Bitcoin Hits $10,000 Because Ceilings Are Just a Construct, Man (gizmodo.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: On Tuesday, the trading price of the most prominent cryptocurrency hit $10,000 for the first time. And that nice round number will almost certainly have the kind of psychological effect that brings in new traders. Based on analysts' recent predictions, the $10,000 milestone could be the beginning of the end or just the beginning. Some thought that $2,000 would be the point at which we'd see a reversal of Bitcoin's ascent. Others predicted it would top out at $4,000. Then, $4,000 became the floor. These days, analysts with decent reputations have predicted the cryptocurrency's trading price could go as high as $50,000, $100,000, and even $1 million.

Comments

Re:Seems like you can use it as currency

[nealric]

Most of those websites aren't really using BTC in the sense that they are actually holding BTC you transfer to them like they would hold the USD you transferred to them. Rather, they've simply set up a conversion as part of the transaction where they receive USD in exchange for the BTC you sent them.

Re:Question

[orlanz]

If Bitcoin totally collapsed in a short enough time frame (say 2 weeks), it would be noticeable but hardly damaging to the economy at large. Google has $700B as its cap. The SPY ETF from one company that links to the S&P 500 (meaning its a small percent of the total) is ~$250B. A loss of either wouldn't significantly impact the economy*. Bitcoin's collapse would be even more minor.

The primary impacts we would notice would be any highly leveraged hedges that would collapse too and rip out funds from proper investments to cover the losses. Basically people who borrowed to pay interest on loans to buy coins would now have to liquidate stable assets to cover the required payments. If they can't pay, then the lender would need to do the same to cover lost operational cash flows.

It is quite difficult to ascertain between speculation and investment. Society has been trying to do it for centuries to curb bubbles, recessions, in/deflations, gold rushes, etc and hasn't gotten anywhere. Any interventions have resulted in worse outcomes.

* = Thou in Google's case we wouldn't lose the services totally, they would be bought up cheap and serviced by someone else. We would see service degradation and no new stuff, but it would still work.

Re:Release the Trolls

[networkBoy]

I really hope you are not serious mate!

When guys doing similar enough to what you're doing now encountered 29-Oct-1929 a fair portion of them jumped out of windows...