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:5 bucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Pure speculation. It is not used (and can not be used) as currency. Somebody is just pumping the price to lure in suckers. Ironically crypto is propably most manipulated market in the world. And people just buy it with no other intention than to sell it later to somebody else for higher price. This can not and will not end well. Remember, value is not generated out of thin air, just transfered from one to another, in order for one person to get a "bitcoin millionaire" there MUST be thousand people who lose 1000$. There is no way around it.

"Traditional" speculators entered the fray

[rsilvergun]

I don't know what else to call them, but the kind of day trader types that play the stock market noticed the price going up. So now in addition to the drug traffickers, money launders and ransomeware authors we've got those jackals. I'm sure this will all end well.

aka

[grasshoppa]

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.

In other words, they have no idea why it's doing what it's doing.

I'm starting to think "expert" is someone who is physically unable to utter the words "I don't know".

Re:aka

[Archangel Michael]

They don't know, and there is a valid reason for it. The market is irrational. The market is as much about emotion as it is about fundamentals, maybe even more so. There will be a correction. The problem is, there are no forces that can take any of the irrationality out of the market. The real panic will happen when the BTC is worth 5 or 6 figures each, and corrects down to three or so. That's when people holding fair numbers of coins will start to panic, and sell off just like everyone else, trying to get any part of the profit they missed when it peaked.

And then you'll see it normalized for a while, perhaps even disappear. People mocked when a guy bought a 20,000 BTC pizza, and now many of those same people are mocking $1000 BTC.

Re:aka

[swillden]

They don't know, and there is a valid reason for it. The market is irrational. The market is as much about emotion as it is about fundamentals, maybe even more so.

There *are* no fundamentals. The transaction rates/costs make it unusable as a currency for more than a fairly small number of people, and it has no other value than as a currency.

Re:Parabolic...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it's a bubble... the key to bubbles though isn't if they are there or not... but when they will burst.

If for instance you know bitcoin is a bubble and it bursts tomorrow, you find a way to short bitcoins today.
If you know it's a bubble and it bursts 5-6 years from now, you buy bitcoin now, and sell it in 4-5 years.

If you know it's a bubble but have no idea when it bursts, there is no value in knowing it's a bubble.

Everyone knows it's a bubble...
It might not burst, we might imbue bitcoin with value by allowing it to be used as currency in a great deal of transactions... if that becomes the case then we might fill that bubble with the value it needs to no longer be a bubble... (at that point the price should stabilize).

I think it's going to burst... but I don't know when.

Re:Seems like you can use it as currency

[Anonymous Coward]

A currency which the value of has increased some 10 times in less than a year is a pretty poor currency. There's no incentive to ever spend it. In fact, anybody who would spend it when the value is going up like it currently is, is nothing but an absolute idiot. And a currency that you'd be an idiot to spend, again is a pretty poor currency. Great investment though.

Re:Parabolic...

[gweihir]

Oh, it will crash. Bitcoin is not actually worth anything in real-world terms and the current instability wipes out its usefulness as a currency. The only question is how much more fools can be found and when that supply dries up, the crash comes. The "Greater fool theory" applies nicely, and I expect a few reasonable master's theses will be written about it. (This whole thing is to obvious and predictable for a PhD of reasonable quality.)

Re:5 bucks

[religionofpeas]

In that case it's the exchange that loses the money.

It's the people that are holding fiat that are losing the value of their money

Enough already!

[hackertourist]

this is the fifth story in as many weeks with no more substance than "bitcoin hits $x!". Comments from the fist story can be copied verbatim to all the others, there's nothing new to be said on the subject. Can we please find a more interesting subject to talk about?
If I wanted to know the day price for Bitcoin, I'd use a stock ticker.

Re:Seems like you can use it as currency

[TheRealMindChild]

There's no incentive to ever spend it

Sure there is. I need food *now*, and these might not be valuable enough in the future to sacrifice starving right now.

Re:Seems like you can use it as currency

[squiggleslash]

Not just no incentive to spend it (beyond the absolutely necessary right now) but no incentive to lend (invest) it either unless the returns are so astronomical they outweigh the loss in value of any collateral that the borrower might put up.

Bitcoin enthusiasts are overjoyed about this, because they're suddenly rich, so overjoyed they're missing the part that this entire thing is a disaster for Bitcoin in terms of its supposed use. And if Bitcoin is completely unusable for the purpose for which it was designed then... what's the point of Bitcoin? The world's biggest disorganized pyramid scheme?

Can this last anyway? Will it reach a peak and then start slowly dropping, or will it collapse? If it collapses (again!) then even if it reaches a more reasonable level, will retailers (who presumably will lose quite a bit of money on it) ever accept it again?

Hyperdeflation, to be followed at some point by hyperinflation. This is not what a stable currency looks like. BTC enthusiasts should be thinking "Well, failure never felt so good", not "Woohoo, this is good news for Bitcoin". Because it really, really, isn't.