
Bitcoin falls below $5,000 - wil_I_am_27
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46263998
======
johnwheeler
I wanted to get some bitcoin to buy some things off a website where bitcoin
was the only thing accepted.

I was immediately turned off when a different, exchange website asked me to
upload a photo of myself holding my driver's license in one hand and a paper
with the name of the website and date in the other.

Just my experience. To me, it seemed like a joke.

~~~
cenal
KYC is an awful thing for user experience.

Expect it moving forward.

~~~
waynecochran
FMI, KYC is a TLA for "Know Your Customer" based authentication.

~~~
yellowapple
FYI, TLA is a TLA for "Three Letter Acronym"

~~~
nsgoetz
FYI, FYI is a TLA for “For Your Information”

~~~
waynecochran
FMI is a TLA for "for my information"

------
the_clarence
I honestly don’t know what to make of it. I’m surrounded by a lot of bankers,
none of them believe in cryptocurrencies but all of them are focused on the
price and have zero understanding of the technology. I’m also surrounded by a
lot of blockchain people who are insanely hyped by the future of
cryptocurrencies and who have little idea about their current prices.

Being in the middle I see 99% of bullshit blockchain stuff, but I’m really
hyped by some cryptocurrencies and some of their tech. It is a really
interesting field if you ignore the market, but there is also a lot to
win/lose if you can predict where the tech will go.

Bankers and blockchain people are both the worst people to ask for an opinion.
So I might be in the right position to make a guess.

There is value. This market might become as strong as the stock market is
nowadays. As long as there is hype, there will continue to be a market. If
it’s a scam/pyramid sheme/mlm, then it’s an international one and it’s
probably not going to stop.

~~~
buboard
I 'm confused about the position of bankers. Our bank terminated our business
account because they found out we ran a cryptocoin price aggregator (oh the
horror!). I had to terminate the site (because it was making peanuts and i
didn't have the time) to have the account reinstated but i didn't understand
the hostility. And this came from a bank that in 2013 crashed and literally
stole money from their customer's accounts. This weird situation actually made
me a lot more optimistic about the future of crypto, because , you know, banks
are thieves too.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _i didn 't understand the hostility_

Cryptocurrencies are an AML nightmare. Ironically, this is a social–not
technological–problem. Even on HN, you'll regularly see "I don't have to pay
taxes on cryptocurrencies because the authorities can't catch me" comments.
This creates regulatory risks. Regulatory risks are regulatory costs.

Add to that the credit card fraud (buy cryptocurrencies with a card, charge
back; profit) and theft risks, and a cryptocurrency-affiliated customer is
more likely to cost a bank rather than make them money. Layer on top of that
the time it takes to develop expertise and a blanket ban on everything around
cryptocurrencies becomes understandable (versus training employees to comb
through them).

I don't like this outcome. But I see why a big bank would decide this.
Community banks, on the other hand, might be willing to invest the time into
understanding why you don't pose a fraud or my-assets-got-stolen-now-I'm-broke
risk.

~~~
buboard
But i wasnt running a crypto exchange, but a listing of cryptocoin prices.

------
mikenew
When it comes to the general public adopting crypto as usable, cash
replacement currency, I think there's two issues with adoption.

One is of course the network effect. I can't pay with (whatever)coin unless
other people use it too. So unless I'm just really excited about crypto and
_want_ to pay with it, it's not very useful to me until more people start
using it. And considering most of the crypt-hype has worn off, there's less
and less people that are just dying to use it.

And the other is that people (and businesses) are not going to try things over
and over until someone gets it right. Bitcoin is terrible as a currency. I
tried paying a friend of mine for a sandwich once, just for fun, and it cost
me $10 to send him $10, plus it took almost an hour. Of course it's less bad
now, but it's still not great. Valve started accepting bitcion and later
stopped. Lots of retailers did too. No one is going to jump on Bitcoin Cash or
Monero or whatever, even if they're better, because they were burned pretty
hard with Bitcoin.

Someone is going to have to genuinely nail it with a currency that is instant,
costs almost nothing per transaction, is very easy to use, and they're going
to have to make sure everyone knows it. And even then I think it's going to be
uphill.

