Bitcoin Surges 10% To All-Time High Above $2,700, Has Now Doubled in May (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In another intraday jump of more than $200, bitcoin surged to a record Thursday on strong Asian demand overnight. Bitcoin jumped more than 10 percent to an all-time high of $2,752.07, more than twice its April 30 price of $1,347.96 according to CoinDesk. The digital currency last traded near $2,726. At Thursday's record, Bitcoin has now gained more than 45 percent since last Thursday and more than 180 percent for the year so far. "There is no question that we are in the middle of a price frenzy," said Brian Kelly of BKCM, in a note to clients Thursday. "There will be a correction and it could be severe, but it's unclear if that correction will start from current prices of $2700 or from some place much higher."

Comments

Unclear

[110010001000]

"but it's unclear if that correction will start from current prices of $2700 or from some place much higher."

I wish I had a job like this. There will be a correction, but it might happen today, or 10,000 years from now.

Re:Unclear

[Anonymous Coward]

So, prostitution then?

Re: Unclear

[Anonymous Coward]

this is *NOT* a sign of a healthy market.

Re:Unclear

[zifn4b]

"but it's unclear if that correction will start from current prices of $2700 or from some place much higher." I wish I had a job like this. There will be a correction, but it might happen today, or 10,000 years from now.

Yeah, you know, some day the world might end or it might not. If it does end it could be sooner or later, it's hard to tell. Whatever the case may be we should all be prepared for it if that day ever comes. Now that's what I call news.

Re:Unclear

[Anonymous Coward]

"but it's unclear if that correction will start from current prices of $2700 or from some place much higher."

I wish I had a job like this. There will be a correction, but it might happen today, or 10,000 years from now.

I worked at a University research institute doing "industry research." You do not want this job. The stress of having a scientific mind and knowing your job is 80% bullshitting is just too much.

Re:Unclear

[courteaudotbiz]

I also wish I had a job like "today will be sunny, tomorrow will be rainy". And if the exact opposite happens, it doesn't matter. You keep your 6 digit job anyway.

Re:Unclear

[courteaudotbiz]

Then it was not "research". It was "gambling".

Re:Unclear

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh. You're an idiot. I already put research in quotes. What more do you want from me? People call that shit research. Hard though it may be to imagine for you, you know sometimes words have two meanings. And she's buying a stairway to heaven.

Re: Unclear

[Anonymous Coward]

I will place this here. I am KGIII, but forgot my password. I am reasonably known and a mathematician. I am NOT an economist. My Ph.D. is in Applied Mathematics.

I have not done even a scrape of math. Get out now. Sell, even if you could wait and make more. I don't even have to do the math. Really, I don't. You can buy in again, but get out now, and wait. Again, sell.

Err... I kinda have some rep, but do what you want.

Re:Unclear

[Imsdal]

No, prostitution involves working for your money. That is why they are called "working girls", after all. This doesn't involve actual work.

This is going to end well lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who jumps on board right now might as well just douse their money in petrol and touch it off. What a joke.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[GLMDesigns]

Anybody that jumps in now is a speculator and not an investor. It will drop. But to what? I don't think it's going below $1000 again and certainly won't hit 500.

If you told me a year ago that BTC would be at $1000 today I would have nodded and have been happy.

It spiked up because Japan legitimized it a couple of months ago and shot up 1500 over the last week because China took away some of their restrictions.

BTC is here to stay. As is Eth.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[watermark]

I'm sure someone said the same thing when it passed $1k. If you bought in at $1k, you'd be feeling pretty good right now. With that said, I'm not buying any right now.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[sheramil]

I don't think it's going below $1000 again and certainly won't hit 500.

I'd like to hear your reasoning for this. As far as i can tell, the price of bitcoins is tied to emissions of neutrinos given off by the sun.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Dunbal]

Nah, there's still a lot of upside left. Human greed is phenomenal. When you see people mortgaging their houses to buy bitcoin THEN you get out.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[bluefoxlucid]

Nobody really asks why bitcoin is $2,700. The answer is simple: Because people think it will be worth more than $2,700 later. They're all speculators.

The difference between "investment" and "speculation" is how people feel about it.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[mtmiller100]

Exactly. At the end of the day, it's all gambling.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Zocalo]

I think it's pretty clear that BTC - and ETH, for that matter - is in a bubble right now, but due to the relatively low trading volumes it's such a volatile entity that does not mean it's too late to buy in; you just won't have the same return as those who got in at a lower price while facing exactly the same risk of a wipe out. The trick - as with any investment bubble - is to sell before it pops and, as I doubt anyone can confidently say when that will occur, "$2,700 or from some place much higher" is probably about as good as it's going to get. Even then, there's no telling what the correction will be or (more importantly, for those that don't get out in time) how long it will take BTC to recover - if you're prepared to play the long game then riding out the correction and eventual recovery is a viable route to a profit as well.

If you're not already onboard by this point though, the smarter option might be to just wait for the all but inevitable correction, buy in during the panic selling as the price corrects, then ride the next price bubble to profits. Just be sure to sell before that bubble pops too.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[DontBeAMoran]

Rule of acquisition #10: Greed is eternal.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Anonymous Coward]

There are practical uses of bitcoin. Estimation of future value based upon the utility of future bitcoin use serves as one guide to decide current price. It is true this is speculation, but it isn't simply based upon estimating what future speculators may think. Things like bitcoin acceptance as currency around the globe compared to the supply of bitcoins will increase or decrease the value of a bitcoin outside of any speculation.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people use it as a commodity for gambling, but other people use it as a currency. Bitcoin has features of both.

