
Bitcoin down 60% to $100  - bevan
https://www.bitstamp.net/
======
ghshephard
Market is all over the place - I logged in with chrome, hit "Sell at current
Bid Price" - (which was $135) - but the interface wouldn't accept a click on
the "Sell Button"

Thought it might be my browser, so I tried logging in with Firefox, hit "Sell
at Bid Price" - Which, about 30 seconds after my first attempt with chrome was
now $175.

Something is going to crash spectacularly when you get a $40 swing on
something like this in 30 seconds.

I still can't sell my BitCoins though. The Irony is I had 20 of them left over
from playing around a couple years ago on a linode VPS - they are actually
worth quite a bit, if I could only sell them. I wonder how many other people
out there are checking to see if they still have a .bitcoin directory sitting
around on their various linux systems...

~~~
nico
Same problem, can't sell... :( I also tried putting in a buy order, but it
didn't go through either.

Looks like a good opportunity for an alternative exchange...

~~~
paulhodge
I haven't tried it yet, but if I was going to sell BTC for USD I would give
this one a go: <https://fastcash4bitcoins.com/> They only buy BTC, and it's a
fixed price instead of an of exchange.

------
trotsky
Day's Range: $70.00 - $259.34

Mtgox trading engine lag: 3865.59s

With gyrations like that and one hour order execution lag there isn't a
regulator in the world that wouldn't halt that market. Comparing this to
investing in a roulette game would be unfairly characterizing the risks in
roulette.

~~~
antr
someone made some serious dough today

~~~
cmutty
and just wait for the SEC to reverse their recent no action decision when the
people on the losing end start crying foul.

~~~
CodeCube
I'm actually really curious, how could the SEC (or any agency) take any action
here? Sure, they can make rules that say you shouldn't trade bitcoins, or
maybe even threaten fines ... but for someone who doesn't care to report their
activity, is there any way to be "Stopped" from doing so?

~~~
cmutty
By no means am I a securities or legal expert but the SEC has authority to
regulate any marketplace, exchange, or "investment opportunity" to ensure
investors are protected from fraud.

------
napoleoncomplex
Not that I'd wish monetary loss on anyone, but if the first Bitcoin crash is
any indication, these things tend to have a positive side-benefit of driving
out most of the speculators flooding in after all the news reports that fuel
these cycles, and the people actually interested in the currency itself stay
behind, with an influx of new folk.

After all the noise dies down, new businesses and services get built backed by
the wider audience, and the ecosystem develops further.

It's not yet clear if this is a crash similar to the previous one, but if it
comes, I don't think much will change in terms of Bitcoin's future for the
next few years.

~~~
sneak
If you wouldn't wish monetary loss on people investo-speculating near-randomly
in a very small market for an emerging decentralized cryptocommodity, who
WOULD you wish it on?

What is this, "too small to fail"?!

------
sneak
Bitcoin "down" to $100. They were $10 in January. They'll be over $50 at the
end of this month. When I was mining 18 months ago, they were about a quarter.

Smooth the line and bitcoins are doing exactly what you'd expect from a
linear-demand-growth emerging commodity market with a fixed rate of supply.
Everything is going exactly according to plan.

Note well that the exact same thing (a big speculative run-up and follow-up
correction) happened a couple years ago for the $0.50 to $29 spike, and will
probably happen again for the inevitable $300 to $1500 run-up.

~~~
tptacek
Unless you actually wanted to transact business using Bitcoin as a unit of
account.

Worth observing that the opposite swing, where BTC shoots up $50 in ten
minutes or whatever, is just as harmful.

~~~
sneak
Most people who aren't risk-tolerant toward things like this are using
services that instantly (or daily) convert to USD or EUR to minimize losses
due to exchange rate flux.

It's really only a big deal for speculators, or people who are trying to run a
btc-in-from-customers, btc-out-to-vendors business. SR is probably pretty
interesting today.

~~~
tptacek
How do you instantly convert USD and BTC when the prices are this volatile?
Bitpay quotes BTC prices good for 10 minutes.

~~~
sneak
Obviously, you can't. The intra-day prices have only been this volatile for 3
or 4 days out of 1000, though.

I think a half of one percent is pretty good for something that finally solved
the centralization problem for digital currency and has only been really
useful for a couple of years. It will, of course, continue to get better with
time as the size of the market increases.

This big flux could well have been caused by a single old-school
miner/collector dumping $1-2mm of BTC in one batch, too. Remember, these
markets aren't really that big yet.

------
cecilpl
[http://www.thebubblebubble.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/04/st...](http://www.thebubblebubble.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/04/stages.jpg)

First sell-off - late 2011 whne the price dropped from $30 to $5.

Enthusiasm @ $50. Greed @ $130

New paradigm over the last couple days.

------
Splendor
We get it. Bitcoins have value and that value changes. Surely there's a better
place to discuss this.