~~~
buboard
> No one is going to jump on Bitcoin Cash or Monero or whatever, even if
> they're better

I think they will, if it is better.

> going to have to genuinely nail it with a currency that is instant, costs
> almost nothing per transaction, is very easy to use,

There are such cryptos. stellar, nano and i m sure also others. And i think
monero's anonymity promise is a big selling point too

~~~
waynecochran
Who will use bitcoin without it having a stable value?

~~~
buboard
The fees are a much bigger problem. Bitcoin is unusable, it s a speculative
vehicle for rich people. Zero-fee , or very-low-fee cryptos (i remember
stellar, iota, raiblocks, even xrp) would be very usable if they had a large
userbase and a very easy way to buy them. One of those has to focus on real
world growth, i.e. get many websites to support them by providing a dead-
simple payment solution.

I think there are ways to make them less volatile. For one, don't list them in
any crypto-to-crypto exchanges, instead allow only dollar cash-ins/outs, or
limit the amount that can be exchanged to some fixed value like $100 / hour.
Speculation and greed is limiting the prospects of most coins.

~~~
hackandtrip
Iota is unusable from (almost) the very first day it got out, they are just
scheduling and rescheduling the removal of central coordinators, making that
in no way different from a central authority authorizing payment, they cashed
and they disappeared basically

Stellar is trying to achieve a completely different goal than exchanging
stellars coins.

Almost no one of those crypto could achieve even half of the current daily
transaction processed by CC, and the proof they are using is in no way as safe
as proof of work, even if more efficient. Why would people adopt them? There's
no advantages, fees would be similar probably

------
dopamean
$5000 still seems like an insane number for something that I have no idea how
to judge the value of.

~~~
nostrademons
I felt the same about Facebook, and it's now worth $380B.

~~~
rootusrootus
The value proposition of FB seems much easier to explain than cryptocurrency,
though. We at least know what FB gets used for and where it earns money.
That's 100% more than I can say about Bitcoin.

~~~
sunshiney
Bitcoin core derives a good deal of value from being the entry to exchanging
for coins/tokens to buy into an ICO, which is now more restrained due to last
week's SEC actions. While there are stinky ICO-funded projects, there are also
valid projects that are growing. I have always seen it as more of a front
door, given that it's the primary pair across exchanges and given tx costs.
LTC was, for long, promo'd as the coin that would be used for day-to-day
purchases. Unfortunately traditional fiat users do not think in that way as
this is not the usual use of something fiat.

~~~
drivingmenuts
> Bitcoin core derives a good deal of value from being the entry to exchanging
> for coins/tokens to buy into an ICO, which is now more restrained due to
> last week's SEC actions. While there are stinky ICO-funded projects, there
> are also valid projects that are growing. I have always seen it as more of a
> front door, given that it's the primary pair across exchanges and given tx
> costs. LTC was, for long, promo'd as the coin that would be used for day-to-
> day purchases. Unfortunately traditional fiat users do not think in that way
> as this is not the usual use of something fiat.

I understood most of those words individually, but the combination was a
complete bafflement.

And that, in a nutshell, is a big problem for Bitcoin. I understand cash - it
has value because the government says it has value and it's directly
exchangeable for something that I can relate to that value (say, a huge bag of
bubblegum). But how do you explain an ICO and it's value to someone, without
an actual, physical object being present?

On the surface, it sounds like something virtual being exchanged for something
else virtual which may or may not lead to some other virtual thing, but at no
time is anything physical, representing concrete value, present.

In re the bubblegum example - when I was young, my grandfather handed my
cousin and I a dollar to buy some gum, expecting we buy a piece or two and
hand him the change. You can figure out the rest, I think. He was kinda pissed
off.

------
Kaveren
Amusing that the Bitcoin / Bitcoin Cash split is now even deeper with a split
in Bitcoin Cash. Just keep on forking until everyone has their own
cryptocurrency, I guess.

Aside from that, a point nobody seems to bring up is just how unproven most
cryptocurrency technology is from a monetary safety standpoint.

It's not just about a 51% blockchain attack. In multiple cases of some of the
most popular cryptocurrencies, we've seen danger [0] (these are not the only
examples). Nobody talks about this though, so while you're worried about
centralized banking, consider for a moment the threat of bad actors to the
core of your system.

[0] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/09/cryptocurrency-
insecurity-...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/09/cryptocurrency-insecurity-
iota-bcash-and-too-many-more/)

Of course many fanatics (some of the same people who still treat John McAfee
seriously) will blindly "hodl" by the logic that it's gone up after the
post-2013 crash, it must surely skyrocket again. Some people can justify their
belief, but many are just playing follow the leader.