China seems to be using it mostly as investors try to get cash out of the country. They can buy bitcoin in China, travel to another country, and sell it for cash and then make investments in economies outside of China.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Serge_Tomiko]

One cannot invest in a number on someone's computer, just as no one can invest in baseball cards or comic books. Unlike money, bitcoin has no intrinsic value - no government will adjudicate public or private debts using it.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been saying exactly the same thing since 2011. The people that didn't listen to you are now rich beyond their wildest dreams. But this time, it's different, right?

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Comrade Ogilvy]

There is bitcoin acceptance and there is bitcoin usage. The two are not the same, although when you a scrappy itty bitty currency fighting for recognition, the difference may not seem so important.

Bitcoin can be accepted and be beaten out by competing currencies. There will definitely be digital blockchain competitors in the future. Plus once we accept that bitcoin is a currency is suddenly is compared directly with the big boys, for both good and ill. Consider the USD has approximately 100% "acceptance" across the entire globe, yet no one assumes that global economic growth guarantees anything about the price of the USD.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Which is to say, there is no intrinsic floor to the price of the bitcoin, which is a huge problem is you are a rational actor that views volatility negatively. Not all rational actors put a significant negative on volatility, but most of us do.

In comparison, the USD does have a practical floor -- short of an apocalyptic event, the likelihood of the USD dropping more than 50% in my lifetime is approximately zero. Of course, in any apocalyptic scenario that hammers the USD more than 50%, bitcoin is very likely to go down to exactly zero value.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[codebonobo]

Intrinsic value in anything is subjective and a product of utility, demand, and scarcity. Bitcoin has left the speculation only phase a long time ago and now has a healthy circular economy of inelastic users who need it to survive: Gamblers, Prostitutes/Johns, Drug Dealers/Users, Ransomeware victims, Money launderers/capital flight are some important use cases.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[GLMDesigns]

Ha!!!!

Of course I don't know for sure. Obviously it's not going to keep going up. It will come down in price - but to what. When Japan made it a legitimate commodity to hold, buy and sell BTC entered a new stage in its development. It was no longer a store of value, or a means of transferring funds for places like Greece or Venezuela.

The latest rise from 1200 - 2700 is from China removing restrictions. There most certainly is a bubble but I don't think my buy orders at 990 are ever going to be met. I would be ecstatic if they do though.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[codebonobo]

which is a huge problem is you are a rational actor that views volatility negatively.

While volatility in a currency is indeed negative. There are plenty of rational reasons one prefers volatility. Day Traders (I don't recommend this hobby) or simply people who don't mind balancing currencies(BTC is down 20 % I Use USD fiat, BTC up 20 % I combine 18% discount from purse.io for 38% off anything from amazon) .

Bitcoin has been increasing becoming more stable year after year but still has a long way to go and is more akin to gold asset than currency however.

the USD does have a practical floor -- short of an apocalyptic event, the likelihood of the USD dropping more than 50% in my lifetime is approximately zero.

I wouldn't suggest this is accurate as fiat currencies fail all the time. The USD has already had some past failures- confederate dollar, 100% gold backed dollar, partial gold backed dollar.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[GLMDesigns]

I think the price is going to drop in the short term but long term I think BTC is just scratching the surface of where it will end up. (And I'm using BTC as a catch-all for crypto-currencies. BTC may not end up surviving. It may be another currency that hasn't been created yet.)

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Dunbal]

But money is limited. Hence the inevitable bust that comes with the boom.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[codebonobo]

Anyone investing now should be prepared to hold onto it for at least 2020 (next halving) http://www.bitcoinblockhalf.co... but this is an acceptable risk for many to diversify their portfolio with a few % of BTC.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[GLMDesigns]

Will you accept gold? (Assuming you are absolutely positive it is gold?)

BTC is a technology. It's value is based on the fact that you can send money from place A to place B using a P2P network and without a central authority. In the very near future this technology will be used to facilitate real estate transactions, authenticate ownership of intellectual property and much, much more. The more this technology is used the greater the value of BTC.

You're focused on the speculation over the immediate value of BTC - you should be interested in the technology and its potential for growth. It the technology isn't adopted then BTC will not have utility and the price will plummet to zero. If the technology is adopted the price will sky rocket.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in inflation alone that happens easily. What floor is there for the USD? I can think of many events which will make the USD worth nothing. It wouldn't be an apocalyptic event, it would just make the US obsolete.

Re: This is going to end well lol

[orlanz]

Can you give us 2-3 situations where USD would fall 50% or more?

Re:This is going to end well lol

[DontBeAMoran]

Money is limited, but Bitcoin is currently dividable to 8 decimals, unlike say the U.S. dollar which is only divisible to 2 decimals.

We could get to the point where 1 satoshi equals 1 U.S. cent in market/trading value, so there's a long way to go before you can say "money is limited" when talking about Bitcoin.

Re: This is going to end well lol

[codebonobo]

Can you give us 2-3 situations where USD would fall 50% or more?

