re:Previous article

[aaarrrgggh]

More like a pump and dump scheme I would guess.

Re:Previous article

[houstonbofh]

And the second it dropped below $900, people started buying and pushed it to $975... Look up "Profit Taking" "Rebound" and "Correction" to see why this happens and how it happens in stocks and other investments all the time. Essentially, a lot of people had sell orders at $1100 that started a dip. A lot of day traders dumped when it dipped causing a big drop. But a lot had buy orders if it went below $900, and that floor caused the day traders to jump in and push it up further.

Maybe just profit taking?

[DigitalSorceress]

I really think that a lot of folks had just said "oh 1k maybe time to "cash in"...

I bet it rebounds and will go through some oscillations every time it crosses 1k until folks get used to the idea that it can go to /higher than 1k then it will creep up and probably take a dip at 1.5k and/or 2k

Re:Maybe just profit taking?

[AthanasiusKircher]

The ignorance of looking at a 24 hour 17% drop vs a 300% 12 month raise is astounding. I would think most people who understand financial markets would not be this ignorant to call this a "crash"

For someone accusing others of being "ignorant" of financial markets, you sure have a funny way of reporting statistics. You do realize that IF you had a 300% gain, then a 75% loss would completely erase it, right? When talking about percentage gains this large, it usually helps to talk in terms of actual numerical gains or at least how much of a loss you have COMPARED TO the gain (in real numbers).

According to the first search hit I found, a year ago Bitcoin was at around $432. Yesterday, that site reported it as $1135. That's a 162% gain, not 300%. As I write this, Bitcoin is around $950. That's is indeed somewhere around a 16-17% loss in 24 hours.

But, from a clearer perspective on how we relate those two percentages, the gain for the past year was about $700. The overnight loss is so far around $185. In other words, Bitcoin lost OVER A QUARTER OF ITS YEARLY GAIN OVERNIGHT.

Is it back where it was a year ago? No. But trying to pretend that this is a minimal loss by juxtaposing numbers like 300 and 17 is disingenuous at best.

Should "people who understand financial markets" be worried at such a turn of events? Probably not. Because people who understand financial markets know that Bitcoin is right now a really bizarre investment subject to the whims of "pump and dump" investors, and there's still a lot of value locked up in some early investors who could completely crash the market if they decided to jump ship.

So, anyone "who understands financial markets" probably expects Bitcoin to be this volatile -- probably even more so. Whether a person "who understands financial markets" would consider Bitcoin a sound investment is a different question.

Re:Bitcoin is always crashing.

[Maritz]

Number of instances of word "bitcoin" in your comment about a Bitcoin article: 0.

Bitcoin is dead

[vvaduva]

This is it...Bitoin is dead!! It's up 300% over the last 12 months but down 18% over the last 24 hours. It's fucked! Bitcoin is dead!! What idiots use this crap??

OMG back to $929!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not news. If I wanted to know what the BTC value is I'd not check on /.

This stuff makes me feel old

[Gilgaron]

At work I get dollars for labor, which can be used to procure goods and services. I could also use my computer sitting at home to do nothing and save electricity, fold proteins for the good of mankind, or generate numbers that for some reason can be used to procure goods and services? Usually when you get value for no reason it is part of a Ponzi scheme. Does Bitcoin hold any value because it also seems to be a decent way to launder money?

1st Million coins

[Holi]

As long as Satoshi still controls the first million bitcoins I fear it cannot be taken seriously as the creator has the power to single handily effect the market. No bank or government is going to back something where 1 individual has set themselves up with such disruptive power.

Inverse relationship to Yuan

[NotARealUser]

Welcome to currency trading. The reason your grandparents did not bet the farm on currency is because of the wild swings. Somebody gains big and somebody loses big here. These sort of swings in currency are exactly how George Soros made his fortunes. I do not think the current swing indicates good or bad days ahead for BitCoin. It only indicates that it is being used for huge profits by some.

Here is a little explanation of what just happened:
One of the biggest emerging Bitcoin markets is in China. China's Yuan has been weak and even a small percentage of investors moving their Yuan investments in and out of Bitcoin can cause the market to fluctuate greatly. China's Yuan is much bigger than Bitcoin, so relatively small waves in China really rock the boats in the Bitcoin world. There was a spike in Yuan value, and some investors assumed better days ahead for China and cashed out bitcoins for Yuan. As you can see from the current charts, investors now saw cheap Bitcoin and are buying those again.

Re:Don't buy bitcoin for an investment.

[lgw]

All investment is risk, but that's different from what people normally mean by gamble. Sure any investment bears risks such as global nuclear war, government/societal collapse, alien invasion, and so on, but the unexpected death of the investor is a higher risk than those sorts of things. Any investment is a risk somewhere on the scale between short-term US treasuries, and loaning money to a heroin addict, but that doesn't mean all risks are similar.

Also, volatility and risk are different things. At this point for BTC, I'd be much more concerned about its volatility than the risk it would go to 0, making it speculative regardless.