~~~
xiphias2
Please don't confuse Bitcoin with any other cryptocurrency. Bitcoin Core is
where developers who treat it responsibly as a multi-billion dollar system are
concentrated. It's very hard to submit code to it for a reason (unlike ALL
other crypto currencies so far). Just as an example Bitcoin is the only
cryptocurrency where you can see a page with all security vulnerabilities so
far.

~~~
Kaveren
I am aware that Bitcoin is not the same as the myriad of altcoins. Faith in
the cryptocurrency market as a whole can affect _all_ prices, and that's half
the point. Besides, it's only been what, not quite 10 years since the first
Bitcoin implementation, and there's still plenty of ongoing work. I'm sure the
developers take their job very seriously, but even so, there's no promise of
impenetrability this early. Maybe in another 10 years.

Volatility induced by technical failures in the cryptocurrency market should
be just as concerning, particularly when people expect / expected the price to
stabilize following the surge in price in 2017.

------
nikk1
The price of bitcoin is actually a pretty good metric to observe the Gartner
hype cycle in action: from the rise, peak of inflated expectations, and slide
into the through of disillusionment. I predict that in 2019 or 2020 the price
of bitcoin will _slowly_ begin to come back up once we hit the slope of
enlightenment.

~~~
scj
That assumes Bitcoin is the ideal expression of the near-term cryptocoin.
Perhaps Bitcoin will be surpassed for technical reasons to become "The Yahoo!
of crypto-currencies" one day.

From a speculator's perspective, it'd probably be a riskier but more rewarding
bet to make in the cryptocurrency space.

------
yifanl
"On Thursday, 15 November, Bitcoin Cash - an offshoot of Bitcoin - split into
two different crypto-currencies, which are now in competition with each other"

Could someone explain why did Bitcoin Cash split _again_ , were there
technical reasons that couldn't be resolved by creating a new cryptocurrency?

edit: clarification

~~~
dawhizkid
By design the Bitcoin Cash network upgrades every 6 months. There were some
proposed network upgrades that a certain influential mining group led by
someone claiming to be the creator of Bitcoin disagreed with, and decided to
band together with some other large miners to hard fork with their own
protocol changes.

The changes were mostly around blocksize (the camp that disagreed wanted
larger block sizes), how transactions are ordered in a block, and
adding/removing certain functions.

~~~
berberous
I haven't followed the split very closely at all, but "someone claiming to be
the creator of Bitcoin" really understates things. That someone is Craig
Wright. Craig is _obviously_ not Satoshi (the creator of Bitcoin) -- he is a
transparent fraudster, lacks technical understanding, and is unhinged (see his
tweets and crazy threatening emails).

I think a lot of this is just stemming from Craig's ongoing desire to
fraudulently control Bitcoin by claiming to be it's creator (the fork is
called "Satoshi's Vision").

I'd stay far away from anything he touches.

~~~
dawhizkid
Yes, I've followed his tweets on occasion. I'm not saying I think he is
Satoshi. His "unhinged" Twitter behavior is not any more crazy than a certain
leader of the free world IMO and on par with the general eccentricities that
is crypto right now.

~~~
berberous
This email is pretty unhinged: [https://coinjournal.net/craig-wright-
threatens-to-crash-bitc...](https://coinjournal.net/craig-wright-threatens-to-
crash-bitcoin-cash-in-email-to-ver/)

Comparing him to Trump only speaks to the fact that Trump also has issues, not
that Craig does not.