I did better than this. I gave you an example where it fell almost 100% - confederate USD. Look through most of history , fiat currencies come and go. The average lifespan is around 27 years for fiat currencies before they get a major "reboot" . We are seeing incidents of this right now in countries with hyperinflation, currency/gold confiscation, and national bailins where everyone gets a massive haircut.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Dunbal]

You're missing the point entirely. Money in the world willing to chase after dreams of a Bitcoin jackpot is limited. When money stops flowing in and begins flowing out, it will be the proverbial time of "wailing and gnashing of teeth". The problem with this kind of thing is that people who are buying in today are expecting to get out with a profit, not because they have any particular use or need for Bitcoin.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[angel'o'sphere]

Well, I'm old enough that the USD has lost about 50% of its exchange rate, and probably 80% of its value during my lifetime. And I'm only 50.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[crtreece]

no government will adjudicate public or private debts using it

That seems to be changing.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[crtreece]

Define limited. The US Federal Reserve can create and destroy US dollars at will. Are dollars still money?

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, not when the words are used correctly.

Speculation is purchasing an item with intent to resell it for a profit in a different context (usually the future or after shipping it somewhere). Investment is when you provide capital with the expectation that it will be used to create something valuable and you will then receive a portion of that value in payment for use of your capital.

Speculation is useful mainly as a mechanism for determining what something is actually worth to the market as a whole. Investment is how you generate economic growth. They are superficially similar in modern financial markets but conceptually distinct when viewed objectively rather that though the lense of a broker's marketing fluff.

Re: This is going to end well lol

[david_thornley]

2% annual inflation over maybe thirty or forty years? An online CPI calculator says that $100 in 1954 dollars is worth about $900 in 2017 dollars, so that's about a nominal 90% fall over my lifetime.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[david_thornley]

If the technology is adopted, there's still no guarantee that BTC is going to be worth anything. There's lots of ways to use blockchains that don't involve BTC.

Moreover, BTC isn't a very practical currency for general use, since it's hard to transfer from one person to another.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[GLMDesigns]

You're absolutely correct. BTC may not be the winner. It will be remembered (at worst) as a proof of concept.

BTC is excellent as a store of value and transfer. It may not the best for buying cups of coffee and packs of gum from the local store. But it is a good way for the store to send end of day transactions to the bank. There may very well be numerous currencies. Some may be better (read faster) for tiny transactions where the effort to double spend is too great to bother for a $5.00 transaction but not secure enough for a $5,000.00 transaction, let alone a $5,000,000.00 transaction.

There are many potential combinations. I don't think there is a question that there will be multiple cryptocurrencies that are not controlled by a central authority. BTC may, or may not, be among those cryptocurrencies.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Comrade Ogilvy]

I wouldn't suggest this is accurate as fiat currencies fail all the time. The USD has already had some past failures- confederate dollar, 100% gold backed dollar, partial gold backed dollar.

Depends what you call a "failure". If we use too loosey goosey a definition, then bitcoin has already failed ten times more than the USD ever has in a much shorter time span. The worst horrors of 70s stagflation are really nothing compared to the volatility of bitcoin.

The fact is that volatility is a big negative for most people. For some sophisticated people with a largish chunk of capital that they can balance out with a long term view, maybe it hardly matters. The reason you can actually do that kind of balancing is because you have access to excellent liquid assets like the USD. Thus you are implicitly using a double standard, measuring the USD against a very high bar because you know it is real money, and measuring bitcoin against a very low bar because you know it is not.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[Comrade Ogilvy]

If you stuffed you money in a mattress and forgot about it, yes, you are right. But there are many ways to lose 50+% of your value over the long haul. We have excellent banks in this country, that can at least hedge against inflation for effectively zero risk, and can do a bit better than inflation for most decades for a very small risk. For bitcoin, we have MtGox and similar, right?

Re: This is going to end well lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin has to survive because if it doesn't then whatever replaces it will be superceded for an improvement too and therefore is not a reliable store of wealth which is a basic requirement of what it's suppose to be.

Re: This is going to end well lol

[orlanz]

That's not what people mean by a currency losing value... By that metric there isn't a currency in the world that won't become worthless given time. The only resolution of which is to bankrupt it, cancel all obligations, and start all over.

Losing value to worthless is usually meant by a prolonged period where people will not trade in it.

PS, the dollar's long term inflation rate is usually 3%. Which is really good. A healthy inflation is considered by most to be around 2%. Which the US attempts to get to but historically killed the average up with brief periods of high inflation.

Re: This is going to end well lol

[Anonymous Coward]

KGIII again. USD is not really universally accepted. Many can't verify it, can't exchange it, and will insist you convert to locally carried currency first. Note the specifics of locally carried currency. They can't count on the USD or exchange rate. USD really isn't as well accepted as some may think.

Re: This is going to end well lol

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It is KGIII again. Sheesh... It was never meant to store wealth. It was designed to transfer it. BTC is a transference medium, not an investment.

Re: This is going to end well lol

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to?

Re:This is going to end well lol

[david_thornley]

BTC is currently too volatile to be a good store of value, and its usefulness for money transfer is directly dependent on what banks do. A BTC transfer is deliberately made to be expensive in computrons, while a bank transfer is simple. As long as banks insist on excess profit from money transfers and currency conversions, BTC will have an advantage, but not otherwise.

