
Bitcoin just broke 400 USD - bmilleare
https://coinbase.com/charts?foo
======
uniclaude
To all those in this thread regretting having sold bictoins earlier because of
some feeling. Don't be depressed, a lot of people did, and that's OK.

You can still trade, but you have to switch your mindset to a trader's one,
and regretting a "missed" opportunity and feeling "tempted" to buy while the
asset is on the rise is impulsive. Learn how to trade, there are countless
resources around, even though this is not only math, learning seriously can
protect you from impulsive behavior.

I'd say, if you want to invest in bitcoin, unless you're a serious believer
(and that's fine, but in this case you probably already have some), do it like
poker players manage their bankroll, use some money you can _really_ afford to
lose, so you can sleep at night and not feel too bad then the coin drops 25%
over a day.

Anyways, what I think is that we are on HN, where people make money using
their skills and by creating value. Investing $10k by creating your company
today might not only make more money than the same investment in some
cryptocurrency, but also create something of value in the meantime.

Want to join the bitcoin ride the hacker way? Build a service that uses the
currency, or help people to use it.

Disclaimer: I have nothing against bitcoin, I just think it's a little sad to
regret not making a quick buck on something you have no real control on.

~~~
lectrick
> regretting having sold bictoins earlier because of some feeling

They turned a risky as hell deflationary asset into a low-risk slowly-
inflating one :)

Hindsight is 20/20\. At any time, Bitcoin could experience... a problem. Which
affects its value, badly. By selling, you simply dodged the cost of that risk,
which is real.

There will be Senate hearings soon on Bitcoin. The guidance coming out of this
alone could boost the value even further... or slam it.

[http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/11/bitcoin-
senate-...](http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/11/bitcoin-senate-
hearing-november-18.html)

And if it slams it, you should buy, as Bitcoin is a global phenomenon and is
incapable of being controlled by the US Government no matter how they propose
to deal with it. :) Germany and China are already quite positive on it.

~~~
droope
low risk? We'll see.

~~~
lectrick
_Perceived_ low risk :)

BTC is a nice hedge against that. I think people are beginning to realize
that.

------
oscilloscope
Bitcoin Average and Bitcoin Charts are two sites that provide much more
information about the latest price than Coinbase's chart.

Bitcoin Average does a volume-weighted price average across major exchanges.

[https://bitcoinaverage.com/#USD](https://bitcoinaverage.com/#USD)

Bitcoin Charts gives you some historical information like the 30-day average
for each exchange/currency pair.

[http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/](http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/)

If you want to look at candlesticks to track the latest price action,
Bitcoinity tracks multiple exchanges.

[http://bitcoinity.org/markets](http://bitcoinity.org/markets)

~~~
pilom
Looking at the bitcoincharts link, why is the going rate a MtGox (~440) so
much higher than BitStamp (399)?

~~~
mastermojo
It is notoriously difficult to get USD out of MtGox. I've heard that often the
process will take weeks or even a couple months. The price there reflects that
people are less willing to sell Bitcoins on MtGox.

------
fragsworth
Right now, the market cap is nearly $5 billion. An eventual market cap of $1
trillion or higher, however, is very realistic, if global banks pick it up as
their default method of exchanging wealth. It effectively replaces risky
physical shipments of gold and cash, and solves the (also risky) reliance on
corporate/government credit worthiness for digital transfers of ownership.

~~~
Fomite
Banks don't exchange wealth with physical shipments of gold and cash. Large
scale digital transfers of money is nothing new.

~~~
fragsworth
No, they do. Collateral for many debts require some percentage of physical
(lower risk) assets as opposed to a contract holding that carries ove risk
from a third party. Physical assets get moved around all the time.

------
nilkn
Does anyone have an explanation for why the price is going up so high so fast?
Is there something legitimately pushing the price up or is it pure
speculation?

~~~
lectrick
China discovered Bitcoin, I believe it was featured on its state news
recently, and the main Chinese bitcoin exchange (which is only 2 months old or
so) is already the largest in the world. China has been hurting for any kind
of financial investment vehicle of late, and historically they are big savers.

This is what happens with global phenomena. The soil (global internet) is
already there, anything that will grow in that soil (like bitcoin) can spread
VERY quickly like a wildfire.