Moreover, the style of writing/behavior is polar opposite of Satoshi.

------
johnwheeler
So, it looks like this post got ripped off the front page.

Question: was the Bitcoin breaks $20000 post ripped off the front page last
year?

------
the_snooze
I'm surprised it's that high, given that its biggest uses are just
speculation, drugs, and ransomware.

------
isuckatcoding
Please let this mean cheaper GPUs

------
api
I'm really shocked by the whole cryptocurrency experiment. We are now ten
years in and it seems like literally nothing of value has come of it at all.
Billions have been spent and we have absolutely nothing to show for it.

I've thought it was overvalued for a while but I still kept expecting the
whole ecosystem to create something I or someone else might find useful in the
real world. I've waited and waited and waited but no. Teams of brilliant
people, tons of money, and nothing!

It started as a sort of crypto-libertarian critique of financial capitalism,
but then it seems to have evolved rapidly into a "reductio ad absurdium"
parody of financial capitalism.

Among other things I think this experiment proves that the excesses and
absurdities of financial capitalism are not a technical problem. They are a
social and political problem. The instant cryptocurrency got legs it became
yet another speculative casino just like the rest of the financial system.

Edit: so prove me wrong. Does anyone actually use a cryptocurrency based
system for anything other than cryptocurrency itself, speculation, or
gambling?

~~~
joefourier
There are a number of real-world applications to which cryptocurrency has been
proven to be useful outside of gambling and financial speculation, such as
darknet markets, ransomware, donations to blacklisted organisations, paying
international contractors sotto banco, transporting money illegally across
borders... While you may notice a common pattern in their legality or lack
thereof, they certainly have real needs that are fulfilled by cryptocurrency.

~~~
api
I'm aware of that niche, but I was speaking mostly of the ICOs that promised
new technologies and of broader adoption of cryptocurrency across the economy.

The thing that's shocked me the most is the amount of money raised by ICO-type
projects during the boom and the fact that not one of them appears to have
delivered anything. I'd expect some to be scams, but _every single one of
them?_ Not a single reputable functional team raised money with an ICO and
shipped something?

I'm excluding ICOs that shipped things of use only to other ICOs,
cryptocurrency, gambling, and speculation. That's self-referential: crypto to
make crypto for more crypto. I'm talking about things of use in the real
world. That's why I called it a parody of financial capitalism. The point of
money is to facilitate useful things, not to just chase itself around in
circles. The latter is the essence of financial capitalism vs. real productive
capitalism.

~~~
lmpostor
I mean what timeline were you expecting? Did you honestly think that an
application with the attack surface of literally everyone would come-out
polished in a year or two?

Ethereum's ICO was in 2014, and most ICOs were on Ethereum and are less than
1-2 years old. One of the older "smart contract" projects has been in
development since 2013 and it is still a massive work in progress.

You have a shit ton of people who want to reap the benefits of what-to-come,
in fact that is what ICOs made easier. What it lacks are extremely competent
people willing to dedicate anywhere between 3-10 years of their life to make
it happen. It is hard to say you can buy that with strictly money.

------
0x8BADF00D
I don’t think mining will be profitable anymore at a certain point. As soon as
mining becomes unprofitable, there will be a death spiral for the price of
Bitcoin.

~~~
newnewpdro
When miners leave the network the difficulty drops automatically keeping it
profitable for those who remain.

~~~
mario0b1
But this then brings the question back (atleast for me): What happens when all
coins are mined? I just looked it up and it's already >80% mined. So if miners
would leave the pool and then suddenly (suddenly might even be a long period
of time here, I don't know to much about bitcoin) all coins are gone. What
happens?

Edit: What just got to my mind is that we will never gain more bitcoins then
those 21 million, but we surely will lose them (people lose they keys, die,
whatever). Will the price go up to "infinity" or will it suddenly drop to 0?

~~~
berbec
According to [1], in 2140 each block will give 0.00000042 BTC (big guess based
on mining trends). The reward per block goes down as the number of remaining
coins reduces.