As a consumer, if bank transfers and conversions become cheaper, I benefit, even if I never have a BTC wallet and never use a BTC exchange to transfer money. I'm interested in seeing how this plays out.

Re:This is going to end well lol

[GLMDesigns]

"BTC is too volatile" - today it is. Increase market cap by a factor of 10,000 and it won't be. :) That's pushing it (of course) but the greater the market cap the less volatile it will be.

If banks bring down the cost of money transfer to pennies on the dollar and it's as easy to send money as to send an email then you're correct. There will not be an economic utility for BTC.

At that point it's only value will be that it's not fiat and not controlled by a central authority. This value will not be important under "normal" economic times.

BTC's last selling point - relative anonymity can be created by other means. Money from wallet (say Chase) goes to an anonymizer which then goes to store to buy coffee.

Re: This is going to end well lol

[peawormsworth]

Many countries are forced to buy and sell goods in US dollars creating an artificial demand for the US dollar. If the US tries and fails to create new international trade deals then there would be less reason to purchase US dollars.

I don't know about 50%, but if some some US leaders try to renegotiate international trade and is incompetent, then the US dollar will suffer.

Fake currency is fake...

[Anonymous Coward]

no matter what the peddlers of it say it is worth.

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[DiSKiLLeR]

Same as your USD and Gold.

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[captaindomon]

No, it is not the same as USD and other government-backed fiat currencies. USD is backed by lots of guns and nuclear weapons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[DigiShaman]

PMs (Gold, Silver, Platinum..etc) are limited only by what's in circulation. Fiat can be printed or digitally float the decimal point (Hyper inflation). Crypto currencies are not limited. There's nothing preventing me or anyone else creating their own standard. Too much wealth NOT too. But, the human race has yet to figure out how to create new elements and/or convert lots of energy into mass, specifically the element Au.

The only problem with PMs is that they're heavy and not liquid in electronic form. But basing fiat to a Gold standard does prevent inflation. IE, it keeps government spending in check. THAT is why we are off the Gold standard to this day, regardless of the fact getting off it it helped with international commerce. Even Alan Greenspan voiced his regret to that effect. And that man is a financial GOD. So when he speaks, YOU listen!

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[Comrade Ogilvy]

False equivalence. There is no perfect "currency", but all currencies being imperfect does not make them all the "same" in any meaningful way.

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin is backed by my love of drugs

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Alan Greenspan...is a financial GOD"

I guess you missed the time he admitted he was so wrong, and basically helped cause the 2008 crash.

Re: Fake currency is fake...

[Anonymous Coward]

Alan Greenspan was still lording the wonderful state of the finance sector while the 2008 crash erupted. He never saw it came, denied it until it was too late, naturally did nothing to prevent it and in fact his tenure at the fed urged it on. Good ol'AG knows fk all!

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[azrael29a]

No, it is not the same as USD and other government-backed fiat currencies. USD is backed by lots of guns and nuclear weapons.

Yup. Every currency backed by a government-sponsored army has a higher chance of survival. Have you ever heard of Liberty Dollars? Or any other independent currencies?

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[hey!]

Sure, if by "same as" you mean that you can place them along some common continuum. In particular, the relevant continuum here runs from "medium of exchange" (US Dollars) to "asset" (Gold).

Currency is something you own to buy things with. An asset is something you own because you think it will appreciate in value.

That doesn't mean you can't buy things with assets; you could in principle walk into a dealership and buy a car with your baseball collection, if the collection were good enough and the dealer knowledgeable about such things. But that doesn't make baseball cards currency.

Currency is managed by central banks to have a predictable value over the short-to-mid-term. This takes an element of timing out of purchase and sale decisions. If I want to buy something, I neither wait because I think my dollars are going to be worth much more in a few months, nor do I hurry to get rid of them because I think they'll be worth much less. The slight bias towards long term value loss (inflation) over years in most currencies is meant to keep you putting your money to work rather than stuffing it in a mattress for years.

So news of a dramatic spike in Bitcoin value doesn't really validate the concept of Bitcoin as a currency, although it doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't invest in Bitcoin. I suspect that any cryptocurrency system which takes a central authority out of the picture will necessarily have volatile value over the short term. Maybe we could learn to live with that though.

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[Anonymous Coward]

Same as your USD

The USD has a lot of people with big guns saying we need to use it or we'll be arrested (in the US) or even killed (see: wars). They have billion dollar budget agencies to ensure the currency is secure and stable.

So no. It's nothing like bitcoin.

and Gold

This is more true. However, gold has a multi-millennia history backing it. Bitcoin has a, what, 10 year history? Gold is basically a bubble, but one which has stood the test of time. Bitcoin... not so much...

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[Pinky's Brain]

If you are an American and have a decent number of USD in the bank you can almost certainly pay your taxes and avoid bankruptcy or worse at the hands of the state.

Whether bitcoin or gold will have an exchange rate sufficient to do the same is much less reliable.

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[angel'o'sphere]

There is not enough PMs in the world to back a single year of world trade, perhaps not even a month.
This is why all currencies became fiat currencies.

You ever watch the olympics? Swimming? All gold in the world does not even fill an olympic swimming pool.

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[david_thornley]

USD is backed by the US economy, and the fact that it runs on USD. USD are used in all payments to and from government, and in all judicial transfers of money, so everybody needs some, and everybody needs to do accounting in USD. The US military has nothing to do with it other than as part of the economy, and as a guarantor that the US government will continue to run things here.

