
Bitcoin drops below $9000 on Coinbase - empressplay
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/01/bitcoin-drops-9-percent-nears-crucial-make-or-break-level-of-9000.html
======
Zaskoda
Dear lord, we haven't seen prices this low since...

...November... I think it was just last November.

~~~
RKearney
Well it was nearly $20k in December, so I'd say having it fall below $9k less
than 2 months later is pretty significant.

~~~
cptskippy
Not when it was that price 2 months earlier. Why wouldn't you expect a rapid
decent immediately following a skyrocket?

~~~
TylerE
Because currencies aren't supposed to fluctuate by 50% in a 1 month span.

~~~
cptskippy
I agree and following that reasoning a 50% upward trend should be very
alarming because it screams manipulation.

When an event like that occurs you should very much expect a correction, and
when that correction occurs it should be expected and not a surprise.

What baffles me is that everyone involved in BTC accepted the 50% upward
fluctuation. When the obvious correction occurred they were all surprised and
started saying just what you did, that currencies aren't suppose to fluctuate
by 50% in a month.

How didn't you see this coming and why do you still consider BTC a currency in
light of this event?

~~~
TylerE
I saw it coming from a mile away. I've thought bitcoin is basically stupid
back when it was under $0.01.

~~~
cptskippy
Why do you consider it a currency?

------
jondubois
Bitcoin is currently the world's reserve cryptocurrency - All cryptocurrencies
can be exchanged for Bitcoin. But unfortunately in technical terms, it's not
fit for this purpose.

The reserve cryptocurrency of the internet needs to be fast and offer cheap
transactions so that it can easily and cheaply be moved between exchanges.

I think it will take some time before another cryptocurrency takes the place
of Bitcoin. Part of the problem is that very few people currently have the
skills to evaluate a cryptocurrency based on its technical merits. So
exchanges are not currently in a position to agree about what the next reserve
cryptocurrency should be.

I think that replacing Bitcoin with Ethereum right now would be a mistake.
Ethereum has a lot of big scalability hurdles - I think that technically
Ethereum actually has more hurdles to overcome than Bitcoin - Their community
does seem a lot more motivated though; but I'm not sure that will be enough.
Ethereum still needs to switch to Proof-of-Stake and THEN it needs to
implement sharding.

Also, I don't think that pruning will be feasible for Ethereum. It wouldn't
make sense to prune the Ethereum blockchain because that would entail pruning
out smart contracts. Most no-smart-contract cryptocurrencies are not limited
in this way.

~~~
rawrmaan
I think Nano ([https://nano.org](https://nano.org) \-- just rebranded from
RaiBlocks) will become one of the biggest arbitrage currencies due to zero
fees and its highly scalable architecture (7k+ TPS tested). I've been working
my butt off to make sure as many people as possible will be able to build with
it as the documentation and ecosystem are currently lacking. See
[https://www.nanode.co/node-api](https://www.nanode.co/node-api)

Prunability included.

~~~
0wing
Raiblocks aka Nano is a scam.

"Distribution is complete" \- how was the supply created and distributed?

[https://raiblocks.net/page/frontiers.php?limit=100](https://raiblocks.net/page/frontiers.php?limit=100)

Basically someone created Raiblocks by forking another DAG 'blockchain'
database, and allocated themselves millions of coins spread across many
addresses. A few thousand coins were given to the public if they clicked
captchas.

These people who generated raiblocks / nano are now essentially multi-level
marketeers trying to convince you to buy their beanie babies.

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raiblock+captch...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=raiblock+captcha+)

Remember, anytime you buy a cryptocurrency means someone else is trying to
cash out.

~~~
Alex3917
> anytime you buy a cryptocurrency means someone else is trying to cash out.

The reason people sell stuff is usually to optimize their portfolio
construction, not because they think the price is going to go down. Just
because you think something is going to go up 10x in the next year doesn't
mean it's a good idea to hold onto it.

~~~
sincerely
>Just because you think something is going to go up 10x in the next year
doesn't mean it's a good idea to hold onto it.

Could you please explain this to me

~~~
Alex3917
I think Stellar is going to go up 10x by the end of next year. That doesn't
make it a good life decision to mortgage my house and put my life savings into
XLM.

------
wand3r
I remember balking when bitcoin increased from $20 to $30 as too expensive way
back in the day. BTC has come so far and appreciated so fast. I find it pretty
wild that people are acting like the price has plummeted. While it literally
has fallen a non-trivial percentage from its high on the 3 year basis it would
be really hard to find anything that had close to this sort of yield.

~~~
twiceaday
BTC crashed from 19k down to 9k. A lot of people lost a lot of money. Why are
you discrediting this? Because BTC was even lower before? How is that related?

~~~
toolz
In the span of a few months....if you invested into BTC _needing_ to make a
profit and only being able to hold for a few months you're just asking for it.