~~~
wavesounds
I just saw them mention it on CNBC its national news surely hackernews should
be discussing the technical aspects of national news, especially when it
involves a virtual internet currency.

~~~
Splendor
I don't consider a post that only points to the current value to be a
discussion of technical aspects.

------
jaimebuelta
Wow, this graph (3 days) is SPECTACULAR
<http://bitcoinity.org/markets/mtgox/USD?span=3d>

From $160 to $240 down to $140, and up currently to $160

------
AlexMuir
Fucks sake. I went to cash out a few this morning. The transfer didn't show in
my MtGox account for an hour so I went out for the day and come home to this.

------
heifetz
bitcoin is done. Why would anyone take this seriously and use it as a store of
value when it has had this much volatility in one month without any
fundamental reason? The problem with bitcoin is that hardly any businesses
support it as a unit of payment, without having to convert to a real currency.
So as a result, bitcoin does not have any fundamental value. It's purely for
speculation and fun.

------
dan1234
Day low of $70 but now $180. Huge potential profits for some.

Edit: that low is on bitstamp, mtgox has a low of $126. Still huge swings.

~~~
slg
And huge potential losses for others. Remember this is a zero sum game
(outside the miners), money gained by one person is lost by another.

------
tedchs
Can someone tell me how to put a filter on my Hacker News account to remove
the multiple-times-a-day articles about Bitcoin? Bitcoin is the opposite of a
useful thing for my business, where I need actual revenue in dollars so I can
turn around and pay my expenses in dollars.

~~~
publicfig
This is a community with a variety of interests and needs that shares articles
that may or may not line up with your interests and needs 100% of the time.
That's the price of going to a collectively aggregated news and discussion
site, you have to see stories that may not be specifically relevant to you.

~~~
tedchs
Yes, and that's why I continue to happily read Hacker News. You missed my
point that I believe it's excessive to have a "news story" every time Bitcoin
fluctuates. I would love to know how many Y Combinator or other startup
companies are transacting in BTC -- my guess is under 1%.

------
georgemcbay
Tell me again why any sane person would accept bitcoin as a currency for
goods?

~~~
hosay123
Please quit with the superficial throwaway comments, that's two content-free
crowd-pleasers in under 15 minutes.

In answer to your question, pricing goods in a fluctuating currency is a well
understood problem, and even with a single Google you'd find the Bitcoin
community already have established solutions. The short answer: spot price is
99% noise, so don't use it.

Unapologetic for being annoyed at this stuff. Check parent's submission
history, top-voted wise cracks have a ripple effect on the remaining comments
for a particular submission.

~~~
ajross
I just did several googles, and can't find an answer to that question. Maybe
you could enlighten us on the "well established solutions" (or just some
google search terms to pull them up)? It seems like a serious question to me.

Currency volatility in the real world is generally considered a near-disaster-
level problem. So if Bitcoin has truly solved this in a "well established" way
I'm sure there are a bunch of national bank managers that would love to hear
about it.

~~~
hosay123
There is at least one web service that produces an average over some period.
As to how you pick a good weighting, it probably depends a lot on how fast you
intend to flip outgoing goods/incoming currency, or where you store value. Try
terms like "VWAP", "Bitcoin average price" and so on.

I have no doubt a momentary search over on SSRN will produce a hundred papers
entirely dedicated to formalizations of this process.

~~~
georgemcbay
Once you formalize the process, how do you get people to buy into it? This
seems like a typical techie thing of coming up with a mathematical solution to
an issue that is really more about human psychology. When you have admittedly
linkbaity websites screaming "Bitcoint has lost half of its value" all over
the place, good luck explaining to people that we should really be averaging
the value and everything is fine, and keep selling your goods at the current
average price, etc.

This all speaks to the immense difficultly of real-world adoption of any
currency that isn't backed by real government policy.

------
publicfig
Note that the price may not be live, but instead a CloudFlare cached version.
The price may be incorrect.

~~~
eli
If I wanted to sell my bitcoins right this minute do you think I could get a
higher price? I don't. And that's the only measure of price that matters.

~~~
brodney
You don't think it's important to have accurate price history to sell
something?

~~~
eli
I didn't say that. But the market value of something is the price at which you
can currently buy and sell it, regardless of anyone else claims.

~~~
publicfig
The problem with that is, however, that you also couldn't sell at that price
because it was just a cached page.

------
teovall
What are you talking about? $150 ≠ $100

~~~
jvm
The price is flailing wildly due to the DDOS against Mt Gox.

They talk about it here: <https://mtgox.com/press_release_20130404.html>

...but as mikebo pointed out that link is from an older incident.

~~~
mikebo
That press release is from 6 days ago

------
brown9-2
What are the best sources for viewing a chart of intra-day price movements?

~~~
aw3c2
<https://data.mtgox.com/api/0/png/24hours.png?Currency=EUR> /
<https://data.mtgox.com/api/0/png/24hours.png?Currency=USD>

edit as per comment, thanks!

~~~
sneak
Note well that the BTC/EUR and BTC/USD markets on MtGox are _different
markets_. The (liquid) one that you care about is the BTC/USD market. The EUR-
traded one is much smaller.

------
SODaniel
Yeah, NO ONE saw this coming :) Of course DDOS attacks, split market places
and a gains of 100% per week for a few months are going to require hard falls.

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jacquesm
Just wait 20 minutes.

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xoail
This is simply a panic when someone decides to sell low. The average weight is
the right no. to look at.

------
dluchian
People buying at 180$/btc when the price is at 130? Nothing suspicious here,
move along.

------
yekko
Buy gold and silver instead.

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waffenklang
Simple cash-in on profits

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xyproto
Now at $150?

------
kiskis
popcorn time