Re:Fake currency is fake...

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction: there are not enough PMs in the world to cover derivatives, rehypothecation, bank bailouts, interest on the (conjured out of thin air) "Federal" "Reserve" fiat, etc. Sound money could work quite well, absent all of that nonsense, wasteful governmental spending, etc.

Trading volume

[Dorianny]

Can someone actually sell (or exchange depending on whether you believe it to be currency or not) a couple of million in bitcoins without the price crashing?

Re:Trading volume

[Smidge204]

You could probably manage it if you do it slow enough that it doesn't cause a panic sell, and/or do it through a number of shell accounts so it doesn't look too suspicious.

Once you've unloaded a few hundred BTC, try to dump the rest and cause a market crash, then buy back what you sold originally for a fraction of the price and wait for the next bubble.
=Smidge=

Re:Trading volume

[GLMDesigns]

No. Not yet. BTC volume is low compared to the equity trading. BTC volume is generally in the range of 50K - 200K BTC / day. And spiking much higher the last few few days.

At $1000 per BTC that's a volume of 50-200 million dollars per day. Low in one respect. But it is respectable.

You can clearly see that it will be a billion/dollar a day market pretty soon.

BTC at $2,500 and trading volume of 400K would make it a billion dollar market.

Re:Trading volume

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the demand is so high right now that it strips out any major dips in someone trying to manipulate it.

Re:Trading volume

[Interfacer]

It's a traded currency. So I suspect it is governed by the same laws of supply and demand. If someone starts dumping it en masse, I'm sure the price will go down. Unless there is a feeding frenzy of course.

It reminds me of tech stocks in late 2000 early 2001 that oscillated like crazy. I know quite a lot of people who won big and became millionaires. And quite a lot of people who gambled millions on a hunch and lost them.

Re:Trading volume

[Archangel Michael]

Technically, it isn't a currency, anymore than Disney bucks are a currency. One day, it might become a currency. Think Ubiquity.

Re:Trading volume

[ThePyro]

Yes. You can actually see the market depth (i.e. how many buy orders are queued up) on GDAX if you're logged in. Right now there are enough open buy orders that a $1,000,000 sale would drop the price by 8%.

Re:Trading volume

[Anonymous Coward]

You could probably manage it if you do it slow enough that it doesn't cause a panic sell, and/or do it through a number of shell accounts so it doesn't look too suspicious.

If you had bought $100 worth of Bitcoin in May of 2010 when the price was 0.003 cents, it would be worth more than $70 Million today. However, this also illustrates the two biggest problems with Bitcoin.

First, if you bought that $100 worth of Bitcoin back in 2010 it's unlikely that you would even still have it today. It probably would have been stolen by now. Is there even a Bitcoin exchange that's been in business for any significant amount of time and hasn't suddenly run off with everyone's money, or, got "hacked" and "lost" all their Bitcoin?

Second, there's no way to turn that $70 Million worth of Bitcoin into $70 Million in real money. Forget the problem with crashing the market -- you're not going to even get that far because NOBODY is going to hand you $70 Million in exchange for your Bitcoin. I guess you could set up a plan to cash in $100,000 a year for the next 700 years.

Re:Trading volume

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the daily trading volume of bitcoin is now exceeding $2 billion? Yeah, you could sell 500 coins without anyone blinking.

Re:Trading volume

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiot. Go to a major exchange. Watch the real time trades appear. Add up how long it takes for the sold volume to hit 500 bitcoins. The answer is minutes. What does the price do? Absolutely fuck all. You could cash out $1 million in minutes.

Re:Trading volume

[DontBeAMoran]

First, if you bought that $100 worth of Bitcoin back in 2010 it's unlikely that you would even still have it today. It probably would have been stolen by now. Is there even a Bitcoin exchange that's been in business for any significant amount of time and hasn't suddenly run off with everyone's money, or, got "hacked" and "lost" all their Bitcoin?

If you left that $100 worth of Bitcoins on an exchange all that time, you're an idiot. If it was kept inside a wallet controlled by your own computer, you'd still have them.

Re:Trading volume

[JaredOfEuropa]

First, if you bought that $100 worth of Bitcoin back in 2010 it's unlikely that you would even still have it today. It probably would have been stolen by now.

I suspect that there's a much simpler explanation: most of the people who bought in at $100 or mined a couple of BTC way back when, probably sold them when they hit $200 or $500 or whatever. Most of the stories about the guys who struck it rich are about people who mined a few or bought some on a lark early on, forgot they even had them, then thankfully remembered their wallet password when the hype struck and BTC was all over the news.

Re:Trading volume

[Anonymous Coward]

Even an online exchange would probably still have your $100. The current estimate is that 1/3 of exchanges have been hacked so you have 2-in-3 chances that the exchange you picked hasn't been hacked.

After that, an exchange that was hacked doesn't necessarily mean that they lost everything. A lot of exchanges keep the majority of their accounts in cold storage. So you might lose all of your online wallet balance, or a fraction, or none at all.

Then to the real point though, most people advise using the online wallet as if it's an actual wallet - transfer the larger amount of your balance into a "savings account" wallet that you control, and only use the online wallet to refill bitcoin and leave enough in there for day to day purchases. This could be just like lunch, just the cash in your physical wallet in your physical pocket.