This introduces a very unstable system. If the price of bitcoin doesn't
(double + increase with inflation), as the block reward shrinks, the rewards
will become useless.

1: [https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10486/when-
will-...](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/10486/when-will-the-
last-bitcoin-be-mined)

------
jgladch
There will be a whole spectrum of cryptos with different advantages over one
another... like there already is.

------
buboard
This is good news, very good. I hope it psychologically affects people and
that it lasts long enough that people will stop focusing on speculation and
pumps, and instead focus on adoption and expansion.

~~~
forthefuture
I’d go even further: I hope it keeps falling until a better crypto currency is
worth more. Bitcoin even existing proves the market is more speculative than
functional.

~~~
buboard
there does seem to be some disentanglement from bitcoin:
[https://coinmarketcap.com/](https://coinmarketcap.com/)

------
booleandilemma
I never saw this coming.

------
dajohnson89
What's the momentum for adoption in places like venezuela?

~~~
asdff
Nowhere to be found. I kid you not, the government tried to start a
nationalized crypto. Many are just using other currencies like the Colombian
peso.

~~~
lrns_
O really?
[https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/VES](https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins/VES)
seems to tell a different story. Ofcourse no one wants to buy a 'nationalized
(read: centralized) crypto'.

------
newnewpdro
There's a lot of posts here questioning the utility of cryptocurrency when we
already have cash. I sometimes ask myself the same question, as none of my
day-to-day transactions would benefit from cryptocurrency (or even offer it as
an option). But I'm a cantankerous old man who just goes to the grocery store
and gas station, not some malleable young whipper-snapper shaping the future,
for better or worse, with what I participate in.

However, I recently listened to a Reply-All episode [1] where a young girl
casually received $100 in bitcoin from an anonymous individual mid-episode, a
sort of restitution for having her account stolen, while corresponding with
the thief on discord.

It took practically no time, and gave me some pause to consider how this might
be a glimpse of the future. The exchange could have been done through PayPal
or something else with less anonymity, but it wasn't, they used bitcoin.
Perhaps it was staged, perhaps she was primed to have a coinbase account
already by the show hosts knowing this would happen, I don't know. If it was
an authentically candid situation, it would be somewhat remarkable that she
was already prepared to accept the payment with zero friction other than
asking "It's super long, right?" when asked for her bitcoin address.

So clearly there's already utility/convenience for _some_ people today, and
the fact that this group includes youngsters could mean it's just be a matter
of their becoming mature adults continuing to use cryptocurrency before it
takes over in a big way.

Here's the excerpt from the transcript for the curious and lazy:

\----8<\----8<\----8<\----8<\-----

ALEX: And then (clears throat) he was like, “Look, do you have a bitcoin
account?” And she was like, “Yeah.”

KEVIN: I sold the Snapchat for 100 so I’ll just send that directly back to
you. So um, you can do whatever you want with that since it is rightfully
yours.

ALEX: Lizzie, do you have your Bitcoin account number handy?

LIZZIE: Yeah.

ALEX: Do you want to drop it into–

KEVIN: Yeah, let me–

LIZZIE: It’s super long, right?

KEVIN: Yeah, yeah, yeah no. Post it. Yeah, yeah. It starts, uh, it’s usually
with a three. You have coinbase, right?

LIZZIE: Yeah.

KEVIN: Yeah, let me boot up my ledger. Okay. [typing] Alright I sent it.

LIZZIE: Yup.

KEVIN: Got it?

LIZZIE: Yeah, thank you.

KEVIN: Cool. Yeah, of course. Yeah you can do whatever you want with that. If
you wanted to donate it, go for it. And if you want to keep it and buy
groceries go for it.

LIZZIE: Awesome.

\----8<\----8<\----8<\----8<\-----

[1] [https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-
all/130-lizard](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/130-lizard)

[1.mp3]
[https://traffic.megaphone.fm/GLT8967905844.mp3?updated=15416...](https://traffic.megaphone.fm/GLT8967905844.mp3?updated=1541657837)

------
mxschumacher
something that I think is commonly misunderstood about Bitcoin is that
something can bring a lot of value, without being valuable in a market
capitalisation sense. Think Wikipedia and Linux.