~~~
twiceaday
This is not saying much. Obviously short term positions in a volatile asset
are bad. Are you implying that long term positions in BTC are good?

~~~
wand3r
Yes, that was what I said exactly. The price was $20-30 dollars and if you
were long on that with even a small position you would have made significant
money over the long term. BTC has always fluctuated a lot but on average if
you held the currency for long periods of time; >1 year, you would have more
money than you had previously. It is short term speculators that have always
driven volatility.

~~~
twiceaday
Past performance is not indicative of future returns. We will never again have
the same climate for BTC as we had. It is absolutely "wild" for you to treat
strong future BTC growth as a foregone conclusion.

------
solotronics
scalability is being solved by lightning network which is already seeing alpha
testing on the Bitcoin main net (production) I am doing what I have done every
big drop in Bitcoin and buying a little each week

just because it performed in the past doesn't mean it will in the future but
the same reasons I liked it still exist and are getting stronger. the market
will lag behind lightning because people don't realize what it is yet and it
might take a year or two but it will be back even stronger than $20k (the
first time it's bought by a countries reserve bank it's game over cryotos will
beat fiat then)

~~~
lern_too_spel
Alternatively, people realize what it is and understand why it doesn't solve
any meaningful problems with Bitcoin.

~~~
solotronics
people are already using lightning to pay for VPN service instantly with less
transaction fee than $0.01 USD, from my perspective this solves the problem of
Bitcoin transactions being too expensive to pay for everyday items

~~~
lern_too_spel
In order to do that, you had to pay a large transaction fee to set up a
Lightning channel in the first place. Since all transactions between you and
TorGuard are one-way, you will have to do this repeatedly, paying large
transaction fees each time.

------
yashksagar
Don't worry keep HODLing
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg2oukQZ6dg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg2oukQZ6dg)

------
tromp
As predicted in [1] we now have reversed the meme:

[https://i.imgur.com/cjnwruL.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/cjnwruL.jpg)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15987623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15987623)

~~~
starpilot
Predictions without a specific timeframe aren't very useful. For a random
variable on an infinite domain, all outcomes will eventually be true.

------
m1sta_
Like a ball bouncing down a stairwell.

~~~
IntronExon
If it looks like a cat, and smells like a corpse...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_bounce](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_bounce)

 _Even a dead cat will bounce if it falls from a great height_

That last step is going to be a doozy too. Hopefully this is happening before
too many people lose more than they can afford, because of FOMO and the
relentless hype.

~~~
mikestew
I had considered jumping in if what appears to be support at $9K held. Looks
like this cat, though, might not bounce but just drill its way into the
earth's crust. Granted, I'm apply analysis that is questionable with stocks,
and might be (probably is?) completely inappropriate for cryptocurrency.

------
poster123
At what price would Bitcoin be cheap? I'd be willing to take a flyer with a
few $K if I had reason to think there was positive expectancy.

~~~
lern_too_spel
There is no floor on Bitcoin's value.

~~~
jjoonathan
Well it probably isn't going to go negative. Probably.

~~~
0wing
Well, mining Bitcoins is a net negative of wasted energy.

Every bit of computer power beyond the minimum threshold of efficiency needed
to operate the transactions and database is a net loss.

Peak efficiency of the Bitcoin mining network would be about 3-10 basic
desktop computers. Instead Satoshi Nakomoto's Proof of Work will waste more
and more energy with nothing to show as time goes on.

~~~
X6S1x6Okd1st
Do you have a proposal for a cryptocurrency without proof of work?

------
mkbkn
$9000 is nothing. During the Indian Budget yesterday, bitcoin price was close
to $4000 on Zebpay.

[https://www.cryptoground.com/article/btc-price-4000-usd-
indi...](https://www.cryptoground.com/article/btc-price-4000-usd-indian-
exchange-zebpay)

------
pramodzion
why is it "on Coinbase" ?

~~~
beefsack
Because it's only worth what people are willing to pay, and that's how much
Coinbase are paying at the moment.

~~~
foobar2020
Well there are more people that are willing to pay than just Coinbase. A more
comprehensive answer would be that arbitrage is not that up to speed in the
Bitcoin world, especially in KRW and JPY markets:
[https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#markets)

Used to be that crypto is massively overpriced there, now it looks like Korea
and Japan are leading this price fall.

~~~
ceejayoz
> A more comprehensive answer would be that arbitrage is not that up to speed
> in the Bitcoin world...

Or that folks trust their ability to get money out of Coinbase more than the
other exchanges.

------
amriksohata
Patience, hold onto it for another few days lol

------
perseusprime11
Hodl? Or Fodl?

~~~
thesmallestcat
foldl?

~~~
quickthrower2
foldl' is better

------
Taniwha
oooh .... a race to the door ...

------
CryptoPunk
Ethereum has the most trading pairs after Bitcoin, and a pretty comprehensive
multi-pronged scaling plan. It's the most likely successor to Bitcoin as the
reserve cryptocurrency.

~~~
siruncledrew
Why is a reserve cryptocurrency needed?

~~~
CryptoPunk
It is just what emerges, because people need a stable high-liquidity currency,
for things like an intermediary for trading between lower liquidity
currencies, and as a lower-volatility store of value.