What happens when India discovers it is perfect for remittances? What happens
when Africa discovers they can exchange payments with just a mobile phone
without even having a bank or credit card or any credit period? What happens
when parents the world over realize this is a perfect way to give their kids
money to buy stuff online with? Or for online retailers to be able to sell to
the unbanked and to those who don't have good credit or a credit card?
Anywhere in the world, to anyone with BTC? What happens when new uses for
Bitcoin that haven't even been thought of yet, are?

Trivia: The head of the Chinese exchange is a Stanford graduate and his
brother invented Litecoin.

~~~
foobarqux
Since such an exchange can circumvent Chinese monetary policy it is unlikely
that it can keep doing so and become popular.

~~~
vinchuco
Wouldn't a country lose by placing restrictions on BTC if BTC became widely
used in a global setting?

~~~
foobarqux
Countries place all kinds of restrictions that don't exist in other countries,
they don't end up "losing".

------
foobarqux
Which trading exchanges allow you to withdraw money easily and promptly and
have low liquidity and credit risk?

------
Jtsummers
All of you talking about investing in bitcoins, why aren't you trying to
_earn_ bitcoins instead? To some extent you'd be able to establish your own
exchange rate, or at least not be tossing money in at an inopportune moment,
and instead throw time/materials into some project and grow the bitcoin
economy. And, by growing the economy, you'll help to ensure that BTC's value
might mantain, rather than diminish, when speculators pull out or toy with the
market.

------
spikels
I wonder how much of the recent BitCoin run up is driven by CryptoLocker?

CryptoLocker demands 2 bitcoins (10 after initial deadline has passed) and
there are only around 12 million BitCoins in circulation. I haven't seem any
good estimates of how many people have been infected but it seems like it is
quite a few. This additional demand could easily drive the price up although
eventually the CyptoLocker extortionists would sell those BitCoins driving the
price down.

~~~
ufmace
I doubt it's much, since from what I've read, virtually nobody is paying the
ransoms in bitcoins. Makes sense - if you have some already, you aren't likely
to be the type of person who gets infected by that. If you don't, well, the
deadline for payment is like 3 days. I've bought bitcoins already multiple
times, and I don't think I could buy some in 3 days reliably. Somebody who
doesn't know much about bitcoin already doesn't have much chance of making a
purchase before the deadline.

------
AlexMuir
Right, question time:

Market cap is now $5 billion. Wealth can't be created, so where has that money
come from? Have other currencies fractionally devalued?

The cost of mining has been negligible until recently.

~~~
jeremysmyth
Why can't wealth be created? Value (of which wealth is a store) is entirely
subjective, and is not at all a zero-sum game.

If John Lennon wrote a poem on a sheet of paper just before he died, that
paper would now be worth a vast amount of money. Considerably more than the 1c
value of the sheet of paper alone. Nobody had to pay anything to create that
poem.

Bitcoins are currently valuable, precisely because (and frankly, only because)
people put a value on them. That means that if I'm willing to spend $400 on a
Bitcoin, and someone is willing to give one to me at that price, that is how
much it's worth.

That single transaction may be zero-sum, in dollar terms, but next week I
might sell the same Bitcoin for $500 or $300 in another (dollar-terms) zero-
sum transaction. The Bitcoin is the same. The price (value) is all that's
changed. Just like the price of the sheet of paper containing John Lennon's
last poem after he wrote on it.

------
kristianp
If you're thinking about trading bitcoin, I would suggest you don't use MtGox.
It has problems with withdrawals of USD, and hence has an inflated bitcoin
price compared to other exchanges [1]. Once your money is in there, the only
fast way to get your money out is to withdraw bitcoin, hence the disparity.

[1] [http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/#jump-btc-
usd](http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/#jump-btc-usd)

~~~
foobarqux
So what exchange should you use? And what type of assurances do they have in
terms of not losing your money?

------
BenderV
Funny that I almost invest in Bitcoin ten days ago...

Really, I always feel it's a good moment to invest when I look at the last 3
days chart...but then I look at the 2y chart...Big Bubble.

