Ask HN: Will Bitcoin price collapse again in 2017? - samnwa
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imaginenore
Nobody knows the future. People who are giving you definitive answers are
guessing at best.

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ca98am79
not this time. Think of all of the buyers - people wanting bitcoin. Now think
of who is selling at this price - I don't see a compelling reason to sell.
More buyers and not enough sellers = price goes up.

"It is one of the great paradoxes of the stock market that what seems too high
usually goes higher and what seems too low usually goes lower" \- William
O'Neil

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endswapper
This may not answer your question directly, but it certainly represents the
volatility implied by your question: 1/5/17 "Bitcoin lost $3 billion in market
value in 40 minutes[0]"
[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13332551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13332551)

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vcarela
What you really want to know is whether to buy now or not and there is no
answer for that.

But as others pointed out, bitcoin & cia is no longer a crazy idea from
Internet. It is now a deeply studied idea that has been around for quite a
long time, so people started to trust in it, and after all, this is mainly a
matter of confidence.

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m-p-3
As Bitcoin price increases, there will most likely be attempts at achieving
virtual heist of exchanges. Usually the Bitcoin price goes down right after a
big one.

If exchanges are not maintaining good security practices, it will happen
sooner than later.

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27182818284
Sure.

It is nowhere near stable:
[https://twitter.com/sama/status/791754651506909186](https://twitter.com/sama/status/791754651506909186)

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bbcbasic
Since the value is based on confidence and it is not backed by anything ...
who knows?

Same sentence applies to fiat currency too although there is so much interest
in keeping those stable that they are unlikely to tank.

~~~
dr_win
If something (a commodity) has limited supply and there is non-zero demand =>
it has a value.

Demand for fiat currencies is at least generated by legal tender laws (you
need it to pay taxes). Demand for bitcoin is at least generated by the need to
publish some information in a global immutable distributed censorship-proof
table. Those two sources of demand are the fundamental ones (I would say
intrinsic). There definitely are more. Some demand is for example generated by
"store of value" function or "medium of exchange" function. These functions
emerge as secondary functions when a commodity is selected by market for its
favourable properties.

So I would disagree that "bitcoin is not backed by anything". You might have
written "I don't see the intrinsic value backing bitcoin" or "bitcoin is not
backed by anything tangible". Those statements would be correct.

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oleganza
Yes. From $10-15K to $5-7K. Just like it collapsed from $1000 to $300 in 2014,
or from $270 to $100 in 2013, or from $15 to $10 in 2012, or from $30 to $3 in
2011.

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wmf
Yes, the boom-bust cycle will continue.

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sayurichick
how would HN know? no one can predict with actual certainty.

However, It is true that as time goes on, volatility reduces. high price makes
it harder to fluctuate as quickly, and as new bitcoin continue to get mined,
the volume increases as well.

