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

Posted by msmash on from the what-in-the-world dept.

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.

9 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. 5 bucks by Danathar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I bought 5 bucks worth of bitcoin last year... It's now worth $80 bucks (as of this writing). I'm simply floored by how much its gone up!

    1. Re: 5 bucks by gweihir · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The second one is pretty much assured when it crashes, as the Bitcoin blockchain is slow and will get much slower during a crash. 10k/coin just means that people are doing a pump&dump scam. Most people that buy now will not even recover their investment.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    2. Re: 5 bucks by gweihir · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They misjudged the size of the pool of fools. The sharp rise of the last few months is a sure sign the crash is near. At the moment, those that have invested are frantically trying to get more to invest, because a $10'000 coin is worth nothing if nobody buys it. But the remaining pool of fools is dwindling fast.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
    3. Re:5 bucks by war4peace · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Um... let me simplify.
      John has 1 BTC. It's worth a dollar.
      Jack wants that BTC and is willing to play John 2 dollars.
      John now has 1 BTC worth 2 dollars, but Jill wants to buy it for 10 dollars.
      Fast forward through 10, 20, 50 subsequent buyers, end up with 1 BTC worth 10K dollars and rising. Money (as in dollars) wasn't lost, they simply exchanged hands between various people for the same product.

      Value was not generated out of thin air, it was a product of the ancient demand/offer balance. As long as people want BTC and are willing to play hefty sums of money for it, its value would increase.

      Also BTC can be and is used as currency. It has a slow transfer rate, that's for sure, but it works. Here in my 3rd world country I can buy a variety of legal products with it, such as IT hardware, software and general goods.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    4. Re:5 bucks by Bucky24 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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

      It's true that if you assume bitcoin is actually worth what the exchange pays for it (and it would be, because some entity is willing to pay for it), then the exchange has not actually lost any value, just exchanged one form of it for another. But from what I gather, GP wasn't counting the value of bitcoin as an actual value. With that assumption, then the exchange is rapidly losing money because they are paying out something of value (USD) for something of no value (bitcoin).

      And if you assume, as GP did, that bitcoin is a closed system, and the only way to get bitcoins is to buy them from the exchange (not technically true but for most people entering the market at this point it might as well be), then people are giving USD in exchange for bitcoins, putting money into the market, then it's possible for one person to sell a ton of coins that have gone way up in value, and be paid out all the exchange's USD reserve. In that case, since the exchange can't print more money, they have essentially lost the ability to buy anyone else's bitcoins. At that point the people who still own bitcoins technically haven't lost value either, but as there's no entity (we assume only one exchange in this scenario) that can pay them for their bitcoins, the coins essentially become worthless outside of the bitcoin system.

      So in the end I guess it depends on your definition of money. I don't personally consider bitcoin to be money, though it's getting a lot closer. But if it is money, then the exchange never loses value at all, since it's essentially just a money changer. On the other hand, if bitcoin isn't money, then the exchange is almost guaranteed to lose money if the currency becomes more valuable.

      As with all things, its just down to a point of view.

      --
      All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
  2. That's not all that's spiking upwards by timholman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In related news .... the average BTC transaction fee is now at $6 USD, and climbing fast. Could be worse, however. Two weeks ago, it spiked above $19.

    Does anyone seriously think that BTC is being used for anything except speculation? It sure isn't being used for "money". You've got people buying BTC using their credit cards, and converting their savings to BTC. It's a classic bubble.

    It's gonna be nasty, and when the bubble pops the transaction backlog will be huge as people try to dump their BTC before they lose everything. Transaction fees will shoot through the roof. Boom or bust, the Chinese mining pools will make money hand over fist.

    1. Re:That's not all that's spiking upwards by gweihir · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The mining-pool will just be as screwed as anybody else. The only ones that will win is those that get out early enough to actually have somebody buy their worthless merchandise. That point may already be in the past. There are indications that actually selling larger amounts of Bitcoin is already difficult.

      --
      Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  3. Didn't happen by slashmydots · · Score: 1, Interesting

    According to charts on websites that people actually use, it didn't quite hit $10,000. Anyway, this is very uncommon during the winter when people don't have to offset the insane energy costs of mining hardware with cooling. In fact I'm heating my apartment and shop with minres. So I also don't have to play for heat (or electricity for the miners depending on how you look at it). People are willing to sell their bitcoins for a much lower price in the winter because of this so that's odd. Yes I know the southern hemisphere is a thing that exists. They just don't own many bitcoins.

  4. Re: What does this do to mining economics by viperidaenz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Except for the little detail of: If some miners stop mining, mining becomes easier, making mining more profitable.

    The cost of mining is related to the popularity of mining. The profitability of mining is a combination of the value of bitcoin and the size of the mining pool, making it not a simple economic problem.