For the optimistics, I would suggest you to read that
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/04/11/an-
illustr...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/04/11/an-illustrated-
history-of-bitcoin-crashes/)

~~~
pjc50
Look at the 2y chart. Then look at the oil price chart from 2000. This spike
will have a matching downspike with recovery.

------
sciguy77
I bought some at $30 and sold at $260 right before the last crash (literally,
2 hours before). I felt all smug…

~~~
cstrat
haha yeah me too, I bought in at $40 and progressively sold out up to about
$240... I too felt smug. :)

------
SubuSS
So I see different rates in different websites. What prevents me from buying
in one and selling in another? Do these automatically account for the exchange
rates? from a quick look it doesn't seem so - I am wondering if short term
trading is a bad idea. (With tiny amount of money of course).

~~~
modeless
Nothing prevents you from moving bitcoins between exchanges, but moving
dollars between exchanges turns out to be much more difficult than you might
expect. Banks and governments introduce all sorts of roadblocks, charges, and
delays. In order to arbitrage effectively, you need to be able to transfer
dollars as well as bitcoins.

------
Aqueous
This graph is helpful:

[http://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed-
cumulat...](http://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed-
cumulative?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=)

------
dysruption
I sold my remaining BTC when it was 140.. I thought that was high...

~~~
nas
This points to a problem with the idea of early adopters getting an unfair
advantage. Say you are an early adopter and you bought at $0.10. Should you
cash out at $10? How about $100? At any point along the path an early adopter
could cash out and a late adopter could get in.

~~~
Jtsummers
This does not point out a problem with early adopter advantage.

BTC still appears to be a deflationary currency, which fundamentally favors
the early adopter (though they may still screw up and lose that advantage). In
a deflationary currency, over time, the cost of goods and services will trend
towards smaller increments of the currency. Assume that the BTC economy
stabilized, that it has a nearly consistent deflation rate similar to our
nearly consistent inflation rates in other currencies.

If you receive a salary of 100BTC this year, at a 10% deflation rate you would
expect your salary the next year to be about 90BTC, and about 81BTC the year
after. 7 years into the job (barring other pay raises) your pay is cut in half
(in absolute terms), but can still purchase the same amount each year. Now,
assuming a modest 30% savings rate, after about 15-16 years you'll have saved
up more than you will earn over the next 15 years. So now my kid is grown and
entering into the economy, in his first 15 years he'll have earned what you
saved, but have a fraction of your wealth. 15 years after him another kid has
grown and entered the market and faces the same dilemma.

Today, BTC is unstable, the value fluctuates wildly, "early adopter" is a
fuzzy term because BTC is still young. But this is the fundamental problem
facing deflationary currencies over an extended period. The deflation rate,
similar to the inflation rate for other currencies today, has to be tempered.
If it's allowed to get out of hand it'll wreck the economy it's meant to
facilitate.

------
lelf
Already have been discussed
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6724548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6724548)

------
nzealand
Things should get interesting when the Winklevoss' Bitcoin ETF is created. I
wonder what the implied volatility will say about the cost of puts and
calls...

------
kclay
Bought some at the April bubble at 235, dropped the next day . So happy that
it finally got back up but sad that I didn't buy more when it was at 40-75

------
sciguy77
Dear Hackers, Do something to produce a crash so I can buy more Bitcoin…
please?

------
rfnslyr
FUCK. Is all I have to say. When it was $200, I said "Fuck, I should probably
wait". Same thing when it was $300. I'm so on the fence in investing in
bitcoin. I feel like it's going to reach $10k/btc and I'll be living in a
lifelong depression of "what could have been".

Tempted to drop like 5k into it...

I truly don't know what to do at this point. I _could_ wait and see a drop
that may or may not come, and I'll constantly be in the state of indecision
that I feel ultimately will cripple me in the future.

I think I'll buy 1BTC/mo and see where it goes from there.

~~~
fleitz
Don't be sorry, you're looking at executing a buy high, sell low strategy.

When you want to buy bitcoin is when it's just experienced a big drop, you're
too late to the party, when it hits $50 again, buy.

Pick a price point, make a buy order, as soon as your buy order executes pick
another point, make your sell order. Don't time the market, price the market.

~~~
jaibot
On a related note: Is the bitcoin infrastructure mature enough to support
short selling in a sane way yet? I've yet to find a decent way to do this.

~~~
rfnslyr
I use BTC-E. Too bad I'm an idiot and traded over 50BTC for litecoins. I'm
legitimately stressed.

~~~
fleitz
I refused an offer for my house in Aug 2007, don't sweat it.

Go into trades with a clear head not thinking about the past. Whatever you did
you did, stressing about it will not help you make better trades in the
future.

If you think BTC is going up, cut your litecoin losses and trade, if you don't
stick with litecoin or something more stable til BTC reaches your price.