Re:Trading volume

[Orgasmatron]

On the most basic level, currency is that which circulates. Bitcoin circulates, Disney gift certificates do not.

Without knowing which definition of currency you've chosen, it is hard to assess your claim of technicality. Or, for that matter, how closely your definition matches the ordinary meaning of the word.

Re:Trading volume

[Archangel Michael]

By your definition of "currency", stocks would be considered currency. So would a lot of other instruments, trading cards, collectibles, durable goods.

And I actually qualified why I answered the way I did. Ubiquity.

Re:Trading volume

[codebonobo]

A few million in Bitcoin isn't much these days and many exchanges would quickly fill those orders in a second. Bitcoin is very liquid with over 2.5 billion in trading volume during the last 24 hours

Re:Trading volume

[codebonobo]

No. Not yet. BTC volume is low compared to the equity trading. BTC volume is generally in the range of 50K - 200K BTC / day. And spiking much higher the last few few days

Last 24 hour trading was over 940k BTC or 2.5Billion USD https://coinmarketcap.com/curr...

Re:Trading volume

[codebonobo]

Bitcoin is very fungible and liquid, and while still volatile(many fiat currencies are volatile too), isn't at all like a stock where you don't see people trading stock shares to buy goods and services.

Re:Trading volume

[codebonobo]

and Gdax is a very illiquid exchange. On a more popular exchange selling a million would hardly effect the price.

Re:Trading volume

[azrael29a]

World Of Warcraft gold could be also called currency using this definition (it circulates), but it is not a legal tender. You can't expect anyone to accept it as a payment for your gas, apples, or coffee. No one enforces it. In case of fiat currencies, it's the governments of the countries that emit their currencies. The same situation is with Bitcoin.

Re:Trading volume

[Orgasmatron]

You capitalized it, which led me to believe you were talking about some product that I was unfamiliar with. If you just mean "everywhere", I should point out that "everywhere" is never everywhere everywhere, but is always everywhere in some scope .

Stocks don't really circulate anywhere that I know of. There may be country clubs where they are passed around, but I don't know of any. For the most part, they are transacted through limited access markets by specialist traders. In those markets, it may be possible to say that they circulate, but not elsewhere (maybe in the hypothetical country clubs too). Ditto most of the other stuff you listed.

Cigarettes in prison are often used as the example of an unusual currency. Debts and services, in such places, are denominated in cigarettes, and the expectation is generally that you can trade them freely - even people that are neither producers nor consumers of cigarettes. That meets circulation and (scoped) ubiquity.

Are you aware of any circulation of Disney gift certificates between people who are neither producers nor consumers of said cards? That is - of people using them as money? Someone who gets one as a gift, but has no intention of using it may sell it for money, but that chain has both a producer and a consumer occupying two of the three steps spanning production to consumption. That's not circulation.

Bitcoin, however, does have a global circulation. People who aren't miners buy it to use as money, and people accept it as money that they can use to buy other goods and services with, not just so that they can cash out. This circulation is, to be sure, relatively thin. But it is there, and the same can't be said about most other things.

Re:Trading volume

[azrael29a]

It's a traded good, not a traded currency. You could trade web domain names in the same way, but you couldn't expect everyone to accept them as payment for your shopping, even though you could probably find some shops that would do it.

Re:Trading volume

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is still nothing compared to FX trading, where daily volume is around $5.1 trillion USD.

Re:Trading volume

[Anonymous Coward]

> would hardly *effect* the price

Retard.

Re:Trading volume

[Lehk228]

8% for a 1 million dollar sell transaction sounds bad to me. maybe I'm wrong but that seems very sensitive to manipulation

what...

[Anonymous Coward]

What goes up....

Re:what...

[JcMorin]

bitcoin is not only a speculation bubble, it's an idea, a concept, just like torrent or the internet itself. While bitcoin price can surely go down, the concept is out forever. It's an experimental currency and we live right now its birth and rise. It's an incredible piece of technology that worth learning.

Re:what...

[Comrade Ogilvy]

IMO the idea of the public blockchain is very powerful, and that is an idea that will not die, until we meet our internet security apocalypse in the form of quantum computers destroy all known practical encryption.

Bitcoin itself could plausibly be replaced by a competitor that has enough of its positive points, and a different mix of negatives.

If you are not an idiot

[DalM]

... you sell NOW. Right now.

Re:If you are not an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Idiots would sell right now.

Re:If you are not an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

You're already an idiot if you put any money into bitcoin in the first place ...

Re:If you are not an idiot

[JcMorin]

While would someone investing in the best-performing asset over on the best-revolutionised technology be an idiot? I guess you don't own Bitcoin... or haven't learned how Bitcoin really works.

Re:If you are not an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I am an idiot for buying bitcoin at $100

Re:If you are not an idiot

[DalM]

You underestimate the number of idiots in the world. If they all sell now, the price will plummet. You have to sell before they do. Sell now.

Re:If you are not an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the Tesla I just bought, and the mortgage I just paid out, Chicken Little.

Re:If you are not an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't even make logical sense. If you put ANY amount of money into bitcoin at ANY point in the past, you have made money. Whether you merely doubled it in the past week, or increased it by four orders of magnitude over the past few years, you're clearly NOT an idiot.