------
rustcharm
Shouldn't all the True Believers be mortgaging and leveraging everything and
going all in?

~~~
pamflemington
Well the funny thing about the True Believers is that their numbers are
strangely correlated to the price of bitcoin.

------
0xTJ
Oh no, my $10 is now worth $5

~~~
alexandernst
HODL!!! I'm told you'll soon be so rich you could buy a yacht! Or two!

------
raverbashing
London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London Bridge is
falling down, my dear lady

(ambiguity intended)

------
adamnemecek
Crypto is going to come back with vengeance. Maybe not bitcoin and maybe not
in the next 6 months, but people have seen the future and they want more.

In order to maximize "exchange of value", there needs to be a way to exchange
tiny amounts of money easily. Right now there isn't such a way and crypto
might solve it.

~~~
lsiunsuex
(not an investor nor a banker)

"At its peak, in November 2017, it briefly hit $19,783 - which means the price
has fallen by about 75%."

If this were a real stock market and those were real $$$s, isn't that the kind
of crash that causes great depressions or investors jumping out of windows
(movie trope, but not really)

How can something so volatile possibly be worth pursuing or investing in,
other then get rich quick schemes.

~~~
dqpb
Surely the speculative value of bitcoin is independent of the inherent value
of cryptocurrency technology. You wouldn't argue that cash isn't viable
because some countries economies have crashed.

~~~
fisherjeff
> You wouldn't argue that cash isn't viable because some countries economies
> have crashed

On the other hand, I _would_ say a country's economy weren't viable if their
cash had crashed.

------
mrtksn
My feeling: HN is generally negative against blockchain and it's applications,
rooting to be proven useless because the Silicon Valley actually missed the
window and it's not on the cutting edge of the wave.

My feelings towards bitcoin(cryptocurrencies in general): A tool to misbehave
in a society that is completely regulated and monitored. Its price is going to
match the market for misbehaviour. The size of the market for misbehaviour is
going to be based on how much the society deviates from moderate: that is, in
total anarchy bitcoin can replace the total global money supply and reach
millions of dollars equivalent per bitcoin and in totalitarian governments in
multipole world order it can be the currency to trade between camps and
illegals when the governments tells you not to.

Edit: Hey, it would be nice if you also write why you disagree.

~~~
ageitgey
I don't think SV missed the window. Coinbase has done very well.

I think the reasons a lot of HN people are negative on bitcoin and blockchain
are:

\- For most use cases, blockchains seem like a really inefficient database.
While blockchains are are neat data structure and might have some great uses
in the future, most of the proposed use cases seem better served by a normal
DB. Would love to be proven wrong.

\- The "power used vs. utility provided" ratio of BTC seems insanely bad. A
fairly small financial network (at the global scale) is sucking up a
noticeable fraction of energy production.

\- Crypto brought a wave of very non-technical get-rich hucksters into the
tech scene doing pump and dump ICOs and the like.

\- It seems like a lot of non-sophisticated, non-technical investors are
getting duped out of their money. I hear all the time about working class
people "getting into crypto" because they think it's a magic money machine and
don't really understand the risk.

\- And the biggest for me: Almost every crypto investor/fan I ask in person
has NEVER used crypto to buy anything other than more crypto or to make small
purchases. Crypto fans make huge claims like crypto is transforming commerce
but it doesn't seem to jive with real life experience.

~~~
the_snooze
>For most use cases, blockchains seem like a really inefficient database.
While blockchains are are neat data structure and might have some great uses
in the future, most of the proposed use cases seem better served by a normal
DB. Would love to be proven wrong.

As a corollary to this, a lot of blockchain "solutions" don't seem to even
understand the problems they're purporting to solve. They're shoehorning
blockchain into issues where it's absolutely inappropriate and claiming
victory. Elections come to mind.

~~~
mrtksn
Just like the programmers trying to solve every problem with an app at some
point a few years ago.

Not long ago every app idea was getting funded only to decay in irrelevance.