Now fuck off and let the winners enjoy their new, considerably richer than you, lifestyle ;)

Re:If you are not an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't even make logical sense. If you put ANY amount of money into bitcoin at ANY point in the past, you have made money. Whether you merely doubled it in the past week, or increased it by four orders of magnitude over the past few years, you're clearly NOT an idiot.

Money proves intelligence? Have you voted Trump?

Re:If you are not an idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the Tesla I just bought, and the mortgage I just paid out, Chicken Little.

Hey! Bitcoin Tesla/house buddies! Nice

Re:Thanks Trump!

[PPH]

Thanks Narendra Modi!

I think the Indian move to eradicate cash and push everyone to the banking system has a lot more to do with this. Honorable mention to Xi Jinping because China is on their way as well.

All bitcoin stories remind me of ...

[WoodstockJeff]

... Mystico and Janet, and flats built by hynosis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

(of course, most of the world's current currencies are the same, but bitcoin and its ilk just exaggerate the effect)

Re:Thanks Trump!

[Interfacer]

Good point. As governments are actively seeking to discourage cash transactions, I think electronic currencies will continue to become more and more popular

Who's stupid now?

[PopeRatzo]

When the economy crashes and the US becomes a post-apocalyptic wasteland, I'm gonna be sitting fat and happy on my bitcoins while the rest of you scrounge for caps and Nuka-cola.

That's why I've been keeping my bitcoins in my mattress since 2009. To protect them from ransomware.

couple of million in bitcoins ?

[JcMorin]

Nobody owns a couple of millions of bitcoin. The way those are distributed at the fixed rate per time, earlier adopter had more but they worthless, today they worth a lot but received also less. If someone right now has let's say 100,000 BTC (worth 200 million) he probably acquired them a couple years ago and probably believe in the currency... little chance he will sell them all at the same time. If it's case that would crash the price instantly because there is no such liquidity. The same concept can be applied to stocks or gold.

Please, from now on.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Please to refer to Bitcoin as the following:

Internet Drug Tokens
PedoPesos
Math-Based Beanie Babies
Internet Fun Bux

and always remember....
Satoshi Nakamoto is an anagram for "So A Man Took A Shit"

Greatest Volatile stocks you can get

[Anonymous Coward]

you're encouraged to buy them cheap and sell them when they're high.

BTC Market Cap out of sync with available USD

[laughingskeptic]

Your ability to get a dollar out of the BTC market today for a dollar put in yesterday depends heavily on the participation of others putting their dollars in today. If you examine the data behind the charts https://blockchain.info/charts... and https://blockchain.info/charts... it is very clear that speculative trading has repeatedly driven BTC values up followed by a market value collapse of BTC. People stop putting their money in and instead pull it out and the amount of time it takes to get their money out goes from minutes to days. If there is no speculation and all BTC coins are used for ephemeral transactions, then the total amount of hard currency backing BTC would be around the daily volume of BTC transactions in a day: $1 Billion dollars. However people are behaving as if all of the BTCs are worth $40 Billion dollars. The speculators are the "long-term" holders of BTC, however only a small fraction of their holdings can actually be converted to hard currency before the entire BTC system collapses ... in the 2% range. Everyone is depending on everyone else not to blink, historically not a good bet.

Re:BTC Market Cap out of sync with available USD

[religionofpeas]

however only a small fraction of their holdings can actually be converted to hard currency before the entire BTC system collapses

That's true of many things.

Re:BTC Market Cap out of sync with available USD

[Cipheron]

Yeah, it's a known thing with all currencies, bank accounts etc. Fractional reserve banking. If more than an average number of people withdraw their money from the bank at the same time, you have big problems.

Re:BTC Market Cap out of sync with available USD

[codebonobo]

Market cap is indeed a worthless and misleading number; more relevant is market liquidity and you can easily sell a few million of btc right now and not effect the price more than 1%.

Re:BTC Market Cap out of sync with available USD

[Anonymous Coward]

All EXACTLY true of FIAT.

Except Bitcoin cannot currently be printed by the pallet, nor burned, by governments, and is a global universality transacting in under 15 minutes for relative cheap.

Also, Governments hate it. Anything Governments hate has value.

All aboard... ;)

Market crash in...3....2....1....

[drew_92123]

The current rise in bitcoin value is due to market manipulation... expect the manipulators to cash out VERY soon and send the value under $1000 almost overnight...

Re:Market crash in...3....2....1....

[Anonymous Coward]

citation please

Re:Market crash in...3....2....1....

[codebonobo]

Bitcoin has gone through many bubbles in the past where they all correct after a 5-11x in explosive growth, thus many longterm investors will likely take profits in the 5-10k USD per btc range here.

Re:Market crash in...3....2....1....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, I'm surprised we haven't seen a ton of Bitcoin exchanges taking the coins and running yet

Re:Market crash in...3....2....1....

[Anonymous Coward]

They're just waiting for WalletSize * PriceOfBitcoin > Sum(t=0->infinity, TradingFee * (1 - InflationRate)^t). The moment that happens, expect to hear about a terrible hack that has absconded with all their funds. So sorry. No choice but to close down. Don't blame us, it was the mysterious hacker! :V

PUMP PUMP PUMP!

[Anonymous Coward]

I need to take a dump!

reconsider your rant for a moment

[Anonymous Coward]

when i saw the price go up again, i knew this story would be here.

when i saw the headline, i knew if i clicked on it, i'd hear the same crap again.

"bitcoin is a bubble" "bitcoin is a scam" "bitcoin is a hoax" yada yada

these seem to be the same people, saying the same thing, no matter how much the price goes up. they simply will not buy some and take a chance, and so they simply will make no money.

let me tell you what bitcoin is: it's not a currency, and it's not a stock. it's bitcoin. it's a NEW thing. it's a COOL thing. your parents didn't have it. your grandparents didn't have it. hell, they didn't have the Internet either. did the Internet turn out to be a waste of time? perhaps bitcoin won't. and yes, the price WILL go down again someday. I AGREE. but that's not a reason to sit there every day trashing bitcoin out of frustration with the fact that you've sat there the whole time, NOT MAKING MONEY, warning those who take the risk of investing. you think you're smart because you won't take the risk, and you won't get burned.

but you like computers, right? maybe your'e a programmer too? you like numbers? why do i feel like the only one who reads slashdot and thinks bitcoin is COOL SIMPLY BECAUSE IT BELONGS TO THE INTERNET GENERATION? the old farts can't wrap their minds around bitcoin!

i embrace bitcoin not because it will always be worth money, but because it is ours, our generation's invention. IT DISRUPTS THINGS. it's disrupting things right now, with this price run.

don't like the way the algorithm works? INVENT a new cryptocurrency. hell, that's how Ether got started. you're smart, right? why do you spend your time bitching on slashdot when you could be implementing a better currency??

so maybe you should reconsider your rant before you post. maybe you should buy a fucking bitcoin. yeah, maybe you'll lose money. maybe you'll live life for just one moment. maybe you'll learn something.

ONE LAST POINT. if you haven't seen it, go to coinmarketcap.com. look at the following charts: ether, monero, dash, zcash, hell even litecoin....

THEY ARE ALL RALLYING UP. NOTHING LIKE THIS HAS EVER HAPPENED BEFORE. YOU ARE MISSING IT.

One day, one day

[SPopulisQR]

By the end of the year, the price will higher than $10,000 per BTC. Also, BTC will shoot up every time there is some financial disturbance. Finally, in 10 years the value of BTC will be one million dollars per coin. Why such wild predictions, you might ask? Isn't it a redo of the Tulip mania? The answer is: no. 1. In Netherlands, there is an almost unlimited supply of tulip bulbs. 2. BTC can never be regulated (well, you can switch off the internet, or can ban by law) 3. You can actually exchange easily your BTC to some other assets No, this is not an advocacy of BTC. This is merely a confirmation of the fact, that the world is witnessing a new phenomenon, only limited by the number of participants that are living on earth.

Re:One day, one day

[david_thornley]

That assumes that people will pay a megabuck for a bitcoin in 2027. There's plenty of unregulated things in limited supply that aren't worth a million dollars, and I can (indirectly) use these to pay for things.

Cashless Society

[Anonymous Coward]

For anybody that has been paying attention in the last few years to where the U.S. Federal government set up exchanges, it's clear they are planning to use BitCoin as the new cashless society, or at least an early adoption of it.

They are providing incentive for private companies to use credit card only, and/or BitCoin, and to completely stop using cash.

We cannot allow that under ANY circumstances. Everybody needs to use more cash and start accepting and using Gold and Silver.

You don't need "hard currency"

[Anonymous Coward]

You can just use BTC itself to facilitate trade, rather than converting to "hard" currency.

Actually, BTC suffers many technical problems...

[Anonymous Coward]

... There are huge issues with scaling the Bitcoin network, there has been a long-time Civil War among the hard-core fanatics on this issue, and while there have been many advancements in the technology over the years, these years have seen nothing but stagnation in the deployment of those advancements.

The price is going up not because Bitcoin is working well, but rather because most of these know-nothing speculators have no clue that there are serious technical problems—hell, they don't even understand how the technology in which they've invested even works. If they come out on top, it won't be due to their shrewdness, but rather their luck.

The last crisis

[Anonymous Coward]

The US debt-based dollar is backed by the willingness of the the debtor to repay the debt.
During the last financial crisis there started to be runaway deflation due to a lot of people deciding they wouldn't be re-paying their mortgages. The federal government stepped in and assumed the debt burden by all their bailout and "QE*" programs. This stabilized the dollar.
In a way you could say it's backed by guns and weapons, another way is to say it's backed by the efficiency/threat of the IRS, but a lot of the value (size of the debt) of our money comes from mortgage debt.

Stock prices are not, repeat NOT pertinent

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF is an article re: the price of a commodity doing on a purportedly tech news site?
If this is pertinent, then shills about penny-stock-XXYyy are equally valid slashdumb posts.

Submitter--
Poster--
Editor = -1
While { (Slashdot.org editor > 0) do slashdot.org editor-- }

Stupid Stupid Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? an article re: speculative stock prices are relevant?
Shoot the editor.
In the face.
Then fire the idjot.

Ooooh! Penny stocks (not exactly) now relevant

[Anonymous Coward]

This stock is about to surge! Then see what happened next!

See original post

Ponzi scheme?

[GPS Pilot]

Your ability to get a dollar out of the BTC market today for a dollar put in yesterday depends heavily on the participation of others putting their dollars in today.

Sounds like you are characterizing BTC as something of a Ponzi scheme. Is that about right?